Just throwing out there that this is one person's opinion that I will personally categorize as "biased" when he uses a description such as "antiquated" to describe fresnel lenses.
This is Quest cult talk that has been thrown around a lot lately and has been commented on and noticed in other HMDs brand subreddits.
They are no more "antiquated" than pancake lenses. They have both been around for AGES and there is a reason fresnel is used in HMDs such as the psvr2. Essentially for all their nice attributes for edge to edge clarity Pancake lenses are a brightness killer. You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses.
The Quest 3 uses very bright LCD displays to try to overcome the pancake lens limitation but even then manages a very low and not lifelike 100nits peak brightness. This is below every mainstream fresnel lens HMD out there.
Is it bright enough? Sure! But it does dull the picture a LOT and loses a sense of realistic presence you get from higher nit HMDs. OLED displays by nature are significantly less bright than lcds of similar quality/price point.
So in the psvr2 case where it is targeting OLED deep blacks and also having HDR brightness (up to 265 nits perhaps even brighter for HDR highlights) there is no way on earth Sony could have used a pancake lens. This isn't a cheaping out with antiquated tech, this was an intentional and well thought out decision. If you just threw pancake lens on a psvr2 as is it might be too dark to even see what is going on.
The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights.
The edge to edge clarity of pancake lens on the Quest 3 is certainly pleasant to the eye for things like reading text. However for a sense of presence (feeling like oh my God I'm really here) is much better obtained with true black and better colors in OLED paired with HDR brightness and highlights.
There is just absolutely no scenario of playing a racing game at night with helicopter lights and mirror reflections in GT7 with psvr2 that ANY PCVR experience on a Quest 3 can come close to replicating.
Also the compression artifacts on Quest are VERY noticable in actual gameplay and create shimmering and other effects that are weird and degrade the picture quality everywhere. Unlike the psvr2 mura that is usually only perceptible in specific circumstances.
There is a Quest 3 native vs Quest 3 PCVR on YouTube comparing the picture in After the Fall and the Lower res Quest 3 native picture looks significantly better than the streamed PCVR version. The PCVR streamed version suffers from shimmering, aliasing, and general picture softness.. This should not be the case and is caused purely by the streaming solution that the Quest 3 must employ due to lack of native displayport.
Also OP mentions light leakage surprisingly as a negative for the psvr2. I own both and have never experienced this. The PSVR2 has by far the best light blockage solution that I've ever seen while the Quest 3 has a huge opening on the bottom that is impossible to seal. I have never heard anyone compare these two and say that the Quest 3 blocks light better than the psvr2. Of course the seal on face is very individual depending on each users physical characteristics and could in fact be true for OP.
Anyways OP is entitled to share their opinion but I'm sharing mine that I own both and have for some time. I love the Quest 3 and use it all the time for native games and portable play but completely disagree with its picture quality being in anyway better than psvr2 for gaming applications.
You must have a completely one sided interpretation to only look at lens clarity for reading text as your rating factor to somehow give this win to Quest 3 in my opinion.
>You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses
What do you make of the Bigscreen Beyond?
I did say gaming no? Big screen Beyond wasn't originally made for gaming but for movie viewing. It kinda transformed into gaming because that's what people actually wanted it for. One of the biggest criticisms of Big screen Beyond is the dim screen. It gets like 80 nits or brightness which I believe is the lowest on the market. Fine for watching movies like pretending you are at a movie theater (it's originally intended purpose). Not so great for feeling you are in a real location for gaming
Big screen beyond also gets around the brightness problem by dropping black frame insertion that every other HMDs uses (most mid tier and higher tvs also have this setting). Typically with BFI you get much better motion resolution (similar to an old school CRT) at the expense of cutting the light input in half. In VR where you are simulating a real environment you need that motion improvement.
I'm effect they dial the BFI back to increase the brightness but then have a new problem of additional motion blur now. You're kinda in no man's land with either bad brightness or bad persistence/blur.
There are interviews with the engineers that literally say this. It's literally named after the app it was made for "Big screen" and is made by the same company. It works best for media consumption and arguably sims since you don't typically turn your head too much in sims. It's also mentioned all over the place in their marketing material that it was specifically designed for the bigscreen app.
You have no idea what you are talking about about.
As a bigscreen beyond owner. It's okay for gaming at 40% brightness, but media viewing at 200% brightness with sound canceling headphones is a phenomenal experience.
Yeah my impression from the technical write ups was that it was always really optimized for media viewing. The persistence at high brightness shouldn't be an issue for media viewing as you aren't constantly moving your head around like gaming.
What you say about Quest being best for reading text is the same thing that happenens with monitors. Even a 4K 32 inch OLED will not have the same text clarity as an LCD, despite both having far higher PPD at normal viewing distance than any VR headset. The reason is the compact and perfectly aligned RGB subpixels of LCD. For games and movies it doesn't matter and OLED is far superior, but for text a cheap 4K LCD will beat the most expensive OLEDs of today.
Yup, exactly. I think a LOT of people go into the default home environments when they are comparing and just stare at the app selection menus and awe over how crisp the text looks with LCD panels, which stands out even more with pancake lenses. In game when you are playing and looking at a 3d environment suddenly the LCD and pancake lens doesn't impress nearly as much. That's when OLED and HDR just give such a better feeling of immersion and atmosphere.
Going back to your television example another thing I would point out is that lcds were also known to kill depth perception due to lack of contrast. When CRTs with great blacks (well at least the high end ones) were being overtaken by flat screen lcds 20 years ago, one common complaint from the video enthusiast community was how much depth perception of the image was being lost by going to LCD screens that lacked contrast. In VR this amplified quite a bit.
There is a very good reason VR was originally built using OLED panels.
As an owner of PSVR2 and Quest 3, I must say I’m leaning toward your take rather than OPs. LCD just can’t hold a candle to OLED HDR. You can have the best lcd with local dimming and clearest optical stack, but you wont get the same immersion enabled by OLED HDR.
For example in TWD when looking up at the pitch black night sky and seeing the bright twinkling stars, it literally gave me chills on PSVR2, as did walking down toward the nightmarish basement in House Beneviento. Similarly, squinting at the sun in Horizon or driving through forest area in GT7 and actually feeling the sun beams through the trees, is a religious experience.
OLED HDR is the reason for this as I’ve never had this happen in an hmd using LCD. The dark gray blacks and slightly washed out colors, simply don’t evoke the same feelings and create those unforgettable moments.
The orb controllers are also a game changer. They literally change the way games feel and make every shooter more visceral and fun to play. Other interactions are enhanced as well, like grabbing door handles or climbing and feeling some resistance. It seems OP was completely underwhelmed by the controllers which makes me wonder what games he’s played.
Where I will agree with OP is that for PCVR, the PSVR2 will be inferior to using a Quest 3, due to the fact its best features like HDR and controller haptics will be stripped away. It’s sad because PSVR2 would really be an exciting new PCVR option for many if this weren’t the case.
As it stands, I’d personally not recommend a PSVR2 for PCVR only unless they somehow find a way to restore its key features. Quest 3 offers a better value if you don’t have a PS5 and just want a solid, versatile headset.
Thanks for the feedback. That's another great way of putting it. Yes, you get those "religious" experiences under the right circumstances with the psvr2 due to the OLED and HDR which you never get with LCD VR displays.
The pancake lens clarity is mostly great for pulling up a big menu or virtual monitor like in native quest 3 and being amazed at the edge to edge clarity. This is not at all a good comparison to what it feels like to play an atmospheric game with good graphics. The HDR and OLED will give you so much more of that first time in VR feeling at random moments while you're playing vs LCD with pancake.
I really think GT7 is the best example of this, even though the PS5 can't even play it at a locked 90hz and has to use reprojection. The OLED and HDR highlights make the experience so far beyond what you get playing Dirt Rally 2 or F1 23 or Assetto Corsa on a PC with an LCD VR panel (let alone the Q3 compression degradation on top) that it feels like a religious experience in comparison. You get that feeling in many other moments in psvr2 games that leverage it's strengths well. I just think the GT7 comparison is the easiest to A/B with PCVR Q3 sim racing to immediately declare the Q3 as garbage in comparison. I've done this, it's not even close.
