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Seems to have borrowed a lot from the Quest 2, which is a good thing really. I have a third party quest head strap with a dial to adjust like that one, and it's really handy for quickly swapping with friends and for adjusting it to be nice and comfy.
 
Inside out camera based tracking is great too. No sensors means you're so much more likely to pick up and play, and at least on the Quest, it just works so well, never worrying about tracking or blocking the sensor. And it's handy to be able to quickly see your environment when you need to, too.

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I finally got the Index. 

Holy moly it's good! Really comfortable, even if it's heavier than my Reverb. The audio is the same, as it's developed by Valve. The screens have more god rays and lower resolution, but it's evened out by the 144Hrz and huge FOV. The sweetspot is also really big, so going from a Reverb to this has been a pleasent experience. 

And then there's the tracking. I love the base stations <3. Being able to do whatever wherever is really nice. I can easily do things in Blade and Sorcery outside of the view of the headset, and this really helps. The G2 is annoyingly bad when it comes to vertical tracking, so being able to actually rest my hands while not losing tracking means a lot, especially in VRchat ect.

Also, not using any extra software for the headset is really nice. Just launch SteamVR and you're good to go. I hope we'll get better inside-out tracking for the future, because that's way easier than needing to set up a room for optimal tracking, but we'll see when we get there. So far I'm really happy with the Index, and I plan to sell the G2 as soon as possible. 

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Moss: Book II is releasing in just two weeks, on March 31st. Pretty crazy that it wasn't mentioned during the State of Play!

Some previews: 

 

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Fascinating deep dive into what they're working on over at Meta. Surprising that they were happy to show it all off tbh.

Some of the technology they're developing looks incredible - proper space age stuff. Like the flat variofocal lens thingy looks like something they'd get in a Marvel film and handwave it away with a term like nano-tech.

They stress many times that they don't expect many of these features to make it to consumer products any time soon, but it does make the future of VR look very exciting indeed.
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10 hours ago, bob said:

They stress many times that they don't expect many of these features to make it to consumer products any time soon, but it does make the future of VR look very exciting indeed.

It's very interesting stuff indeed! Zuckerberg also stated that the timeframe for this tech to be implemented is "in a few years", which sounds really, really promising! It's awesome to see tech moving forward at this speed :D 

Speaking of new tech, how are people feeling about meta's next headset, Project Cambria? It's looking really nice in my opinion. Sleek and small profile, with the new pancake lenses as well as micro LED (finally going to have good contrast again).

Bradley-Cambira-Render-front-bottom-scal

project-cambria-unofficial-render-3.jpg

The headset looks to be great comfort right out of the box, and it looks like an easy-and-quick-to-enjoy headset. I hope the price tag is right. I actually sold off my Valve Index because of either Cambria (if not too expensive) or PSVR 2, just because of how much better the tech looks compared to the three year old headset.

The new controllers on the Cambria looks really interesting too, and if the IR cameras work as I believe they should, we should finally see great tracking for standalone headsets in the time forward. No more tracking rings! Also love that the headset comes with a link cable in the box (rumored), as well as the charging stand :D 

Project Cambria: 5 bold features to expect from Meta's next headset -  NotebookCheck.net News

Exciting times ahead!

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Some more details on PSVR2 (the PS Blog says they'll be sharing launch details soon): 

Key details:

 

Edited by Julius
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Yeah, that's kinda weird for a 2 year old product to go up $100 in price. Makes me wonder if this is done to let the quest line be more afforable and to ease in a higher price for the Quest 3 when it comes out next year. Still a bad decision in my book. 

Anyone else seen the dumpster fire that is the newest VRchat update? Store page is getting review bombed, and the developers are more or less out of touch with the community, putting up restrictions to using mods (where the majority is used for accessibility functions). Will be interesting to see how this affects VRchat, and if it will remain the biggest social VR platform in the future or not. I think it's a vocal minority at this point, and that it will have some effect on users, but not by a large amount. 

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PSVR2 is set to launch in early 2023:

As much as I want to be there Day 1...I think I'll need to try to be sensible, and to wait and see what they've got cooking for the launch window to see if it'll be worth being there from the start – as much as I've enjoyed my time with the PS5, exclusive games hasn't been it's forte since launch.

Got to imagine supply will be pretty limited, and early 2023 is this the window where the cost of living crisis is really set to be in full swing over here in the UK, so...

rugrats-chucky.gif

Edited by Julius
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I've skipped PSVR and probably won't be able to acquire PSVR2 in 2023, but I'll definitely try to get one later.
Can't wait to properly give VR a go, though. Hope there's a healthy library of games available once I make the jump :D 

I do wonder what "early 2023" means, though. Before/in March?

