What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week(blog.immersed.team) |
What it's like to spend 40-50 hours in VR every week(blog.immersed.team) |
Is it just few centimeters or can be adjusted to be like 15 meters?
You can change the effective stereographic distance though, so things look like they're pretty far away (or super close, if that's your thing), and the movement parallax, and eye convergence agree - but the resolving power is still the same for all objects in the visual field.
fortunately it’s not
End of the day, it’s tech. Tech platforms will have security vulns and thread models. Interested to see what that looks like for VR.
Pretending it won’t happen is sticking ones head in the sand.
However I am never buying an Oculus device, for fear and loathing of anything made by Facebook. Having to have and use a FB account, with their track record of privacy blunders has completely alienated me from all their products.
Sadly that doesn't leave very many options on the table, some of which cost an arm and a leg.
It also doesn't actually have a particularly high resolution, and sort of cheats by making your periphery have a significantly lower resolution (hardware, not software, is responsible for this, so you can't just turn foveated rendering off), which makes it good for many use cases, but worse for programming.
Also, even disregarding the extra focal-spot screens, you're wrong about the resolution. It's the highest of all headsets that don't have insanely wide FOV's like the Pimax8K, by a long way. 2880 x 2720 per eye (Varjo VR-3) > 1832 x 1920 per eye (Quest 2) > 1440 x 1600 per eye (Vive Pro 2) ~= 1600 x 1440 per eye (Valve Index)
They also support Mac, and yes, Windows for those unable to escape the pull of Redmond.
Thanks for the post!
Wouldn't be that quick in judgement :-) I think all that 6dof is about image sensors and machine learning and both are already widely used in mobiles. To my senses it feels like nowadays smartphones could handle 6dof with even only single camera with just appropriate software.
A valid Varjo XR subscription is required to use the device Every XR-3 user must have a Varjo account and a valid XR subscription. Read more here.
You could have just checked the store.
A valid Varjo VR subscription is required to use the device Every VR-3 user must have a Varjo account and a valid VR subscription. Read more here.
The TOS says that the minimum subscription length is 1 year, so that brings the absolute minimum cost to US$3990 for the VR-3.
Here are the leaked specs from investigations of a recent firmware: https://uploadvr.com/quest-pro-specs-controllers-leak/
If we get improved lenses, fine-ipd and distance control for a really clear picture, plus eye and face tracking for expressive avatars, color HD passthrough so I can see my hands and keyboard, and a lighter, smaller headset, that would go a long way to addressing my issues with working in VR.
I'm personally quite interested since I travel a lot and it would be amazing to have a multi sit-stand setup in a ski goggle case. I have already been having good results using the Quest 2 as a portable gym, so portable office would be icing on the cake. If these specs are real, I'll be a day-1 customer.
One other thing that I had issues with that hope to see addressed: with both immersed and the Horizon Workrooms, the mouse latency was a killer when using their desktop client. Not sure what the deal was but was using a recent MacBook pro.
I would like to use VR more but even an hour with the Oculus Quest leaves me feeling quite tired. The physical weight of the device and the not quite perfect alignment of the lenses are the likely causes.
The authors points about VR not having the limitations of real life are spot on. Tools like Workrooms are just a stepping stone to more and varied VR experiences.
As an aside, I used to use VPL eyephones, VPL datagloves and a SGI Crimson to do research back in the late 80s. I honestly thought back then we would all have fully adopted VR by now. I was so wrong!
The only 2 that run this particular software right now are the Quest, and the Vive Focus 3 (which cost $1000 more). There are other virtual office interface options available, though, and those run on WMR or any Steam compatible headset.
None others that support Linux that I'm aware of, though.
What alternative would you guys recommend? Would the experience be significantly worse if I tried to do this with an Index, for instance?
We use the very environment around us to think".
Yes, exactly. Great blog post.
It worked and I could certainly program. But it was far from comfortable. The resolution is very noticeably worse than on my physical monitors. I don't know why OP's experience is so different. I suspect he's just willing to sacrifice crisp text for the coolness of the experience.
And come hang out on the Discord - would love to talk about your new-user experience, and help make it work for you.
Reasons: I don't like to be totally disconnected from reality/physical world. I work in a room with balanced natural light. Removing this is not productive for me. In recent years I developed a technique to refresh cyclically my brain by making timely stops away from my computer. Example: In the breaks I walk away completely in a different room and may play guitar, draw, do physical exercise or just meditate. Advantages from this interruptions are immense. Your brain is never bored, and your work sessions are effective and absent from procrastination.
This is your way to evaporate stress, everyone has individual choices in this regard.
Mine include going outside, walking, running, some exercise, shoot photography, drive to a near village, etc.
I spend enough time in-front of a set of displays. And since early 2000s my choice is always towards high-quality displays as Eizo or Nec. The newer models have eco-friendly mode which adjust automatically the brightness with accordance to ambient light.
Thats why my preference for the work of future is towards holographic displays or projectors. It is more natural.
There's a lot of VR content I still can't handle, even though I've built a tolerance to many others. But for a stationary experience like productivity, where I at most walk in a very small area while at the standing desk, it's not applicable - I'm running 100fps+, and the 6DoF tracking does an excellent job.
Since then, I've been able to try a number of headsets and they all give me a headache after about 30 minutes. Depending on how the camera moves around, I can speedrun getting a headache in less than 5 minutes.
Does anyone else experience this? The OP's setup or SimulaVR sound really cool but I highly doubt I'll be able to do it for any productive amount of time.