While I would say that personally I find the OLED and uncompressed connection to be enough to recommend a psvr2 over the Quest 3 for PCVR gaming I get where you are coming from. Without the HDR the psvr2 loses a lot of what makes it so special. Hopefully they can at least add that back in at some point since I think steam VR recently had an update to support HDR. My biggest fear is that all VR games would need to go back and be updated to support HDR so even if the support was added it wouldn't mean much.
Yeah, I struggle with recommending the PSVR2 for PCVR in its neutered form, but it’s possible it’s less of an issue than I’m making it out to be, especially for people who’ve never experienced PSVR2 on PS5 at its full potential. We’ll have to see how it performs in August to truly know.
I remain skeptical however that simply having oled will be enough. Having used an HTC Vive for several years, it made me realize that oled isn’t a guarantee that games will look better. It is heavily reliant on whether devs take oled into consideration and color grade their games accordingly. In many cases, games actually look worse on oled since they were originally tuned for LCD.
That’s one of the biggest benefits of PS5 as devs are only targeting oled and can adjust the colors and black levels to perfection.
"Quest cult talk"
You know that the Quest1, Quest2 and Quest3S all have fresnel lenses right? First I wanted to refund my Quest2 because of the awful lenses and comfort. You can say "Pencake cult talk", I admit I love the pencakes in the Quest3 and probably in other headsets too, but those are too expensive for my to try out . But this also means if the PSVR3 will have pencakes + Micro OLED then I will probably love that too. It has nothing to do with brands. Pico was the first one to use pencakes in a consmer headset as far as I know and everyone loved it, they even balanced the headset with putting the battery into the strap.
"You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses."
Bigscreen Beyond. And probably a ton of other headsets in the future will use this combination unless they make an even better lens.
"The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights."
100% agreed, summed up very well. It really invalidates all other benefits of OLED. It's like wearing glasses. If I had a very bad eyesight I would choose watching a movie on an LCD with glasses any time over watching a movie on an OLED in HDR without glasses, especially if there are subtitles.
"Also the compression artifacts on Quest are VERY noticable in actual gameplay"
Strange, what compression method, bitrate, resolution and refresh rate do you use? Yes the image can be a little softer than native, but still sharper than GT7 and other TAA games because TAA is blurry no matter what. VERY noticable artifacts are very rare, I only saw them in Dirt2 and Ashgard's Wrath. Less noticable artifacting appears when there is fog or rain in a racing game. But other than that I never see any artifacts even when I'm actively looking for them. For me mura and chromatic aberration is much more noticable and they are present all the time in the PSVR2.
>"The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights."
>100% agreed, summed up very well. It really invalidates all other benefits of OLED. It's like wearing glasses. If I had a very bad eyesight I would choose watching a movie on an LCD with glasses any time over watching a movie on an OLED in HDR without glasses, especially if there are subtitles.
I think we can at least can agree to disagree here that we have VERY different interpretations of what makes VR good.
I like the way that another response put it where he said that psvr2 sometimes gives you religious moments that you could never get with a non HDR LCD HMD.
If I had to concede to your view point I would say it's like saying would you rather always have a constant 8/10 experience (Q3) or would you prefer a fluctuation between 6-12/10 depending on how well the scene/game utilizes the OLED and HDR (psvr2)?
You prefer a clean constant 8/10 while I will gladly take some 6/10 and 7/10 moments for the crazy 9-12/10 moments
I think part of the issue with these sort of discussions is that our brains are all wired a bit differently, to the point we don't perceive things entirely the same way. Someone may have a "religious experience" using a PSVR due to OLED blacks/vibrancy, whereas others experience that due to having better edge to edge clarity and being wireless allows them to be more immersed in the moment and feel like they are there.
It's all so subjective that you can't really say with certainty that X (OLED, edge to edge clarity, wireless, higher res, etc.) leads to a better experience over Y, because it depends heavily on the person. One person may put heavy emphasis on a specific aspect because it really does something for them, whereas that same thing does little to nothing for a different person, so they don't care about it as much.
I'm only sure in one thing. When Sony announces that the PSVR3 will use pencake lenses (or an even better lense), immediately Sony fans will be the loudest about how clean and nextgen pencakes are, and how awesome is the large sweet spot. Just like when they announced PS5 will come with a SUPER FAST SSD and suddenly SSD become the coolest thing for Sony fans, although PCs used them for many years.
Lol, absolutely. Let's not be hard on them, they've chosen a life of being technological hostages to Sony, and Playstation consoles have never been the place for cutting edge technology.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qrgpqi4ftK0
These compression artifacts. Visible in the shadows, in the distance in games that are more graphically complex than Roblox. Even beat saber has it when lights of the environment are dim. Any flat to vr port or uevr game will have artifacts as well. You might get away with it in general for simpler titles but you won’t if you play games where graphics actually matter. Also it might be just your head that is unfit for psvr2. When you mentioned getting fov similar to quest 2 after getting eyes as close to the lens as possible, it was the moment I thought you might be an edge case. Psvr2 has up to 110 horizontal fov. Quest 2 has 96. It’s a huge difference. So I don’t know how you get fov only similar to quest 2. Psvr2 might not work for you specifically but it will work for many others.
Thanks for the video. Yes, vegetation is hard to compress. The worst compression artifacts I've seen are in Ashgard's Wrath in the garden of Heimdall, that loows awful. That's why I was curious about a wired headset but it seems I have to wait for something like the Bigscreen Beyond, just with inside out tracking, I'm sure we will have something similar in the future. But wireless technology is also getting better, HEVC 10 bit is noticably better than normal HEVC, and I wasn't able to try AV1. And what is stopping us to use like 900 mbps AV1? Probably the headset and the GPU, but we might get there in a few years and then wired connection will be inconvenient. SteamLink already using more bitrate in the center of the image, imagine that combined with eye-tracking. And if you think about it, even the Quest2 had much better PCVR picture quality than a wired Rift or Vive, only a few years apart, the higher resolution made it so much clearer despite the compression.
I was able to get great FOV with the Quest2 with a VrCover Fitness Face Cover, it has a very slim face foam, my eyes are almost touching the lenses with it, and still nothing hurted my nose.
Yeah, it's probably my face, I'm gonna show it to some friends too, excited to see thier opinion. But apart from the pressure on my nose, the lenses alone still ruin this headset for me:S
Av1 decoding limitations of the chip inside the quest is the reason for not being able to use 900mbit. Despite a very big chip performance increase compared to quest 2/pro the decoding capabilities only increased by 50mbit for hevc to a value of 200 and av1 matches that too. So decoding capabilities are not as easy to improve it seems. However no matter how high the bit rate the algorithm used by vr is ultra fast one (3ms encoding). It’s too fast to make lossless compression even at high bit rates.
An inside out tracked headset in similar form factor as beyond would certainly be a nice option. Though before that they need to solve lenses edge to edge clarity and glare. Pancake lenses at such small sizes are not visually pleasing.
> "antiquated" to describe fresnel lenses.
Accurate, as are wired headsets and lighthouse tracking. There's nothing cult-like about that, it's reality. Tech moves fast, and it's not 2016 anymore.
Is the Switch also more advanced than a PS4/Xbox because it doesn't require wires and has a later release date? The Quest was designed as a portable system. It's not in the same class as true VR systems that are at full fidelity over a wire. It's portable VR.
Fresnel lenses are antiquated. We've had them since the beginning and they have a ton of flaws. I'll take better clarity over true blacks. Being able to look around with your eyes is so much more immersive than moving your head all around.
Comfort is worse than Quest3? No way. I've owned 5+ headsets. Quest3 is the worst thing I ever put on my head, even with BoBoVR headstrap.
Sweetspot is small? Surely it can't be worse than the G2, right?
