Following Quest 2 almost three years to the day, Quest 3 is finally here. Meta continues its trend of building some of the best VR hardware out there, but it will be some time yet before the headset’s potential is fully revealed. Read on for our full Quest 3 review.

I wanted to start this review saying that Quest 3 feels like a real next-gen headset. And while that’s certainly true when it comes to hardware, it’ll be a little while yet before the software reaches a point that it becomes obvious to everyone. Although it might not feel like it right out of the gate, even with the added price (starting at $500 vs. Quest 2 at $300), I’m certain the benefits will feel worth it in the end.

Quest 3’s hardware is impressive, and a much larger improvement than we saw from Quest 1 to Quest 2. For the most part, you’re getting a better and cheaper Quest Pro, minus eye-tracking and face-tracking. And to put it clearly, even if Quest Pro and Quest 3 were the same price, I’d pick Quest 3.

Before we dive in, here’s a look at Quest 3’s specs for reference:

Hardware

Even if the software isn’t fully tapping the headset’s potential yet, Meta has packed a lot of value into the Quest 3 hardware.

Lenses

First, and perhaps most importantly, the lenses on Quest 3 are a generational improvement over Quest 2 and other headsets of the Fresnel-era. They aren’t just more compact and sharper, they also offer a noticeably wider field-of-view and have an unmatched sweet spot that extends nearly across the entire lens. That means even when you aren’t looking directly through the center of the lens, the world is still sharp. While Quest 3’s field-of-view is also objectively larger than Quest 2, the expanded sweet spot helps amplify that improvement because you can look around the scene more naturally with your eyes and less with your head.

Glare is another place that headsets often struggle, and there we also see a huge improvement with the Quest 3 lenses. Gone are the painfully obvious god-rays that you could even see in the headset’s main menu. Now only subtle glare is visible even in scenes with extreme contrast.

Resolution and Clarity

Quest 3 doesn’t have massively higher than Quest 2, but the combination of about 30% more pixels—3.5MP per-eye (1,832 × 1,920) vs. 4.5MP per-eye (2,064 × 2,208)—a much larger sweet spot, and a huge reduction in glare makes for a headset with significantly improved clarity. Other display vitals like persistence blur, chromatic aberration, pupil swim, mura, and ghosting are all top-of-class as well. And despite the increased sharpness of the lenses, there’s still functionally no screen-door effect.

Here’s a look at the resolving power of Quest 3 compared to some other headsets:

While Quest 3 and Quest Pro score the same here in terms of resolving power, the Snellen test lacks precision; I can say for sure the Quest 3 looks a bit sharper than Quest Pro, but not enough to get it into the next Snellen tier.

While the optics of Quest 3 are also more compact than most, the form-factor isn’t radically different than Quest 2. The slightly more central center-of-gravity makes the headset feel a little less noticeable during fast head rotations, but on the whole the visual improvements are much more significant than ergonomic.

Ergonomics

Ergonomics feels like one of just a few places where Quest 3 doesn’t see many meaningful improvements. Even though it’s a little more compact, it weighs about the same as Quest 2, and its included soft strap is just as awful. So my recommendation remains: get an aftermarket strap for Quest 3 on day one (and with a battery if you know you’re going to use the headset often). Meta’s official Elite Strap and Elite Strap with Battery are an easy choice but you can find options of equal comfort that are more affordable from third-parties. FYI: the Elite Straps are not forward or backward compatible between Quest 2 and 3.

While the form-factor of the headset haven’t really improved, it’s ability to adapt to each user certainly has. Quest 3 is the most adaptable Meta headset to date, offering both continuous IPD (distance between the eyes) and notched eye-relief (distance from eye to lens) adjustments. This means that more people can dial in a good fit for the headset, giving them the best visual comfort and quality.

I was about to write “to my surprise…”—but actually this doesn’t surprise me at this point given Meta’s MO—the setup of Quest 3 either didn’t walk me through adjusting either of these settings or did so in such a nonchalant way that I didn’t even notice. Most new users will not only not know what IPD or eye-relief really does for them, but also struggle to pick their own best setting. There should definitely be clear guidance and helpful calibration.

The dial on the bottom of Quest 3 makes it easy to adjust the IPD, but the eye-relief mechanism is rather clunky. You have to push both buttons on the inside of the facepad at the same time and kind of also pull it out or push it forward. It works but I found it to be incredibly iffy.

Field-of-View

In any case, I’m happy to report that eye-relief on Quest 3 is more than just a buffer for glasses. Moving to the closest setting gave me a notably wider field-of-view than Quest 2. Here’s a look at the Quest 3 FoV:

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD
(no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

And here’s how it stacks up to some other headsets:

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD
(minimum-designed eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

Audio

Another meaningful improvement for Quest 3 is improved built-in audio. While on Quest 2 I always felt like I needed to have the headset at full volume (and even then the audio quality felt like a compromise), Quest 3 gets both a volume and quality boost. Now I don’t feel like every app needs to be at 100% volume. And while I’d still love better quality and spatialization from the built-in audio, Quest 3’s audio finally feels sufficient rather than an unfortunate compromise.

Controllers

Quest 3’s new Touch Plus controllers so far feel like they work just as well as Quest 2 controllers, but with better haptics and an improved form-factor thanks to the removal of the ring. Quest 3 is also much faster to switch between hand-tracking and controller input when you set the controllers down or pick them up.

Processor

The last major change is the new Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chip that powers Quest 3. While ‘XR2 Gen 1’ vs. ‘XR2 Gen 2’ might not sound like a big change, the difference is significant. The new chip has 2.6x the graphical horsepower of the prior version, according to Meta. That’s a leap-and-a-half compared to the kind of chip-to-chip updates usually seen in smartphones. The CPU boost is more in line with what we’d typically expect; Meta says it’s 33% more powerful than Quest 2 at launch, alongside 30% more RAM.

Quest 3 is still essentially a smartphone in a headset in terms of computing power, so don’t expect it to match the best of what you see on PSVR 2 or PC VR, but there’s a ton of extra headroom for developers to work with.

Continue Reading on Page 2: Softwhere? »

Bigscreen Beyond is the most interesting and promising new dedicated PC VR headset to come out in years, and while there’s a lot to like, we’re still waiting on a key piece that will make or break the headset.

Bigscreen Beyond has one goal in mind: make the smallest possible headset with the highest possible image quality.

Generally speaking, this unlikely headset (born from a VR software startup, after all) has ‘pulled it off.’ It’s an incredibly compact VR headset with built-in SteamVR tracking. It feels like a polished, high-end product with a look and feel that’s all its own. The visuals are great, though not without a few compromises. And it delivers something that no other headset to date has: a completely custom facepad that’s specially made for each customer.

I’ll dig more into the visual details soon, but first I need to point out that Bigscreen Beyond missing something important: built-in audio.

While there’s an official deluxe audio strap on the way, as of right now the only way to use Bigscreen Beyond is with your own headphones. In my case that means a pair of wireless gaming headphones connected to my PC. And it also means another thing to put on my head.

For some headsets this would be a notable but not deal-breaking inconvenience, for Bigscreen Beyond, however, it’s amplified because the headset’s custom-fit facepad means absolutely zero light leakage. It wasn’t until I started using Beyond that I realize just how often I use the nose-gap in the bottom of most headsets to get a quick glimpse into the real world, whether that’s to grab controllers, make sure I didn’t miss an important notification on my phone, or even pick up a pair of headphones.

With no nose-gap and no passthrough camera, you are 100% blind to the real world when you put on Beyond. Then you need to feel around to find your headphones. Then you need to feel around for your controllers.

Oops, something messed up on your PC and you need to restart SteamVR? Sure, you can lift the headset to your forehead to deal with it in a pinch, but then you put it back down and realize you got some oil on the lenses from your hair or forehead. So now you need to wipe the lenses… ok, let me put down the controllers, take off the headphones, take off the headset, wipe the lenses, then put on the headset, feel around for my headphones, then feel around for my controllers. Now I want to fix my headstrap… oops the headphones are in the way. Let me take those off for a minute…

All of this and more was the most frustrating part of an otherwise quite good experience when using Beyond. And sure, I could use wireless earbuds or even external speakers. But both have downsides that don’t exist with a built-in audio solution.

A lack of built-in audio on a VR headset just feels like a huge step back in 2023. It’s a pain in the ass. Full stop.

Until we have the upcoming deluxe audio strap to pair with Beyond, it feels incomplete. We’re patiently waiting to get our hands on the strap—as it will really make-or-break the headset—and plan to update our review when that time comes. Bigscreen says it expects the deluxe audio start to be available sometime in Q4.

Bigscreen Beyond Review

With the audio situation in the back of our minds, we can certainty talk about the rest of the headset. Before we dive in, here’s a look at the tech specs for some context:

And here’s where it fits into the landscape of high-end PC VR headsets from a pricing standpoint:

Smaller Than it Looks

Bigscreen Beyond is an incredibly unique offering in a landscape of mostly much larger and much bulkier PC VR headsets. Beyond is even smaller than it looks in photos. In fact, it’s so small that it nearly fits inside other VR headsets.

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Getting it so small required that the company individually create custom-fit facepads for each and every customer. Doing so involves using an app to 3D scan your face, which is sent to the company and used as the blueprint to make the facepad that ships with your headset. At present the face scan is only supported on iOS devices (specifically iPhone XR or newer) which means anyone without access to such a device can’t even order the headset.

And this isn’t an illusion of customization, the company isn’t just picking from one of, say, 5 or 10 facepad shapes to find the one that most closely fits your face. Each facepad is completely unique—and the result is that it fits your face like a glove.

That means zero light leakage (which can be good for immersion, but problematic for the reasons described above). The headset is also dialed in—at the hardware level—for your specific IPD, based on your face scan.

Eyebox is Everything

If there’s one thing you should take away from this review it’s that Bigscreen Beyond has very good visuals and is uniquely conformable, but getting your eyes in exactly the correct position is critical for a good experience.

The eyebox (the optimal optical position relative to the lenses) is so tight that even small deviations can amplify artifacts and reduce the field-of-view. In any other headset it would be far too small to make the headset even a viable product, but Beyond’s commitment to custom-fit facepads makes it possible because they have relatively precise control over where the customer’s pupil will sit.

The first facepad the company sent me fit my face well, but the headset’s sweet spot (the clarity across lens) felt so tight that it made the already somewhat small field-of-view feel even smaller—too small for my taste. But by testing the headset without any facepad, I could tell that having my eyes closer would give me a notably better visual experience.

When I reached out to the company about this, they sent back a newly made facepad, this time with and even tighter eye-relief. This was the key to opening up the headset’s field-of-view, sweet spot, and improving some other artifacts just enough to the point that it didn’t feel too much of a sacrifice next other headsets.

Here’s a look at my field-of-view measurements for Bigscreen Beyond (with the optimal facepad), next to some other PC VR headsets. While the field-of-view only increased slightly from the first facepad to the second, the improvement in the sweet spot was significant.

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD
(minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

It’s sort of incredible that moving from the first facepad to the second made such an improvement. At most, the difference in my pupil position between the two facepad was likely just a handful of milimeters. But the headset’s eye-box is just so tight that even small deviations will influence the visual experience.

Comfort & Visuals

With the ideal facepad—and ignoring the annoyance of dealing with an off-board audio solution—Bigscreen beyond felt like I jumped a few years forward into the future of headsets. It’s tiny, fits my face perfectly, the OLED displays offer true blacks, and the resolution is incredibly sharp with zero evidence of any screen-door-effect (unlit space between pixels).

While it does feel like you give up some field-of-view compared to other headsets, and there’s notable glare, the compact form-factor and light weight really makes a big difference to wearability.

With most VR headsets today I find myself adjusting them slightly on my head every 10 or 15 minutes to relieve pressure points and stay comfortable over a longer period. With Beyond, I found myself making those adjustments far less often, or not at all in some sessions. When playing over longer periods you just don’t notice the headset nearly as much as others, and you’re even less likely to have the occasional bonk on the headset from your flailing controllers, thanks to its much smaller footprint.

Brightness vs. Persistence

While Beyond’s resolution is very good—with resolving power that I found about equal to Varjo’s Aero headset—the default brightness level (100) leads to more persistence blur than I personally think is reasonable. Fortunately Bigscreen makes available a simple utility that lets you turn down brightness in favor of lower persistence blur.

I found that dialing it down to 50 was roughly the optimal balance between brightness and persistence for my taste. This level keeps the image sharp during head movement, but leaves dark scenes truly dark. Granted you can adjust the brightness on the fly if you really want.

Of course this will be content dependent, and Bigscreen is ostensibly tuning the headset with an eye toward movie viewing (considering their VR app is all about movie watching), where persistence blur wouldn’t be quite as bad because you move your head considerably less while watching a movie vs. playing a VR game.

Clarity

While Beyond doesn’t have Fresnel lenses, its pancake optics still end up with a lot of glare in high contrast scenes. I’d say it’s not quite as bad as what you get with most Fresnel optics, but it’s still quite notable. While Fresnel lenses tend to create ‘god rays’ which emanate from specific objects in the scene, Beyond’s pancake optics create glare that’s appears less directly attached to what’s in the scene.

Beyond the issues noted so far, other visual factors are all top notch: no pupil swim, geometric distortion, or chromatic aberration (again, this is all highly dependent on how well your facepad fits, so if you see much of the above, you might want to look into the fit of the headset).

Continue on Page 2: Bigscreen Beyond Review Summary »

More than six years after its VR debut, Sony is ready to bring next-gen VR to PS5 with PSVR 2. Does PlayStation VR 2 make a substantial improvement over its predecessor? And how does it stack up to other VR headsets on the market? Read on to find out.

With PSVR 2, Sony is not just improving on the prior headset, it’s also raising some bars for consumer headsets overall as the first device in its class to bring eye-tracking, HDR, and new haptic capabilities to the market. Let’s start out with a look at PSVR 2’s specs and how they compare to the original PSVR:

PSVR 2 Review

One of the most important parts of a VR headset is how things look when you peer through the lenses, so that’s where we’re going to start.

Clarity

How good things look inside of a VR headset depends on much more than just resolution, so we like to boil things down to the point of talking about ‘clarity’, ie: how clear does the virtual world look inside the headset.

PSVR 2 gets a big jump in clarity over its predecessor thanks first and foremost to a big leap in resolution (from 1.0MP per-eye to 4.1MP per-eye). From a resolution standpoint, that puts PSVR 2 on par with other headsets on the market like Quest 2.

While the image through PSVR 2’s lenses certainly looks much better than the original PSVR, it’s hampered a bit by two notable issues: sweet spot and motion blur.

PSVR 2’s Fresnel lenses actually have fairly good edge-to-edge clarity, but only if you can get your eyes in the headset’s rather small eye-box (AKA sweet spot). Unfortunately not everyone will be able to get their eyes into the ideal position because the sweet spot seems to be designed at a distance that makes it so you’d have to cram the headset uncomfortably against your face in order to keep the lenses in the perfect spot. Thanks to an eye-relief adjustment it’s easy to move the lenses far enough away that they aren’t crushing your nose, but for every little bit that you do you give up some sharpness on the edges and some field-of-view.

The small eye-box also means that if you don’t dial the headsets ergonomic adjustments in just right you’ll see things like chromatic aberration and more blur around the edges than you would otherwise.

Thankfully Sony has included a guided calibration step (which makes use of the headset’s eye-tracking) and helps users find that ideal spot by guiding them toward the correct IPD and lens alignment. This definitely helps reduce the issue of having a small sweet spot, and I find myself running calibration every few times that I pick up the headset just to be sure things haven’t jostled out of place. Luckily Sony has made it easy to run the calibration step at any point—even in the middle of a game.

I also mentioned motion blur as something that’s holding back the clarity on PSVR 2. I still don’t know exactly why I’m seeing a fair bit of motion blur on PSVR 2—whether its persistence blur, ghosting, reprojection, or something else—but it somwhat reduces the sharpness of the image whenever your head is in motion (which in VR is most of the time). It’s a shame because you can see just how sharp everything is when you head is still, and then as soon as you go to look at something else, the world around you becomes a bit more blurry.

