I’ve had issues with my Oculus Rift S for years now and it seems like the proprietary cable finally broke (I made a post about my current issue you can see here on !techsupport@lemmy.world) so I’m thinking about making a change but I haven’t really been tracking the scene in a while. That’s not to say I haven’t done any research but it’s largely limited to LTT reviews I’ve had sporadically recommended to me and those don’t really take into account follow ups after extended use and updates.
It seems relatively dominated by the Meta Quest 3 but I can’t tell how much of that is it being the new thing. I am also quite wary of Meta after how they handled the Rift S with updates and replacement cables.
Some other considerations I have are
-
Works with my desktop PC running Windows 11 so that I can play games I have on Steam and elsewhere like Arizona Sunshine and EmuVR. As well as watch VR movies. If it can pair up with a PC running Linux that would be even better.
-
Doesn’t have proprietary parts that I will likely need to replace at some point.
-
Minimal to no mounting of lighthouses and as little cables as possible.
-
Something that won’t require an abundant amount of troubleshooting. The inability to just put on my Rift S headset caused it to gather dust a lot of the time.
-
I’d prefer not to buy a Meta product. I am not super set on this as long as they’ve been better about their more recent products.
-
Some kind of passthrough mode so that I can walk around my place and do things like wash dishes and fold laundry would be nice.
-
I’d prefer to spend $700 or less. I am not sure how often or what headsets are expected to go on sale and for how much. I feel like there are options out there for this price that would be an improvement over Rift S and original PSVR that I’ve used.
If the Quest 3 is my best bet is there anything I should know about it? Maybe concerns over how it would connect to a PC?
Don’t go this route unless you plan to stay on Windows 10. Windows 11 24h2 killed my HP Reverb G2 v2 due to eol of wmr.
Last I checked my WMR headset is still working on W11 but I haven’t used it recently
The next feature update will kill it.
On my Windows machine I am specifically running 23H2 and I have it locked to that version so it won’t auto-update behind my back. It still works on 10 as well, but some of my new hardware does not have drivers that work correctly with 10 so I’m stuck with it.
Monado is promising support for WMR headsets under Linux and at the time of writing has at least partially functional support. I predict when the Win10 cutoff happens you will be able to find WMR headsets very cheap on eBay as people dump their now apparently no longer working hardware.
The Reberb G2 is probably the best of the bunch there, and is what I have.
Projects like this get me very excited. So many people have issues with the software side of VR and issues never seem to get fixed as issues get overshadowed by new headset releases.
I could see the tinkering side of VR making people treat it a lot more seriously.
Hmm good to know! Thanks.