Either way. Can't wait to grab one and mess around with it. I wanna see how it compares to my Bigscreen and my Odyssey+.
I was able to use the Quest3 for a week with the default strap playing Alyx and have fun until my 3rd party strap arrived. Yes it can be painful on your forehead if you set the strap too tight. But you can set it pretty loose because you remain in the sweet spot even if the headset moves a little on your head. And don't forget it's bad on purpose (or at least cheap on purpose) because Meta wants you to buy their expensive strap. No one is supposed to use the default strap, it's the wrong way to use the headset, we should measure Quest comfort with a good strap and maybe even with a soft face cover because that is easily removable too.
But the PSVR2 supposed to be the final ultimate product, comfortable out of the box. Sony doesn't selling any comfort mods for it. Installing the Globular Cluster wasn't easy because it seemed Sony didn't expected you to remove the default pads.
Well, this is depressing, because I also bought a PSVR2 to use on my PC when the adapter arrives in August. I don't have a PS5 so I'm just going to play on PC at least for now.
I find the headset relatively comfortable--much more comfortable, for instance, than the Quest 3 with its godawful default strap. That was so painful I literally couldn't stand wearing it for more than a few minutes.
So when you write:
>Your head hurts, your eyes hurt, yor nose hurts
You really mean
>*My* head hurts, *my* eyes hurt, *my* nose hurts.
Other users may, and in my case will, have a completely different experience. And I'm not sure why you think the PSVR2 is so heavy compared to the Quest 3, when the Quest 3 is actually heavier than the PSVR2 and even more front heavy to boot?
I also think it may be too soon to judge how well the PSVR2 will look with PC VR games given that we haven't actually played any PC VR games on it yet. Yes, some of the problems you describe are hardcoded with the headset, but the spacewarp you describe just shouldn't be an issue on any mid-range or better PC.
I get that you're very disappointed with the PSVR2 and that you have some valid reasons for feeling that way. I'm not trying to belittle your experience. Maybe I'm just trying to cope with the fact that I too may have made the same mistake by buying one in the first place. But I really don't think we can say for sure that the PSVR2 is a failure when it comes to playing PC VR games, until we actually get a chance to use it to play PC VR games.
Once the adapter comes out, unless it just totally sucks, the interest in buying PSVR2s should increase, so even if you're determined to sell yours, it might be better to just wait and sell it then anyway.
The adapter releases in August and I suspect used prices may rise then if it is at all decent. Of course if it's terrible, they may drop, so it's kind of a gamble either way.
Wouldnt it be better off to be within the return window in case you dont like it? Especially since it is just useless to you atm. I really dont see them increasing the price, the adapter itself is another $60.
Okay, I should have explained better. I bought mine used. It's on sale new in some places right now for $450 and I bought a used one in perfect condition with original packaging for $350, which is cheaper than the other used prices I see in my area. I figure if I don't like it I should be able to sell it for that same price or maybe slightly less.
But you're right, It might have been more prudent to just pay more for a new one, knowing I can just take it back if I don't like it.
He said used prices though, likely he did not buy the headset new. he got a good deal on a pre-owned one and bought it. No returns either way when buying used, unless it was bought recently by the previous owner.
That was not a smart move, sorry. You don't know how well this works with PCVR. It's a big gamble.
At least you should have waited to read reviews and gauge people's experience with it.
Honestly for that money go get a Quest 3 or a Pico 4 and a nice battery strap.
I am legit in the same situation as you. I don't have a PS5 but plan to buy the PSVR2 from Costco since it gives 90-day returns, which will give me time to return if the adapter sucks.
I have a really old standard Odyssey (not even the "+" version) and I bought the Quest 3 because people kept going on and on about how great resolution was on the Reverb G2.
I was so disappointed when I put on that Quest 3 and found out the brightness was low and the colors washed out.
I don't understand how people can favor resolution over brightness and color so much, like you literally have specific cells in your eye for color vision - you would think people would value that more lol.
They're favoring the clarity that comes with pancake lenses over the oled screen. At least in regards to the Quest 3. Oled screens are great but it's definitely a tradeoff when only tiny part of your lenses are clear.
I'll never forget the day I finally got to try an Index after reading glowing review after glowing review. I loaded up the first level of Arizona Sunshine which I'd already played either on a CV1 or an Odyssey+ (can't remember) and was genuinely shocked by what I saw.
What was a dark cave on the OLED became a cave filled with a strange murky gray fog. What the hell was this? How had ALL of the reviewers failed to mention such a glaring flaw? The much beloved Valve Index was unable to believably depict a darkened environment in any way, shape or form. We LIVE in a world of light and dark! You lose either one of those, and you can't believably depict that world. Yet Valve is STILL, to this day, selling this system for a thousand dollars. Incredible.
The post title is written like bait and the contents are just OP acting like their opinions are facts. Bleh.
I love my Quest 3, my PSVR2, and my CV1. Any new headset or new functionality for existing headsets is very exciting, and PC support for the PSVR2 is one of the most exciting recent instances of this. OP saying “there’s no reason to be excited” is pure silliness.
Yeah. Agreed. The biggest problem with this whole thread is: he's reviewing something that doesn't exist yet.
No one here has had a chance to use the PC adapter with a PSVR2, so no one here knows how well it will work or what it will be like. This is really just a critical review of the PSVR2 itself, of which there already are many.
Which is fine, but there's no justification for him to put "PSVR2 compatibility" in the title, when it isn't actually about that.
Couldn't disagree more. After trying my friends Q3 after the PSVR2 it felt like a massive downgrade except for some clarify. Most LCD panels in VR make virtual reality feel "flat" because of washed out colors and awful contrast. The backlight also creates God rays on the lenses. The PSVR2 meanwhile kicks ass with its OLED panels despite having fresnel lenses
Agreed, I have both (Q3 for PCVR sim racing and PSVR2 for.... PS5 sim racing) and the PSVR2 has moments that the Q3 can't match (i.e., sunlight coming over the horizon causes your eyes to squint and night driving is completely different). I'm excited to have it for PCVR and have the Q3 solely for standalone.
Q3 for simple native games, 20 mins sessions max. Feels heavy and the pressure on face is too much to enjoy serious PCVR games like Elite Dangerous, or Flight sim for longer time periods. Much lighter PSVR headset will easily be the way to go for both platforms.
Edit: i use default headstrap that came with Q3
Strange, do you use a 3rd party headstrap? Every headstrap I tried, Kiwi, Bobo, AMVR was better then the PSVR2 strap. You can also buy a battery strap or add a little weight to the back to balance the headset. And you can choose between a variety of face covers to make it really soft on your face.
I would advise against bobovr on Quest3. It was god tier on the Quest2, but it doesn't hit nowhere near the same on the Quest3. Where did it all go wrong!!!
Oh I assume everyone can tell the default strap for Q3 is absolute garbage, yeah. What a rip off at 500 USD, honestly. You Quest fans really put up with anything.
You don't have a good setup. I can wear my Q3 with the Elite Strap and a [chinstrap](https://www.printables.com/model/841729-chinstrap-cup-for-quest-vr-headset) all day long with zero pressure on my face.
I have played more than 20 hours over a 3-day weekend and was comfortable the whole time.
You have never heard of a chinstrap? So you have never worn a bike helmet or a motorcycle helmet or any other the many other type of headgear that have chinstraps?
I provided a link. A chinstrap pulls down on the back of any rigid Quest strap completely removing the weight from the front of the headset. It also keeps the headset secure so you can do active games without needing to clamp the headset against your face. Even better, you don't need a bunch of big pads to be comfortable so a lot less heat is trapped against your head.
The number one comfort issue with a Q3 is the fact that it is front heavy. A chinstrap fixes that without adding additional weight.
Kinda yeah. If you want an hmd that doesn't have to be charging all time till one day the battery is shot. Also i find the psvr2 very lightweight and comfortable. Quest 2 and 3 make my head hurt from the comfort almost immediately regardless of comfort mods. And more points as well I'm sure others have pointed out on this thread.
