META QUEST - Stand Alone VR - The Bear and Badger

bad_hair_day

The original Quest deets...

Spoiler:

The Next Generation of VR Gaming

Just under a year and a half since the original Quest smashed all expectations, it's successor launched October 13. VR grows up fast.

Improved clarity, refresh rate and power for less money is quite something, so where's the catch? A Facebook account. Many will have it on their phone/PC already so it's up to the individual to judge the merits. Meanwhile, those about to enter the world of wireless VR - welcome to the pleasure dome, and don't tread on the cat.

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ifFF1N0B3SDVXUVmLvLtZkoc1VrpQBY7gfDmlTbotFc/htmlview

The Quest Fest Club

Add friends through the phone App using their Oculus name (in purple)

pantyfire (P4ntyfire)
SonicBoomBoy
Scout (Ruomra)
bad_hair_day (bad_hair_day)
JMW
djchump
ShabbyMcCrabby (shabbymccrabby)
Boozy (Boozy_The _Clown)
Omnewancanobe
nick_md (nmdja)
b0r1s
Jimmy The Lips
Lurch666
stellavista
myfavouriteuncle
FranticPea
AndCallMeCharlie (derekg49)
Wookienopants
Mal0wner (MalOwner)
Nexx
mannaboy (Mannaboy)
Dark Soldier (DorkSirjur)
Skerret
Armitage_Shankburn
Yossarian
Kow
tigersgogrrr
Gamermike
halfgone
Louiecat
Webbins
Chazmano
Cupatay
afgavinstan

What's in store

Although it's strengths play to arcade style games and experience based titles, with a web browser, Netflix, Amazon Prime and DLNA streaming apps the Quest can immerse you for hours in a virtual world. If all that wasn't enough, connect a compatible cable to a gaming computer and the PCVR universe is ready to explore.

Virtual Desktop (£14.99)

For the ultimate experience, play untethered PC games with a dedicated 5ghz router channel and the incredible 'Virtual Desktop' app.

Probably an overused term, but for fifteen quid it's a game changer. Here's a how to guide:

Game Recommendations

Superhot (£18.99)
Stylised graphics make this feel like it was made for VR. Wire-free, Superhot is even more super addictive.

Beat Saber (£22.99)
Rhythm based block dicing, now with no strings attached. Sideload custom tracks and it just gets better.

Echo Arena (Free)
Zero-G multiplayer arena sport. Convincing weightless is like nothing you've ever played before.

Pistol Whip
An unstoppable action-rhythm FPS through a cinematic bullet hell driven by a pounding soundtrack.

Vader Immortal (£7.99)
Genuine OG Star Wars feel. More an episodic experience than a game but when it's this good, take my credits.

Skybox (£10.99)
IMAX size projection for whatever you throw at it. Multitude of settings make this one flexible player.

Moss (£22.99)
Adorable puzzle platformer you play seated but moves you in other ways. Utterly enchanting.

Thumper (£14.99)
Another music game, but one with such impressive scale it grabs you by the beats and just wrings your mind.

Tilt Brush (14.99)
If you're the creative type, paint within an non-tethered 3D space and let your imagination go crazy. One for the long winter evenings.

Space Pirate Trainer (£10.99)
Mix Virtua Cop with Space Invaders and you get this belting shoot 'em down.

The Official Hardware

64gb - £300

256gb - £400

Elite Strap - £50

Elite Strap, battery and travel case - £119

Pimp Your Pleasure Dome.

After a year and a half of using wireless VR, my huge ego thought it helpful to share these mods to get the best from your Quest. (Links below)

Oculus Elite Strap
Overpriced but IMO the essential accessory for comfort and support.

Get a Grip
These elastic straps stop you launching the £69 touch controllers across the room and allow your hands to relax between goes. Having the confidence to play with abandon just elevates your experience.

Pop on Prescription Lenses
Fitting either Quest, they're such a quality of life improvement over wearing glasses.

+

Silicone Face Cover
Keep your cool with this wipe clean hygienic mould. Super comfy, it stops the tickling from fluff and hair that builds up on the stock fabric cover.

Stay in Charge
Keep immersed for 2- 3 times longer with battery packs - had a spare white one so that's a fit. Securely attached with strong hook & loop tape, it acts as a perfect counterweight.

Wired for Sound
Can't stress enough - plug in some headphones (easier before holding the controllers!) It's a slight hassle but what a difference they make to VR immersion.

Links

Prescription Lenses - £59

Elastic Grips - £20

Silicone Face Cover - £15

Red 0.5m cable £3.65

Hook & Loop Tape £3.69

Anker (2v) Battery £22.99 (pictured)

Anker (5v) Battery £29.99

.

bad_hair_day

Place holder.

