Bang for the buck VR headset as of today or in the very near future?

[hazmatt]

From what I've seen it's the Rift S. I've read the standalone one for the same price has better resolution but will it work with AH?

Maybe somebody can give me a quick breakdown of the current state of affairs and what I should buy or if something new is coming in the near future that I should hold off for?

[Drano]

The problem right now is an almost total lack of stock for any of these anywhere. RiftS has been hard to come by for a while now. No word yet as to whether Oculus is maybe just coming out with something new as I don't think there was a CES show this year. That's usually where that stuff  gets announced. I'd wait a while and see how this whole world situation shakes out.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

[Vulcan]

If you have a powerful enough rig maybe the Quest is an option. You can tether the quest to a gaming PC, but it sucks about 20% out of the framerates.

[hazmatt]

I've read that quest has a better display then the S but that it doesn't work as well on a gaming PC and their both the same price...

[Vulcan]

The Quest puts extra CPU load on the gaming PC. So you loose FPS. If you have a really grunty gaming PC it'll be fine.

The advantage is the standalone Quest games are huge fun. Going from tethered VR to untethered VR is almost as big a jump in user experience as going from no-VR to VR.

[Vulcan]

I spun up my Quest on my gaming rig yesterday to have another play on it with AH (versus the Rift CV1)

- the Quest is noticeably heavier due to the battery
- the sound is awful compared to the Rift (not sure if the Rift S has the same sound system?)
- the graphics are not as crisp, I think that may be due to me having AH set to Rift resolution - not native Quest res which is higher
- one cool thing on the quest is you double the side of the quest with your finger and it turns on pass through mode (good for typing/eating/drinking) so you see the real world via the Quest cameras

[Drano]

Yeah the RiftS sound is kinda crappy. Functional. I plugged on some Bionik headphones and it's worlds better.

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[Vulcan]

Yeah the RiftS sound is kinda crappy. Functional. I plugged on some Bionik headphones and it's worlds better.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

I just remembered the Quest has headphone sockets too, duh. Will try those.

I've also found some tweaks on resolution which I need to try.

Ultimately I'd like to see if I can replace the Rift CV1 with the Quest for AH. The double tap pass through option is quite cool.

[Mister Fork]

In my household, we have an Oculus Quest, and two Acer AH101 WMR headsets. RIP is Oculus DK2.

The Quest IMHO, is the best out there so far. You still need a beefy PC to play modern games anyway (including VR), and the Quest works great for Aces High (at least my two boys say so). I use the Acer and love it, and the Quest just seems that much better.

With virtual gaming desktops coming mainstream soon (i.e. GeForce NOW), someone is going to launch one that you can use with VR headsets.  It's all coming, and in 2-3  years, we'll have a lot more options WRT VR gaming.

[Trip01]

Anyone playing with the Valve Index? I'm probably going to buy one and this might tempt me back to AH. I think it's probably more then 10 years since I played.

[sundowner25]

I use the index. I like it.

[Vulcan]

There's a new facebook video showing colour passthrough to acheive AR-ness. Looks like it'd be run on a new Quest with colour cams. Res looks higher too.

[Owlblink]

Hello all!

Hope all is well. I haven't played in maybe two years(?). I used to play with an HTC Vive and really loved it. I'm hoping to get my hand on a Steam Valve set up within the next 8 weeks. In theory I think it should function with AHIII the same way the HTC Vive does, as they use similar platforms, but with clearer visuals (much less screen door effect) and a much better refresh rate. If/When this happens i'll give you all some feedback in case others are curious.

[Avman]

I started with an HTC Vive and upgraded to an Valve Index.  For me the difference was night and day.
The HTC Vive ran at 90hz/FPS and had a resolution of 1080x1200 per eye.  I used super sampling in the Steam VR settings to bump the resolution up so that I could read the cockpit gauges a bit better. This helped some, but there were still usually a bit blurry.

The Valve Index can run at 80, 90, 120 & 144hz/FPS  I set mine to the 144hz/FPS setting.  The resolution is 1440x1600 per eye.  For me, the higher resolution and much faster refresh rate adds a lot to the experience. The movement/motion feels so much better at 144hz/FPS than at 90hz/FPS. 
I'm still super sampling from the Steam VR settings as it aliases the image and removes the jaggy edges from things.
The cockpit gauges are crisp and clear and easy to read at a quick glance.

Another thing to note about the Valve Index is that the sound quality is phenomenal compared to that of the HTC Vive.

[Mister Fork]

Bang for the buck? Quest, hands down. Both stand-alone and PC-Link capabilities.