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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

An important consideration for me is that a 43" TV with a 4K HD screen is beautiful to look at, while Oculus screens are not. For 300 dollars I can get a beautiful portal into 3D worlds in the form of a monitor in front of my face and I don't have to wear anything or change anything about the way I see or hear. And also, I don't like the way things move in the VR I've seen. It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.

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On the contrary, the immersion still amazes me every day. The quest 2 screens are not beautiful, the blacks are a milky grey and the colors aren't particularly popping.

But wow who cares, when I'm playing a third-party VR mod of half-life 2 from 2004, it seems so real. Despite the low-poly meshes and blocky textures that come with games of that era. Blown away by the feeling of actually being there. I get vertigo balancing on the de support beams of the huge bridge I have to climb, disgusted at the howling zombies attacking me while I hurriedly try to stuff shells into my shotgun.

Those too-big and underwhelming pixels? I really don't have time to notice them.

I bought this headset for only $50 more than the $300 you mention (yes now it costs more). For desktop work yes I prefer my $220 4K monitor hands down. But wow this is something else and it's only getting better.

No offense, but you sound like ChatGPT

Edit: Sorry. You deserve a serious answer. I'm old and not someone who wants to walk around and spin with a headset on. I'm someone who wants to use something similar to a flight simulator or Google Earth, so I put a premium on the niceness of the view.

Google Earth is rather awesome in VR, if you haven't tried it.

ChatGPT doesn't use my kind of language, I've never seen it do exclamations like 'wow'. I'm just very enthusiastic about VR from using it a lot, and it has allowed me to relive some classics in an amazing way. As well as some amazing new content of course, but there isn't that much of it yet.

But the things you mention benefit the most from VR. Graphical resolution is indeed a bit lower with Flight Simulation but the feeling of flying is much more accurate. I've flown real Cessna 172s and I've never really felt like flying in a PC simulator until VR came around.

Google Earth is also quite amazing in VR. Of course for both experiences you need a serious PC, neither flight simulator nor google earth will run on the headset natively.

The resolution and colour depth is really one of the least important things in my opinion (and they will be solved in due course, the first TFT screens were also quite horrible and still we played sims on them).

I wasn't trying to insult you and I meant no offense. I was amused because I couldn't tell if your writing was computer generated. Your paragraph contained a level of exuberance and enthusiasm for VR that I share but don't normally see on HN. I like ChatGPT and I like your writing style when it comes to VR.

I would be happier with VR that was all done on a high powered desktop computer where the headset is just two high quality screens tethered to the desktop computer. I see the problem as trying to put all the processing power in the glasses so people can move around. I've done Sandbox VR here in the Bay Area where I can walk and spin and it's amazing. I'm comparing Oculus to that and feel Oculus comes up short because it's a home consumer setup that has to be affordable.

I'm going to shop for the type of VR I want. I realized in this thread that that's what I need.

https://sandboxvr.com/sanfrancisco/

Not really sure how you can preface that with "no offense." If you want to be rude just dive in, no need to hide.

In case you grew up in Micronesia with no exposure to American culture, see the link I have shared. I was trying to be humorous, not rude. I will never say that again because I now know people take it as an insult. It's all so new, you know?

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=no%20offense

I agree in principle that current VR screens suffer from many distortion and "pixelated" effects, which makes text especially hard to read (though this is improved with the newer lenses, the fresnel lenses are much worse for this), but:

> It lags and jumps bit and does not scroll smoothly as I look around.

That hasn't been my experience at all, not since the DK2 I originally had, maybe on the google cardboard, I never tried that. A headset with dedicated tracking works amazingly well in terms of your rotational/positional view of the world.

Maybe in 5 years it’ll be great but I found the Quest 2 to be very blurry and “streaky” compared to a decent monitor. It also still gives me nausea if I play a game for a few hours which I like to do

When is the last time you tried an extended session? It is now possible to do 120Hz on the quest for some games and on PCVR. Earlier versions were limited to 72Hz. There have been other improvements too. Maybe update your headset, tweak some settings, find games that will work at 120Hz and give it another go.

Also, the Quest 2 is kind of old now, newer headsets are vastly superior with regards to blur and streaks.

I find the Quest Pro lenses and screen to be a significant improvement over Quest 2 in terms of clarity. You’ll find many other people saying the same thing. So your 5-year timeline seems off to me.

The quest pro costs as much as a gaming pc. So I guess I’ll have to wait. Also disappointing they didn’t increase the resolution. I’m not looking to pay 5x for marginally better lenses

Yes the value to cost isn’t there if you’re not very invested in XR. But I wouldn’t discount the local display dimming, eye tracking (for foveated rendering), faster GPU / CPU clocking, and 10% PPD increase which all contribute to better visual quality.

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