And unfortunately PSVR 2’s Fresnel lenses aren’t an exception to the rule: its still easy to spot god rays and some glare in high contrast scenes.

Displays & HDR

Sweet spot issues aside, PSVR 2 is packing a pair of impressive OLED displays that make colors feel more rich and saturated while allowing dark parts of the scene to get truly dark instead of just dark grey.

This makes a big difference when it comes to content like Horizon Call of the Mountain which aims to immerse players in a world full of lush scenery.

While it’s great to have OLED black levels on a modern headset, PSVR 2’s displays do suffer from more mura than seen on its contemporaries, which manifests as a bit of speckling on the screen that’s more visible when seen against certain colors.

But that’s the price you pay for those deep blacks and purported ‘HDR’ capabilities, though I’ve yet to hear Sony confirm key parts of that capability, like peak brightness.

In my experience with the headset I can’t say I’ve felt like its showing significantly more peak brightness than other headsets, but it feels like the HDR is paying off more in the mid and lower tones.

Field-of-view

Similar to the small sweet spot, PSVR 2’s field-of-view is technically quite large—at times feeling like it meets even Valve’s Index—but that’s only if you can push the lenses exceptionally (and for me, uncomfortably) close to your eyes; so close that the lenses are putting a lot of pressure on your nose. Between where it’s actually comfortable for me to have the lenses sit and where I would get the maximum field-of-view, it feels like I’m leaving a non-trivial amount of FoV on the table. That said, even the comfortable position leaves me with a fairly sizable field-of-view that exceeds something like Quest 2.

IPD & Eye-tracking

PSVR 2 is the first consumer VR headset to ship with eye-tracking. While this has the potential to be very useful across a range of applications, I’ve yet to see any game that’s putting it to seriously good use. So far the closest any game has come is Horizon Call of the Mountain which uses eye-tracking to improve the accuracy of the game’s subtle auto-aim.

For its part, Sony is making use of the eye-tracking to help users set their correct IPD (which is very useful, especially considering the headset’s small sweet spot), and even adjust the tilt of the headset on the user’s head.

While I appreciate that smart touch, I wish the calibration step would actually provide a number to accompany the IPD setting; that way you could simply remember your number and dial it in every time. Instead, the guided calibration just shows a visual indicator of how close your eyes are to the center of the lenses. It works well, but without a number to go by you need to dial things in visually every time.

Continue on Page 2: Audio, Tracking & Controllers, Haptics »

Quest Pro is here and brings with it some welcomed hardware improvements but a dubious value proposition that’s highly dependent on someone else making the right apps.

There’s two ways to look at Quest Pro:

• A better and more expensive Quest 2
• A headset with new features that wants to transform the way you work

The former is pretty straightforward. If you plan on gaming just like you do on Quest 2, Quest Pro is in most ways the superior device. But when you factor in the $1,500 pricetag, there’s just no way the improvements are worth the cost of admission. And that’s fine, Meta really isn’t selling Quest Pro as a Quest 2 upgrade.

Instead the company is marketing some vague value proposition that Quest Pro will ‘transform the way you work’. Officially the company claims that Quest Pro is made for “builders, designers, and inventors. Architects, product designers, prototypers, game developers, engineers, and researchers have historically designed 3D products and experiences on 2D screens. We are giving these builders the ability to visualize their creations in 3D while getting a sense of scale and proportion in context to the environment.”

In theory that makes a lot of sense. In practice, the whole premise is undermined by a host of usability issues and a lack of high quality first-party software that delivers clear value. Meta seems to be banking entirely on someone else building the headset’s core enterprise functionality, at launch making Quest Pro feel like an experiment more than a product.

Finding the Value Proposition

So there seems to be two core ways that Meta expects customers to get value from this $1,500 headset. The first is by using it as a portable workspace, either by tapping into the inbuilt browser or using some sort of virtual desktop software. The second is that maybe you get lucky and somebody builds a third-party ‘killer app’ for your specific workflow.

Curiously, neither of these use-cases really demand the hardware that Quest Pro brings to the table. While some apps are enhanced by what Quest Pro does uniquely (better passthrough and expression tracking), I’ve yet to see an app that really uses them in a way that’s indispensable, making much of the headset feel like new hardware in search of a problem to solve rather than an answer to a critical need.

Usability Debt Rises to the Surface

The thing is, if you look at Quest 2 as a VR game console, it’s a pretty attractive product because it does one thing quite well: it plays VR games. And when you’re using it to play games, many of the headset’s serious usability issues are masked because generally you’re launching into a single app and then spending almost your entire session inside of it.

Productivity, on the other hand, generally means jumping between lots of different applications and workflows… something that Quest 2 (and Quest Pro, with its identical interface) is really bad at.

The issues there start at a fundamental level with the Quest interface. Though it began as mere menu, over time Meta has attempted to morph it into a sort of operating system interface. The result? A truly clunky nightmare of usability issues.

And a feeling of productivity isn’t lost just because the system interface is problematic and because jumping between apps is slow, but also because the entire architecture of the platform treats every app as its own siloed experience. So jumping from one app to another to try to get stuff done means dealing with a mess of different interfaces, different avatars, different friends/invite systems, different capabilities etc.

First-party Problems

Meta has sorta-kinda attempted to fix this with Horizon Workrooms, a single app that functions as both your personal office (via remote work on your PC or Mac) and a place where you meet immersively with colleagues. In theory that sounds great, but there’s a few key problems.

For one, Workrooms doesn’t even come pre-installed. You could easily end up with a Quest Pro and literally never know that what is ostensibly supposed to be core functionality (remote PC and immersive meetings) is actually hiding in some app you have to find and download from the store.

And what’s more… Workrooms just doesn’t come close to reaching the ease-of-use it needs to make people actually prefer to use it over other options that do not involve being in a headset. Much like the Quest system interface, Workrooms is wildly clunky and really quite unintuitive.

I’ve been professionally working in the VR space for more than a decade now, and while I’m able to figure it out, I can only imagine an employee (with minimal or no VR experience) getting a Quest Pro headset and trying to figure out how to use Workrooms.

I can already hear the poor support person trying to help out on the other end of a call:

Did you click the button on the bottom bar? No, the other bottom bar. You have to close the first bottom bar with the right button on your controller. You aren’t using the controllers? Ok pinch your fingers together then move your fingers down over the Oculus logo—I mean Quest logo—while you’re still pinching then let go of your pinch. Did the first bar close? Ok now on the other bar you see in front of you, click the button with the computer icon. You can’t see your pointer? Try moving your hands closer to the little screen there. No not too close, you can’t just tap the button with your finger, you have to pinch to select. Ok now click that computer icon. Do you see anything in the list? No? Ok make sure you launched the remote software on your computer. Yes, take off your headset and go to the website and download that and install it. Then put your headset back on and click that computer icon again.

Everything Quest Pro wants to accomplish makes sense; the execution is just seriously lacking for any ‘professional’ who expects to use the device for general productivity work. The intended use cases just aren’t sufficiently supported by high-quality first-party apps and capabilities.

Third-party to the Rescue (Hopefully)

A lack of high-quality first-party productivity features leaves the headset entirely dependent on third parties to pick up the slack… something Meta seems to be seriously praying for.

To that end, the one place that Quest Pro could prove truly useful is if there’s a single third-party app out there that directly benefits your workflow. And maybe there is… maybe you do 3D design and would really benefit from using an app like Gravity Sketch to brainstorm and sketch out models and ideas. Maybe you’re an architect and would really benefit from using an app like Resolve to visualize large 3D models for construction projects.

But this is the kicker… Quest 2 can run those apps effectively just as well as Quest Pro. So, what is Quest Pro bringing to the table?

How about the headset’s new capabilities? Better quality passthrough AR and expression tracking are nice to have… but today Meta doesn’t have an out-of-the-box killer app for them—either first or third-party. So why not just get a Quest 2?

In its present state, using Quest Pro for the things Meta is marketing feels a bit like trying to use your Xbox as a productivity PC. Like… yes, you actually can browse the web on an Xbox, but an Xbox is way better at playing games than browsing the web. And right now Quest Pro is better at playing games than anything else.

Mixed Reality Marketing

Perhaps Quest Pro’s most marketed feature—mixed reality—is still very undercooked. You can manually outline your room to make the headset aware of what’s around you, allowing some apps to interact with those (exclusively rectangular) surfaces that you’ve told it about. But it’s a tedious process which currently provides minimal benefits. And like much else of the system-level Quest functionality, it’s got tons of usability issues; things as obvious as the instruction window blocking your view as you try to draw outlines.

But let’s say you don’t care about the headset being aware of the shape of the room around you. Passthrough still could have another huge benefit: allowing you to easily interact with the outside world without taking off your headset. Things like checking your phone or reading from a sheet of paper is the kind of practical usage you’d want for that, but Quest Pro falls short with not enough resolution and still fairly ‘bumpy’ depth estimation for near-field objects.

Even for just wanting a feeling of not being fully immersed by leaving the passthrough background turned on while you work is not quite fully there yet. After using Quest Pro as a browser-based workstation with keyboard and mouse for at least an hour, I got slightly dizzy and opted to turn off passthrough.

It’s Not All Bad, Just Expensive

Well, there are a few reasons you might actually want Quest Pro today. The form-factor is a little nicer, though I wouldn’t go as far as calling it obviously more comfortable (unless you’re measuring by the terrible soft strap that comes included with Quest 2 out of the box). The benefit in clarity, thanks to the new lenses, is definitely a noticeable improvement, but you’re ultimately seeing the same number of pixels… but sharper. The Touch Pro controllers are probably the clearest single win from the headset… but they’re also compatible with Quest 2.

Does any of that justify paying $1,100 more than a Quest 2? Doesn’t look like it to me.

Continue on Page 2: Getting Technical »

Last month HP announced that it was releasing a new Reverb G2 headset with some tweaks designed to improve field-of-view and controller coverage. We got out hands on the new headset and put it through the paces.

Reverb G2 is a decent headset and in our review we really loved the clarity of its display and lenses, but were a bit let down by the limited field-of-view. And even though the headset had notably better tracking coverage compared to prior Windows VR headsets, it still had some blind spots that were easy to notice during regular use.

Now HP has released a slightly updated version of the headset in the US which hopes to specifically address these issues, along with improving compatibility with AMD GPUs. We got our hands on the new Reverb G2 and compared it to the original.

HP is still calling the new version of the headset the ‘Reverb G2’, but for clarity let’s call the original the G2 and the new version the G2.1.

Eye-relief & Field-of-view

The Reverb G2.1 comes with a new facepad which can be reduced from the original fixed eye-relief distance of 15mm to 9mm. This is accomplished with a simple spacer which comes pre-installed in the G2.1. In my experience with the original G2, there was a good deal of field-of-view left on the table because of the fixed eye-relief. In theory, removing the spacer to drop down to 9mm should help people like me get closer to the headsets maximum field-of-view.

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Indeed, removing the spacer brought a noticeable improvement in both vertical and horizontal field-of-view. Here’s a look at measurements comparing the field-of-view of the G2 and the G2.1.

Reverb G2 vs. G2.1 Field-of-View – Personal Measurements
(no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

You can see that using the 9mm setting on Reverb G2.1 increased my horizontal and vertical field-of-view by 16° and 10° respectively.

Compared to running the same field-of-view test with the facepad completely removed, I got the very same results (because at that point the screen becomes the limiting factor over eye-relief). That means that the 9mm setting of the Reverb G2.1 allows me to perfectly maximize the headset’s field-of-view.

Now I want to be clear… this might not be the case for everyone using the headset; it depends entirely on the topology of one’s face. Some people may already be getting the maximum field-of-view (or close to it) at 15mm, and going down to 9mm would only serve to reveal the edges of the display instead of expanding the field-of-view.

As for me, the 9mm setting was just right in that it maximized the headset’s field-of-view without revealing the edges of the display—which is generally preferred because the hard boundary of a display is somehow more immersion-breaking than the soft boundary of a lens.

There’s really only one downside to this change and that’s a slightly smaller nose cavity, no matter if you’re using the spacer or not. If you have a big nose and the original G2 feels tight there, the G2.1 could put bothersome pressure on your nose.

The spacer itself is such a simple part and I’m really glad HP went out of its way to include it in the new version of the headset to make it easier for everyone to dial in the eye-relief to get the most from the field-of-view.

The spacer is perfectly formed to the headset and snaps onto its magnetic attachment points, and then the facepad snaps over top of it using the same magnets.

If you’re curious, yes you can use the new spacer and/or the new facepad with the original Reverb G2; both will fit perfectly onto the headset (you can also use the old facepad with the new headset). However, using the new spacer with the original facepad (which would take you to a 21mm eye-relief) sort of works, but the two parts lack a perfect seal which causes some light leakage that can be annoying.

Continue on Page 2: Tacking Coverage »

Varjo today announced Aero; while it’s the company’s most affordable headset yet, its $2,000 price point still limits its to businesses and wealthy enthusiasts. But with stunning clarity its sure going to be a dream headset for VR simmers who aren’t afraid to trade cash for immersion.

Varjo Aero is a pared down version of the company’s high-end enterprise headsets, notably without the ‘bionic display’ which gave the headset retina resolution at the center of the field-of-view. Even without the novel bionic display, Aero still offers stunning clarity (claimed to be 35 PPD) that’s beaten only by the company’s more expensive headsets. You can read up on the Aero’s announcement and release date here; let’s start with the full specs below:

Varjo Aero Review

Before we dive in too deep, let’s take a look at where the Varjo Aero fits into the landscape of similar headsets from a price standpoint:

To date Varjo’s headsets have been best known for their ‘bionic display’ system, which actually uses two displays per-eye, a large display to cover a wide field-of-view, and a smaller inset display with high pixel density which offers genuine retina resolution (60+ PPD) in the center of the headset’s field-of-view.

Varjo Aero does away with the smaller display and looses its true retina resolution, but even with just its large display it still retains a whopping 35 PPD and leading clarity over all non-Varjo headsets on the market.

Clarity

It wasn’t long ago that we saw the release of Vive Pro 2 and Reverb G2, with resolutions of 2,448 x 2,448 (6MP) and 2,160 × 2,160 (4.7MP), both of which have pretty impressive clarity.

And though Varjo Aero’s 2,880 x 2,720 (7.8MP) resolution doesn’t seem like that much more, it gets an extra clarity boost thanks to its aspheric lenses which all but eliminate glare and god-rays which are prevalent in other headsets.

With the right content, looking through the lenses of Varjo Aero feels like looking at the world with new eyes. Within minutes of donning the headset, I saw details in Half-Life: Alyx that I couldn’t even see on prior-generation headsets, like the textured tip of a screwdriver.

The clarity of the Aero is so crisp that it easily reveals content that isn’t up to par; for the first time in Alyx I immediately noticed that the game’s chain-link fences are actually completely flat, largely thanks to the headset’s increased resolving power which enhances stereoscopy (or lack thereof).

This also has an impact on presence—that feeling when your eyes are being tricked into believing that what’s in front of you is actually there. While playing Alyx with Aero, there were several rooms I walked into where I just had to stop and stare… when the lighting was just right, it felt like I was actually standing there in that place. It’s an incredibly powerful feeling that goes beyond mere immersion, and Aero seems to elicit it more easily than any headset I’ve tried before.

Beyond virtually eliminating ghosting and glare, Aero’s lenses also make for an incredibly large sweet-spot which means that most of the image stays sharp even when you rotate your eyes away from the center. This is an absolute relief from most other Fresnel headsets which have tight sweet-spots that make things look blurry even if you move your eyes just a bit.

While Aero has incredible clarity, it’s image isn’t without flaws; there’s two things preventing it from looking like a near-perfect image. The first is chromatic aberration (the separation of colors), which stood out to me right away, even before explicitly analyzing the headset’s image quality.

This is surprising because chromatic aberration is rarely an issue on other VR headsets as it’s easily corrected in software. Varjo is either doing a poor job with their chromatic aberration correction, or there’s something about the lenses that make it a greater challenge than with other headsets. Hopefully the former, which would mean that it could potentially be solved with a future software update.

