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
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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.
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Doesn’t have proprietary parts that I will likely need to replace at some point.
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Minimal to no mounting of lighthouses and as little cables as possible.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
I will join the chorus here recommending that you absolutely do not under any circumstances buy a Meta hardware product. For your budget you will probably have to purchase used or make quite a few sacrifices to your requirements. The alternative is to buy a Quest, but those are cheap because Meta subsidizes the cost of hardware by using it to literally spy on you.
If you can stomach having external tracking towers with your setup anyway, the best avenue for compatibility is probably one of the Valve/HTC Vive models. The Vive Pro 2 is probably the most attractive price-wise, at $800 for the entire setup.
For your purposes the Focus Vision is probably more appealing, since it has inside-out tracking and does not require lighthouses/towers. If I were forced to dump my Reverb for some reason this would probably be the avenue I’d take, however I would have a hard time justifying the minimal upgrade to resolution which is already looking somewhat outdated at 2448x2448 per eye.
The Pimax Crystal Light also looks interesting, but I have no personal experience with Pimax products. It also has inside-out tracking. You can buy it outright but Pimax also does this weird combination pricing thing where they let you stretch out the payments over time if the initial cost blows your budget, which sounds fishy on the surface but they’ve offered that for a while and haven’t been sued into the dirt yet, so it must be at least somewhat legit.
I feel like there have to be ways to neuter the headset in that regard between using a burner account, sideloading applications, and maybe even isolating it at a network level.
Do you know if any headsets you mentioned have any notable software or hardware issues? I’m not sure what kind of track record either company has for things like software/community support, durability, and replacement parts.
I’d like something that will last me a while and won’t be turned into a paper weight by softare updates or a single niche component failing. Ideally I’d like to avoid just aimlessly scrolling through different headset’s subreddits to find out.
If I’m correct the Rift S had half the resolution of the Focus Vision so I don’t think that would be a major issue. I would appreciate something that was a bit more clear though. I can’t recall if the Rift S had the screen door effect some headset reviews mention.
Maybe, but I’m going to point out once again that this is a machine covered in cameras and microphones, and fully owned by Meta, which you bring into your house and wave around. Even with burner data it is trivial for Meta to determine your approximate location based on IP, and the fucking thing could very well be recording the faces of everyone around the place any time Meta felt like it.
In my opinion, even setting the bad precedent that Meta’s behavior is tolerable enough to warrant a sale in the first place even if we hold our noses over it, that does not seem like an acceptable risk vs. reward situation for me personally. I believe you can use a Quest tethered without an internet connection to play games once it’s set up, but it is absolutely required with a sign-in the first time you use it.
HTC/Valve’s hardware support has been quite good insofar as I’m able to tell. I have no experience with Pimax in that regard.
For the record, despite being the “best” WMR platform headset the Reverb G2 I have actually has an abysmal hardware track record. HP was awful at supporting the things when they were new, they broke like crazy all the time for seemingly no reason, and now that software support is officially dropped I would not be at all surprised if they just pretended the damn things no longer existed if you asked them at this point. So as much as I like my G2, I wouldn’t recommend anyone buy one now unless you really like to tinker and you can get one for next to free from eBay or something. The WMR headsets were indeed effectively paperweighted, so I sympathize with your concerns there.
It seems quite unlikely this will happen with any of the HTC headsets, especially the ones cosupported by Valve.