Is there a reason why Immersed only works with Facebook devices? I deleted my Facebook account and this would be a definite dealbreaker for me.
As for the FB devices - available audience and cost of doing business. They also support the Vive Focus 3 now though, and others are in the works.
Where motion sickness is not solves is with artificial locomotion, e.g. using to use the joysticks to move around like in a regular FPS game, that will still make most people motion sick to varying degrees, but many will get used to it after a while.
Custom lenses, appropriate fitting for every major headset. The inserts don't seem to limit the field of view at all, and they even serve as an extra layer of protection against scratching the headset's particularly delicate lenses.
I've gotten rid of my unit, but back when I had it, custom lenses were the best thing I did for comfort. I can't wear glasses close to my eyes, and was just generally miserable with the glasses squished in an already small space. The custom lenses solved all of that.
I highly doubt it. My dual monitor setup cost me about £300 including a nice desk stand. No fancy GPU or anything required. If that VR setup really cost that much it would be an impulse buy for me.
Until the technology gets much much lighter of course, which it will.
Good ergonomics apply in VR just as they do in any occupational setup. I was suffering from cervical lordosis before ever going into VR - but because I've used it to increase my range of motion throughout the day, and eliminate my need to ever hunch or squint, I'm feeling much better than before going full-time VR.
But: don't do it all at once. Work up to it, balance the weight appropriately, position screens properly, and take breaks! Yes, I do 8-10 hours a day in VR - but not all at once.
As a rider myself, the first week or so was a bit rough and an unusual feeling- it wears off after that.
Hang out the washing and read your emails.
(Gaming was amazing though...)
It's improved a little bit, but still takes a lot of tweaking to maximize readability. I'd say it's "maybe passable" for most users without a lot of patience to do that tuning and compromise in favor of density over beauty.
So it might not be there for you yet - but it's moving in the right direction.
But for doing a day of work, I would almost complain that it is too immersive. It eliminates distractions, but it also traps your eyes in front of screens and eliminates the real world except for things like eating and using the bathroom (and with the Quest passthrough, you don't even have to remove your headset for that).
I feel that, no matter how good you made this kind of tech, it's not going to work until it's full AR. VR isn't comfortable for long periods, even at its most comfortable, because your brain (or at least mine) prefers regular doses of reality.
And if you're going to be trapped in a VR computer, I found that using it for entertainment is the better experience. I can play Gamecube games and watch Netflix and Twitch at the same time, while keeping track discord.
I join most of my Hangouts and Zooms as an avatar, using a virtual webcam from within the software. If it's personal, sensitive, or requires more professionalism, I'll still "resurface" and use a regular webcam - but it's a special occasion.
Is this really true? As someone who has never used VR, I assumed that an issue would be higher eye strain.
As other posters have shared, the bigger issue is that the focal plane is static, at least until the varifocal technology matures. Getting good eye exercise outside of VR is important, just like it is with all-day computer work.
Cheers!
For Linux enthusiasts (possibly the OP as as well): SimulaVR (www.simulavr.com) is working on a portable Linux VR headset with office/programmer productivity as the #1 goal. It will offer the following advantages over the OP's Immersed setup:
1. *More than double the text quality.* We are making a headset with more than double the PPD (pixels-per-degree) of the Oculus Quest 2. This is extremely important for facilitating multi-hour VR sessions without eye fatigue.
2. *Proper window management.* SimulaVR is a fully functional Linux window manager (built over Wayland/wlroots infrastructure). Unlike Immersed, it isn't just emulating screens on another host OS. This means you get an unlimited number of windows, popups can (when desired) behave as new windows, etc. No hacks are required to get this sort of functionality. It will also later on facilitate proper 3D/VR applications being able to share the same space with 2D applications.
3. *Proper portability.* Our headset is going to be fully portable (with a detachable compute pack in the back), and won't require you to tether your headset to another computer over WiFi, or take along an additional laptop just to get your VR computer working somewhere else.
4. *Proper hackability.* Simula is built over FOSS, and is not tethered to the Facebook platform. If there's something you want to change or tweak, you're free to do so.
One thing Immersed has though is immediate availability and scalability (there are an unlimited supply of Oculus Quests floating around :). We're likely going to be constrained on the number of headsets we can produce, at least initially, and will have to queue first to the early users.
We (and the industry at large) also have a lot of work ahead of us to improve upon a VR-centric UX (incorporating proper tiling management, and other things). Very exciting.
One question I've got about the window management system - I make heavy use of virtual desktops so I can swap several windows out simultaneously (all my source code on one screen, my database GUIs on another, etc.). I'd run out of room using a spatially tiled VR interface unless I had "sets" or other groups of windows (or different vantage points); how is that being approached? Is there a "virtual desktop" equivalent?
Any chance of coopting other hardware as part of your development/deployment strategy? (Vive Focus 3, maybe?)
I'll definitely continue to watch the project - please let me know if I can ever be of service in the endeavor. You guys are building an awesome future.
1. Simula is planning on adding a window tiling/window grouping dynamic to its UX. Agreed this is a useful feature, and we've heard from other people as well that this would improve things.
A short-term hack though, since Simula is a fully functioning window manager, is to simply launch another window manager inside Simula as a client (e.g., launching i3 or xfce4 inside Simula, and using it as a way to group applications together).
2. We've been unable to get Linux support from other VR manufacturers in order to run Simula on other hardware. In fact, our initial goal was to only do this (so that we could focus on the software only), but eventually decided it was better to just build our own headset (in particular a high-fidelity one that is uniquely suited for office/programmer productivity).