The other issue with Aero’s image is distortion at the extreme edges of the field-of-view. It’s subtle enough that if you aren’t moving your head you won’t notice it, but as soon as you start moving you’ll notice it due to the sensitivity of peripheral vision to ‘motion’. Other headsets also correct for distortions in software, and with Aero, most of the image is distortion free; given that it’s just on the edges, I’m less hopeful that this could be fixed with a software update.

The distortion doesn’t feel like a deal-breaker, but it’s a bummer that it detracts from what would otherwise be a nearly pristine view.

Overall: Here’s the thing about Aero. It’s clarity and resolving power is beyond the fidelity of most VR content to date. There’s less than a dozen VR titles in existence with the visual chops to really make use of Aero’s fidelity. Upgrading to Aero from any recent generation VR headset isn’t going to mean much if you’re playing Beat Saber, VRChat, or most indie VR titles; they simply weren’t authored with the necessary level of detail. But if you’re using a handful of applications where resolving power is crucial (like flight sims), Aero’s visuals will delight.

Field-of-View

Varjo quotes Aero’s field-of-view at “115° horizontal, 134° diagonal at 12mm eye-relief,” though my personal measurements fell well short of this, even when removing the facepad to get my eyes as close as possible. Here’s how it stacks up to recent headsets:

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD
(minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD
(absolute minimum eye-relief; facepads removed, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

For such an expensive headset, the lack of eye-relief adjustment to maximize the field-of-view is a shame.

Even though the field-of-view is generally less than these other headsets, the large sweet-spot goes a long way toward making it feel larger than it is.

Similar to Vive Pro 2, the actual shape of the field-of-view doesn’t feel quite as round as some other headsets. Instead it feels slightly cropped vertically, a bit more at the bottom than the top.

IPD & Eye-tracking

Varjo Aero includes the company’s 200Hz eye-tracking solution which is paired with an automatic motor-driven physical IPD adjustment that ranges from 57–73mm.

When you put on the headset you’ll be asked to stare at a white dot at the center of the screen for a few seconds to calibrate both the eye-tracking system and your IPD. If the IPD needs to be adjusted, you’ll hear the headset make a little whirr sound as the lenses slide quickly and easily into position.

You can see a readout of the measurement through the Varjo software (mine was spot on), and you can even manually set the IPD if you’d like, in 0.5mm increments.

The eye-tracking system in Aero can also be used for foveated rendering to increase rendering performance, but it’s only supported in applications that make use of the Varjo SDK (which are few and far between).

With Aero likely to reach a wider audience than the company’s more expensive headsets, it’s possible we’ll start to see more applications adapted to support the Varjo eye-tracking system—the company claims it’s fairly straightforward for developers using Unity or Unreal Engine.

In my limited testing with foveated rendering in Aero, I found it to be effectively invisible; the only time I could notice that it was even active is if the eye-tracking wasn’t calibrated correctly.

Continue on Page 2: Displays, Audio, Tracking & Controllers »

Three years after the original Vive Pro, HTC’s Vive Pro 2 is here. With a class-leading price, the “Pro” branded headset is clearly positioned to one-up its contemporaries. Unfortunately the headset’s performance doesn’t quite justify the Pro price. Before we dive into the full review, here’s a recap of the headset’s specs:

HTC Vive Pro 2 Summary

As is tradition, our full review goes into significant depth, so we’ll start with a summary. HTC’s Vive Pro 2 brings some serious specs that, on paper, make it look like the headset will deliver an unbeatable experience compared to its competitors. And that ought to be the goal to justify the steep asking price of $800 for the headset by itself or $1,400 full kit price. Here’s a quick look at how this stacks up to the headset’s two nearest competitors:

With regards to fitting in with the competition and justifying its price, the key goal for Vive Pro 2 would be to offer customers the wide field of view of Valve Index with the clarity of Reverb G2—or at least one or the other. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite get there, and also has a few other oversights that belie the “Pro” branding. While the resolution and field-of-view are good on paper, ultimately the headset doesn’t achieve either of those goals—it doesn’t have a field-of-view that’s as large or larger than Index, nor does it have as great or greater clarity than Reverb G2.

Part of the issue seems to be that the lenses can’t escape the historically tight sweet spot we find on HTC headsets. Even though the field-of-view is wider than the original Vive Pro, much of that added field-of-view gets blurry quickly. Rotate your eyes just a bit and text becomes difficult to read. Combined with the usual god-rays plus additional outer glare from the new dual-element lenses, and the headset’s tight sweet spot makes the view feel oddly cramped at times. This is furthered by a surprisingly small vertical field-of-view which makes feel like the top and bottom of the view has been cropped down.

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD (minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

Theoretical Maximum (based on software rendering, courtesy HMD Geometry Database)

The displays otherwise are fairly good, even if the lenses seem to limit their sharpness somewhat. The headset has no visible screen-door effect, and other artifacts like mura, chromatic aberration, and ghosting are very minimal. Even if Vive Pro 2 doesn’t beat out Index and Reverb G2 in key areas like field-of-view and clarity, it could still be a great headset worthy of the “Pro” name (and price). Unfortunately it falls short of that in other areas too. For one, the pass-through cameras on Vive Pro 2 are very low quality, as is the microphone. While the headphones themselves are quite good in audio quality, the off-ear approach is increasingly the more convenient and preferred way to do audio on a VR headset. While you could opt to remove the headset’s on-ear speakers in favor of your own audio solution, the bulky strap would make it hard to work with anything but earbuds.

With SteamVR Tracking built in, you can expect the same gold standard tracking  accuracy, latency, and coverage that you’d find with other headsets with SteamVR Tracking, though you’ll have to put up with external beacons mounted somewhere in your room. Thankfully SteamVR Tracking also opens the door to some options, such as choosing if you want to use the old school Vive wand controllers or opting for something else like the Valve Index controllers. You can also use the headset with tracking pucks which are used to track other accessories or for adding more tracking points to yourself for full body tracking.

From an ergonomic standpoint, Vive Pro 2 is exactly the same as the original Vive Pro, which means it’s a fairly comfortable headset with a pretty good set of ergonomic adjustments. Notably, the headset has a physical IPD adjustment which ranges from 57–72mm and an eye-relief adjustment, both of which allow the headset to adapt to a wider range of users. Two things I also would have preferred but aren’t included: springs in the headstrap which make it easier to put on and take off without adjusting the tightness each time, and a wider range of rotation for the display housing.

HTC Vive Pro 2 In-depth Review

Let’s first talk about the bread and butter of any VR headset: the visuals. With a whopping 2,448 x 2,448 per-eye resolution and a purported 120° horizontal field-of-view, Vive Pro 2 would seem to be perfectly positioned to bring the best of Valve Index and Reverb G2 into one headset. Unfortunately the reality is a little more blurry.

Clarity

Although the paper specs would suggest that Vive Pro 2 and Reverb G2 could have quite similar resolving power, a quick side-by-side with the headsets reveals Reverb G2 to have an obviously sharper image, even before running any objective tests. To some extent, this would be expected given that Reverb G2 packs its pixels a bit more densely into its smaller field-of-view; even so, while Vive Pro 2 is clearly sharper than Index or the original Vive Pro, it still seems less sharp than it ought to next to Reverb G2. This is very likely a result of the optics, which is one of the biggest changes on Vive Pro 2 compared to the original Vive Pro. While both headsets use Fresnel lenses, Vive Pro 2 adopts the Valve Index approach of moving to a dual-element lens, apparently in an effort to expand the field-of-view. Users of Valve Index will know that the dual-element approach risks introducing additional glare around the outer edges of the lenses (on top of the usual Fresnel god-rays), and we see the same thing happening on Vive Pro 2, more or less to the same extent as Index. This additional glare, combined with the classically weak edge-to-edge clarity of HTC lenses, creates a sweet spot that at times feels oppressively small. Rotate your eyes just a little bit and the world is blurry until you move your head to recenter your eyes. This small sweet spot unfortunately detracts from Vive Pro 2’s improved field-of-view. While it is indeed wider than the original Vive Pro by a good margin, the edges become blurry which can give a sense of tunnel vision even when in your periphery.

Field-of-View

Speaking of field-of-view, Vive Pro 2’s theoretical 120° horizontal seems to be just that: theoretical. At least for my personal measurements, I found the Vive Pro 2 to have a notably smaller field of view than Valve Index:

Personal Measurements – 64mm IPD (minimum-comfortable eye-relief, no glasses, measured with TestHMD 1.2)

Theoretical Maximum (based on software rendering, courtesy HMD Geometry Database)

Vive Pro 2 might indeed have a 120° horizontal field-of-view, but only if you could get your eyes close enough to the lenses. Although the headset has an eye-relief adjustment, it doesn’t seem to have the range of motion necessary to maximize the field-of-view, at least for my head. The eye-relief adjustment on Valve Index, on the other hand, makes it easier to squeeze the most out of the headset’s displays.

You’ll notice a surprisingly small vertical field-of-view on Vive Pro 2. From the shape of the lenses alone you might expect this to be the case; rather than being circular, the top and bottom of the lens are flat. When looking through the headset, it looks like your vertical view has been cropped down, which furthers that feeling of tunnel-vision that ultimately works against the headset’s field-of-view.

Displays

The Vive Pro 2 displays themselves seem quite good, even if their resolution is hampered by the optics. The headset uses an LCD display per-eye, which run up to 120Hz. Unfortunately the switch to LCD on Vive Pro 2 means losing out on the rich colors and deep contrast from the Vive Pro’s OLED display, but in return you’re getting much higher resolution, better pixel fill, and less ghosting. Like Reverb G2, Vive Pro 2 essentially has no screen-door effect (the visibility of unlit spaces between pixels). The display density is simply too great to make out individual pixels. In general use, the displays have almost no visible artifacts. I had to search carefully to find some minor ghosting against certain colors. Mura (the consistency of brightness and color from one pixel to the next) is similarly hard to spot and will probably go entirely unnoticed during normal use. Looking carefully against flat colors I could spot some faint splotchy mura, but it’s impact on the overall clarity is very minimal. When it comes to visual performance, Vive Pro 2 is good, but it doesn’t feel “Pro”, given that it’s bested by Index in field-of-view and sweet spot, and by Reverb G2 in clarity, both of which are less expensive headsets.

Continue on Page 2: Pass-through, Microphone, and Audio »

HP’s newest VR headset, Reverb G2, is finally here. Promising to bring some of the features of Valve’s Index to the Windows VR scene, along with class-leading resolution, new controllers and better tracking. Read on to find out if it delivers.

Before we break into the review, here’s a recap of Reverb G2 specs:

HP Reverb G2 Summary

As is tradition, our full review goes into significant depth, so we’ll start with a summary.

HP’s Reverb G2 really delivers on visual fidelity thanks to its 2,160 × 2,160 per-eye displays. Visible screen door is virtually non-existent on the headset, offering easily the greatest clarity of any headset in its class. While the display isn’t ‘retina resolution’, it still offers a ton of resolving power and will let you see details not visible with other headsets. While the display and lenses aren’t perfect and don’t offer as wide a field of view as Valve’s Index, the headset manages to provide an exceptional level of fidelity.

As HP worked with Valve on the headset, it got to lift the very same off-ear headphones from Index and put them right onto the G2. It’s great to have powerful built-in audio in a form-factor that doesn’t touch your ears or get in your way when you put the headset on. I hope to see more and more companies adopt the same. While HP says the drivers in the headphones are identical to those in Index, I noticed some distortion in certain higher pitched frequencies which didn’t sound great. I’m hoping HP can clear that up with some post-launch EQ adjustments.

The new Reverb G2 controllers are a welcomed change from the old WMR controllers. They mostly mimic Oculus Touch in design, with the same general handle shape and same set of buttons, sticks, and triggers. While they don’t feel quite as premium, they work more seamlessly with modern VR content which has largely coalesced around these inputs.

In terms of tracking, G2 is the first WMR headset to move from two to four cameras for its inside-out tracking. With the two extra cameras on the side of the headset, this gives controller tracking much more coverage and helps reduce the number of ‘stuck’ controller moments which happen when they spend too much time without line of sight to the cameras. Although coverage is increased, there’s still some tracking deadzones above and below the headset which can sometimes be annoying but never significantly impacted gameplay.

Head-tracking continues to be as solid as other WMR headsets and has little issue except for occasional software-induced stutter when transitioning between apps or loading screens. Overall precision and latency for controller-tracking is acceptable but not exceptional, showing more latency and jitter than we see with Oculus or SteamVR tracking.

G2 is comfortable enough, and better than G1, but doesn’t really move the bar overall for VR comfort. The rear strap does a fine job of gripping the back of your head while the top strap helps relieve pressure. The side straps for tightening the headset are elastic which is a little funky in practice because the straps and struts don’t slide as easily as they should. Because of that elasticity though, there’s enough flex to easily pull the headset on and off without adjusting the tightness every time. Beyond the straps, a physical IPD adjustment ranging from 60–68mm lets you best align the lenses with your eyes for clarity and comfort.

While many users will likely gloss over the Windows Mixed Reality environment and jump straight into SteamVR, the WMR environment is actually quite richly featured, allowing users to customize a persistent space and bring their desktop applications into VR in floating virtual windows. The WMR environment can also be fully controlled by VR controllers or a keyboard and mouse, which makes it a flexible way to do more than just play VR games.

While Reverb G2’s class-leading resolution would seem to make it a great candidate as a ‘virtual desktop’ for typical desktop productivity in VR, a realistically sized virtual monitor only sees around a 720p resolution (since it doesn’t stretch across the headset’s entire field of view). While this resolution is perfectly legible, truly working this way still feels like a novelty because of the reduction to your natural field of view and the even more limited ‘sweet spot’ of the headset; both factors mean you’ll need to move your head around much more while using a virtual monitor than you would on an equivalent real-life monitor, which feels like a compromise in practice, especially considering the ergonomic sacrifices of wearing a headset for long periods.

For a $600 headset, Reverb G2 delivers a strong value thanks to its excellent visuals and acceptable tracking. It feels like an especially good fit for simulator-focused use-cases where resolving power is a significant contributor to the experience.

HP Reverb G2 In-depth Review

Display and Lenses

Let’s go right to Reverb G2’s most appealing feature, its display. With a 2,160 × 2,160 LCD display per-eye, the headset delivers class-leading resolution that blows most other headsets out of the water. While the below chart is an imperfect comparison because it doesn’t consider field of view, it does give a good look at where Reverb G2’s resolution stands in comparison to similar headsets (and the first-generation Rift CV1 for reference):

Screen Door No More

Reverb G2 is the first headset in its class where the screen door effect (the unlit spaces between pixels) is virtually gone. Try as you might, the black grid between pixels that’s visible on most other headsets just isn’t discernable. That’s a critical threshold to cross as pretty much every headset in this class to date has had some level of visible screen door effect.

The lack of screen door and impressive sharpness makes everything in the headset look more solid and real, in a way that’s difficult to articulate. The extra sharpness also makes the sense of stereoscopic depth clearer in a way that seems more convincing to the brain.

The resolving power is so impressive that you might find yourself gawking. I definitely did. In Half-Life: Alyx I couldn’t stop looking at the absurd level of detail revealed in the medal of the shotgun. When I jumped into Robo Recall, I was blown away to see the level of detail the headset could reveal in the cloth on the legs of the robots.

If you’ve ever had the experience of getting new headphones and hearing previously unheard details in songs you’ve listened to a hundred times before—at times Reverb G2 feels a lot like that, but with your eyes instead of your ears.

Granted, the screen door being gone does not mean the headset is ‘retina resolution’, nor does it mean it offers perfect clarity. Because it isn’t retina resolution, aliasing is still visible, but it’s really only visible in niche circumstances, like when looking at tiny high contrast details.

Mura & Chromatic Aberration

Overall clarity of the headset is held back slightly by a bit of mura (inconsistency in pixel color and brightness across the display). In the headset the mura manifests in faint horizontal stretches, but it’s faint enough that it isn’t really noticeable except against certain colors.