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image.thumb.png.a0f2dca50c58e799426d8812e69c2eb1.png

New headsets from Pico getting an announcment this thursday. Rumored to be shown are the Pico Neo 4 (Quest 2 competitor) and the Pico Neo 4 Pro (Cambria/Quest Pro competitor), with a lot of good upgrades. Pancake lenses, foveated rendering, new controllers, eye and face tracking etc. Rumors are saying the Quest Pro (Project Cambria) will be priced at around $1500, which is insane. The Pico Neo 4 Pro will be significantly less, somewhere between $800-1000. We'll see at the announcement though. 

Also, for PCVR players, Pico has a great feature where they have a DisplayPort port directly in the headset, which lets you use it as a regular PCVR HMD. No data compression like you get on Quest 2. 

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So, surprisingly enough, BoneLab is releasing this week, on thursday. I'm really, really looking forward to it, and seeing where the game goes forward. I really think the way they open up the way for modders will be really awesome, and the avatar stuff looks really, really cool. And that it works on a quest natively is crazy!

 

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21 hours ago, ArtMediocre said:

So, surprisingly enough, BoneLab is releasing this week, on thursday. I'm really, really looking forward to it, and seeing where the game goes forward. I really think the way they open up the way for modders will be really awesome, and the avatar stuff looks really, really cool. And that it works on a quest natively is crazy!

 

Wow! :o That looks amazing.

Unfortunately I’m currently stuck with LABO VR :heh: and an Oculus Go :blank: as my only VR options, but otherwise I would totally be checking that out.

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BoneLab is out, and it has gotten a bit of a mixed reception. I love it, and am really enjoying the experience as well as the story. There are parts of the game that is hard to understand, especially with the "absolutely no hand holding"-attitude Stress Level Zero has (almost to a fault), but if you get through the hurdles or just try and explore, you can mostly figure it out pretty quickly. I really love the new avatar swapping mechanic, and feel it adds to the flow of the game. Going to play through it first with a clean playthrough before starting to import modded characters and try to mod in my own.

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Stupidly pricey, especially given the tech is bafflingly not backwards compatible with PSVR 1 games. Still, not too surprising given it's coming from Sony this gen. 

The Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle is £40 more. Does that mean the game standalone will be 50 or so? I kind of expected that game to be like a 5-10 hour thing at most, so that seems pretty pricey if that's the case. Again not a surprise, For The Players.

37 minutes ago, drahkon said:

 

Oh phew, that makes it ok then.

 

Edited by Ronnie

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Well... that's a price...

And that's on top of a £449.99 £479.99 price for the console that you need to use the VR headset in the first place...

 

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Sony continues to disappoint. It's not just the price that's the issue but the software as well. Loads of games got announced today and very few of them look interesting. You're asking a lot of people to fork out that amount of cash when there doesn't seem to be a wealth of compelling software on the cards, even more so given the economic climate.

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Think this is the first time something that needs a console to use costs more than the actual console itself.

Pretty hefty price.  Technology, it's high-end.  But this thing costs £50 more than a PS5, combine the headset and console you're looking nearly £1,000 before taking into account games and PS+ costs.

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I disagree here, I actually think that price is reasonable for the specs. No it's not cheap but decent virtual reality headsets never are (and they're a bit 'you get what pay for'). I'm not sure what people were expecting given the known specs.

 

People are already clamouring to buy a PS5 at £480, at £40 more this is not outside the realm of affordability for enthusiastic early adopters. And as we saw with PSVR1, the price will come down with time.

 

I also feel like this sort of price is a lot more acceptable now - not just because of the XSX and PS5, but how people will drop far more than this on new phones they don't really need.

 

This isn't like the £210 DualSense Edge, that was a pisstake on a whole different level.

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Think this is the first time something that needs a console to use costs more than the actual console itself.
Pretty hefty price.  Technology, it's high-end.  But this thing costs £50 more than a PS5, combine the headset and console you're looking nearly £1,000 before taking into account games and PS+ costs.

People will pay more than £1k just for a high-end PC to play VR games, not even counting the cost of then buying the headset. :)

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3 hours ago, Sheikah said:


People will pay more than £1k just for a high-end PC to play VR games, not even counting the cost of then buying the headset. :)

That's true.  I was expecting it to be close to, or near the old PS5 price of £450.  Price does sting a bit, I definitely won't be getting it Day 1.  It'll sell slow for sure.

The stinger ATM outside of price is no backwards compatibility to older VR titles unless patched for free or a small fee.

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