Pimax 5K+
At the end everything just worked, but I head to learn to tweak to get the best result, even half life Alex I played on the Pimax 5K+ and enjoyed every minute of it.
My main use for the HMD was X-Plane 11, and I quickly learned to fly the planes by only using the "Wand" controllers.
One of the things I appreciate in hindsight was the precision of the controllers and visuals in the cockpit. Although it was quite some time since I put my Pimax on, I don't remember that the cockpit was wobbly because of the software pinpointing the headset in the 3D space, but I might be wrong since it was years back, but one thing for sure, the controllers tracking was great as long as they were in the lighthouses sight.
HP Reverb G2
There were few things I found appealing with this headset
- First: it was self contained, no more light houses, inside out tracking. This means less "hardware administration" and cleaner room.
It had both the headset and controllers and it connected directly to the graphic card. - Second: The price was OK, in the middle of cheap and affordable to pricey. For me pricey is above 800$.
- Third: High resolution. Since I use the headset mainly for "Flight Simulation", there are gauges you need to read as you fly, some of them are big and easy to read but some, like the G1000 has small text that which makes me lean over or zoom in to clearly see and read it.
The things that I compromised related to flight sim:
- Cockpit stability, During the first few seconds when you were placed in the cockpit, there was some wobbly movements until the headset was "aligned" correctly by the "software", not sure if it was related to X-Plane or the WMR. I think it was related to the later.
- Position drifting, although that did not occur a lot, or to high extent, it was a thing, and it did occur. The solution was a simple one, you just had to re-center your view (one click of a button).
- Controller precision, The precision that I had with the "wands" controller was gone, since the HP G2 used a different tracking approach which is based on lights. That means that your headset cameras must see your controller to continue and track it, if it lose sight for a few seconds, the controller track will be lost and your "fine" tuning of the "gauge" at that time won't be responsive, like the throttle during landing.
I learned to leave with this draw back, but I also found myself investing in Joysticks, which I did not have to do with the "Steam" echo system.
Overall the experience was quite good, and pleasing for my use cases, it was easy to enjoy the HP G2 headset at the time, even today I think it is a great midrange headset for simmers, until I heard that Microsoft remove all WMR support from their Windows 11 OS. I mean, I haven't even thought of upgrading to this OS but at the time if I would have upgraded at least my headset would work.
Today, Microsoft just pull the plug under all WMR headsets (as of this writing) and turned them into "bricks" without the slightest care in the world.
We can learn few things from this behavior: One, try to avoid hardware from companies that do not handle the whole echo system of their products. In this case it was Microsoft that was responsible for the "backend framework", and "HP", and the likes, for the hardware. I'm pointing this out since I think those collaborations between companies will continue and we should be very careful who we are choosing if we want a long term commitment, sadly today we only have Valve and Meta, the first "leaves" in Valve timezone, and the second is a data collection based company that proved they are committed to the VR idea as a product, unfortunately we don't know if we are the guinea pigs or we are the customers.
Quest 3 - First impression
I decided to buy the 128G version of this headset, since I aim to use it mainly for PCVR usage, with some standalone ones.
The Quest HMD was a good surprise in few areas. The resolution might not be the same as the HP, but overall the cockpit gauges textures seem to be on par as in the Reverb G2, and this is using Wi-Fi connection. It is not perfect, in terms of lag or choppiness, but I admit I do not have enough HMD time with it.
Some technical staff
Since I'm aiming to use the HMD for mainly PCVR usage, and since I do not have a good USB3 cable to directly connect the HMD to my PC, I decided to use the PC motherboard built in WiFi antenna (supports WiFi 6, not sure it supports 6E).
At first it worked quite well, but in Virtual desktop status window, it pointed out that the bandwidth is lacking, 20Mhz, or something along these lines).
Fortunately I have an "old" Netgear NetHawk router. It gathered dust in the past two and half years. After factory resetting the router and making it my hub for my PC and Quest, nothing else is connected to it by WiFi, I was able to get ~1200Mbps on the 5G band, which is a thumb up from VD, although not the fastest router, it does the job for now. In the future I hope to invest in 6E and up router to have lower latencies.
Back to present
Currently I'm positively surprised with the Quest 3 headset, I think it is a good balance between price/performance and features.
In terms of features, The Quest 3 is way ahead the other headsets, in a way like Tesla vs other electrical companies at this time. The controllers were almost always a good point in quest, but now the hand tracking is also good, I still need to see if it will work in flight simulation or you need the application to support it fully so it will take effect.
The things that I still need to figure out and solve are:
- Strap - I hope to get my hand on a better strap to have a better experience.
I don't mind Meta providing a basic head strap, since it allow to sell the HMD in lower price, and for me, it allows me to find a better strap solution out there. - Binocular overlapping, I hope I'm using the correct term, but what I really refer to is the screen I see inside my HMD, in my case, although I set my IPD in the correct width, I sometime feel as I'm looking through binoculars, I can see the circles that combine the screen, instead of it being a squarish or oval presentation of the VR world.
I think that one of the reason is that I pulled the facial interface all the way out so my glasses won't scratch the glass, until I receive the protective glass cover I purchased.
I'll update this post, after I'll have some more experience with the head set.