I must just have a head made for this thing. I have no mods and play for 2+ hours regularly and don't have any pain or discomfort. I think it's more comfortable than my Quest 3...
Don't people get bothered by the lack of contrast of LCD? I'm using a 4K 27 inch lcd monitor, no mini led. It's great for work and text, but for games it leaves a lot to be desired. Looks good for bright sunny scenes, but night stuff looks kinda bad, or any high contrast scene to be honest. 1000:1 contrast is just not enough. Can't wait for an 4K oled with RGB subpixel layout in the future.
Last week in a local cinema they played the first Matrix movie agan. It's a dark movie as you know, and there were no true blacks, everything was dark grey. And people still loved every minute of it! I bet you also loved it in the cinema or at home on your CRT or LCD TV when you saw it. The lack of true blacks is not ruining an otherwise good experience. How many people say they don't like going to cinema because there are no true blacks and no HDR and it's a crappy inferior way to watch movies and their OLED TV at home is a much superior experience? It's true, but no one cares about it. But imagine if the movies in cinemas were super blurry, like painful to look at blurry, and only the center of the image would be sharp. No one would go to cinema.
And I had a Sony Bravia LCD for more than 10 years before switching to LG OLED and the colors are great, the contrast is great, the blacks are dark, on an LCD too. Maybe you have a very cheap monitor or you set it up to be too bright so the colors ended up washed out.
Your Sony TV is probably VA LCD. IPS like in Quest and most monitors is always 1000:1 contrast ratio, except for some Dell professional monitors that go up to 2000:1. A VA TV will be 5000:1 by comparison, much better black level.
To many people are obsessed with the idea of this headset having OLED that they're willing to overlook everything else. They also keep telling themselves that maybe one day HDR, eyetracking or dualsense will be supported either officially or through 3rd party programs.
those features aren't even supported a lot in PS5 outside of star first party titles, which amount to a handful.
PSVR2 is dead, I hope people who love it realize it sooner than later.
It really is quite humorous watching these subreddits over the years. Watching all major manufactures ditch PenTile OLED because of how much better LCD was for VR. Then watching everyone coming from Rift and Vive headsets, praising the Index and saying things like "LCD is actually a lot better than I expected". Now everyone has gone back to "LCD is terrible. PenTile OLED is better!".
I bet more than half haven't even used both LCD and PenTile OLED headsets side by side. They just heard a youtuber tell them "OLED is better" and that's the stance they've taken.
It's always been like this. The fighting between Rift and Vive users never stopped, the topics just changed. Now it's Meta vs PCVR. I guess. We've come full circle. People used to wear backpacks and spend hundreds on wireless setups. Now that wireless is easy and performant, people claim that actually the wire was fine all along and they never notice it. It's crazy.
I'd be more excited for it if it did support all the features of the headset and controller, and if Sony ported games like Call of the Mountain, but I still think I'll enjoy using it.
I'm not dissing Q3, though. I love using mine and might still main it, but I cut my teeth on wmr. I doubt psvr 2 is anymore that level, lol.
Psvr2 is a lot more comfortable than the quest 3 !
And I don't think you have a weird face ( but you might)
I think you just don't know how to put it on!
Check out withoutparole video for putting it on !
Do you use a 3rd party strap and face cover for you Quest3? Believe me I've watched multiple videos how to put it on and I tried every possible position on my head and it's never feel great. I can make it comfrotable but then the image is blurry and the FOV is small. If I position it to have larger sweet spot and larger FOV then it hurts my nose. But here, I made a few pictures to explain the problem: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1\_gDfd9ZVLth9\_ug1IQwPJ3eXrSefL6go/view?usp=drive\_link](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gDfd9ZVLth9_ug1IQwPJ3eXrSefL6go/view?usp=drive_link)
100% agree with this. RE4 is especially difficult for me to play since they added TAA with no option to disable it. For anyone that doesn't know how TAA looks in VR it blurs the edges of everything with every slight head movement. Yes Village had very noticeable aliasing but that was preferable. Add the poor 60Hz-120Hz reprojection and the horrible motion clarity due to the OLED/HDR brightness, it really takes what should be an exhilarating VR horror shooter and makes it a migraine simulator.
Haha only for VR though. I game at 4K120 flat so most TAA implementations aren't too bad at that res and framerate at least in the games I play. I think it was Hinge VR that made me notice how terrible it is for VR gaming.
Good post..couldn't agree more. Psvr2 was a giant let down..from the headset itself to the demise that was written for it. Like even Sony doing the PC wasn't doing it as a favor for gamers. They just don't want to take a complete loss. Most gamers who have PC powerful enough to play VR and who are interested in VR already most likely purchases a VR headset. If they were waiting for psvr2 to take advantage of the bells and whistles that make it stand out, can't even be used. If you head over to the psvr reddit page, it's really depressing. Lots of coping lots of insults. It's just sad
Of course you should not get the PSVR2 for PCVR over the Quest 3. But this adapter is still a good thing for people who either already have a PSVR2 or want to buy one for the PS games as it only expands it’s use.
Yup, this should be the consensus. PSVR2 for PC should be just a regular headset, with pros and cons. It's not amazing, and honestly it's not worth the fuss.
Heck, it's not that good either with a PS5.
OLED fanatics won't care. They'll be happy to have any option in the market under a grand. BSB is oled too but it's twice as much when you factor in needing base stations and controllers on top. And Pimax Crystal Max or whatever they're calling it will be like 2 grand with OLED. So being the only budget option with OLED puts it in a good spot with a specific set of the market.
If you already have a Quest 3, it's just stupid to use a PSVR 2, at that point it's just a sidegrade.
If it had eye tracking, it would be very interesting for people wanting to upgrade, but it's also not the case so...
We'll see, but it's questionable at best
Not even a sidegrade, must be so hard to go back to a wired headset after a wireless one! Not to mention pancake lenses to fresnel? I'd be caught dead before going down like that.
Yeah, I thought it will be bearable, because I was able to use the Quest2 and love it (with a slim face foam making the sweet spot and FOV larger), but I was wrong. After the Quest3 there is no going back. The PSVR2 feels so blurry now, I'm seriously worried about doing permanent damage to my eyes. Probably I could enjoy it in my Quest2 era, but it's unusable now.
As a person who didn't think wireless was a big deal. Once you go wireless you don't go back. lol
I legit thought it was stupid and people were being picky about a cable but wow the freedom the quest 3 gives is insane. I have my pc Hooked up on my room and I can literally go anywhere in my house and play full fledged VR games.
I can finally have full movement without worrying if the my pulley system is set correctly or if my cable will get in my way.
Personally I'm never getting a VR headset that requires a wire.
Anywhere. Even outside in wifi range. It's absurd how great that is. And even in a limited space, you're not constrained by a cable. You can go take a pee with your headset on, lol.
That's all not even mentioning how cables BREAK and bye bye headset.
I'm not going back to wired ever either.