HP’s prior headset, Reverb G1, makes a good point of comparison to show how much better G2 is—even though both headsets share the same resolution.

G1 had pretty noticeable mura along with red-smearing and chromatic aberration, all of which hurt its clarity despite its high resolution. G2 on the other hand has quite minimal mura, no red-smearing (or ghosting of any kind), and no chromatic aberration, giving it easily the best clarity of any headset in its class.

And while Quest 2 isn’t far behind in resolving power with its 1,832 × 1,920 (3.5MP) per-eye displays, the PC power behind G2 means the graphical fidelity of what you’re likely to see through the headset takes far better advantage of all those pixels. And yes, Quest 2 can connect to a PC as well, but this comes with an additional quality hit due to encoding compared to pixels natively rendered on the headset.

God Rays & Field of View

As for the lenses, Reverb G2 is using Fresnels like pretty much every other headset out there. And if you know anything about VR… you know what that means: god rays. Yes, Reverb G2 shows god rays emanating from high contrast elements just like every other headset with Fresnel lenses. It doesn’t seem any better or worse than other Fresnel headsets of this generation like Quest 2 or Rift S.

Luckily Reverb G2 doesn’t show any of the outer glare that’s plainly visible in Valve’s Index headset when looking at high contrast elements, though this seems to come at the cost of field of view, which isn’t as large as Index. While HP advertises the G2 field of view at 114°, to me it feels on par with Quest 2 (which has been unofficially deemed to be around 90° or 95°).

Lens Shape

There’s one quirk to the G2 lenses that makes them a little less comfortable on the eyes than similar headsets. The symmetrical shape of the lenses (which look like teardrops turned on their side) do not extent outward over the nose to provide more stereo field of view in the area just between your eyes. While this normally happens below the eyes (because your nose blocks that portion of your view), the effect created by the lenses creates a ‘nose-like’ blind spot higher up between your eyes.

1 of 2

Every headset has some blind spot in this area, but most shape their lenses to minimize it, whereas on G2 it’s a bit more noticeable.

Update (November 18th, 2020): I had originally speculated above that the reason for the shape of the G2 lenses could be to make them symmetrical for manufacturing simplicity, and said that similar headsets usually have unique left and right lenses. The latter was incorrect; most contemporary headsets also have symmetrical lenses. The offending sentence was removed and the author offers their eternal soul in atonement.

Overall

Long story short, this is the headset with the clearest looking image and the most resolving power in its class.

Continue on Page 2: Audio, Controllers, Tracking »

With PS5 just days away from launch you may be wondering how PSVR will fare on the new console. We’re here to share our experience over the last few weeks of testing PSVR on PS5.

PS5 will bring full support for PSVR thanks to backwards compatibility with existing PS4 titles made for the headset. And while you won’t see big changes in the PSVR experience out of the gate, loading times are a definite improvement. Bigger changes could come to games through post-launch patches; and there’s big potential yet for native PS5 games made for PSVR, but so far Sony has yet to confirm if developers will be allowed to do so.

Setting Up PSVR on PS5

Camera Adapter Required

Setting up PSVR on PS5 is the same process you’re used to on PS4 (all the same plugs in all the same places) but with one key difference: you must have the PS4 camera adapter for PS5. Without it, you can’t plug the PS4 camera into your PS5, which is required for all VR games on the console. And no, unfortunately Sony says the new PS5 camera will not work for PSVR.

Sony is providing the PS4 camera adapter for PS5 free of charge; head to this page to request yours if you plan to use your PSVR on PS5.

Supported Controllers

In order to use PSVR on PS5 you’ll also need a supported controller, which does not include the PS5 controller. The following controllers are supported:

• PS4 DualShock controller
• PS Move
• PS Aim

It’s a shame that the PS5 DualSense controller isn’t supported because it has some really impressive haptics that we’d love to see combined with PSVR.

Setting Up

Once you plug your PSVR into PS5 and turn it on, you’ll be greeted with a familiar setup screen which walks new users through fitting the headset correctly and getting positioned within the camera’s field of view. The first time you plug in a Move or Aim controller you’ll be prompted to hold it in front of the camera for a calibration of the tracking sphere.

Installing Games

The experience of installing PSVR games on PS5 is overall quite seamless. Once you sign into the console with your PlayStation Network account, you’ll be able to see your digital PS4 games in your Game Library and choose which ones you want to install.

The library will show which of your PS4 games are compatible with your PS5; if a game isn’t compatible, you’ll see a ‘stop’ symbol (). Of 34 digital PSVR games in my library, only two weren’t compatible (Robinson: The Journey [2016] and Golem [2019]).

If you have a PSVR game on disc, it’s the same experience you’d expect on PS4: insert the disc to install the game before playing.

No New Options or Features

In case you were wondering, PSVR on PS5 doesn’t gain any new features or options, but you can expect the same adjustments you’re used to on PS4, including a software IPD adjustment (and the ability to measure your IPD via the camera), the ability to see the PS5 dashboard and play non-VR games in a ‘theater screen’ mode, and you can capture videos and screenshots of your VR experience.

Playing PSVR on PS5

Playing PSVR on PS5 is… well it’s almost exactly like playing PSVR on PS4 Pro; as far as we can see, any PS4 Pro enhancements get applied to VR games on PS5 (which are usually tweaks to improve image sharpness).

We tested a range of games across the whole lifespan of PSVR—including those using DualShock, Move, and Aim—and didn’t find any issues with gameplay, nor could we spot any obvious graphical improvements over PS4 Pro. Tracking doesn’t feel any different on the headset (which isn’t surprising considering it uses very same controllers and camera).

That said, there’s one expected but appreciated improvement: loading speeds.

Yes, that fast SSD in PS5 you’ve been hearing about makes a pretty big difference to the amount of time you’ll spend staring at loading screens in your headset. How much loading times are improved will vary by game, but here’s a sample of our tests for an idea:

These figures line up closely with Sony’s claims that PS5 has 2.5x the memory bandwidth of PS4 Pro.

The improved loading times will of course matter more to games which see them frequently, like Iron Man VR where it isn’t uncommon to see loading times of a minute or more on PS4 Pro. Chopping those times by half or more really makes a big difference to the pace of the game.

The improved memory speeds also stand to greatly benefit games which suffer from ‘popping’ textures, and it’s possible that PS5’s extra power will be able to smooth over instances of stutter, but we haven’t found any obvious cases of this since PSVR games are typically quite good at hitting framerate.

And while the company has touted even greater performance gains in other areas of PS5—which could bring big improvements to PSVR games on PS5—we’ll have to wait to see if any post-launch updates ‘unlock’ the potential of backwards compatible PSVR games on the console, let alone if we ever get any native PS5 games for PSVR.

Capturing Videos & Screenshots

Just like on PS4, you can capture videos and screenshots of your PSVR experience on PS5 with the Share button on whichever controller you’re using. Unfortunately we’ve confirmed that even on PS5 these are captured at the same low resolutions of 1,280 × 720 for video and 960 × 720 for screenshots.

– – — – –

And that’s about it… for now anyway. We’re hoping to hear more soon about developer plans to patch PS4 PSVR games to potentially take better advantage of PS5, and to hear if Sony will allow native PS5 PSVR games.

In the meantime, do you have specific questions about PSVR on PS5? Drop us a line in the comments below!

When Quest first launched in 2019, we called it the “first great standalone VR headset,” owing to it being a truly complete package between hardware, software, and content. And over the course of its life, we saw Quest improve over time with software updates that added new features and improved existing ones. And now we have Quest 2, which is pretty much the same headset, just better in (almost) every way.

Quest 2 is (just about) here! Facebook announced the headset and opened pre-orders today starting at $300. Oculus Quest 2 has a release date of October 13th.

But before owners of the original Quest look at their old headset with disdain, consider this. Quest 2 might be better in (almost) every way, but it really doesn’t do anything new. Quest 2 has effectively zero new features compared to the original, and Oculus says both headsets will share the same game library.

A quandary then… would Quest 2 have been better called ‘Quest S‘? Well yes, but also… no. As you’ll find throughout our review, a good chunk of Quest 2’s potential has not yet been unlocked. Similar to the original, Quest 2 will see improvements over time. In that sense, I think it would be fair to call it Quest S on day one, but once Oculus delivers some promised post-launch improvements, it’ll earn the name Quest 2.

Oculus Quest 2 vs. Quest Specs

Before we dive into the full review, here’s a breakdown of Quest 2 compared to Quest official specs:

Now onto the full review… if you want to summary without the detail, skip to the very end for our conclusion.

Hardware

One of the most exciting but as of yet untapped bits of hardware in Quest 2 is the processor. While the original Quest launched with a dated (even at the time) Snapdragon 835, Oculus effectively picked the highest-end processor they could for Quest 2, the Snapdragon XR2. Not only is it significantly more powerful, it’s also a made-for-VR chip which includes some additional features that make it even better for use in a VR headset.

But it’s going to take some time until we see the XR2 really shining in Quest 2. On day one, Oculus says that Quest 2 will run have an ‘experimental’ 90Hz option which will run the headset’s main menu at that refresh rate. Games, however, will continue to run at 72Hz.

“Soon” after launch, according to Oculus, the company will make the 90Hz mode default for the main menu and also allow developers to take advantage of the extra refresh rate, but that may well require per-app updates.

The same thing applies to Oculus Link. On day one, if you plug Quest 2 into your PC to use Link, your PC VR content will run at 72Hz and have the same encoding quality as original Quest. “Soon” after launch, Oculus says, Quest 2 will be able to use Link at 90Hz and higher quality.

So it’s going to take some time before we see the full power of Quest 2.

The good news is that most games can automatically take advantage of Quest 2’s higher resolution, so that’s one benefit that you’ll see right out of the gate, and it’s a big one.

Display & Lenses

The leap in resolution and framerate are among Quest 2’s most meaningful improvements. Quest 2 has a per-eye resolution of 1,832 × 1,920 (3.5 megapixels) compared to the original’s 1,440 × 1,600 (2.3 megapixels). That’s a nice jump already, but there’s a bit of an extra boost because Quest 2’s LCD display has more sub-pixels—which fill in the ‘screen door effect’ even more—than Quest’s OLED display. On Quest 2, the screen door effect is basically invisible.

Pixels are too small to be seen individually; you can still see evidence of the underlying pixel structure against flat colors, but it fades away against anything textured.

The resolution difference is noticeable right away. Between the extra sharpness and the smoother motion of the 90Hz display, stepping up to the menu in Quest 2 feels a bit more real than with the original Quest.

As some know, the move from OLED to LCD comes with some downsides too. Most notably that LCD can’t get close to the deep blacks that OLED can. Although it doesn’t have those deep blacks of the original, it also has massively reduced smearing which is arguably a worthwhile tradeoff because higher resolution doesn’t mean much if you can’t keep pixels from smearing often.

Quest 2’s lenses are effectively the same as the original. They’re fresnel as before, and have the same issues with ‘god rays’ as any modern fresnel lens (that is: annoying god rays on high contrast elements, but generally not to bothersome in most scenes). Oculus declined to share Quest 2’s official field of view, but said it is equivalent to the original Quest (that is: enough to be immersive, but more would still be nice). The ‘sweet spot’ or clarity across the lens, is roughly the same as the original Quest.

Quest 2’s lenses and display are tuned well. Chromatic aberration, pupil swim, and smearing are effectively invisible. Mura is almost invisible as well, but it’ll show up faintly against certain flat colors if you go looking for it.

IPD

Quest 2’s IPD can be physically adjusted between three positions: 58mm, 63mm, and 68mm. Rather than a slider on the bottom of the headset which allows you to adjust the IPD while looking through the lenses, to change the IPD on Quest 2 you need to remove the headset and grasp both lenses and tug them into one of the other positions.

Because of the delineated IPD adjustment, even if you’re within the minimum and maximum range, you could be up to 2.5mm out of the ‘ideal’ lens alignment (if you were to fall exactly between the available positions). We can infer that if Oculus felt being up to 2.5mm out of alignment was ok in the middle of the range, it would also be ok on the ends of the range—giving Quest 2 a ‘maximum recommended’ IPD range from 55.5mm to 70.5mm, which is pretty close to the original Quest’s ‘maximum recommended’ range of 56 to 74mm.

Since my IPD is roughly 63mm, I wouldn’t be able to see what the image looks like if it were 2.5mm off center (not with any reasonable precision, anyway). We’ll have to wait for more widespread feedback to know if falling between the three positions hampers the visual experience much, or if Quest 2’s eye-box is large enough to accommodate (clearly, Oculus felt this to be the case).

However, if you use the widest IPD setting you may see a bit of clipping of the field of view (this is a result of the single display design in which the lenses move closer to the edges of the display when adjusting for IPD).

Audio

Quest 2, like its predecessor, has hidden integrated speakers that allow audio to emanate from the headband. Even though the speaker openings are a bit closer, they’re still miles away from being centrally aligned with the ear, which makes them sub-par for accurate spatial audio.

In terms of sound quality and volume, Quest 2’s speakers feel right in line with Quest. Meaning the audio is passable, but a far cry from from the quality you’d hear from something like Index or even the original Rift CV1. For anyone coming from a Rift S at least, you’ll be happy to know that Quest 2’s audio is louder and of better quality.

Many games will do fine with Quest 2’s build in audio, but for games with especially good sound tech and design, you’ll miss out on a lot of added immersion without a better audio solution.

Although it’s a bummer to have to fumble with headphones to get that maximum immersion from Quest, at least the option to add your own audio is available thanks to the single 3.5mm audio input on the side (unlike original Quest, there’s only one 3.5mm audio input on Quest 2).

Design & Ergonomics

Quest 2’s design isn’t fundamentally different than its predecessor, but it does bring a number of refinements. In terms of size and weight, it’s a bit smaller and a bit lighter.

Quest 2 manages to look slightly less bulbous, if a bit less premium due to the all-plastic finish versus the fabric finish of the original.

The minimal button and port layous are all effectively identical: a volume rocker on the bottom, USB-C charging & data port on the left next to a 3.5mm audio input, and a power button and LED power indicator on the right.

Soft Strap & Elite Strap

The biggest change to the design is the head strap. Out of the box you’ll get a soft strap which is, at least for my head, a bit of a downgrade over the original Quest’s rigid strap. Rigid straps have the benefit of gripping the back of your head and lifting weight off the front of your head via support from the top and side straps. Soft straps without any structure can’t do this nearly as well because they can only really support the front of the headset via the top strap and can’t grip the back of the head as well without a vice-like tightness. When I use the soft strap I find that there’s more pressure than I’d like on my forehead.

Now, this would be a bummer if not for the fact that Oculus is, finally, offering first-party ergonomic accessories, including an Elite Strap and an Elite Battery Strap, both of which are rigid and specifically designed with a counterweight (fingers crossed for an an Elite Audio Strap in the future).

The good news is that the Elite Strap design is excellent—I’d say Oculus’ best headstrap yet—which makes me really wish they just included it by default. It seems pretty clear that not doing so was largely a cost-saving decision.

For most serious VR users, I’m just going to go ahead and recommend you get the Elite Strap or the Elite Battery Strap on day one. Yes, it’s at least another $50 on top of the $300 base price, but it’s worth it.

Fit Pack

On top of the Elite Strap options, Oculus is also going to be selling a ‘Fit Pack’ ($40) which will include light blockers that fit around the lenses (to cover any light coming from the nose cavity) as well as two different face pads to accommodate wider or narrower faces. I haven’t had my hands on the Fit Pack, but found that the included face pad worked fine for me and I wasn’t bothered by any light leakage. It’s great that these accessories will be available though so a wider range of people can find an ergonomic fit that works for them.

Quest 2 also comes with a glasses spacer which holds the lenses a little further from your eyes so that there’s room for glasses in between. The face pad is slightly less wide than the original Quest, so especially wide frames might be problematic.