Would love to stay in contact. Your office VR setup really captures the spirit of the VR age.
Can the headset be connected to a Windows PC? I'm running very heavy stuff when developing, and need all of the the horsepower available. On top of that I also need access to certain software that don't exist on Linux.
But if you have enough money to burn, you can taste the future now.
Nothing beats HTML for expressiveness and transmit-ability, and with frameworks like A-Frame you already have an enormous amount of software written for your headset.
Between you guys and Frame.work, it feels like hardware might get inspiring again. Good luck!
If no support between them, there will be a virtual window embedding e.g https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_decals , which is weird
Get a better head-strap! He mentions it in passing in the article, but 90% of the strain from wearing the Quest 2 for extended periods of time can be traced to the garbage default head-strap. You want something that properly balances the headset. If you want, you can even get one that gives you a bit of extra charge, too. There are plenty of options.
Something critical that doesn't seem to be mentioned:
You can manually alter the resolution of Quest apps; if an app is looking blurry it's almost always because it's set to a lower resolution than native. This is a problem with a lot of "productivity" VR apps, and the main reason why I ended up working on my own for a few months.
The standard 90hz is comfortable for me for prolonged periods of time, but if you feel nauseous, you can turn it up to 120hz, though some applications will require manual adjustment.
The Quest 2 is really cheap and offers a lot of different ways to do work; you can pretty much throw it in a bag with a USB-C mouse and keyboard (and splitter, so you could technically also bring along a USB-A mouse and keyboard just fine if you bought a 2A-to-C splitter) or a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo and you've got a full computing environment anywhere, assuming you set it up beforehand. And if you bring around a laptop or other small form-factor PC while traveling, it works really well to augment those, too.
Literal years ago Palmer Luckey talked about using a Go, a significantly less powerful headset, as a replacement for any monitor setups while traveling with his computer. We're finally at a point where you can do the same on any operating system, and it's honestly a really good experience.
The other part of me is that having a giant whiteboard and endless space seems cool. Imagine if the entire virtual space had powerful programming environments, some more powerful version of Mathematica, I could gesture and run a some powerful. Maybe that would be worth it, but it doesn't seem there yet.
1. Eye and face tracking. The author mentions lip syncing and hand tracking. That goes a long way, but it doesn't recreate the video experience to me. There are a few vtubers out there that are doing some seriously impressive tracking, but it requires tons of special equipment at the moment. Once this gets resolved in a consumer model, I think things will really shine for virtual presence.
2. Lighter weight headsets. For longer sessions, a custom headstrap helps a ton, but even still lighter headsets will go a long ways to helping here.
3. Better lenses and better displays. The lower res means you're really forced to work at huge virtual screen sizes, as the author mentions. While this is the least needed item in this list for basic productivity, the screen door effect definitely creates a barrier some of the time.
I highly anticipate that we'll see a sizable portion of the population change over to VR for productivity within ten years. It has huge potential, especially with the remote work environment many are in these days. I would love to be able to feel the presence of people around me again, while still not having a commute or the risks associated with being physically in the same room.
The resolution isn’t there yet compared to my 4-5k monitors for text, but clearly will get there in the future. For now I don’t see what advantages it really gives me compared to a normal monitor in the real world, especially if I’m just coding. The exception would be if I were on something like an airplane — being able to look forward is a big deal here.
Personally it makes me feel a bit nauseous, particularly if there’s any movement (I get motion sick easily in VR but not normally in real life). My understanding is that about 20% of the population is like this and nothing is known to prevent it.
There are cool things about VR that I really enjoy (particular things like Google street view) but I think it’s way over hyped, and possibly dystopian depending on what people are leaving behind.
Hard pass from me.
Gaming addiction was only officially recognized within roughly the past decade. The idea of developing some sort of dependance on virtual reality fills me with absolute dread. Whats worse is that companies promoting virtual offices like this have every incentive imaginable to promote this (hi Facebook!).
I don't have anything against VR and think it has a lot of potential as a medium for gaming and the arts but theres a lot of danger in assuming there is no risk or minimizing the risks. Ignore the addictive power of the things which tune out the inconveniences of life at your own peril.
I 3d printed some supports to mount a vive headstrap to it, and removed the vive headphones in favor of Airpods. 200 degrees of FOV @ 75hz would be incredible for work with a far superior viewport than OP.
This blog post makes me want to give this a try.
Like the guys from 1980s talking about video games in the recent Netflix documentary 'high score', where some people started spending 8+ hours a day playing games with really primitive graphics because it was just enough to be enjoyable.
VR now seems like something that is almost finally ready to explode and like the atari or iphone is going to change all our lives forever.
Whenever I have friends over, the hands take some time, the game can be slow and boring, etc. In VR, we're in an amazing scene, folks not in the hand can play all sorts of games in parallel, the game is much more dynamic since you have an expert dealer, etc. It made me realize that if I did have 5 people over in my house, I'd rather us all plug into the VR environment than playing in real life.
Online poker among friends gained a lot of popularity during Covid. With the computer dealing, its much easier to play for 1-2 hours. Given our stage in life, we can play once a week online instead of once or twice a year in person.
But since PokerStars VR is only with fake money, most are there just to have fun, at least in the lower stakes tables, so people make (and call) a lot of silly bets.
As time goes on and technology becomes sufficiently advanced, I can't help but feel all the dystopian nightmare sci-fi created as warnings are instead being used as instruction manuals by power hungry Silicon Valley execs.