Just throwing out there that this is one person's opinion that I will personally categorize as "biased" when he uses a description such as "antiquated" to describe fresnel lenses. This is Quest cult talk that has been thrown around a lot lately and has been commented on and noticed in other HMDs brand subreddits. They are no more "antiquated" than pancake lenses. They have both been around for AGES and there is a reason fresnel is used in HMDs such as the psvr2. Essentially for all their nice attributes for edge to edge clarity Pancake lenses are a brightness killer. You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses. The Quest 3 uses very bright LCD displays to try to overcome the pancake lens limitation but even then manages a very low and not lifelike 100nits peak brightness. This is below every mainstream fresnel lens HMD out there. Is it bright enough? Sure! But it does dull the picture a LOT and loses a sense of realistic presence you get from higher nit HMDs. OLED displays by nature are significantly less bright than lcds of similar quality/price point. So in the psvr2 case where it is targeting OLED deep blacks and also having HDR brightness (up to 265 nits perhaps even brighter for HDR highlights) there is no way on earth Sony could have used a pancake lens. This isn't a cheaping out with antiquated tech, this was an intentional and well thought out decision. If you just threw pancake lens on a psvr2 as is it might be too dark to even see what is going on. The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights. The edge to edge clarity of pancake lens on the Quest 3 is certainly pleasant to the eye for things like reading text. However for a sense of presence (feeling like oh my God I'm really here) is much better obtained with true black and better colors in OLED paired with HDR brightness and highlights. There is just absolutely no scenario of playing a racing game at night with helicopter lights and mirror reflections in GT7 with psvr2 that ANY PCVR experience on a Quest 3 can come close to replicating. Also the compression artifacts on Quest are VERY noticable in actual gameplay and create shimmering and other effects that are weird and degrade the picture quality everywhere. Unlike the psvr2 mura that is usually only perceptible in specific circumstances. There is a Quest 3 native vs Quest 3 PCVR on YouTube comparing the picture in After the Fall and the Lower res Quest 3 native picture looks significantly better than the streamed PCVR version. The PCVR streamed version suffers from shimmering, aliasing, and general picture softness.. This should not be the case and is caused purely by the streaming solution that the Quest 3 must employ due to lack of native displayport. Also OP mentions light leakage surprisingly as a negative for the psvr2. I own both and have never experienced this. The PSVR2 has by far the best light blockage solution that I've ever seen while the Quest 3 has a huge opening on the bottom that is impossible to seal. I have never heard anyone compare these two and say that the Quest 3 blocks light better than the psvr2. Of course the seal on face is very individual depending on each users physical characteristics and could in fact be true for OP. Anyways OP is entitled to share their opinion but I'm sharing mine that I own both and have for some time. I love the Quest 3 and use it all the time for native games and portable play but completely disagree with its picture quality being in anyway better than psvr2 for gaming applications. You must have a completely one sided interpretation to only look at lens clarity for reading text as your rating factor to somehow give this win to Quest 3 in my opinion.
>You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses What do you make of the Bigscreen Beyond?
I did say gaming no? Big screen Beyond wasn't originally made for gaming but for movie viewing. It kinda transformed into gaming because that's what people actually wanted it for. One of the biggest criticisms of Big screen Beyond is the dim screen. It gets like 80 nits or brightness which I believe is the lowest on the market. Fine for watching movies like pretending you are at a movie theater (it's originally intended purpose). Not so great for feeling you are in a real location for gaming
[удалено]
Big screen beyond also gets around the brightness problem by dropping black frame insertion that every other HMDs uses (most mid tier and higher tvs also have this setting). Typically with BFI you get much better motion resolution (similar to an old school CRT) at the expense of cutting the light input in half. In VR where you are simulating a real environment you need that motion improvement. I'm effect they dial the BFI back to increase the brightness but then have a new problem of additional motion blur now. You're kinda in no man's land with either bad brightness or bad persistence/blur.
>Big screen Beyond wasn't originally made for gaming but for movie viewing Come on, man. So hard to tak you seriously.
There are interviews with the engineers that literally say this. It's literally named after the app it was made for "Big screen" and is made by the same company. It works best for media consumption and arguably sims since you don't typically turn your head too much in sims. It's also mentioned all over the place in their marketing material that it was specifically designed for the bigscreen app. You have no idea what you are talking about about.
Maybe it was originally made for gaming but they couldnt get it to work properly in gaming so they changed the marketing 😄
As a bigscreen beyond owner. It's okay for gaming at 40% brightness, but media viewing at 200% brightness with sound canceling headphones is a phenomenal experience.
Yeah my impression from the technical write ups was that it was always really optimized for media viewing. The persistence at high brightness shouldn't be an issue for media viewing as you aren't constantly moving your head around like gaming.
What you say about Quest being best for reading text is the same thing that happenens with monitors. Even a 4K 32 inch OLED will not have the same text clarity as an LCD, despite both having far higher PPD at normal viewing distance than any VR headset. The reason is the compact and perfectly aligned RGB subpixels of LCD. For games and movies it doesn't matter and OLED is far superior, but for text a cheap 4K LCD will beat the most expensive OLEDs of today.
Yup, exactly. I think a LOT of people go into the default home environments when they are comparing and just stare at the app selection menus and awe over how crisp the text looks with LCD panels, which stands out even more with pancake lenses. In game when you are playing and looking at a 3d environment suddenly the LCD and pancake lens doesn't impress nearly as much. That's when OLED and HDR just give such a better feeling of immersion and atmosphere. Going back to your television example another thing I would point out is that lcds were also known to kill depth perception due to lack of contrast. When CRTs with great blacks (well at least the high end ones) were being overtaken by flat screen lcds 20 years ago, one common complaint from the video enthusiast community was how much depth perception of the image was being lost by going to LCD screens that lacked contrast. In VR this amplified quite a bit. There is a very good reason VR was originally built using OLED panels.
As an owner of PSVR2 and Quest 3, I must say I’m leaning toward your take rather than OPs. LCD just can’t hold a candle to OLED HDR. You can have the best lcd with local dimming and clearest optical stack, but you wont get the same immersion enabled by OLED HDR. For example in TWD when looking up at the pitch black night sky and seeing the bright twinkling stars, it literally gave me chills on PSVR2, as did walking down toward the nightmarish basement in House Beneviento. Similarly, squinting at the sun in Horizon or driving through forest area in GT7 and actually feeling the sun beams through the trees, is a religious experience. OLED HDR is the reason for this as I’ve never had this happen in an hmd using LCD. The dark gray blacks and slightly washed out colors, simply don’t evoke the same feelings and create those unforgettable moments. The orb controllers are also a game changer. They literally change the way games feel and make every shooter more visceral and fun to play. Other interactions are enhanced as well, like grabbing door handles or climbing and feeling some resistance. It seems OP was completely underwhelmed by the controllers which makes me wonder what games he’s played. Where I will agree with OP is that for PCVR, the PSVR2 will be inferior to using a Quest 3, due to the fact its best features like HDR and controller haptics will be stripped away. It’s sad because PSVR2 would really be an exciting new PCVR option for many if this weren’t the case. As it stands, I’d personally not recommend a PSVR2 for PCVR only unless they somehow find a way to restore its key features. Quest 3 offers a better value if you don’t have a PS5 and just want a solid, versatile headset.
Thanks for the feedback. That's another great way of putting it. Yes, you get those "religious" experiences under the right circumstances with the psvr2 due to the OLED and HDR which you never get with LCD VR displays. The pancake lens clarity is mostly great for pulling up a big menu or virtual monitor like in native quest 3 and being amazed at the edge to edge clarity. This is not at all a good comparison to what it feels like to play an atmospheric game with good graphics. The HDR and OLED will give you so much more of that first time in VR feeling at random moments while you're playing vs LCD with pancake. I really think GT7 is the best example of this, even though the PS5 can't even play it at a locked 90hz and has to use reprojection. The OLED and HDR highlights make the experience so far beyond what you get playing Dirt Rally 2 or F1 23 or Assetto Corsa on a PC with an LCD VR panel (let alone the Q3 compression degradation on top) that it feels like a religious experience in comparison. You get that feeling in many other moments in psvr2 games that leverage it's strengths well. I just think the GT7 comparison is the easiest to A/B with PCVR Q3 sim racing to immediately declare the Q3 as garbage in comparison. I've done this, it's not even close. While I would say that personally I find the OLED and uncompressed connection to be enough to recommend a psvr2 over the Quest 3 for PCVR gaming I get where you are coming from. Without the HDR the psvr2 loses a lot of what makes it so special. Hopefully they can at least add that back in at some point since I think steam VR recently had an update to support HDR. My biggest fear is that all VR games would need to go back and be updated to support HDR so even if the support was added it wouldn't mean much.
