The other day John Carmack tweeted a few things about the BSB. You can cherry pick the positive or negative things he said about the BSB and depending on your feelings could turn his comments into some kind of debate. Carmack absolutely does not hold back, is passionate about VR and has made it plain that he will do his best to destroy bad ideas.
But BSB gave their headset to a guy generally considered the father of modern VR to get his opinion on it. I think that shows some serious balls.
I saw a post of a ChatGPT 4 analysis of his tweets as follows.
"The presented tweets from John Carmack certainly express his high opinion of the Bigscreen Beyond PC VR system. Although he points out some flaws, such as lack of integrated audio, less breathability for fitness activities, and the necessity of a cable and tracking base stations, he also praises its lightweight nature, comfortable and perfect fit, and its high-resolution visuals. This is in line with Carmack's usual speaking style: he's known for his fair and balanced technical analyses. His critique appears thoughtful, detailed, and well-rounded, focusing on both the strengths and weaknesses of the product. At the end, he specifically recommends the Bigscreen Beyond for people considering upgrading their VR system and expresses hope that its design will impact future Meta designs. This suggests he sees value and potential in the product, which can be interpreted as him looking highly of it."
He was not super positive about it as I understand it:
https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-john-carmack-big-screen-beyond-review/
"The custom printed facial interface is comfortable, but not breathable, so it isn’t great for fitness activities."
Sebastian from MRTV added to this that the facial interface is very very close to his eyes and that it felt a bit strange for that reason compared to other HMD's. So yes it's very small, but if it's not breathable material then it can be irritating after using it for a long while in an intense VR session/longer race.
"The visuals are a trade off vs Quest Pro. The resolution is clearly higher, but there are more internal reflections in the pancake optics, and the quality falls off more toward the edges. There are parts of the view where screens look fantastic, good enough for actual productivity work, but not across the entire view."
Calling "
visuals a trade off" compared to the Quest Pro sounds very negative. Since the Crystal, overall, has better visuals then the Quest Pro(except the outside the sweetspot clarity, the QP seems to be even better regarding this, it has ~95% sweetspot, the Crystal ~70% sweetspot). I've read about many Crystal users that they "
upgraded from the Quest Pro" and that the upgrade is big/positive when it comes to visuals. So I'm not sure what he exactly means with that. Maybe it's because of the low nits of the BSB, the QP clearly has more nits and no reflections and a bigger sweetspot.
The internal reflections of the pancake lenses are something that every reviewer until now noticed about the BSB, the BSB also "seems" be be less good outside the sweetspot then the Crystal but this is unsure to what degree this is, the Crystal is also not perfect outside the ~70% sweetspot.
The audio thougts is something that I simply don't share with him, but he's not positive about that either:
"I sorely miss integrated audio. Having to mess with headphones severely impacts the minimalist feel of the headset. I know some people have strong opinions, but I still feel Quest made the right decisions around audio."
Same conclusion as everyone: The legend Carmack was amazed by what's possible with such a small/mini HMD(I am also amazed by that personally ! ). But there are clearly compromises. The visuals are simply not "next level" outside night scene's/Bradley scene's(he uses all his hmd's at insanely low nits, lower then everyone), there are serious trade off's at normal usage.
My end conclusion after all that I've read about the BSB is that it's not a great headset for sim racing. But that the BSB is a great headset for things as: VR chat, horror games, beat saber and similar games, everything where the reflections/low nits/low edge clariry is not an issue and where you get away with the trade off's of the BSB.