My largest gripe with this piece is if you're going to write about comfort in VR, you need to mention the Valve Index. The base model is, in my experience, the most comfortable headset even without modding. If you wear glasses you can find many prescription lens vendors online for ~60-90 USD. Not to mention the top of the line specs on the Index compared to it's competitors.
There's definitely better hardware out there than the Q2 - it just doesn't run the software I need yet.
Valve has great hardware, no question - but this also wasn't about "how to make VR comfortable", it was how I personally make it productive for me. The Immersed software has, until very recently, been Oculus only. They now support the Vive Focus 3, which I hope to try some day (when it's in the budget, or someone notices my article and starts comping me hardware <- subtle hint).
...and I do use (and mention) prescription inserts - $70 at Reloptix, and I'm delighted with the product and my interactions with the company.
Heck, even less than that. I got lenses for my Index for $20. I could have gotten them for as little as $7, but opted for the oleophobic coating to reduce fingerprints when I'm taking them in or out when other people use my headset.
Then you just need a 3D printed adapter which, if you have a printer, you can print with like 5 cents worth of filament, or likely use a 3D printing as-a-Service provider like I did and pay $4 + shipping.
I spend most of my time in the terminal, occasionally switching to a browser. The fact that I see a single window at a time is a “feature” to me.
Then again, if there was no difference in comfort, size, weight, etc, I’d happily increase the size of my screen, if only to increase the font size. I guess I’ll be a late adopter.
Could not agree more. I tried out a much simpler setup on my friend's Oculus Go (predecessor to the Quest 2, since abandoned by Facebook), and was amazed at how well I was able to focus.
For my setup, I used the a web browser on the headset itself to connect to ttyd [0] running on my computer for doing programming homework when I was in college, and it worked really well. I wrote about my experience, and drew similar conclusions. [1]
When I looked into immersive coding environments at that time, I didn't find much. I guess I didn't look hard enough...
One man's prison is another man's minimalist office?
Edit/disclosure: corrected a typo I made while in VR
The Office of the Future https://web.archive.org/web/20190816013625/http://elevr.com/...
The Three Scales https://web.archive.org/web/20190830025347/http://elevr.com/...
Personally I wouldn't do it, but it'd be difficult to use a setup based around e.g. the Pimax without building a room around it, and... at that point why not just install some regular monitors? You can buy quite a few at that price point.
IIRC, the only headset with a higher resolution than Q2 is a PiMax.
If Immersed is going to become widespread, it needs to focus on standalone headsets, so non-gamers can use it.
Wow that's pretty impressive, especially considering the 4K main screen + additional virtual screens used. I wonder how you get the latency this low. 3ms means no buffering at all, neither during encoding nor decoding. The best I could achieve so far is a little less than 60ms but with the additional restriction that playback has to be done via browser.
Does OP have any documentation on how this latency can be achieved and measured?
1. WiFi direct, or as direct as you can make it - which means the computer is either the AP itself, or wired directly to it in order to keep the hops short.
2. Measurement can be done via a companion ping that looks at frame timing, but that's kind of a secondary measure. Best way to really check it is with high-speed video capture of a hardware display and the mirrored content in the headset, of a high-(temporal-)resolution stopwatch. I can also watch a YouTube video streamed with the desktop to the headset, and listen to it on headphones wired straight to the laptop, with no discernible offset (and this is with years of audio engineering experience) - the error bars on that subjective experience are much larger, but demonstrate that it's at least usable.
3. Hardware acceleration, via Nvidia NVENC, and rather than use Immersed's own virtual screen tech, I usually rely on HDMI dummy plugs ($12 for a 3 pack) to maximize GPU throughput (and not cannibalize CPU cycles).
4. Not ALL content is going to move at this speed even in the best of circumstances - I have a low overall rate of change, which means the delta streaming of the NVENC encoder is super short: not much data to grab, not much data to send.
I can absolutely get worse rates than this if I want to push a ton of video content, or if I were to use it for gaming, etc. I don't think everyone would have this level of performance for every use case, but it's what I've been able to achieve and maintain.
If someone from the Evil Empire was here, it would be interesting to get some notion how Facebook checks identity. Is there some huge glom of software that compares online activity, public records, phone records, bank records, credit records, etc. to make sure you're an OK person?
If you think of it less like a monitor and more like a game console or a phone with a locked bootloader, then it's easy to see how you can require account auth in order to use the built-in software.
No thanks.
FB is just way ahead of the field on standalone. Once everyone else catches up I'll be surprised if Immersed doesn't port to each of them.
I'm not a Zuck fan, but damn the Quest 2 is a game changer for me.
As an accessibility tool I'm delighted to see it working for another migraine sufferer though.
I've been wanting to do more to get towards your setup i.e coding in VR, but just haven't had the time. That's why I got excited when I saw your post, because now I've got the blueprints :)
If I ever move more into this, I'll blog about it and credit your post. Thanks again!
Then the next obvious one is screen resolution is just not high enough yet. It probably needs to double and I don't think even the top end of headsets are quite there yet.
It's exciting because all the problems I can identify are essentially things that have high confidence of being solved over time. So I can see there is an inevitability this will be a major way of working at some point and for those of us willing to stretch to it, you can get to the future ahead of everyone else.
At the same time, every time I do the experiment it is objectively less productive than just using a basic 3-screen setup outside of VR. The bar, unfortunately, is quite high.
The tracking is fine, but you'll probably end up re-buying a headset on a monthly basis if doing it.