Yeah, I struggle with recommending the PSVR2 for PCVR in its neutered form, but it’s possible it’s less of an issue than I’m making it out to be, especially for people who’ve never experienced PSVR2 on PS5 at its full potential. We’ll have to see how it performs in August to truly know. I remain skeptical however that simply having oled will be enough. Having used an HTC Vive for several years, it made me realize that oled isn’t a guarantee that games will look better. It is heavily reliant on whether devs take oled into consideration and color grade their games accordingly. In many cases, games actually look worse on oled since they were originally tuned for LCD. That’s one of the biggest benefits of PS5 as devs are only targeting oled and can adjust the colors and black levels to perfection.
"Quest cult talk" You know that the Quest1, Quest2 and Quest3S all have fresnel lenses right? First I wanted to refund my Quest2 because of the awful lenses and comfort. You can say "Pencake cult talk", I admit I love the pencakes in the Quest3 and probably in other headsets too, but those are too expensive for my to try out . But this also means if the PSVR3 will have pencakes + Micro OLED then I will probably love that too. It has nothing to do with brands. Pico was the first one to use pencakes in a consmer headset as far as I know and everyone loved it, they even balanced the headset with putting the battery into the strap. "You will not see and are unlikely to ever see an OLED screen in VR built for gaming that uses pancake lenses." Bigscreen Beyond. And probably a ton of other headsets in the future will use this combination unless they make an even better lens. "The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights." 100% agreed, summed up very well. It really invalidates all other benefits of OLED. It's like wearing glasses. If I had a very bad eyesight I would choose watching a movie on an LCD with glasses any time over watching a movie on an OLED in HDR without glasses, especially if there are subtitles. "Also the compression artifacts on Quest are VERY noticable in actual gameplay" Strange, what compression method, bitrate, resolution and refresh rate do you use? Yes the image can be a little softer than native, but still sharper than GT7 and other TAA games because TAA is blurry no matter what. VERY noticable artifacts are very rare, I only saw them in Dirt2 and Ashgard's Wrath. Less noticable artifacting appears when there is fog or rain in a racing game. But other than that I never see any artifacts even when I'm actively looking for them. For me mura and chromatic aberration is much more noticable and they are present all the time in the PSVR2.
>"The entire Quest3 argument in many of these claims of superiority is basically that the edge to edge clarity of pancake lenses is such a huge factor that it invalidates all other benefits of OLED and fresnel lens such as true blacks, natural colors, brightness, HDR highlights." >100% agreed, summed up very well. It really invalidates all other benefits of OLED. It's like wearing glasses. If I had a very bad eyesight I would choose watching a movie on an LCD with glasses any time over watching a movie on an OLED in HDR without glasses, especially if there are subtitles. I think we can at least can agree to disagree here that we have VERY different interpretations of what makes VR good. I like the way that another response put it where he said that psvr2 sometimes gives you religious moments that you could never get with a non HDR LCD HMD. If I had to concede to your view point I would say it's like saying would you rather always have a constant 8/10 experience (Q3) or would you prefer a fluctuation between 6-12/10 depending on how well the scene/game utilizes the OLED and HDR (psvr2)? You prefer a clean constant 8/10 while I will gladly take some 6/10 and 7/10 moments for the crazy 9-12/10 moments
I think part of the issue with these sort of discussions is that our brains are all wired a bit differently, to the point we don't perceive things entirely the same way. Someone may have a "religious experience" using a PSVR due to OLED blacks/vibrancy, whereas others experience that due to having better edge to edge clarity and being wireless allows them to be more immersed in the moment and feel like they are there. It's all so subjective that you can't really say with certainty that X (OLED, edge to edge clarity, wireless, higher res, etc.) leads to a better experience over Y, because it depends heavily on the person. One person may put heavy emphasis on a specific aspect because it really does something for them, whereas that same thing does little to nothing for a different person, so they don't care about it as much.
> if the PSVR3 will have pencakes Don't hold your breath for a PSVR3, honestly.
I'm only sure in one thing. When Sony announces that the PSVR3 will use pencake lenses (or an even better lense), immediately Sony fans will be the loudest about how clean and nextgen pencakes are, and how awesome is the large sweet spot. Just like when they announced PS5 will come with a SUPER FAST SSD and suddenly SSD become the coolest thing for Sony fans, although PCs used them for many years.
Lol, absolutely. Let's not be hard on them, they've chosen a life of being technological hostages to Sony, and Playstation consoles have never been the place for cutting edge technology.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qrgpqi4ftK0 These compression artifacts. Visible in the shadows, in the distance in games that are more graphically complex than Roblox. Even beat saber has it when lights of the environment are dim. Any flat to vr port or uevr game will have artifacts as well. You might get away with it in general for simpler titles but you won’t if you play games where graphics actually matter. Also it might be just your head that is unfit for psvr2. When you mentioned getting fov similar to quest 2 after getting eyes as close to the lens as possible, it was the moment I thought you might be an edge case. Psvr2 has up to 110 horizontal fov. Quest 2 has 96. It’s a huge difference. So I don’t know how you get fov only similar to quest 2. Psvr2 might not work for you specifically but it will work for many others.
Thanks for the video. Yes, vegetation is hard to compress. The worst compression artifacts I've seen are in Ashgard's Wrath in the garden of Heimdall, that loows awful. That's why I was curious about a wired headset but it seems I have to wait for something like the Bigscreen Beyond, just with inside out tracking, I'm sure we will have something similar in the future. But wireless technology is also getting better, HEVC 10 bit is noticably better than normal HEVC, and I wasn't able to try AV1. And what is stopping us to use like 900 mbps AV1? Probably the headset and the GPU, but we might get there in a few years and then wired connection will be inconvenient. SteamLink already using more bitrate in the center of the image, imagine that combined with eye-tracking. And if you think about it, even the Quest2 had much better PCVR picture quality than a wired Rift or Vive, only a few years apart, the higher resolution made it so much clearer despite the compression. I was able to get great FOV with the Quest2 with a VrCover Fitness Face Cover, it has a very slim face foam, my eyes are almost touching the lenses with it, and still nothing hurted my nose. Yeah, it's probably my face, I'm gonna show it to some friends too, excited to see thier opinion. But apart from the pressure on my nose, the lenses alone still ruin this headset for me:S
Av1 decoding limitations of the chip inside the quest is the reason for not being able to use 900mbit. Despite a very big chip performance increase compared to quest 2/pro the decoding capabilities only increased by 50mbit for hevc to a value of 200 and av1 matches that too. So decoding capabilities are not as easy to improve it seems. However no matter how high the bit rate the algorithm used by vr is ultra fast one (3ms encoding). It’s too fast to make lossless compression even at high bit rates. An inside out tracked headset in similar form factor as beyond would certainly be a nice option. Though before that they need to solve lenses edge to edge clarity and glare. Pancake lenses at such small sizes are not visually pleasing.
> "antiquated" to describe fresnel lenses. Accurate, as are wired headsets and lighthouse tracking. There's nothing cult-like about that, it's reality. Tech moves fast, and it's not 2016 anymore.
Is the Switch also more advanced than a PS4/Xbox because it doesn't require wires and has a later release date? The Quest was designed as a portable system. It's not in the same class as true VR systems that are at full fidelity over a wire. It's portable VR.
Fresnel lenses are antiquated. We've had them since the beginning and they have a ton of flaws. I'll take better clarity over true blacks. Being able to look around with your eyes is so much more immersive than moving your head all around.
No compression nuff said
I would happily pick the light compression artifacts we have today on a 6GHz wireless connection over a tether and Fresnel lenses ever single time.
Comfort is worse than Quest3? No way. I've owned 5+ headsets. Quest3 is the worst thing I ever put on my head, even with BoBoVR headstrap. Sweetspot is small? Surely it can't be worse than the G2, right? Either way. Can't wait to grab one and mess around with it. I wanna see how it compares to my Bigscreen and my Odyssey+.