Controllers

At first glance, Quest 2’s controllers might not look much different than the original Quest controllers, but they’ve actually seen a significant ergonomic redesign—or perhaps more of an ergonomic throwback. The ‘new’ controller design is very close to the Touch controllers of the original Rift CV1 headset. And that’s a great thing because they arguably had the best ergonomics of any VR controller to date.

Compared to the Quest controllers, Quest 2’s controllers are larger and feature a much larger, and offset ‘face’ which provides a natural area to rest your thumb without resting them on a button. The handle shape seems to fit into the hand a bit more purposefully too. The Quest 2 controllers are actually a bit larger than the original Rift CV1 controllers as well. For me that makes them slightly larger than ideal (but those with larger hands will surely feel the opposite). Even still, I think the ergonomic shift back toward the Rift CV1 controllers is a nice improvement.

And there’s another benefit hiding inside. The Quest 2 haptics are notably more powerful than their predecessors. We don’t yet know if they’re capable of some of the advanced haptic effects seen on the Rift CV1 controllers, but we expect to learn more about this soon.

Quest 2’s controllers are also now more power efficient and last up to four times longer than the original Quest controllers, according to Oculus. We’ll need to follow up on that claim because our controller batteries have yet to run out!

Unfortunately Oculus has confirmed that Quest 2 controllers are not compatible with Quest or Rift S.

IPD Adjustment

I already talked about the IPD adjustment up in the hardware section, but there’s a design element that needs to be talked about as well.

I’m glad Quest 2 has an IPD adjustment, even if it can only be moved between three discrete settings (58mm, 63mm, and 68mm). However, the approach is a bit baffling. Rather than a slider on the bottom of the headset which allows you to look at the image as you adjust the IPD, on Quest 2 you need to remove the headset, grab the lenses, push them into one of the other positions, and then put the headset back on.

Given that the different settings are simply labeled 1, 2, and 3—and that there’s seemingly no guidance for the user about which position they should select—I don’t see how users are expected to set their IPD correctly. Even if you could do it by sight, the need to remove the headset, change the lens position, then put it back on means you can’t look at the image as you adjust it, which makes it far harder to set by sight. And even if you’re a VR enthusiast and actually know your own IPD measurement, you have to remember which numbered setting corresponds with which measurement.

Unless I’m missing something, this is a strange approach to IPD adjustment and one which I doubt will result in the majority of users using the correct setting.

Continue on Page 2: Tracking & Experience »

Quest 2 is the first Oculus headset to get official head strap accessories. There’s two to choose from: the Elite Strap, which offers a rigid strap with counterweight, and the Elite Battery Strap, which is essentially the same but with an even better counterweight thanks to an included battery. Here’s our review of both options.

So right up front I’d like to say: no matter which one you pick, if you’re a serious VR user (ie: not a first-timer), I’d highly recommend either of these Quest 2 headstrap accessories over the soft strap that comes included with the headset. As we found in our full Quest 2 review, the soft strap just doesn’t do a great job of keeping the headset comfortably on your face.

But the Elite Strap accessories aren’t just an improvement over the Quest 2 soft strap, they’re the best strap design the company has made yet on any of its VR headsets, and both feel very well built.

Quest 2 Elite Strap & Elite Strap with Battery

It’s about time Oculus started offering accessory upgrades for its headsets. For the first time with Quest 2 you can get the Elite Strap (priced at $50 on Amazon) and the Elite Battery Strap (bundled with a case for $130 on Amazon). And fortunately they don’t disappoint.

The thing that makes these headstraps great is that they’re the first from Oculus (or really any headset maker so far) that makes it really obvious how to find the right fit. This has been a persistent issue with VR headsets from the start, with many first-time users not adjusting their headstraps correctly, leading to discomfort.

It’s the rear rubber piece, and the particular way it’s mounted to the strap, that’s the key here. The shape has a pronounced ‘underscoop’ that makes it easy to tell by feel alone; it naturally grips your occipital bone, the part of your skull which first juts outward if you trace a line along the back of your neck and up to your skull.

Basically, with the Elite Strap and Elite Battery Strap for Quest 2, if you aren’t wearing if right, you’re going to feel that it’s in the wrong spot. Once you do find that sweet spot around the occipital bone, it’ll be really clear that’s where it’s supposed to rest. And that makes a big difference because the strap is designed to grip in such a way that it distributes much more of the headset’s front weight to the top of your head instead of simply tightening the strap like a vice against your face.

Once you’re ready to tighten the strap, the dial on the back really makes it a breeze. As you twist the dial, the headset will tighten in small increments delineated by audible clicks. If you want to loosen the headstrap, just spin the dial the other way.

While the rigid nature of the strap improves its comfort, the extra weight in the back makes a big difference too by counterbalancing the otherwise front-heavy headset.

The Elite Strap and Elite Battery Strap share the same fundamental design; the only major difference is the rear part of the Elite Battery Strap is about twice as thick and twice as heavy since it houses an extra battery—which Oculus says will double the battery life of Quest 2.

A short cable runs along the left side of the Elite Battery Strap which plugs into the side of Quest 2 to feed it power. The underside of the battery portion has its own USB-C charging port, allowing you to plug in your Quest 2 to charge both the extra battery and the headset at the same time.

In terms of comfort, I’d say that the Elite Battery Strap has a slight edge over the Elite Strap because the increased weight offers an even better counterweight, making for a more balanced headset overall.

Downsides of the Elite Straps

There’s really only one thing I’m missing with the Quest 2 Elite Strap accessories, and that’s the spring-fitting mechanism used in the original Rift and Quest headsets. The strap design had a spring built into the struts which made it really easy to put the headset on and pull it off without loosening or tightening it once you already found your ideal fit.

The Elite Strap accessories don’t have this, so usually you’ll end up tightening it every time you put it on and loosening it every time you take it off. It’s not a major difference, but having that springy action would make taking the headset off and on a bit smoother.

Although you won’t have to deal with it often (unless you’re juggling straps), the way that the Elite Straps attach to Quest 2 is just kind of… weird. Instead of some kind of latching mechanism, the Elite Straps have a sort of self-clasping design which grip snuggly onto the headset’s struts.

It seems to work just fine, but removing the original headstrap always makes me feel like I’m going to break something, and attaching the new straps is an awkward affair since there’s no clear starting point. You’ll figure it out eventually, but something more intuitive would have been welcomed.

If you’re the kind of person that expects to be laying down or learning your head back against something while using Quest 2 for media viewing, the Elite Straps probably aren’t a good choice. The counterweight and dial housing is a bit too large not to get in the way.

And for anyone wondering if you can use the Elite Battery Strap to charge the headset while using Oculus Link, unfortunately the answer is no. The USB cable that runs from the battery to the headset appears to be for power only, which means no data is passed through the cable if you plug your Oculus Link cable into the battery’s USB port. You’ll need to unplug the Elite Battery Strap’s side cable to use the Quest’s own USB port for the Oculus Link cable.

And last but not least, there’s the odd caveat that the Elite Battery Strap is only sold bundled with the Quest 2 case. So while you can buy the regular Elite Strap by itself for $50, if you want the Elite Battery Strap you have to buy the bundle which includes the Elite Strap with battery and Quest 2 case for $130.

Speaking of the case…

Oculus Quest 2 Case (included with Elite Battery Strap)

Since the Elite Battery Strap can only be bought in a bundle with the Quest 2 case, we might as well have a quick chat about it.

From a functionality standpoint it works just fine and is a slight improvement over the original case as Quest 2 slides into it more easily. There’s built-in room for the controllers, even if the plastic piece inside that’s meant to hold them doesn’t clearly indicate the intended controller orientation.

While it feels pretty well put together, I imagine the aesthetics will be a bit divisive. The outer skin is covered in a white and nearly hairy feeling material. This alone wouldn’t be too much of an issue, I’d guess, if not for the zipper opening which presents itself as a highly contrasted black line around the whole case. Especially because this line doesn’t have a uniform width all the way around, it can make the case look poorly crafted at times.

But for my taste, I’m not buying a case for fashion’s sake—it serves its purpose perfectly well as a tote for the Quest 2, controllers, and charger.

– – — – –

The Oculus Quest 2 Elite Strap and Elite Battery Strap accessories feel very well built and come highly recommended thanks to their intuitively fitting design and improvements to comfort over the default soft strap. The Elite Battery Strap has a slight edge on comfort thanks to the additional counterweight from the battery, but unfortunately it can only be bought bundled together with the Quest 2 case.

If you’re a first-time VR user or someone who plans to use Quest 2 more for seated (or reclined) media viewing than anything else, you might want to keep the default strap first for a few hours of wear before opting for an upgrade. But if you’re a serious VR user who intends on spending plenty of time in the headset, we’d suggest going for the strap upgrade right away.

HTC’s Vive Cosmos Elite headset is set to ship on the 18th and we’ve been testing the unit to bring you a full review. Cosmos Elite is the same base headset as Cosmos, but equipped with a faceplate that offers SteamVR Tracking instead of inside-out tracking. HTC also plans to also sell the ‘External Tracking Faceplate’ separately so that Cosmos users have the option to upgrade.

Introduction

This is a somewhat unique review because of Vive Cosmos’ modular approach; so let me break down where this all fits before we start.

Cosmos launched back in October as HTC’s latest consumer focused headset and its first PC headset with inside-out tracking. While the headset isn’t bad, competitors on both sides (Oculus’ Rift on the low-end and Valve’s Index on the high-end) seemed to offer better value propositions considering their price and performance.

But, Cosmos has a trick up its sleeve—a detachable faceplate which gives it some interesting modularity. And that’s where Vive Cosmos Elite comes in; it’s one of several modular variants of the headset which HTC recently introduced.

Cosmos Elite is the same Cosmos headset except equipped with what HTC calls the ‘External Tracking Faceplate’ which ditches the inside-out camera tracking for SteamVR Tracking which brings more accuracy but relies on external base stations (which also means more to set up).

For this review, HTC sent us everything that ships with the Vive Cosmos Elite (External Tracking Faceplate, 2x SteamVR Tracking 1.0 base stations, and 2x Vive wand controllers) so that we could upgrade our original Cosmos to Cosmos Elite. With the External Tracking Faceplate equipped, Cosmos becomes virtually identical to Cosmos Elite, except that the latter comes with a matching black color compared to the dark blue of all the other Cosmos headsets.

Now with all that said, this review focuses on Cosmos Elite and the External Tracking Faceplate; since the base headset (headphones, optics, displays, ergonomics, etc.) is otherwise identical to the original Cosmos, we’ll be leaning on our original review of Cosmos where relevant rather than rehashing the same points. Let’s dig in.

Vive Cosmos Elite & External Tracking Faceplate Review

While the original Cosmos is priced at $700, for $900 Cosmos Elite comes equipped with the External Tracking Faceplate and packaged with the Vive wand controllers (instead of the Cosmos controllers) and two SteamVR Tracking 1.0 base stations.

For those upgrading from Cosmos to Cosmos Elite, it’s easy to swap the default Cosmos faceplate for the External Tracking Faceplate. When looking at the lenses, you’ll find a small switch on the left side. Pull this down firmly all the way down as you pull the faceplate off; you may hear a pop or two as it’s removed.

With the default faceplate removed, line up the port on the External Tracking Faceplate with the port on the headset and then firmly press around the faceplate to pop it into place. The seam should be flush with the Cosmos headset.

The External Tracking Faceplate is covered with those familiar Vive pockmarks under which little sensors hide. While there’s only 10 visible pockmarks on the External Tracking Faceplate, there’s many more sensors hiding underneath the IR-transparent plastic, for a total of 32 (the same number you’ll find on headsets like Index and Vive Pro).

These sensors pick up lasers from the SteamVR Tracking base stations. You technically only need one base station for tracking, but two base stations at opposite corners of your playspace is the default configuration to ensure 360 tracking coverage.

The base stations each need to be connected to a wall outlet for power, but don’t need to connect to your PC. They need line of sight to each other, and it’s recommended they be mounted higher than your head and no more than 16 feet apart, supporting a tracking volume of roughly 11 × 11 feet.

The base stations include mounting hardware so that you they could be screwed into your walls, and there’s also a standard tripod screw on the bottom and back if you’d rather stick them on tripods. You could also choose to simply sit them up high somewhere like on a bookshelf, but they need to stay very still during use, otherwise tracking could get thrown off.

Vive Cosmos Elite Tracking

Compared to the inside-out tracking of the base Cosmos headset, which requires no external tracking hardware, the move to SteamVR Tracking and base stations on Cosmos Elite is a more cumbersome setup process, but the result is significantly improved tracking.

While HTC has made improvements to Cosmos’ inside-out tracking (which was pretty rough at launch), it’s still a far cry from SteamVR Tracking with the External Tracking Faceplate, which brings greater accuracy and hugely improved robustness to lighting conditions.

The Achilles’ heel of the original Cosmos is lighting; if it’s moderately dark the headset can lose tracking quality or refuse to track entirely. With SteamVR Tracking you can literally play in a daylight bright room or in a pitch black room and the tracking will keep on kicking thanks to infrared lasers, which are invisibly projected from the base stations.

Tracking performance on Cosmos Elite is notably superior to the original Cosmos; it’s more accurate with almost no discernible jitter or latency. While the External Tracking Faceplate is a modular add-on rather than being built-in, tracking felt just as good as other headsets with built-in SteamVR Tracking like Vive Pro and Index.

As for the controllers, Cosmos Elite uses the same Vive wands as the original Vive that launched back in 2016. These are pretty much a known quantity; they track very well and feel very sturdy, but their size and design reveal their age. While the Vive wands have a large trackpad and a grip ‘button’, most modern controllers have thumbsticks, face buttons, and grip ‘triggers’ (which are held rather than clicked).

Thanks to SteamVR’s interoperability, you could choose to pair Cosmos Elite with any other SteamVR Tracking compatible controller (like Index), but unfortunately the mess that is Cosmos’ modular strategy makes this largely impractical from a price standpoint.

Ergonomics, Lenses, Displays, Audio, & More

As we mentioned, Cosmos Elite is the same core Cosmos headset that launched in late 2019 but with the External Tracking Faceplate and Vive wand controllers. So rather than rehash the same points again, we’ll summarize the rest and encourage you to check out our original Cosmos review if you want the deep dive on the characteristics of the core headset.

While the External Tracking Faceplate takes care of the sub-par tracking of the original Cosmos, it doesn’t alleviate any of the headset’s other issues.

Ergonomics are a major factor for Cosmos, and even though Cosmos Elite (and the External Tracking Faceplate) include a wider top strap, it doesn’t make much of a difference. While I’ve found HTC’s Vive Pro to be very comfortable, Cosmos’ halo-style headband doesn’t work well for me. This may vary on a head-by-head basis, but I’ve found that Cosmos’ head-mount does a poor job of keeping the headset’s lenses in the ideal spot for my eyes, and its front-heavy design isn’t ideal for long sessions.

This is compounded by the fact that Cosmos’ lenses have a very small ‘sweet spot’ (the part of the lens offering the best visual clarity) and it feels like if my eyes are even a bit out of alignment then much of my view is uncomfortably blurry. I found myself needing to regularly adjust Cosmos on my head to try to keep my eyes in the sweet spot, even after setting the physical IPD adjustment correctly.

As for the displays, Cosmos’ 1,440 × 1,700 per-eye LCD displays are on par with contemporaries for pixel density and screen door effect (the space between pixels). But, going back to the small sweet spot and the ergonomic issues, it feels like more of those pixels are blurred more of the time, making Cosmos’ through-the-lens view notably the least desirable for me among Cosmos, Rift S, and Index.

Though the snap-on headphones feel a little cheap and love to get in the way when you put on the headset, the audio quality is solid and easily better than the barely passable audio on Rift S. Index, however, still has notably better audio quality and its off-ear headphone design never bothers you when putting on the headset.

Summary

Cosmos Elite is a passable headset but it has the same core issue as the original Cosmos: it’s not competitive at the price HTC is asking. Yes, the SteamVR Tracking makes it a better headset than the original Cosmos (provided you aren’t bothered by the external tracking hardware), but it also costs an additional $200. At $900, I just can’t recommend Cosmos Elite when Rift S provides more value and Index offers a notably improved experience for just $100 more.