ShabbyMcCrabby

I'm curious as to the graphical quality of a portable headset. Will be interesting to read some impressions

Bob

And battery life

Unlikely

This tempts me.

RedDave2

Really bad choice to have the video show real world responsibilities like YOUR CHILD disappearing away when you pop on the head set.

#terribledaddy

Wookienopants

Great OP Hair, I really really want one of these but know I’ll never be able to afford it.
In the meantime I’ll just live vicariously through your Quest stories on FNF

mistercrayon

I’m in the moment tetris Effect comes on and I can lose the PSVR.

yourfavouriteuncle

I want one for the lack of wires but apart from Moss and Beat Sabre there doesn’t seem to be too many reasons. Any bangers in their to persuade?

acemuzzy

VR is incompatible with my life

bad_hair_day

Hello punters, busy till mid morning so hopefully other owners can answer some queries in the meantime.

Scout

It's an awesome piece of kit. I was lucky enough that my VR mate gave me a spare Rift last year, the plan being that I'd hopefully be able to get a gaming PC some point soon. But in the end there was just no way that was happening so he gave me his blessing to punt it for a Quest. I got £300 on ebay. More than I expected. Along with the £80 I got for my GPDXD handheld retro console I pretty much had enough so grabbed a Quest on Friday in Argos.

I've played every iteration of VR round at my mate's, from Rift dev kit, Rift consumer to Vive and I reckon the Quest does a great job of matching up to them and perhaps even exceeding them due to being entirely untethered. It really is a remarkable feeling to be standing in a game world and have the ability to wander round without the fear of getting tangled in your own cable, though of course you have the restriction of your own playspace.

Graphically it holds up really well. It's obviously not going to be as graphically impressive as a PC or even PSVR but everything I've played looks great. I haven't played PSVR but all the people who have seem to be blown away by the quality of the Quest due to it's improved screen res, fantastic tracking and proper VR controllers.

My highlight since Friday has probably been Vader Immortal. It's a short episodic Star Wars experience, the first of three parts. Amazing sense of scale and immersion. The first moment the big man himself strides right up to you is surprisingly intimidating. Tricky to find decent screenshots but it looks like this:

I've also put quite a few hours into Face Your Fears 2 which is a fun little horror game. Again, super immersive reaching forward to open doors and actually walking into the environment. Nothing quite like it. I only wish I had a bigger play area.

Apart from that my most played app has probably been Wander, the closest thing on the Quest at the moment to Google Earth VR (which is hopefully coming). It's not quite as impressive as that but it's still really cool. It's basically Streetview in VR, the entire planet. Really cool hopping around the place, from all the obvious things to your childhood home. This is probably the thing my non-gaming partner was most impressed with.

So in summary, it's awesome. Whenever I'd be round at my mate's I always used to think, yup this is really cool but I don't think it would ever replace my normal gaming. And to be honest I still believe that. But this is a seriously cool piece of kit to have in the house. It really is a proper VR experience. Got some friends coming over this weekend and I can't wait to show it off.

Scout

Bob wrote:

And battery life

I think it's around 2 hours of gaming and a bit longer for media apps. So not exactly great I guess but it's not been an issue for me so far. 2 hours of continuous VRing is a bit intense anyway. And of course you can always use it with the charging cable plugged into the headset.

Bob

So to clarify it’s a better headset than the psvr in terms of quality of screens? How does it stack up in computational power ? Is it better all rounder?

dynamiteReady

It's strange that a new mainstream console from a huge company isn't receiving the usual kind of buzz associated with a Sony/Ninty/Microsoft launch...

It's definitely a legit console, but there's been none of the usual clamour from the big devcos to support the platform...

Hardware wise, it sounds shit hot too.

Scout

I'm not one for tech specs but Google is telling me that the Quest has 2 OLED screens that are 1440x1600. 72Hz refresh rate. Snapdragon 835 processor. 4GB ram. It's a mobile processor that was used in the 2017 Galaxy S8.

PSVR is a single screen with a resolution of 1080x960. So it's not as powerful as a PS4 with PSVR but yes, the screens are better.

Edit: @Bob

bad_hair_day

Bob wrote:

And battery life

Recharging time is 2 hours plus change. For the hardcore who can’t wait there’s the included 3 meter USB C lead, or slip a cable down your clothes with battery in a pocket.

Speaking of hardcore, browsing Pornhub’s VR section is a revelation. LIFE SIZE NYMPHOS.

SpaceGazelle

I wanna see some forum multiplayer. Getting drunk with n0face and doing VR was an unexpected highlight with the Vive. It's proper larks and you really feel like you've spent some time with friends.

Also fuck walled garden Facebook bollocks, but I'm pleased it's getting more people into VR and the benefits of Facebook monies is the price. It's certainly being sold at cost.