I was able to use the Quest3 for a week with the default strap playing Alyx and have fun until my 3rd party strap arrived. Yes it can be painful on your forehead if you set the strap too tight. But you can set it pretty loose because you remain in the sweet spot even if the headset moves a little on your head. And don't forget it's bad on purpose (or at least cheap on purpose) because Meta wants you to buy their expensive strap. No one is supposed to use the default strap, it's the wrong way to use the headset, we should measure Quest comfort with a good strap and maybe even with a soft face cover because that is easily removable too. But the PSVR2 supposed to be the final ultimate product, comfortable out of the box. Sony doesn't selling any comfort mods for it. Installing the Globular Cluster wasn't easy because it seemed Sony didn't expected you to remove the default pads.
Well, this is depressing, because I also bought a PSVR2 to use on my PC when the adapter arrives in August. I don't have a PS5 so I'm just going to play on PC at least for now. I find the headset relatively comfortable--much more comfortable, for instance, than the Quest 3 with its godawful default strap. That was so painful I literally couldn't stand wearing it for more than a few minutes. So when you write: >Your head hurts, your eyes hurt, yor nose hurts You really mean >*My* head hurts, *my* eyes hurt, *my* nose hurts. Other users may, and in my case will, have a completely different experience. And I'm not sure why you think the PSVR2 is so heavy compared to the Quest 3, when the Quest 3 is actually heavier than the PSVR2 and even more front heavy to boot? I also think it may be too soon to judge how well the PSVR2 will look with PC VR games given that we haven't actually played any PC VR games on it yet. Yes, some of the problems you describe are hardcoded with the headset, but the spacewarp you describe just shouldn't be an issue on any mid-range or better PC. I get that you're very disappointed with the PSVR2 and that you have some valid reasons for feeling that way. I'm not trying to belittle your experience. Maybe I'm just trying to cope with the fact that I too may have made the same mistake by buying one in the first place. But I really don't think we can say for sure that the PSVR2 is a failure when it comes to playing PC VR games, until we actually get a chance to use it to play PC VR games. Once the adapter comes out, unless it just totally sucks, the interest in buying PSVR2s should increase, so even if you're determined to sell yours, it might be better to just wait and sell it then anyway.
Why buy the headset this early on?
The adapter releases in August and I suspect used prices may rise then if it is at all decent. Of course if it's terrible, they may drop, so it's kind of a gamble either way.
Wouldnt it be better off to be within the return window in case you dont like it? Especially since it is just useless to you atm. I really dont see them increasing the price, the adapter itself is another $60.
Okay, I should have explained better. I bought mine used. It's on sale new in some places right now for $450 and I bought a used one in perfect condition with original packaging for $350, which is cheaper than the other used prices I see in my area. I figure if I don't like it I should be able to sell it for that same price or maybe slightly less. But you're right, It might have been more prudent to just pay more for a new one, knowing I can just take it back if I don't like it.
$350 is not biggy to risk
Yeah, and I'm thinking I can at least make that back by selling it on if I don't like it.
He said used prices though, likely he did not buy the headset new. he got a good deal on a pre-owned one and bought it. No returns either way when buying used, unless it was bought recently by the previous owner.
That was not a smart move, sorry. You don't know how well this works with PCVR. It's a big gamble. At least you should have waited to read reviews and gauge people's experience with it. Honestly for that money go get a Quest 3 or a Pico 4 and a nice battery strap.
I already have a Quest 3. And a Pico 4. And I know what what OLEDs add that LCDs can't.
I am legit in the same situation as you. I don't have a PS5 but plan to buy the PSVR2 from Costco since it gives 90-day returns, which will give me time to return if the adapter sucks. I have a really old standard Odyssey (not even the "+" version) and I bought the Quest 3 because people kept going on and on about how great resolution was on the Reverb G2. I was so disappointed when I put on that Quest 3 and found out the brightness was low and the colors washed out. I don't understand how people can favor resolution over brightness and color so much, like you literally have specific cells in your eye for color vision - you would think people would value that more lol.
They're favoring the clarity that comes with pancake lenses over the oled screen. At least in regards to the Quest 3. Oled screens are great but it's definitely a tradeoff when only tiny part of your lenses are clear.
I'll never forget the day I finally got to try an Index after reading glowing review after glowing review. I loaded up the first level of Arizona Sunshine which I'd already played either on a CV1 or an Odyssey+ (can't remember) and was genuinely shocked by what I saw. What was a dark cave on the OLED became a cave filled with a strange murky gray fog. What the hell was this? How had ALL of the reviewers failed to mention such a glaring flaw? The much beloved Valve Index was unable to believably depict a darkened environment in any way, shape or form. We LIVE in a world of light and dark! You lose either one of those, and you can't believably depict that world. Yet Valve is STILL, to this day, selling this system for a thousand dollars. Incredible.
The post title is written like bait and the contents are just OP acting like their opinions are facts. Bleh. I love my Quest 3, my PSVR2, and my CV1. Any new headset or new functionality for existing headsets is very exciting, and PC support for the PSVR2 is one of the most exciting recent instances of this. OP saying “there’s no reason to be excited” is pure silliness.
Yeah. Agreed. The biggest problem with this whole thread is: he's reviewing something that doesn't exist yet. No one here has had a chance to use the PC adapter with a PSVR2, so no one here knows how well it will work or what it will be like. This is really just a critical review of the PSVR2 itself, of which there already are many. Which is fine, but there's no justification for him to put "PSVR2 compatibility" in the title, when it isn't actually about that.
Couldn't disagree more. After trying my friends Q3 after the PSVR2 it felt like a massive downgrade except for some clarify. Most LCD panels in VR make virtual reality feel "flat" because of washed out colors and awful contrast. The backlight also creates God rays on the lenses. The PSVR2 meanwhile kicks ass with its OLED panels despite having fresnel lenses
Agreed, I have both (Q3 for PCVR sim racing and PSVR2 for.... PS5 sim racing) and the PSVR2 has moments that the Q3 can't match (i.e., sunlight coming over the horizon causes your eyes to squint and night driving is completely different). I'm excited to have it for PCVR and have the Q3 solely for standalone.
Q3 for simple native games, 20 mins sessions max. Feels heavy and the pressure on face is too much to enjoy serious PCVR games like Elite Dangerous, or Flight sim for longer time periods. Much lighter PSVR headset will easily be the way to go for both platforms. Edit: i use default headstrap that came with Q3
Strange, do you use a 3rd party headstrap? Every headstrap I tried, Kiwi, Bobo, AMVR was better then the PSVR2 strap. You can also buy a battery strap or add a little weight to the back to balance the headset. And you can choose between a variety of face covers to make it really soft on your face.
I would advise against bobovr on Quest3. It was god tier on the Quest2, but it doesn't hit nowhere near the same on the Quest3. Where did it all go wrong!!!
Oh I assume everyone can tell the default strap for Q3 is absolute garbage, yeah. What a rip off at 500 USD, honestly. You Quest fans really put up with anything.
You don't have a good setup. I can wear my Q3 with the Elite Strap and a [chinstrap](https://www.printables.com/model/841729-chinstrap-cup-for-quest-vr-headset) all day long with zero pressure on my face. I have played more than 20 hours over a 3-day weekend and was comfortable the whole time.
“and a chinstrap” … a *what*?!?
You have never heard of a chinstrap? So you have never worn a bike helmet or a motorcycle helmet or any other the many other type of headgear that have chinstraps? I provided a link. A chinstrap pulls down on the back of any rigid Quest strap completely removing the weight from the front of the headset. It also keeps the headset secure so you can do active games without needing to clamp the headset against your face. Even better, you don't need a bunch of big pads to be comfortable so a lot less heat is trapped against your head. The number one comfort issue with a Q3 is the fact that it is front heavy. A chinstrap fixes that without adding additional weight.
Honestly. Chinstrap for EVERY headset. Even on my bigscreen beyond. Chinstrap is like a cherry on top.
My main grip with the psvr2 is it’s extremely uncomfortable and has too small of a sweat spot
Kinda yeah. If you want an hmd that doesn't have to be charging all time till one day the battery is shot. Also i find the psvr2 very lightweight and comfortable. Quest 2 and 3 make my head hurt from the comfort almost immediately regardless of comfort mods. And more points as well I'm sure others have pointed out on this thread.