I'm very curious why I seem to have heard this exact same advice for every single headset on the market. Why does it seem endemic that headsets ship uncomfortable, fixed within days by amateurs with Velcro and tape? Why haven't manufacturers noticed that they are partly responsible for one of the major blocks to wide spread adoption?
As it is, I imagine at $300, Facebook is likely losing money on the sale of each headset.
High-end headsets like the Valve Index come with a very good strap. There's no need to mod it or get an aftermarket one because the stock one is already very comfortable and balances the weight on your head very well. But the full kit is $1,000 and requires a gaming PC.
Plus, this also allows you to grow your market share by not excluding people that can't quite afford the better version of the headset.
But it requires a FB account right? Or is there a way to use it without one?
> Quest 2 requires everyone to use a Facebook account to log in.
> If you are an existing Oculus user and have an Oculus account, you will have the option to log in with your Oculus account and merge your Facebook and Oculus accounts.
I can't speak how enforced these are, but even if it's a soft requirement for now, it's enough for me to avoid it. Pity, since it seems pretty good tech wise.
There was a fair amount of bad press about the issue and how there was no way to get unbanned. The bad press forced their hand a bit, but I wonder if it’s an issue again now that it’s not such a hot topic.
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/oculus-quest-2-users-banne...
https://screenrant.com/oculus-quest-worthless-facebook-accou...
https://palmerluckey.com/oculus-goblack-how-to-make-your-ocu...
You can see that on wayback machine.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190325121641/http://palmerluck...
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4627924
https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/jeie0q/your_ip...
It can be hooked up to a more powerful PC and essentially just used as a monitor, but it can also run less demanding titles natively with no additional hardware. It has a web browser built in and you can connect a Bluetooth keyboard to it. So you can do some stuff without a laptop/pc. There’s a good library of native games but if you wanted to make a PowerPoint or do office/work you’d likely be using a web app (or just connecting to a pc)
If you've got a 3D printer, there's a pretty popular project that allows you to adapt the Vive Deluxe Audio Strap to a Quest 2; I've heard little but glowing praise for it.
However, since you mention the Rift S, as far as I'm aware the halo strap(s, there are a lot of different brands pushing pretty much the same thing) the author mentions in the page is pretty much just a clone of the Rift S strap, and I've also heard really good things about it. It's like $20 on AliExpress, so it's probably worth a try, at least.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001657071604.html
Add a weight on the back is also good.
Nice flex, but not everyone has this kind of setup.
Sounds more reasonable for Tokyo and I imagine, HK or Singapore.
That's exactly the point, with VR someone in a small apartment they share with an extended family can ALSO have a nice big wooden table overlooking the city. Even if they are facing a beige wall ...
It works great, and I actually use my Quest 2 for this.
The only, er, slight issue is it detects rotation using gyros, so when the airplane turns it'll be immediately visible in a way it isn't when you're not using VR. It ironically makes you more aware of your surroundings.
You can...take off the headset.
Not sure.
But I think that there will be far fewer people who work relative to those who play in these virtual+immersive environments than there are with any of our more augmented ones.
Sit down and your real room just widens virtually, your window remains and big screens pop up next to it.
The pandemic is the best opportunity FB will ever have to push VR into the mainstream. Zuck has also been playing up that it could replace business travel post pandemic and there have been leaked specs for a Quest Pro that would deliver a very cutting edge productivity experience.
Lighter-weight headsets is something necessary but also something that is in sort of a weird spot. The Quest 2 is actually a lot heavier than average, because it's standalone. As cool as it is, it's regressive in some interesting ways.
For better displays, there's already some pretty impressive displays these days if you don't mind jumping up in price a few notches. Enthusiast-range, for sure, but still consumer models.
As an aside, a handy cheap way to get more screens in VR with Oculus Link is to insert a headless HDMI plug into your video card. This also works for creating new screens in VR using Immersed although they claim that the virtual screens (paid feature) work better.
The oculus team put together a seriously jawdropping demo of facial tracking using a few cameras in a headset, combined with a lot of AI. The prototype was from a couple years ago. I can't wait until it makes it into commercial headsets. I wonder what the hold up is?
Well worth a look if you haven't seen it:
Curious, but why not AR for productivity rather than VR? Both could work, and AR is less invasive.
E.g. the very best AR stuff you can buy right now is still moderately-bright glowing pixels on top of whatever you're currently looking towards. So if you have too much contrast in the background, or actual light sources, they show right through and ruin much of the visual clarity.
As much as I like AR as a concept, it's much further from "ready". It has all the complexities of VR, plus real-world tracking, plus visual overlay - it'll necessarily trail VR until those latter two are "good enough", and they certainly are not at the moment.
What risks are you anticipating in ten years time?
And to your last point I think that's where common sense comes in. If something is painful, if it causes you discomfort, stop. You're body is decently good at protecting you from things that are harmful to it (except sugary sweets for me...)
I have poorer vision in low light conditions then when I was younger. My optometrist has confirmed my sensitive eyes and advised to wear blue light filters but I choose not to. I have friends who need glasses to drive legally at night for similar reasons.
Don't give people the wrong impression without first asking professional advice as you could do harm by misleading someone.
But yeah I couldn't imagine using it for a workday. I bought an Oculus Go once, my eyes couldn't handle it for more then 5 tot 10 minutes.
But I guess everyone is different, can imagine for some people like me it's not healthy
There are things that can cause strain. For example, items too close to you can be out of focus, the low FOV makes you move your head a lot more, and it has extra weight strapped to it, there is the heat, the motion, etc... But a well designed desktop setting like in the article avoids many of these problems.