Yossarian

dynamiteReady wrote:

It's strange that a new mainstream console from a huge company isn't receiving the usual kind of buzz associated with a Sony/Ninty/Microsoft launch...

I think it’s because VR still isn’t considered mainstream.

Kernowgaz

Can you side load apps/games yet?

dynamiteReady

At the very least, it has a built in webrowser, so you can sideload a lot of shit, depending on what you have in mind.

poprock

I’m wary of the Facebook connection, but otherwise this looks like fun. I’ve read something about needing to be logged in to Facebook to use it? And about it being tied to a single Facebook account – so if you pass it to a mate, for example, they’re using it in your account – Is that right?

So say I hand my Quest over to Hair, for example, and he goes to watch some VR nympho bongo, then Facebook is stacking that up on my user profile.

dynamiteReady

Yossarian wrote:

I think it’s because VR still isn’t considered mainstream.

I'm with you tbh, I'm still not convinced by all this VR shit.

At the most, I've been playing about with VR photos on Google Cardboard. That's pretty cool. But not exactly worth a £400 purchase.

Beat Saber is also nice, but it's not a 'killer app'.

A solid racing game could grab my attention, or an Ace Combat style arcade flight sim, with a completists' ambition.

I'm a simple man...

SpaceGazelle

Yossarian wrote:

dynamiteReady wrote:

It's strange that a new mainstream console from a huge company isn't receiving the usual kind of buzz associated with a Sony/Ninty/Microsoft launch...

I think it’s because VR still isn’t considered mainstream.

It's also because VR, astounding though it can be, is still mired in technical problems. Oculus are are addressing some issues and Valve others.

The problem Oculus has is comfort, because spending an hour in VR can be exhausting. It's not physical - although there is that, it's sensory. 70 Hz will do the job but your brain will get tired, and the res has a similar effect. Then there's slight motion blur and ghosting, the slightly claustrophobic field of view. All these things make doing VR only reasonable for stints of an hour or so, and it's a biggie. It's just not suited to AAA gaming.

The problem the Index has is cost and tethered. It's been designed almost entirely on the premise you can spend all day in it with minimal discomfort, and the devs are loving it but it's a high price to pay. Less screen door effect, up to 144 Hz (apparently this is a huge deal), wider field of view, better ventilation, much comfier design (although Quest could copy this next time). The speakers are actually off-ear so your ears are pressure free as nature intended and channel the sound around the natural contours of your ear like in real life. The controllers strap to your hands so you can relax the palms and feel hands free until you need to grip something in-game. All of this is designed to make VR viable for long gaming sessions, which is handy as they're bringing out 3 full 'proper' games over the next year or so. The cost, including GPU is over £2000. And it's tethered, which is also a major bummer.

The problem both these hmd's have is locomotion. Natural locomotion looks daft but feels surprisingly effective.

Untethered is great because like massive roomscale you can literally just walk about if you have a big enough space, but unless you want to physically traverse the entire of Halo it's still a problem. Cockpit stuff can be amazing and negates all this but that's a pretty small slice of the market if it's going to get mainstream.

SpaceGazelle

poprock wrote:

I’m wary of the Facebook connection, but otherwise this looks like fun. I’ve read something about needing to be logged in to Facebook to use it? And about it being tied to a single Facebook account – so if you pass it to a mate, for example, they’re using it in your account – Is that right? So say I hand my Quest over to Hair, for example, and he goes to watch some VR nympho bongo, then Facebook is stacking that up on my user profile.

Your living room would be great for VR. Push the couch back, throw Cooper out the window and you're sorted.

dynamiteReady

It's the whole spatial tracking solution that impresses me about this Oculus thing.
But there's still no outstanding software, I feel.

Kow

I have a whole top floor almost completely devoid of furniture, perfect for vr. But I'm still holding out for the perfect pc rig version. Vive 2.0 may get there.

Unlikely

poprock wrote:

I’ve read something about needing to be logged in to Facebook to use it?

If this is correct then I've gone from nipping down to Argos one lunchtime this week to shoving the whole idea in the bin.

SpaceGazelle

It's cheap for a reason.

SpaceGazelle

Kow wrote:

I have a whole top floor almost completely devoid of furniture, perfect for vr. But I'm still holding out for the perfect pc rig version. Vive 2.0 may get there.

Buy an Index you mental.

https://uploadvr.com/valve-index-hardware-preview/

Scout

Unlikely wrote:

poprock wrote:

I’ve read something about needing to be logged in to Facebook to use it?

If this is correct then I've gone from nipping down to Argos one lunchtime this week to shoving the whole idea in the bin.

That's definitley not the case. You don't even need to link to a Facebook account. It obviously asks you to but I declined and just set up through an email address.

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