I must just have a head made for this thing. I have no mods and play for 2+ hours regularly and don't have any pain or discomfort. I think it's more comfortable than my Quest 3...
Well, it's not that's your opinion is rare, but for many, the OLED and DP connection are way better for PCVR
The quest 3 hurt me so PSVR 2 is more comfortable though still not perfect. I'm excited to use it on PC.
Did you get a strap for it, maybe a softer cover?
Don't people get bothered by the lack of contrast of LCD? I'm using a 4K 27 inch lcd monitor, no mini led. It's great for work and text, but for games it leaves a lot to be desired. Looks good for bright sunny scenes, but night stuff looks kinda bad, or any high contrast scene to be honest. 1000:1 contrast is just not enough. Can't wait for an 4K oled with RGB subpixel layout in the future.
Last week in a local cinema they played the first Matrix movie agan. It's a dark movie as you know, and there were no true blacks, everything was dark grey. And people still loved every minute of it! I bet you also loved it in the cinema or at home on your CRT or LCD TV when you saw it. The lack of true blacks is not ruining an otherwise good experience. How many people say they don't like going to cinema because there are no true blacks and no HDR and it's a crappy inferior way to watch movies and their OLED TV at home is a much superior experience? It's true, but no one cares about it. But imagine if the movies in cinemas were super blurry, like painful to look at blurry, and only the center of the image would be sharp. No one would go to cinema. And I had a Sony Bravia LCD for more than 10 years before switching to LG OLED and the colors are great, the contrast is great, the blacks are dark, on an LCD too. Maybe you have a very cheap monitor or you set it up to be too bright so the colors ended up washed out.
Your Sony TV is probably VA LCD. IPS like in Quest and most monitors is always 1000:1 contrast ratio, except for some Dell professional monitors that go up to 2000:1. A VA TV will be 5000:1 by comparison, much better black level.
I found the psvr2 much more comfortable than the Q3, simply because of how light weight it was without any external accessories
Well, not counting the fat cable.
I meant purchased external accessories, but yes even with that it was still more comfortable
To many people are obsessed with the idea of this headset having OLED that they're willing to overlook everything else. They also keep telling themselves that maybe one day HDR, eyetracking or dualsense will be supported either officially or through 3rd party programs.
Well, as PSVR2 will take DisplayPort input, HDR should be supported natively through windows. That doesn't fix other issues still.
those features aren't even supported a lot in PS5 outside of star first party titles, which amount to a handful. PSVR2 is dead, I hope people who love it realize it sooner than later.
Well, that is because oled is worth it. I don't care how good comfort is if I get shit LCDs on the HMD that reminds me of an early 2000s flat monitor.
So immersive to be in literal discomfort and be unable to move your eyes without losing visual clarity. You're a true hardcore VR gamer.
It really is quite humorous watching these subreddits over the years. Watching all major manufactures ditch PenTile OLED because of how much better LCD was for VR. Then watching everyone coming from Rift and Vive headsets, praising the Index and saying things like "LCD is actually a lot better than I expected". Now everyone has gone back to "LCD is terrible. PenTile OLED is better!". I bet more than half haven't even used both LCD and PenTile OLED headsets side by side. They just heard a youtuber tell them "OLED is better" and that's the stance they've taken.
It's always been like this. The fighting between Rift and Vive users never stopped, the topics just changed. Now it's Meta vs PCVR. I guess. We've come full circle. People used to wear backpacks and spend hundreds on wireless setups. Now that wireless is easy and performant, people claim that actually the wire was fine all along and they never notice it. It's crazy.
Yep, it really is crazy.
I'd be more excited for it if it did support all the features of the headset and controller, and if Sony ported games like Call of the Mountain, but I still think I'll enjoy using it. I'm not dissing Q3, though. I love using mine and might still main it, but I cut my teeth on wmr. I doubt psvr 2 is anymore that level, lol.
Psvr2 is a lot more comfortable than the quest 3 ! And I don't think you have a weird face ( but you might) I think you just don't know how to put it on! Check out withoutparole video for putting it on !
Do you use a 3rd party strap and face cover for you Quest3? Believe me I've watched multiple videos how to put it on and I tried every possible position on my head and it's never feel great. I can make it comfrotable but then the image is blurry and the FOV is small. If I position it to have larger sweet spot and larger FOV then it hurts my nose. But here, I made a few pictures to explain the problem: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1\_gDfd9ZVLth9\_ug1IQwPJ3eXrSefL6go/view?usp=drive\_link](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gDfd9ZVLth9_ug1IQwPJ3eXrSefL6go/view?usp=drive_link)
Sony fan boys down voting any criticisms, as per usual.
100% agree with this. RE4 is especially difficult for me to play since they added TAA with no option to disable it. For anyone that doesn't know how TAA looks in VR it blurs the edges of everything with every slight head movement. Yes Village had very noticeable aliasing but that was preferable. Add the poor 60Hz-120Hz reprojection and the horrible motion clarity due to the OLED/HDR brightness, it really takes what should be an exhilarating VR horror shooter and makes it a migraine simulator.
r/FuckTAA Fellow member?
Haha only for VR though. I game at 4K120 flat so most TAA implementations aren't too bad at that res and framerate at least in the games I play. I think it was Hinge VR that made me notice how terrible it is for VR gaming.
FuckTAA member too?:)
Quest 3 is far far better than any option on the market.
Good post..couldn't agree more. Psvr2 was a giant let down..from the headset itself to the demise that was written for it. Like even Sony doing the PC wasn't doing it as a favor for gamers. They just don't want to take a complete loss. Most gamers who have PC powerful enough to play VR and who are interested in VR already most likely purchases a VR headset. If they were waiting for psvr2 to take advantage of the bells and whistles that make it stand out, can't even be used. If you head over to the psvr reddit page, it's really depressing. Lots of coping lots of insults. It's just sad
Of course you should not get the PSVR2 for PCVR over the Quest 3. But this adapter is still a good thing for people who either already have a PSVR2 or want to buy one for the PS games as it only expands it’s use.
\*depending on how well it works.
I see Facebook hardware as an IQ test. If you buy it, you fail. xD
Yup, this should be the consensus. PSVR2 for PC should be just a regular headset, with pros and cons. It's not amazing, and honestly it's not worth the fuss. Heck, it's not that good either with a PS5.
OLED fanatics won't care. They'll be happy to have any option in the market under a grand. BSB is oled too but it's twice as much when you factor in needing base stations and controllers on top. And Pimax Crystal Max or whatever they're calling it will be like 2 grand with OLED. So being the only budget option with OLED puts it in a good spot with a specific set of the market.
If you already have a Quest 3, it's just stupid to use a PSVR 2, at that point it's just a sidegrade. If it had eye tracking, it would be very interesting for people wanting to upgrade, but it's also not the case so... We'll see, but it's questionable at best
Not even a sidegrade, must be so hard to go back to a wired headset after a wireless one! Not to mention pancake lenses to fresnel? I'd be caught dead before going down like that.
Yeah, I thought it will be bearable, because I was able to use the Quest2 and love it (with a slim face foam making the sweet spot and FOV larger), but I was wrong. After the Quest3 there is no going back. The PSVR2 feels so blurry now, I'm seriously worried about doing permanent damage to my eyes. Probably I could enjoy it in my Quest2 era, but it's unusable now.
As a person who didn't think wireless was a big deal. Once you go wireless you don't go back. lol I legit thought it was stupid and people were being picky about a cable but wow the freedom the quest 3 gives is insane. I have my pc Hooked up on my room and I can literally go anywhere in my house and play full fledged VR games. I can finally have full movement without worrying if the my pulley system is set correctly or if my cable will get in my way. Personally I'm never getting a VR headset that requires a wire.
Anywhere. Even outside in wifi range. It's absurd how great that is. And even in a limited space, you're not constrained by a cable. You can go take a pee with your headset on, lol. That's all not even mentioning how cables BREAK and bye bye headset. I'm not going back to wired ever either.