Even if there was someone out there who simply wouldn’t settle for a headset from any company but HTC, I would easily recommend the Vive Pro Starter Kit (also $900) over Cosmos Elite thanks to its vastly better ergonomic design—it’s a shame that the company is now discontinuing that headset.

Disclosure: HTC provided Road to VR with the Vive Cosmos Elite hardware.

Vive Cosmos has arrived and takes HTC’s consumer headset ambitions in a somewhat different direction. Three and a half years after the launch of the original Vive, Cosmos finds itself in a rather strange competitive landscape where it simultaneously must defend itself from a longstanding rival on the low-end and its former ally on the high-end. Read on to find out how it fares.

Before we start, you may recall that we initially postponed our review as we were waiting to hear back from HTC on an issue regarding the headset’s light sensitivity. The outcome of that inquiry is addressed below.

Vive Cosmos Review

While the original Vive was a collaboration between Valve and HTC, which resulted in the headset being deeply tied to both Steam and the SteamVR Tracking system (AKA Lighthouse), Cosmos shows several ways in which HTC is hoping to divest its VR business from Valve and create its own distinct offering. Unfortunately, vestiges of what once was manifest now cause complications for Cosmos.

In terms of pricing, at $700, Cosmos fits between two primary competitors: Rift S on the low-end at $400 and Index on the high-end at $1,000 (or $750 for anyone who already owns SteamVR Tracking base stations). In order for Cosmos to succeed in this middle ground, it ideally needs to do most things better than Rift S, even if it can’t quite match the more expensive Index.

Starting with the hardware design, Cosmos doesn’t do much to justify its $700 price tag. While the industrial design is fine—if uninspired—there are several elements which make Cosmos feel a bit cheap. The seemingly tacked-on headphones with exposed wires doesn’t jibe with the flimsy headband. The removable face gasket (to which the face-foam attaches) genuinely feels like it’s about to break every time it’s removed. The forehead-rest (which you must remove if you want to take off the headphones) also feels like it wants to break upon removal and is a frustrating challenge to put back in place due to 13 individual plastic clasps across a complex curved surface which holds it in place.

On that note though, Cosmos takes after the Vive Pro with the best nose-cavity light blocker of any headset in the industry, and the facial interface offers a full enclosure that blocks out all light. Cosmos also has a flip-up visor which is a very welcomed addition that saves you from needing to completely remove and then refit the headset if you need to peer into the real world just for a moment or two.

Unfortunately Cosmos’ halo-style head-mount seems to offer two mutually exclusive choices: comfort or clarity. With such a small sweet spot on Cosmos, getting your eyes into the ideal position is critical for the best visual clarity. At least for me, that ideal eye position is not the ideal comfort position, and after 30 minutes or so in the headset, the pressure on my forehead is very apparent. Unfortunately, moving the headset into its most comfortable position means my eyes are poorly aligned with the sweet spot of the lens and I get a notably reduced visual experience.

And while Rift S shares the same ‘comfort or clarity’ problem with regards to ergonomics, Cosmos’ weight and front-heavy design amplify the issue even more. I actually felt some pain in my back between my shoulders after a one and a half hour session with Cosmos, something I don’t recall experiencing with other headsets. Needless to say, if your head doesn’t agree with halo-style head-mounts, it probably isn’t going to agree with Cosmos.

While Cosmos struggles in the build quality and ergonomics department, one place where it does fare pretty well is in visuals. HTC quotes the headset’s field of view at the same 110 degrees diagonal as the original Vive and Vive Pro (which feels about right) and going side-by-side with the Rift S shows Cosmos as the obvious winner in FOV, though Index ultimately takes the cake over both.

The headset’s slightly higher per-eye resolution compared to Index and somewhat smaller FOV reflect what the on-paper specs would suggest: 1,440 × 1,700 per-eye at a somewhat smaller FOV than Index’s 1,440 × 1,600 resolution results in a bit more pixel density and a slight edge in reduced screen door effect for Cosmos. Ultimately Cosmos, Index, and Rift S are all in effectively the same class when it comes to pixel density and screen-door effect.

Unfortunately, like all HTC headsets before it, Cosmos’ lenses have a frustratingly small sweet spot (the area of maximum visual clarity). If your eyes aren’t in perfect alignment with the lenses (or if you roll your eyes to look around the field of view without turning your head) you’re going to see uncomfortable blurring in the periphery. This makes Cosmos’ ergonomic prognosis even more severe—if the ideal alignment of your eyes to the lenses doesn’t also result in a comfortable fit, you’re going to have trouble maintaining comfort for longer sessions.

When it comes to glare and god rays, Cosmos’ Fresnel lenses look to have somewhat reduced god rays and glare compared to Vive and Vive Pro, similar in extent to Rift S. Meanwhile, Index’s dual-element optics have similar god rays but lots of glare. As ever, god rays and glare really only stand out in high-contrast visuals.

While the difference isn’t quite large enough that I’d personally be able to guess which is which, the 90Hz displays on Cosmos give a bit of added smoothness to motion compared to the Rift S at 80Hz. However, Index at 120Hz (or even 144Hz if your PC has the horsepower) is a noticeable step up.

Cosmos’ on-board headphones sound good, though the spring-flip design made me appreciate the off-ear audio solutions of Rift S and Index. Unfortunately the spring-flip design can be obnoxious at times because the flimsy Cosmos headband will sometimes flex instead of the headphone flipping into place as it should, which means needing to grab the headphone by its strut and to force it into position when it should have just flipped into place on its own.

Luckily if you want to use your own headphones to remedy this issue, you can remove Cosmos’ headphones without tools and then plug in your own via the 3.5mm headphone jack (though earbuds tend to work best because it’s hard to find banded headphones which play well with a halo head-mount on a VR headset).

Then we come to tracking. The stock Cosmos moves away from SteamVR Tracking—the gold standard for room-scale tracking—and to its own inside-out tracking system which uses six cameras on the headset to track the position of both the headset and its controllers. While SteamVR Tracking requires external beacons which can be cumbersome to set up, Cosmos’ inside-out tracking is fully self-contained and brings a much easier plug and play experience. Unfortunately this comes at the cost of tracking precision and accuracy.

And while Rift S’ inside-out tracking system holds up quite well against SteamVR Tracking outside of some specific cases, Cosmos struggles to reach the same level of precision unless you’re in a very well-lit room.

You may have seen that we initially postponed our review of Cosmos because the headset was so aggressively complaining of bad lighting that we thought it might be defective. Initially we couldn’t get Cosmos to function at all after the Sun had set, even when every other inside-out tracked headset we have on hand worked without problem. After we reached out to understand the scope of the problem, HTC pushed out a patch which made the headset more accepting of low-light situations.

And while the initial setting was surely too aggressive, anything but a very well-lit room results in reduced precision which causes the headset to jitter more than desired. These small movements (which represent the limit of the headset’s tracking precision) aren’t outright disruptive to the experience, but they can lead to subtle discomfort.

At least in the nominal lighting condition in my playspace (no overhead lighting), Cosmos’ tracking performance falls somewhere between PSVR and Rift S (leaning closer to Rift S). This is still ‘good enough’ for a broad range of cases, though you probably would get frustrated if trying to do precision work with Cosmos like VR painting, sculpting, or designing, unless you’re in a room that’s perfectly lit to the headset’s specification. HTC doesn’t offer any specific guidance on how bright your space should be for Cosmos.

Cosmos’ controllers are a big shift for HTC which has relied on its original Vive wands for years. The Cosmos controllers come more in line with the rest of the industry now with thumbsticks, two primary face buttons, an index trigger, and a grip trigger, though it also adds a ‘bumper’ above the index trigger.

The Cosmos controllers, which rely on two AA batteries, are decidedly chunky and do not have a very favorable center of gravity, giving them a worse-in-class feel compared to Oculus Touch and Index controllers, though they are still preferred over the original wands.

The controllers track relatively well (though they are equally impacted by the precision issues discussed above) and the six camera tracking coverage feels comparable to Rift S and a clear step up over the two-camera tracking system used on Windows VR headsets. While they seem to have a bit of added latency compared to Rift S controllers, it’s not too much to be easily compensated for; I was able to play Beat Saber on Expert+ with no complaints.

The controller tracking has some expected dead-spots very close to the headset but handles them gracefully by freezing the controller in place until it is reacquired. I was able to play games like The Lab’s ‘Longbow’ without issue for the most part, even as I was pulling the bowstring right up to my cheek before releasing the arrow. Depending upon the specific game, this could prove problematic at times if you will have your controllers very close to your headset for extended periods and still need to control them with fine motions, but this is typical for any inside-out tracking system.

HTC has announced plans to release a swappable faceplate add-on for Cosmos in early 2020 which will imbue it with SteamVR Tracking capabilities. We haven’t had a chance to test this yet, though it’s expected to cost around $200 and will require separate controllers.

Cosmos will also be compatible with the Vive Wireless Adapter via an additional $50 add-on which is expected to ship later this month. We also haven’t had a chance to test this with the headset.

On the software and experience side, HTC is attempting to build out its own ecosystem and simplify the end-user experience with both Viveport and the ‘Vive Reality System’. Unfortunately Cosmos is still fundamentally stuck with Valve because Cosmos is still a SteamVR headset at its core.

And while that’s a big plus for anyone who is already bought into the SteamVR ecosystem, it complicates HTC’s efforts to make Cosmos a simple and user-friendly experience.

While the Vive setup software felt modern and was easy to follow, it doesn’t really explain the connection between Cosmos/Vive and SteamVR for new users at all, despite SteamVR being where a bunch of really important settings live (like audio configuration, supersampling, etc). So no matter how user-friendly the Cosmos software might be or become, it still can’t rid itself from the complexities and often fiddly nature of SteamVR.

This vestigial Steam/Vive relationship gets even more confusing for new users when it comes to content. Though Steam offers up the largest and best library of game content for the headset, HTC points users straight to its Viveport VR app store. Central to Viveport is Viveport Infinity, the company’s subscription game service (which is included for a year with Cosmos) that offers up access to a bulk of the Viveport content library for a monthly subscription. And while Viveport Infinity offers a decent value thanks to encompassing some genuinely recommendable content, it prefers to dangle heaps of shovelware in front of new users rather than point them to top VR titles that are available on Steam but not on Viveport.

The Vive Reality System, which is supposed to be a top-down in-VR user experience foundation, is little more than a dashboard and a ‘home’ space in the headset at launch. ‘Lens’ is what they call the dashboard; it looks nice and makes it easy enough to scroll through your library and launch new games, but that’s just about all it does.

HTC had teased that Vive Reality System would include much more, like social features and social spaces, but that’s all apparently still on the horizon, leaving Steam instead to supplant key features like friend lists, social spaces, text & voice communication, and foundational multiplayer functionality.

One place where HTC did deliver on making a straightforward improvement over SteamVR is in Cosmos’ room-scale setup. Cosmos uses a similar approach to Rift S when it comes to drawing out the playspace boundary: using the pass-through camera, you point the controller at the ground and actually trace the edge of your available playspace. This defines your ‘chaperone’ system which pops up as a grid when you get near it to prevent you from walking into anything in the real world. This approach is quick and easy and even Index hasn’t caught up just yet.

Summary

Despite its small sweet spot and occasionally iffy build quality, Vive Cosmos could be a decent headset so long as you find it comfortable. Even so, it unfortunately doesn’t feel like it lives up to its $700 price point when seen in the context of the competition.

While Cosmos scores a few points here and there (like a wider field of view and better sound), Rift S seems to offer a generally better experience for $300 less. On the other hand, while Index costs $300 more than Cosmos, it does a lot more to justify that premium price with top notch tracking, incredible audio, high build quality, better ergonomics, and overall much better optics. And if you’re an early adopter who already owns base stations (making Index just $50 more) and is weighing Cosmos vs. Index, there’s pretty much no question that you should go with Index as long as base stations aren’t a hindrance to your use of VR.

Taking everything into consideration, it’s hard to feel like Cosmos can really be competitive with either of its main contenders unless priced squarely at the Rift S’ $400 price point, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Disclosure: HTC provided Road to VR with a Vive Cosmos headset.

The Valve Index headset is more expensive and less user-friendly than its nearest competitor, the Oculus Rift S, but the experience it offers is the clear choice for VR enthusiasts who want to maximize immersion. Read on for our full Valve Index review to learn if this headset is for you.

As usual, we’ll start up top with a high level review summary followed up with an in-depth review further down. [Note: this review is an expansion and refinement of our previous in-depth preview, so some of the text may be familiar].

Valve Index Review Summary

Valve’s Index headset asks for a premium price and manages to deliver a premium experience. From the a hardware standpoint, the headset feels very well constructed and I find it to be the most comfortable headset currently available. That’s thanks to its thoughtful ergonomic design which offers a wide range of adjustments (including hardware IPD and lens-to-eye adjustments) as well as spring-loaded side struts which let you put on and remove the headset without tightening and loosening it every time.

Though it has the same 1,440 × 1,600 per-eye resolution as the Vive Pro, the move to LCD displays with RGB subpixels offers better fill factor and a bit less screen-door effect. Compared to the original Vive and Rift (both with 1,080 × 1,200 per-eye OLED displays), it’s a significant reduction in the screen-door effect, but still visible at times.

LCD means worse black levels, so darker scenes have a greyish, low-contrast look compared to the rich blacks seen in OLED headsets. I haven’t been able to spot any ghosting from the Index’s display (which is more common with OLED displays).

Index supports 80Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz refresh rates. Most PC headsets run at 90Hz which looks and feels fine, but there’s a definite immersive benefit to going higher. With 144Hz on Index, everything just feels smoother and tracking even feels tighter (because latency is lower and tracked objects move more smoothly). However, to get the most out of the higher refresh rates, you’ll want to pair Index with a very high-end GPU (like an RTX 2080 Ti) and CPU, otherwise you may need to turn down the headset’s resolution to maintain high frame rates without continuous use of reprojection or motion smoothing.

Between its resolution, lenses, high refresh rates, and ultra low persistence, Index is the leader in visual clarity over pretty much any headset except (arguably) the HP Reverb, which offers much more resolving power thanks to 2,160 × 2,160 per-eye resolution concentrated over a smaller field of view (but is somewhat compromised by more than ideal mura).

Index offers the widest field of view than other headsets in its class, at around 120 or 130 degrees. This is thanks to larger lenses, but also a dial on the side of the headset that allows you to bring the lenses very close to your eyes, which enables more users to experience the optimal field of view. The improvement doesn’t feel like a night and day difference at first (like it does with the ultra-wide FOV Pimax headsets), but going back to other headsets makes it quite noticeable and you’ll be wishing you were back in Index.

The larger field of view also brings with it a larger sweet spot, which means the image sharpness doesn’t fall off as fast as you look toward the edges of the lens. The Vive headsets have a notoriously small sweet spot, and Index offers a nice improvement by comparison. As with any headset, dialing in the fit to get your eye to the center of the sweet spot is important for maximum clarity.

Unfortunately the new lens design brings quite a bit of glare with it, which illuminates the edges of the lens when there’s bright objects against darker backgrounds. At times this can be as bad if not a little bit worse than the original Vive, but as with pretty much any headset, you won’t see it unless you’re looking at something high contrast. The glare seems to concentrate toward the edges of the lens and you can reduce it somewhat by dialing back the field of view a bit.

The headphones on Index are simply excellent; easily the best of any headset on the market. The floating design is smart in the way that the headphones don’t touch your ears at all, but still offer tremendous audio quality with lots of power, deep bass, and a full audio profile. Compared to the Rift S (which has notoriously bad audio quality), it’s truly a night and day difference. Index also offers better sound than the Vive Pro and the original Rift (which was the audio quality leader, until Index).

The Valve Index controllers are a nice upgrade (finally) from the Vive wands thanks to the addition of a thumbstick and face buttons, as well as a more intuitive ‘grab’ input in the form of a force-sensitive handle.