[1] https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1130973138362294272
So it's not the problem focussing something in 5cm distance. The big issue is that your eyes never have to adapt the distance they are looking at. Watching a screen all day 50cm from your eyes is equally bad. You could say that focussing a distance 2m or infinity is better, but i am no eye-scientist.
After a lot of trial and error and just thinking about what could possibly be causing this, I believe I have found that I wasn't getting enough sleep. I haven't had eye pain in months and I have been using my computer even more frequently than before (because my eyes don't hurt).
I have learned that I need at least 8 hours of sleep, but try for 8 1/2 - 9 hours. If I go a couple of days getting 5-6 hours of sleep, my eyes start killing me again.
Might be worth looking into your sleeping habits.
Not to mention humans have evolved with sunlight in mind and LED lights are relatively new. Our eyes most likely are more used to sunlight than LED lights.
I'm not ophthalmologist but I do wear glasses for myopia. My concern would be emitted light, distance and emitted heat...
Screens are emitted light. Having a screen strapped to your head emitting light into your eyes is very different to having a monitor in a room (adjusted to ambient light) emitting light and in an environment with a lot of natural reflected light.
Distance, yes there are lenses that bend the emitted light and change the perception of distance to the screen but it's still only a short distance from your face emitting light and heat.
You might be fine for a few years but I would be willing to bet you will have some form of eye issue in later life.
If anything, this could be much healthier.
If only the head mounted displays were designed with health in mind rather than making a quick profit...
What is relevant is the distance to the focal plane.
For typical screens, the focal distance and the screen distance are obviously identical.
For VR systems, they're very different. The last one I tried had a focal plane that was about 4 meters away. This makes it better than typical screens!
However, the low resolution is an issue. I've found that I get sore eyes if I use a low-resolutions screen. This is because my eyes try to focus, fail, and keep "hunting" by changing focus back and forth looking for the point of sharp focus -- but it's never there. This is why all of my displays are 4K.
For VR because of the large field of view, the required resolution is at least 8K per eye or equivalent. Ideally a "fake" 16K using foveated rendering.
Similarly VR has a narrow range of possible brightness, this is less of an issue but can also cause problems long term.
This is almost always one of two things:
* A low or unsteady framerate or tracking
* Lack of spending twenty minutes in it to teach your body to cope with the aforementioned low or unsteady framerate or tracking
The Quest 2 won't drop below 90hz if in any productivity app, and you can even turn it up to 120hz (it can handle games at 120hz; a productivity app won't put any stress on the hardware), so there isn't really the opportunity for nausea.
It really does sound like you've only used Cardboard or Daydream, since the only thing you're listing is Street View. There's nothing wrong with Cardboard and Daydream, but they're 3DoF and you were lucky if it would hit 60hz consistently. They're a box for nausea. Even the original Vive (still an admirable headset, although pretty rough these days) is significantly below the state of the art enough that judgements about VR as a whole can't justifiably be made.
Distance isn't really a factor here, at least not as far as total light entering your eyes goes - a 1W/m^2 source 10cm from your eyes causes the same amount of light to enter as a 16W/m^2 source 40cm away.
What matters, as others have pointed out, is the distance between your eyes and the focal plane.
We've tried everything we could to get their headsets to run smoothly. There are multiple guides in the iRacing forums about combing through every line in all relevant .ini files, setting up windows, nVidia settings, etc.
Why would I want to wear a headset strapped to my face for hours to interact with memojis of my co-workers? I've definitely tried out VR games in the past few years ... cool, but novel fun and the headset strapped to my face annoyed me.
Tipping points are fundamental to the nature of reality. Technology improves through decades of little tweaks and incremental improvements, which can sometimes bring a technology to a point where it's optimal and suddenly dominates the landscape.
You could've asked someone 20 years earlier "why would you want to walk around with a suitcase attached to a phone so you could make calls from your car?" Or you could ask someone 10 years earlier why they would want to carry a small brick in their pocket so they could scribble notes with a tiny stylus. Or 5 years earlier why they would want a phone that ran "apps" when you had to buy them at the store on SD cards and interact via a small resistive touch screen.
Few-to-none of these things spring fully formed from the minds of a lone genius. They're the result of identifying new and potentially useful things that can be done with tools that are just becoming good enough to be adequate.
VR may have been invented in the 90s, but it likely wasn't until a few years ago that we could do it well enough and cheaply enough to make it worthwhile for consumer-level gamers.
VR in the 90s was incredibly low resolution and and had low framerates, not to mention thousands of dollars and with shitty latency. It was ugly and nauseating.
To make VR useable for consumers, it had to be semi-affordable and attractive. It wasn't until the last 10 years as small high-DPI LCD screens dropped in price and PCs could render at the 90+ fps needed to keep latency low (And really, since it's 90+ fps PER EYE, it's really rendering at 180 fps) that VR became viable.
This is both noticed anecdotally by a lot of people (the majority, if the prevalence of multi-monitor setups are anything to go by) and you can also derive this from the facts that people put more than one thing on their single monitor at a time, and prefer larger screens.
You've probably either gotten in the habit of using a single screen, or your brain hardware behaves in a way that most peoples' doesn't. I don't think that your preferences are actually reflective of an objective increase in efficiency, or comfort for the majority of computer users.
About all I can really do on a laptop is code in the car or an airplane, or do documents, and event that I'm starting to run out of screen real-estate.
