I have had my Oculus Quest 2 for about a year now. It has given me countless joy and taken up much of my time.
I bought the headset for gaming, which was my primary use in the beginning. And I enjoyed it for the most part.
It was a brand new gaming experience, especially for shooters and flight simulators. The reloading, aiming, firing and movement was just so much more realistic and immersive.
However, the graphics were mostly bad, compared to PC versions. The gaming content was no match either. Worst of all, motion sickness always kicked in after some time.
Therefore, once I started using the headset for movies, it quickly became the preferred option for me.
It could simulate the cinema so well, just with complete control on what to play, screen size, cinema theme, pause, backward/forward etc etc.
However, I have never given up on VR gaming completely. I would take up the headset and start playing from time to time.
I did sweat and feel tired, which was the excuse I gave myself for getting the headset in the first place.
The problem was that I always felt more tired than I should be, e.g. comparing with similar amount of pure physical activities. Sometimes, I felt that affected my energy level.
So I have decided to put a stop to VR gaming for now.
My alternative would then be flat-screen gaming. It would be hard for me to go back to the shooters after VR, but strategy games should do.
I encountered none of the worries which I had anticipated.
When I ordered, I worried about whether my glasses would fit and whether my glasses would scratch the headset lenses.
To my surprise, they were no problem at all.
My glasses could just fit into the headset and with the glass spacer provided in the package, my glasses were quite some distance away from the lenses.
So I just started using it, instead of waiting for the rubber spacer which I had originally planed.
But anyway, I guess we would stop caring soon enough after the first time…haha
Being able to see the VR world as I moved and interact with objects by physically moving my hands, as opposed to click some buttons on keyboard felt superb!
And I was really surprised how well the tracking was, evening the movement.
When I walked in the real world, I moved in the VR world.
Man! At that point, I really wanted a big house.
But mostly, I needed to use the controller to move around. Otherwise, I would keeping hitting the walls…
Also, bear in the mind that this was just the “starters”, like some “first contract” to introduce me to how things would work in VR.
I have not gone into the serious gaming yet. That would be another separate post.
I would very often dirty my classes just by putting on the headset, because the glasses got squeezed and touched my eyebrow etc.
Sweeting would make that so much worse.
So after some play time, even in air-conditioned rooms, I usually had blurry pictures, sometimes to a point that I could not tell a person from a pillar. And I would be emptying a whole mag on a pillar while the enemy came up on me from behind.
I guess I would probably need to get some prescription inserts if I really want to make this work.
The another problem is motion sickness.
After playing games or even watching some videos, I just do not feel comfortable, especially in the stomach.
But I have not given up yet. I guess it would take some getting used to.
Over the weekend, I had some time to catch up on the VR news.
Nov was supposed to be biggest month ever for VR, at least on the consumer hardware side.
But to me, it turned out to be a big disappointment.
With 4 launch events in like two weeks, you would think there would be some exciting advancement, especially with the Oculus leak after the announcement of HTC Vive Flow.
In a way, there was, but definitely not the way I expected.
Lets see how they disappointed.
HTC Vive Flow has amazing form factor, but what it can do in gaming is so limited. This is ok for me as I never had high expectations to begin with.
Varjo Aero is so close to the best of what we can expect now. But it costs a fortune. I am not ready to spend 4000 dollars on VR just yet.
Pimax is really exciting, with all the specs built in and the affordable price. Guess what, we have to wait until the same time next year to get our hands on them…
Oculus (or should I call it Meta) is really disappointing though. The stuff they released after the launch of HTC Vive Flow and all the speculation afterwards got me so excited. I was sure we were going to get the updated Quest with similar form factor to HTC Vive Flow. I was ready to pay double the price of Quest 2, even with the same specs as Quest 2. But No….Apparently that was too much to ask for.
It is so freaking disappointing.
Why the hell does the tech has to develop so slowly for mainstream consumers? It has been more than 10 years since the initial hype.
I was thinking about whether to buy it and I heard about the planned launches. So I waited, only to be disappointed.
GTA and some other popular titles are coming to Quest 2 platform, so I guess Quest 2 will still be relevant for some time.
From my research, the biggest concern for the purchase is that I wear glasses. And it does not seem to be very friendly to people who have to wear glasses.
The rest of the concerns, like having to purchase better head strap, facial foam etc, I am ok with.
I am ready to invest 500–600SGD for the experience.