It can be difficult to find a good fit around you hand with the ‘cinch’ design, but the controller works well once you do, allowing you to naturally clasp the handle to initiate a ‘grab’, or release it completely to release your grab. At the top of the cinch there’s a little metal piece which can be moved between four positions to make the cinch better fit different hand sizes but it can get in the way of reaching your thumb to the thumbstick and face buttons.

Index can track the position of all of your fingers, which is interesting, but frankly doesn’t seem to add much to the experience. There’s the novelty period of looking at your fingers move for the first two minutes of using the controllers, but beyond that, there’s few meaningful interactions that actually come from it. On the surface it seems like independently tracked fingers means you’d suddenly be able to intuitively interact with the virtual world using fine finger manipulations, but the reality is that this isn’t really possible with the limitations of this kind of finger tracking. Unless Valve’s upcoming VR game (or some other creative developer) shows that this finger tracking tech is truly compelling for gameplay, my gut says it might have been better to scrap the extra tracked fingers in favor of a controller that’s smaller, lighter, and cheaper, with a more concentrated center of gravity

While headsets like the Rift S are moving toward a more user-friendly approach by adopting inside-out tracking, Index is still reliant on the same external tracker paradigm as before. That means you’ll need a dedicated playspace with room to permanently or semi-permanently mount beacons for tracking. This makes for a longer and more complex initial setup process, but means robust and performant tracking in the end.

SteamVR (the component of Steam which is required for using Index) still feels like a power-user’s utility rather than an inviting portal into virtual reality. I’m a hardcore PC gamer who has been using VR for years now, and I still find some of SteamVR’s settings confusingly arranged and interconnected. Much of the options are simply not explained in any meaningful way, and novice users could easily degrade their experience by accidentally hitting a wrong check box. SteamVR is still finicky at times and will occasionally test your troubleshooting skills.

Despite having two decent cameras on the front of Index, Valve is presently doing almost nothing with them. You can double-press the system button to look through the cameras, but it takes far too long for the view to appear for it to be any use for quickly peering outside of the headset. Valve has teased some stylized pass-through modes previously, but it seems they’re still treating the cameras as a development toy instead of a proper feature of the headset.

By contrast, the pass-through view on the Rift S is used to make setting up the play boundaries easier (by looking through the passthrough view and tracing the play area) and also makes onboarding easier because you can look through the cameras to easily pick up your controllers after you put on the headset (which is much nicer than feeling around for the controllers and putting them on blindly). Valve really should steal these ideas to make Index a bit less cumbersome in the initial setup and onboarding.

– – — – –

The full Index kit runs $1,000 and comes with all of 2016’s VR caveats: set up permanent or semi-permanent tracking equipment, figure out how to use fiddly SteamVR software and settings, and learn how to dial in all of the headset’s adjustments. Not to mention that to get the most out of the 144Hz capable headset, you’ll want enthusiast grade PC hardware to match.

In this sense, I liken the Index approach to a DSLR camera—more expensive, but capable of taking great photos as long as you put in the time to learn the ins and outs, and have appropriate hardware to support it (like a good tripod and lens).

Oculus on the other hand is aiming more for the ‘point-and-shoot’ camera approach with Rift S—lower cost, less complexity, and more user friendly—but simply not capable of achieving the same level of fidelity.

For that reason, Index is a great choice for enthusiasts, but not a great choice for novice users or those who find themselves not diving into VR very often because of the friction of use.

If you have a first-gen VR headset and find you aren’t using it very often, consider that ease-of-use (and not things like resolution, field of view, and refresh rate) might be the reason why—in that case, Index isn’t likely to make you use VR any more than you are currently. On the other hand, if you’re a diligent enthusiast who uses VR plenty already with a first-gen headset, Index will likely be a good upgrade to your experience.

Of course, a headset is nothing without content. Index is compatible with all SteamVR content, and while the controllers work fine for existing apps with legacy input bindings, developers will need to update their games if they want to make specific use of the controller’s new features. Hopefully Valve’s upcoming VR game will come along and show what the controllers are truly capable of, but they still haven’t announced a release date for the game, let alone even given it a name.

Previously, picking a SteamVR headset over an Oculus headset essentially meant being locked out from playing Oculus exclusive content; although it’s been technically possible to play Oculus games through the unofficial ‘Revive’ mod, the old Vive wands were a poor stand-in for the Touch controllers and made it a compromised experience. The Index controllers on the other hand seem to work much better for this purpose, making Oculus exclusive content finally feel truly playable on headsets like Index. And while that opens the exciting possibility of playing some of the best VR content from Oculus, it’s a bit of a gamble considering Oculus could break support for Revive at any time.

Valve Index In-depth Review

Hardware

Ergonomics

For my head, Index is the new bar for headset comfort, surpassing the Vive Pro. For pretty much any headset, long sessions mean regularly making small adjustments to maintain comfort; with Index it feels like I need less little adjustments over long sessions than with other headsets.

Ergonomics in VR headsets isn’t just about comfort though, it’s also about visual clarity, since getting your eyes well aligned with the lenses can make the difference between a sharp and comfortable image, or a blurry one with eyestrain. Without being able to get your eyes comfortably into ideal alignment, pretty much every visual aspect of the headset can be compromised.

Thankfully, Index has a physical IPD adjustment, which ranges from 58mm to 70mm, accommodating the vast majority of users. On top of that, the knob on the right side of the headset lets you bring the lenses very close to your eyes, maximizing the field of view and your ability to align with the lenses’ sweet spot. The Vive Pro has a similar lens-to-eye distance adjustment but it doesn’t let you get the lenses as close as Index.

From a comfort standpoint, Index’s padding is soft and comfortable; a knob on the back of the head-mount lets you finely adjust the tightness of the head-mount, and the visor rotates about the hinges to find a good resting place against your face. Though it’s fine for me, I don’t expect that the face gasket will fit everyone perfectly (it’s extremely similar in geometry to that of the original Oculus Rift, so if you have experience with that headset you’ll know what to expect). Thin-framed glasses ought to fit inside ok, and the lens-to-eye adjustment knob will make it easy to make space for them in the direction of the lenses.

In case it doesn’t fit everyone well, the face gasket is magnetically attached and easily removable; Valve says it plans to release CAD files to make it easy for third parties to make accessories for Index, which will hopefully mean readily available aftermarket choices.

While the padding is pleasant against the skin, it appears to be a covering of sorts over top of some underlying foam. As someone who plays a good bit of Beat Saber (which means sweating into the headset’s padding), the padding seems to want to hold onto moisture more than with other headsets which use foam with no covering. The ability to easily remove the magnetic face gasket is really nice for pulling it out for a quick cleaning after a sweaty session, but those planning frequent workouts in their headset may want to keep an eye out for a fitness-focused aftermarket gasket.

Index’s side struts are ‘springy’, just like the original Rift. This means that there’s some ‘play’ to the fit, such that you can put the headset on and take it off ‘hat style’ (back to front) without re-adjusting the tightening knob in the back every time. For the most part, that means that once you dial in the fit of Index, you shouldn’t have to fiddle with it often. That’s a nice improvement over headsets like Rift S and Vive Pro, which generally need to be tightened each time you put them on and then loosened before being taken off.

Visuals

Field of View

Thanks to Index’s ergonomic design, it’s easy to get your eyes right into the sweet spot of the lenses for the best visuals. This matters not just for clarity, but certainly for field of view too. Between the displays and the ability to bring the lenses very close to your eyes, Valve says they expect that most users will get a field of view that’s roughly 20 degrees wider than they’d see with a Vive. The difference at first doesn’t seem massive, but going back to headsets like the Vive and Rift S makes it abundantly clear that Index has the widest and most desirable FOV of the bunch.

It’s possible to bring the lenses so close that you can start to see the edges of the displays in your peripheral vision. This is generally undesirable, but tolerable if you want the maximum possible FOV. If you’d prefer the soft round edges of the lenses as the limit of your FOV instead, it’s incredibly easy to dial the lenses back just a bit until you don’t see the display edges anymore.

Display

With a resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 per-eye, Index uses an LCD display with RGB subpixels which are known for having better fill-factor/less screen door effect (SDE). It’s a notable reduction in SDE and improvement in resolution compared to the original Vive and Rift (both use OLED displays at 1,080 × 1,200 per-eye); SDE is still visible, but easily melts away in darker scenes and against textures.

Compared to the Vive Pro (1,440 × 1,600 per-eye OLED) however, there’s little overall difference in SDE. This is likely partly due to the larger Index FOV (which serves to reduce pixel density compared to a smaller FOV), and the fact that RGB subpixels create a slightly more defined (if smaller) SDE structure compared to the offset pattern seen with PenTile OLED displays.

Though the Rift S has a lower resolution (1,280 × 1,440), its concentrated over a smaller field of view than Index, making the sharpness/resolving of the headsets quite similar.

Mura (inconsistencies in brightness and color between pixels) is fairly minimal; it’s improved over the original Vive, on par with the Vive Pro, and a bit more visible than the Rift S.

Overall clarity on Index pulls ahead of the Rift S and Vive Pro however, which is thanks to the super low persistence, high refresh rates, and lens differences. Index’s overall clarity even competes well with HP’s Reverb headset, which has much higher resolution of 2,160 × 2,160 (and thus more resolving power) but quite a bit of mura, and can’t run at such high refresh rates or with such low persistence.

Refresh Rate & Low Persistence

While most PC VR headsets have a 90Hz refresh rate (with the exception of the Rift S at 80Hz), Index is capable of 80Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz.

It’s hard to explain exactly how a higher refresh rate makes the view through Index look more immersive and solid, but it definitely does. Even though the 80Hz or 90Hz of other headsets is plenty comfortable and looks good, it’s still far from the ‘perfectly smooth’ motion of real life. At 144Hz, everything just looks that much more smooth, adding to the ‘solidity’ of what’s around you. It probably also helps that a 144Hz refresh rate means lower latency too.

The high refresh rate works in conjunction with Index’s ultra low persistence to keep the image sharp even during movement. Persistence is how long a pixel remains lit, and in VR, lower is better because illuminating pixels for less time reduces blur during head movement. All decent headsets use low persistence, but Valve says that Index is the first headset to offer sub-pixel persistence, which in theory means virtually zero persistence blurring.

I would go so far to say that the higher refresh rate and ultra low persistence together are the greatest contributors to the increased immersion with Index, perhaps even more so than the increase in field of view.

Sweet Spot

Index’s sweet spot (the area of the lens which offers the best clarity) is also noticeably improved over the Vive and Vive Pro. It’s not ‘edge to edge’ sharp when you rotate your eyes about the scene, but the sharpness doesn’t fall off nearly as fast as with the Vives. The end result is that it feels more natural to look around the scene with your eyes rather than your head, compared to other headsets, which is especially good considering the wider field of view on Index.

God Rays & Glare

For the most part, everything described above about Index’s visuals is either on par or an improvement over headsets in the same class, but there is one area where Index makes a compromise: glare.

While most other headsets use single-element lenses, Index uses dual-element lenses. I suspect this was done specifically to expand the sweet spot, but I also suspect it’s the reason why glare has become more apparent than other headsets like the Rift S, Vive, and Vive Pro.

I want to be clear here because the terminology surrounding what many users call ‘god rays’ and ‘glare’ is not particularly precise—so I’m going to explain what I’m talking about with a little extra detail.

When it comes to various light-related lens artifacts in VR headsets, there seems to be two major components. The first is what I believe most people are talking about when they say ‘god rays’—that would be the lens flare-like light that seems to directly emanate from bright objects against darker surroundings. God rays are the lines of light you can see coming directly from objects in the scene. These lines are quite defined, and typically point directly toward or away from the very center of the lens; you can see them rotate around their host object as you move your head. A good example is white text on a black background—the text appears to flare in a quite discrete way, directly against and around the text.

Then there’s internal reflections, which generally equates to what some users call ‘glare’ (and that’s how I’ll refer to it here). Glare is the broader light scattering artifacts that don’t appear to emanate as directly from the object in the way that god rays do. Glare scatters around the field of view more globally than god rays.

With that in mind, when it comes to Index, god rays are an improvement over Vive, and look to be about on par with the Rift S. But glare is worse than Rift S, Vive, and Vive Pro, and can be pretty obnoxious when you have large, high contrast elements against darker backgrounds. The glare on Index seems to be brighter and more defined than with other headsets. It also tends to fall toward the outer edges of the field of view, which I suspect makes it more noticeable because of the way that our peripheral vision is more sensitive to both movement and contrast than our central vision.

I suppose this was a necessary concession to achieve other objectives in the lens design, but I’m surprised with how apparent the glare can be at times.

As ever, both god rays and glare go away in scenes with lower contrast. Smart developers can mitigate god rays and glare by avoiding high contrast elements in their content (Lone Echo being the premiere example)—and frankly that would benefit other headsets too if more developers were cognizant of this; maybe Index will be a good wake-up call.

Black Levels & Ghosting

As far as black levels are concerned, Index is on par with other headsets using LCD displays like the Rift S and Oculus Go. Many first-gen VR headsets (like the Vive) used OLED displays that are capable of incredibly dark blacks, which look great in darker scenes, but could be subject to ghosting. LCD can be prone to ghosting too (in different circumstances), but I haven’t spotted any on Index.

Blacks in Index have that classic ‘LCD grey’ look to them, which makes for poor contrast in darker scenes compared to OLED. It’s not a deal breaker, but if you play especially dark games like space sims and are used to OLED headsets, you’ll definitely miss the rich blacks.

Audio

The floating headphones on Index are just flat-out excellent. When you put the headset on, you don’t even know they’re there because they don’t touch your ears. Then the audio comes in and boom—powerful, full-bodied sound; easily the highest quality integrated audio in any VR headset to date. As these are technically speakers rather than headphones, they’re going to be audible to other people in the room, but you’ll want to use them anyway. If you’d prefer another audio solution, you can remove the Index headphones with an allen wrench and plug in your preferred headphones with the on-board 3.5mm jack (hidden under the face gasket).

I’ve already written in-depth about Index’s headphones, though I will share an anecdote.

For me, a true ‘audio upgrade’ is when the upgrade allows you to hear things you’ve never heard before in audio content that you’re intimately familiar with. I’ve logged dozens of hours in The Lab over the years, but it wasn’t until I was using Index that I was struck by how intricate and detailed the sounds are from the little robot dog. It has a bunch of different animations, each accompanied by subtle noises that highlight its movements. I wasn’t even specifically testing the headset’s audio, it was just something that caught my attention as the dog ran around me.

And that’s pretty freaking cool. The Lab came out in 2016—and I’ve explored damn near all of it—but three years later I experienced something that I never really noticed until better hardware came along and revealed it.

I spoke with a VR developer who had this same experience with Index of newly noticed audio details, but in their own application that they work on every day.

Tracking

Index makes use of Valve’s SteamVR Tracking tech, and supports both 1.0 and 2.0 base stations. Tracking feels as tight and robust as ever on Index. Especially with the higher refresh rate of the headset, tracking makes movements in fast paced games like Beat Saber feel slightly easier to control.

With two base stations mounted at opposite corners of my playspace, I didn’t notice any occlusion issues while I played despite the front of the headset having many fewer tracking sensors than the Vive headsets.

Valve doesn’t advertise any specific performance improvements from the 1.0 to the 2.0 base stations, though 2.0 can support larger playspaces and up to four base stations for more robustness to occlusion (though the latter benefits scarcely apply to in-home users). Indeed, I haven’t been able to notice any tracking differences between the 1.0 and 2.0 base stations.

For those who ordered the Index full kit (which includes two 2.0 base stations), you’ll also get some mounting hardware included. Each base station comes with a mounting bracket that can be screwed into the wall with included screws. The mounting brackets are also designed to sit on flat surfaces like a table or bookshelf for those who don’t want to screw them to the wall. The standard tripod screw on the bracket can fasten to the corresponding screw holes on the back or bottom of the base stations, making either orientation work.