Here's the lens adapter I use. The description has a link to the exact glasses.
> Best way to really check it is with high-speed video capture of a hardware display and the mirrored content in the headset, of a high-(temporal-)resolution stopwatch.
Agreed, it's a little cumbersome but afterwards you can be pretty confident in your result. Have you measured 3ms like that? Getting below 3ms with small deltas using NVENC sounds possible but considering that even with a refresh rate of 120fps there is over 8ms between two frames, 3ms does sound suspiciously low.
One last question, have you done any experiments with the video codec, due to compatibility requirements I am pretty much limited to H.264 but was wondering if there is something better for super low latency encoding?
My advice would be to both include these points and demonstrate this (perhaps with a video) in your article, as latency is IMHO correctly perceived as the killer of several concepts, such as remote game streaming services and host-to-goggles interactivity. This is especially important as you're using a cheapish consumer device as your primary display.
Do include the circumstances that contradict your 3ms claim. You do this elsewhere in your article (the gray old computers example) but it will serve to bolster your overarching argument.
Anecdotally (i.e. for me), that makes it far less straining to look into. although I'd really want twice that.
I woke up thinking, "I need to invest in drone deliveries!"
The form factor basic idea of VR hasn't changed since the 90s which is still strap a bulky headset to your face. Prescription or sunglasses aren't bulky ..what humans have worn for possibly centuries.
Maybe it will finally change how we play video games but working virtually with my coworkers emojis for 8 hours or long periods of time with a headset strapped to my face is lol
Btw, too little light is also not good for the eye, outside, in the sun it can easily be 100x brighter than your screen and your eye needs that every now and then to remain in good shape.
It would be like maintaining a separate appstore for iPhones.
I guess the issue there is that the popularity of the platform and nature of its limitations made it worth someone's trouble to maintain those repos. With something like an Oculus, I don't know that there are enough users (and also a sufficient subset that want to avoid Facebook or run some unsanctioned software) to justify the effort.
I'm assuming here that it is somehow subsidized (via volume or via data mining) and is cheaper than alternatives.
Only 7 of the 21 VR listed in that page exceed 115 degrees. And four of those are PIMAX systems.
https://www.wired.com/story/billionaires-use-vr-avoid-social...
Think of it like a cinema projection vs TV screen.
In a cinema a projector sends light onto a screen that bounces off and towards your eyes, this is a reflected light.
If you were to watch a TV of the same size it would be emitting light from LED's shining light directly to you.
There are some comments on an older thread with some good info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17993615
What matters is the content and quality of the light spectrum.
LED lights or even LCD screens can be designed with a more or less healthy spectrum depending on the priorities of the manufacturer. But this is an economical problem that can be regulated.
Aside from that, this post is about to make me buy an Oculus.
I seem to remember that it was mostly done on the computer: IR emitters on the headset for tracking with a sensor/camera to receive the positional data to be processed by the computer. Then the generated output of the "camera" was sent to the display sitting behind the lenses.
There was definitely processing going on and you did need drivers/software. I'd imagine you could still use it with not much more than some lightweight drivers/software to process the positional data and render the appropriately distorted output.
In my understanding it is extremely rare to experience VR motion sickness if the motion in VR matches the motion in IRL.
> Every Oculus Quest for business costs $999.
https://skarredghost.com/2020/05/22/oculus-business-vr-price...
What’s next? Ballpoints for business use, at double the price of ballpoints for personal use?
Last I saw, that opaque layer's pixel density was far too coarse (so it blocked too much or too little - it needs like >10x higher density than the highest density consumer screens out now), and every tech I've seen has had a fundamental issue with focus - we can project AR pixels at comfortable focus ranges with complex enough techniques, but nothing exists to project "darkness", so it's at an entirely different visual and focal distance as the pixels, and it never looks quite right.
On top of that, you can't really use it to make semi-opaque pixels - you can only darken, and draw brighter stuff on top. So even if you solve ^ all that, you still have to accurately track the world, figure out what's being occluded, and re-draw that along with the pixel you want to draw. Without blocking vision, so the cameras to do all this can't see exactly the same thing you see.
... so every AR headset just adds a pair of literal sunglasses behind it all to dim the world so things don't look quite as bad, and that's the best we have now.
In VR with a couple cameras, you... just draw a semi-opaque pixel on top. And it looks perfect.
I know plenty of people who had a shitty time and ended up dealing with a lot of mental health issues.
I'd be _fine_ with going to the office once every other week to just meet up, but not more than that.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00036...
No, the focal distance in a headset is fixed. The light hitting your eye is always coming in at the same angle.
I probably average about 4-6 hours per week outdoors in sunlight with my Skyzone 04X. It has dual OLED screens and a very similar (if smaller) form factor to my Quest 2.
I’d say it’s more a “be aware of this and be careful” problem than a “you’re going to break it once a month” problem.
The Q2 without a non-OEM facial interface isn't exactly tuned as well for outdoor conditions (then again, Facebook just put out a new one) as most FPV hardware is.
By the way, do you know the vendor of the panels in Skyzone hardware? I've been wanting to try some out from a certain vendor for ages, but I can never tell what they're in, just that they're occasionally used in FPV gear that's always discontinued by the time I find out about it. Microdisplays are such a worse market than standard displays (like what's in the Quest 2); it's a real headache.
To my knowledge, they have nothing to them that would mitigate damage from sunlight - and I can’t think of any way to do that, given how the lenses work. Certainly it’s a common thing that is warned against in forums and other online venues.