‘Frunk’

Valve calls the opening hiding beneath the magnetically attached face-plate the ‘frunk’. There’s a USB 3.0 port in the side, and Valve envisions it as an expansion port for people who want to experiment with adding various peripherals and add-ons to the headset. Valve says they have no specific plans for the frunk. Unless someone comes up with some highly essential add-on that fits in the frunk, it seems like a waste; without it, Index presumably could have had a slightly smaller footprint and less weight (especially with removing the plastic faceplate and corresponding magnets).

Index Controllers (Knuckles)

The Index controllers (formerly called Knuckles) can work with any SteamVR headset, and finally offer an upgrade over the Vive wand controllers.

From an input standpoint, the Index controllers are much more aligned with the Touch controllers by adding a trackpad, face buttons, and a much more natural grabbing input thanks to the force-sensitive handle.

Knuckles is unique in two significant ways. First of all, it’s ‘worn’ by tightening a cinch around your hand. This allows you to completely ‘let go’ of the controller while it remains in your hand. The idea is that this will work with the force-sensitive handle to allow for natural grabbing and releasing of virtual objects by simply gripping or not gripping the handle.

The second unique thing is independent finger tracking. The handle has embedded capacitive sensors which detect each of your fingers to animate your virtual hand to match. The trigger and all of the face inputs (stick, trackpad, and buttons) are also capacitive, which means your whole hand position can be pretty effectively tracked and represented virtually.

Merely by having more comprehensive inputs, a more natural gripping input, and a more central center of gravity, the Index controllers are an upgrade over the Vive wands. But the unique selling points of the controller (independent finger tracking and the hand cinch) feel less obviously valuable.

It took a while to find a decent fit for the cinch. My initial instinct was to pull it tight and snug, but after about 15 minutes it started to feel uncomfortable so I had to dial it back and find a balance between keeping it tight enough to keep the controller on my hand but loose enough to stay comfortable. The way the cinch is tightened makes it easy to put more pressure on one side of your palm than the other. I found after tightening the controllers that I’d usually have to adjust the position of the straps against my hand to prevent that pinching/pressure sensation.

There’s a metal piece that protrudes from the top of the strap and can be moved into four different positions (by pushing it ‘into’ the controller and then rotating), which offers an important adjustment, but I also found that the metal piece sticks out too far and easily gets a bit in the way of reaching for the thumbstick and face buttons.

In the end, the Index controllers can be comfortable, but you’ll need to spend some time really figuring out how to make them fit you.

Then there’s the independent finger tracking, which so far only really matters for the first two minutes of using the controllers—you’ll stare at your moving fingers and then move on to games which make no use of them. Yes, over time more games will add support to correctly animate your fingers, but for all the complexity this adds to the controllers it’s hard to imagine that this is an essential feature. The expectation seems to be that this will make VR more immersive, but without any means of realistic manipulations of virtual objects with your fingers alone (which can’t be done without force-feedback), it really doesn’t seem to be adding much except for those times where you want to stare at your fingers for the novelty of the fact that they are tracked.

Not to be underestimated however is the social presence that can seep in when users have more defined finger tracking. Although clearly an edge case, sign language users might also find Knuckles to be a step in the right direction in translating actual finger movements to VR.

Continue Reading on Page 2: Experience »

After months of teasing, Oculus Quest starts shipping today. After testing the headset for several weeks, our Oculus Quest review is here. Because it doesn’t rely on a PC, but still has full tracking capabilities, Oculus hopes that Quest can bring VR’s most immersive experiences to a much wider crowd. Does Quest deliver? Read on to find out.

As usual, we’ll start with a review summary and then dig into the details further down.

Oculus Quest Review Summary

Oculus Quest is Facebook’s first standalone headset that offers 6DOF tracking on both the head and hands. Practically, that means that the headset has the same full tracking capabilities typically reserved for high-end VR headsets that are hooked up to a computer or game console. Because Quest has full 6DOF tracking, it opens the door to significantly more immersive and interactive content than on a headset like Oculus Go, which is only suitable for mostly static, seated experiences because it has more limited tracking abilities.

Given that it’s a standalone, Quest’s biggest advantage is its low friction experience. When you put the headset on, you see a pass-through video view of the world around you which makes it easy to pick up your controllers. From there, setting up your Guardian—the boundary around you playspace—is as easy as pointing your controller at the ground and tracing an outline around the available space, and then you’re good to go.

Quest’s menu is a bit clunky but functional, and feels snappy enough to not be annoying. From the menu you can search the Store for new games, access your Library to launch apps, and do other things like adjust settings, launch a web browser, and more. It’s a familiar experience for those who have used Oculus Go, as it’s largely the same interface.

Visually speaking, Quest looks pretty similar to what you’d expect from an Oculus Rift, but with a bit more resolution (1,440 × 1,600 per-display vs. 1,080 × 1,200). That means slightly less screen door (the black space between pixels) and sub-pixels which are now just about invisible. The lenses have also seen an upgrade over the Rift, which somewhat reduces reflections in high contrast scenes. That said, the mobile processor in Quest simply can’t push the same quality image as a PC driven headset like the Rift, so in the end you’ll see improved clarity through Quest, but things just aren’t going to look as pretty in most cases—expect ‘mobile’ graphics.

That said, the visuals are more than adequate to provide compelling VR experiences. Some games look and play effectively identical to what you’d expect on PC. Beat Saber, for instance, looks nearly identical, runs smoothly, and feels great. This will be a little hit or miss with many of the ports that are initially launching on Quest, like Robo Recall, which has had much of its luster baked down into garish textures in order to get the game to run on the headset. Made-for-Quest games generally fare better graphically because they were designed for Quest’s graphical limits in the first place.

Quest’s inside-out tracking is perhaps the most important element because it’s the hardest thing to get right. In my time with Quest, I’ve been really impressed with the performance and robustness of the head and hand tracking—Quest is currently leading the industry here. Headtracking is extremely solid with very little latency, and the controller tracking is surprisingly performant, even when playing some of the most demanding games like Beat Saber.

There are two caveats to my praise of Quest’s tracking, although both are challenges faced by all inside-out tracking systems. Firstly, environmental factors can cause tracking issues. I was frankly quite surprised with how well Quest handled tracking in my apartment living room as well as it did. I have large windows around most of the room, and these look like massive bright lights during the day to Quest’s cameras—something that can be very confusing to computer-vision tracking. But still, things worked very well, and in hours of testing over many days I only saw the tracking drop out completely (the screen goes black and a message pops up until tracking is found again) a handful of times; in those times it was only for a second or two at a time. The controller tracking, on the other hand, would funk out briefly a little more often (perhaps due to passing in front of one of the bright windows), but it was infrequent enough that it really didn’t bug me.

The second caveat is that Quest does have some blind spots to its tracking, though in general they don’t cause trouble unless a game relies on a specific mechanic which frequently puts the controllers into the blind spots for extended periods. For instance, Creed: Rise to Glory asks you to hold your hands up in front of your face like you are blocking in a boxing match, and this would occasionally lead to the controller losing tracking for a few seconds at a time, which felt funky when one of my hands just stuck there in the air as I tried to throw a punch (before eventually popping back into the proper position).

So, edge-cases in both environmental factors and specific game gestures can trip things up, but on the whole Quest’s tracking works very well.

Quest effectively packs all of the features that make high-end VR great into an easier to use and more affordable package (everything but high-end graphics). And that gives the headset huge potential, so long as there’s great content to back it up.

Quest has a launch lineup of 50-ish titles, including probably the most important game that could be on the headset at launch—Beat Saber—and there’s a handful of other really strong entries, but the vast majority are ports and many of those are quite dated. Oculus will need to push hard to keep Quest’s library growing with quality (and genuinely new) content if they want to capitalize on its potential as an easy-to-use VR headset which has pretty much all the right stuff to deliver some really compelling experiences.

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Oculus Quest In-depth Review

Hardware & Display

Quest is effectively a headset with a mid-range smartphone processor built inside. It’s running a Snapdragon 835 processor with active cooling, and the headset is offered with 64GB and 128GB memory options (unfortunately with no memory expansion ports).

Clearly visible on the outside of the headset are four cameras around the visor’s bezel which are used to track the headset’s movement via computer vision. The same cameras also see and track the controllers (which have invisible IR LEDs on them).

Very similar to Rift, Quest uses a pair of OLED displays, but with an upgraded resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 each (compared to 1,080 × 1,200). Quest also uses single Fresnel lenses, though Oculus says they’re improved over those used in the original Rift (and are in fact much closer, if not identical to the lenses used in Oculus Go). Quest has a field of view that’s almost identical to Rift, which we’d guess to be around 100 degrees diagonally (though Oculus won’t provide an official FOV figure).

If you’ve never used a VR headset before, Quests visuals are pretty good and there’s no serious complaints, save for the usual lens reflections (AKA god rays) and black smearing which are problems that every headset with Fresnel lenses and OLED displays runs up against. The field of view is wide enough that the world feels convincingly around you, and everything works well enough to easily make you forget which way you’re even facing in the real world (or even which room you’re in). If you have used another VR headset, I’ll make some comparisons to try to demonstrate what’s improved (or not).

Quest offers a decent improvement in clarity over the Rift on a pure pixels-through-the-lens standpoint, but relative power difference means this may not mean quite as much except in a handful of cases where Quest is able to match the Rift pixel for pixel (like when playing back video or browsing the web). That said, the improved resolution directly translates to a sharper image, though this is tempered in many cases by the fact that the default render resolution for Quest is lower than its total resolution for performance reasons. The increased pixel density also means somewhat less screen door effect, and makes the sub-pixels just about invisible, making for more cohesive colors.

One of the biggest improvements from Rift to Quest is the mura, which on Rift was really not great, but on Quest looks all but eliminated. Mura is caused by inconsistencies in color and brightness from one pixel to the next, and usually shows itself mostly in darker scenes. Black smear (where dark areas bleed into bright areas during head movement) is still an issue (as it is for most OLED displays) and appears to be equally as bad as Rift.

Quest’s lenses have seen an upgrade over the Rift, though it isn’t drastic. Internal reflections (AKA god rays) appear somewhat reduced, but are still annoying in high contrast scenes. The sweet spot also appears to be a little more favorable than the Rift, though it’s difficult to quantify this in a meaningful way.

Quest has a hardware IPD adjustment which means you can adjust the distance between the lenses to make sure your eyes are best aligned with the center of the lens (which is important for achieving maximum comfort and clarity). Oculus says that Quest’s IPD adjustment goes from 58–72mm, and is “best” for users with an IPD between 56mm and 74mm.

During setup, there’s an IPD calibration screen which shows a green cross which attempts to help users set their ideal IPD setting. Unfortunately there’s no digital readout of the IPD width inside the headset, so if you happen to know your IPD in millimeters, you can’t just dial it in based on the number. The green cross does a pretty awful job of making it clear which IPD setting is best. Unless this gets adjusted, I have a feeling many users are going to set their IPD wrong out of the gate, and may suffer reduced comfort because of it. This also means that if one user fiddles with it before handing the headset to another there’s no quick way to return to a known setting, which puts a slight damper on Quest’s potential for pass-and-play.

Tracking

Quest’s inside-out tracking is the best that I’ve ever seen in a standalone headset, and notably it’s the only headset in its class that offers fully-tracked controllers. Other consumer headsets like Oculus Go and the Lenovo Mirage Solo come with a single controller that only tracks rotation, putting a significant limit to how interesting and dynamic VR gameplay can be.

In my time with Quest, I’ve been really impressed with the performance and robustness of the head and hand tracking—Quest is currently leading the industry here. Headtracking is extremely solid with very little latency, and the controller tracking is surprisingly performant, even when playing some of the most demanding games like Beat Saber.

There are two caveats to my praise of Quest’s tracking, though both are challenges faced by all inside-out tracking systems. Firstly, environmental factors can cause tracking issues. I was frankly quite surprised with how well Quest handled tracking in my apartment living room as well as it did. I have large windows around most of the room, and to Quest’s cameras these look massive bright lights covering the walls during the day—something that can be very confusing to computer-vision tracking. Still, in hours of testing over many days, I only saw the tracking drop out completely—when the screen goes black and a message pops up until tracking is found again—a handful of times, and in those moments it was only for a second or two at a time. The controller tracking, on the other hand, would funk out briefly a little more often (perhaps due to passing in front of one of the bright windows), but it was infrequent enough that it wasn’t a problem most of the time.

It would be nice however if Oculus were to provide a few tips to new users about what kinds of things in their environment could be less than ideal for tracking. Big bright windows, mirrors, and moving objects (like ceiling fans) could pose problems, and it would be helpful if Oculus would tell users: ‘If you’re tracking is having issues, try doing XYZ to improve it’.

For instance, if I was trying to play Beat Saber and the controllers felt a little less reliable than I expected, I would rotate myself 45 degrees and use the recenter button to change my forward direction in the hopes of avoiding whatever in the room was bugging the tracking system. Most users probably aren’t going to really think about the ins-and-outs of the tracking system enough to know to try something like this, let alone to close problematic blinds, turn off ceiling fans, and avoid other computer vision foes.

The second caveat for tracking is that Quest does have some blind spots in terms of where the cameras can actually see the controllers, though in general they don’t cause trouble unless a game relies on a specific mechanic which frequently puts the controllers into the blind spots and keeps them there for several seconds at a time. For instance, Creed: Rise to Glory asks you to hold your hands up in front of your face like you are blocking a punch in real a boxing match, and this would occasionally lead to the controller losing tracking for a few seconds at a time; it felt funky when one of my hands just stuck there in the air as I tried to throw a punch (before eventually popping back into the proper position). Over time, developers will learn to avoid these blind spots when making their Quest-native games, but in the near term you might bump into them here and there.

So, edge-cases in both environment factors and specific game gestures can trip things up, but on the whole Quest’s tracking works very well.

Design & Ergonomics

Quest feels remarkably similar to the company’s first PC headset, the Oculus Rift. For those unfamiliar, that’s a compliment—the Rift is a well-built and designed headset that easily holds up three years after its initial launch. Like Rift, Quest feels like a solidly built device, and its fabric accents help it feel a little more human than a plastic box on your head. That said, it’s still a little bulky (as pretty much any VR headset is these days), and at 571 grams weighs in heavier than the Rift’s 470 grams.

Despite 100 grams of additional weight, I’ve found Quest to be at least as comfortable as the Rift. Quest has a larger and more flexible triangle opening in the rear straps which seems to find better purchase on the crown of my head than the Rift’s smaller and stiffer opening can manage. Slightly more generous foam also seems to help relieve pressure on the face.

Just like with the Rift though, Quest can be very comfortable, but adjusting it as such is not intuitive for new users. Out of the gate, most people want to stick the headset on and then crank the side straps tight to create a vice-like grip between the visor and the rear straps; this feels like a good fit, but 15 minutes later your face won’t be very happy. The key is actually to find the place where the rear of the straps best grips the crown of your head, then use that grip as an anchor to adjust the top strap so that most of the visor’s weight is ‘hanging’ from the top strap. At that point, you want to tighten the side straps only as much as you need to in order to keep the headset stable on your face. This is far more comfortable for long-term play sessions.

Though Quest and Rift are quite similar in design, Quest drops the on-ear headphones in favor of some hidden sound holes in the headband. While this means more sound leakage (ie: other people can hear what’s going on in the headset) and arguably less immersive audio (because the sound is originating at the side of your ear instead of going straight into it), it does mean one less thing to fiddle with when you put the headset on.

The audio is acceptable and gets reasonably loud, though anything with deep bass has a chance of bottoming out. Luckily, you can use your own earbuds or headphones by plugging into either of the 3.5mm audio jacks on both sides of the headset. While Oculus is considering an official earbud accessory which would use both jacks, the company has confirmed that both are wired fully for stereo, so either side will work fine for any normal pair of stereo headphones.

Quest’s Touch controllers are a little different from Rift’s. For one, the tracking ring now goes over the top (to make it easier for the headset’s cameras to see), and the shape has been adjusted a bit too. To my hands, Quest’s controllers are ever so slightly less comfortable than the original Rift Touch controllers, but in the end they are equally functional and a very good controller design with a quality feel to every button and stick. Like the Rift controllers, Quest’s controllers use a single AA battery.

Continue Reading on Page 2: Experience »