> By the way, do you know the vendor of the panels in Skyzone hardware?
Sorry, I don’t off the top of my head. I don’t think they’re terribly easy to disassemble to that point, either. I wouldn’t mind popping them open to check for you… but I have ~$600 in my set at the moment, so I don’t want to void the warranty on a whim :).
You might send an email to the folks at Fat Shark, though. You can often get their older goggles, like the HD3, used on Facebook for ~$200.
Other than that, I can't really think of anything off the top of my head. I know someone who uses one on a trampoline in the heat of the summer to cheat in a video game; Q2s are surprisingly durable little things.
Just don't stare at the sun, I guess.
The irony of posting this after a statement that is patently not supported by any evidence, and is generally thought to be wrong:
>due to phone and computer use.
I have some hope the use of VR gear might start to reverse that trend. The focal plane is normally set a couple meters away from you -- I think six meters for the Quest. Anecdotally, I find it comfortable to look into; it has a 'night' mode that reddens the light, too.
I don't know how provable it is, but I've always heard that nearsightedness may be caused by looking at things that are too close, too often.
Right now there's a concern in that the focal plane is always six meters, but light-field displays will be coming at some point, probably before these become a mass-market product.
Strictly enforced. I borrowed an older oculus headset from a friend to try out a while ago. It wouldn't let me use it without providing Facebook my personal details. I tried making a new anonymous facebook account, which was immediately locked out before I could provide government issued identification. I borrowed my friends' oculus account to briefly give it a go, but quickly returned the hardware because I was just too creeped out by the Facebook association.
It really is a shame that the companies with the biggest R&D budgets are also the ones which are the least aligned with the interests of the user.
Falling for shitty dark patterns doesn't earn being called a liar; take the victim blaming somewhere else.
Same here. Such a shame that this toxic company is stifling VR adoption by wrapping their tentacles around such a prime product.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/k81bg2/oculus_witho...
It'd be more like a Wii without Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It really won't be that different unless you're dependent on their online services.
However, eventually they'll be getting rid of the avenues to make a new account without a Facebook account like they've already slowly been doing. Which is a bad move, but while the avenues are available they might as well be taken.
I mean there’s probably a pretty strong correlation between being outside and having a long focal distance, but my understanding was that when attempting to control for this (ie rise of increase in apartment living, first in Japan and then other Asian cities) its tightly correlated to not focusing on things a long way away
It's almost like he's working on being disliked?
Maybe it's his a way of get back at the world for being invisible on so many levels, until financial success?
As for the Quest, you can buy a Facebook free version for about twice the price of the standard one
So while I spend 8-10 hours a day in VR, I don't do it all at once - I do take breaks, which means walking the dog 3 times a day right now, in addition to bio breaks or just stretching my legs a bit.
Pardon and I believe that I am futurist .. forward thinker like AR Glasses apps I want to make...
- Keep track of real life ping pong game score via AI & show each awarded point in glasses view (can do similar for fencing, card games, etc)
- AR location history (show me how this building looked decades ago)
- AR turn day into night & vice versa
- AR zoom in ... Apple just added their Magnifer app .. put that in AR/smart glasses
AR/smart glasses (really should call them that "smart," it makes more sense to regular consumer) will be revolutionary for sure as it enhances and innovates something millions and millions already do wear glasses. People will pick them up by the millions to billions and possibly because some of the app ideas I listed above.
VR has been around for 30 years .... why would millions to billions want to strap on a headset to talk to memojis of their co-workers for hours each day. It's isolating vs. AR ... AR glasses will enhance social behaviors ... VR i never see becoming anything like the iPhone. AR glasse are no doubt the next iPhone especially where developers create revolutionary apps for them.
It's obviously easier to look up from a physical screen and look around to change up your focal distance, but frankly, this is something that people already forget to do -- and it's just as easy to do in VR if you've got something in the far distance to look at.
Then your point definitely stands: taking off a headset in order to mix up your focal distance does sound like a pain.
On a VR headset, your eyes will always focus at the exact same distance until you remove the headset.
Ask those outside of your VR circle ... are they excited to use VR ... strap a headset on their face and work in a virtual world with their co-workers' memojis for 8 hours or would they prefer to wear their sunglasses or prescription glasses that are smart & enhance the world around them like never before. If my AR ideas are not good ...not ground breaking ideas that get millions to billions of regular people buying them im sure other developers ideas will be even better and prompt billions to adapt and buy them. But i am excited to be able to play real life games like ping pong (card games) and have my glasses keep/show me the score in my glasses view. I guess that is a stupid completely void of innovation type idea..... not changing how we do everyday things
Maybe out of all this work in VR things will be learned and used to create smart prescription or sunglasses.
I rather doubt it, but if we're lucky it's something they're working on. A generation or two after, maybe?
Now, Facebook can go fuck itself, but damn the Quest 2 looks nice. What a shame.
New account creation on numerous services (not just FB) has become increasingly limited. Even simple MS Windows registrations.
I’m pretty sure that Facebook is unofficially « closed » for new « non verified » accounts.
And that’s not even surprising : literally everybody was on Facebook a decade ago, it’s definitely not the social network of the younger generation, and nobody who had the occasion to register 10 years ago is going to change its mind today. So the vast majority of new registrations must be spam bots.
Official government issued ID, passport, photos, video verification available for a fee.
In the case of Quest2 that would mean you lose all the games you bought on the device along with the Facebook account.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook...
Come to think of it, that could be a way to get accounts with which to use Oculus with.