VR the champions of the world?

[Skybird]

Its out now, had waited for it. Taken for itself its good, compared to the other racket&ball games I own, I prefer those. Groovy soundtrack. My verdict, you cant go wrong with picking this one, but then again, I like the others better. I dont like that it has no auto-running mode, you must run via ministick, either by moving smoothly (only left and right) or by getting teleported in steps when pushing the stick - both is not my thing.

In grades: B- .

[Skybird]

VRIDER has been released in Applab (=Early Access), and I must say its off with a very impressive start. So far around half a dozen tracks, all but one I do know from car racing. Its still in development, but I did not come over any serious issues.

Visually, the perspective of VR on a motorbike is a feast. The track layouts are correct, but the environment on the tracks' sidelines is less detailed and realistic than what I am used to from car racers.

Physics seem to be very good, but I never rode a motorbike. You can/must lean behind the windshield to help top speed, or erect your upper body to help braking, the handling with VR sticks is well done. This really feels immersive and makes you believe to ride a real motorbike. But it needs practice, handling is VERY different to that in cars. It ill take much time to become competitive in mastering the tracks smoothly.

A racing title was so far missing in my Quest library, the futuristic one I had so far became stale very soon. This one will last and will deliver a much better show for the money. If interested in the genre: definitely recommended! So far I know of no better racing title for Quest 2/3.


The video shows three tracks.

[Skybird]

Quest 3 gets the v64 update. It brings some good things.

[Skybird]

The old classic Homeworld is coming to Quest. Its not just a port, but a new game created from scratch.



So is the Metro Franchise with Metro Awakening.

[Skybird]

In Quest there is an app named Meta Quest TV. Its essentially a dwarf version of youtube, means it is a video box with Meta-selected content that you can watch. Some of that content is really good. Some is old, and has low resolution only. They really need better quality control there. But its nevertheless worth to check and examine that app's available filmbase, its an app easy to overlook and forget. You shouldn't!

I just watched two documentaries that really impressed me and are done with utmost possible display quality (resolution). In The People's House you get a tour through the White House's famous rooms, and meet the Obamas who indeed are your tour guides. Visually, I was very impressed, I like the looks of the WH's inside. Of all government's seats I have seen on TV at some opportunity, this one looks the best to me. Noble, but not as megalomaniac and overdone than many of the other government's seats in the old world and in Russia or China. Also, the size and proportions of the oval office are very different from the impression you get when you see its recreation in some Hollywood movie - its bigger than it seems. Its around 20 minutes.

The other is a one hour documentary that was a real stunner, The Soloist, about Alex Honnold who many see as the leading free climber in the world currently. And the camera follows him into the vertical and in 360° - the sights are breathtaking and exciting, and you better do not look down. Worth every minute. The man is nuts, totally nuts. Or suicidal, I dont know.

An older program of utmost beauty was Oceans of Light, diving and "water-dancing" embedded within a herd of dolphins, for a quarter of an hour.

Already mentioned before, the fantastic series of ISS and space videos entitled Space Explorers. They developed a new camera just for this shooting. Its several films, runnign for several hours in total I think. High resolution material, breathtaking. It will change your view at the world, forever. Just a big 2D movie screen cannot do this.

Many of the AirPano films are available here, too. Drone-driven landscape footage. They have a fantastic channel at youtube as well.

He who has a Quest does not want to miss any the above.

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If you have not noticed it , I am quite enthusiastic about the possibilities of VR. I use it a lot, and daily, but I also see that the best-rated PC-VR headset by now is a several years old piece of technology and that several makers have dropped out of the competition for PC VR hardware. The numbers of VR headsets in use in the wild however slowly but constantly grow, also at Steam, and if you interpret them in detail then you see that VR indeed is developing, and cinstantly gropwing, but slower than the ever-pushing industry hoped it would, and that the drive is pushed not so much by PC market, but by cable-free headsets like Meta's. Which is, now that the various options of links between Quests and PCs seems to work reliable (wasn't the case for me in the beginning), is no surprise.

Practically nobody speaks of the Pico 4 anymore, no more native stuff for it comes out. And Sony had a good headset in the race with its 2nd version of it - but then made an unforgivable mistake, like with the first one: they did not support it with a sufficient output of VR games on the Playstation, and for the little there is the hardware simply is way too expensive. Completely Sony's own fault. But they give the whole business a bad name, so shame on them.

Microsoft cancelled its Mixed Reality standard on Windows, and for whatever a reason they even actively take it out of existing Windows installations, which in my opinion is a very shabby move. Older headsets depending on MR sooner or later will stop working if they cannot work under SteamVR and OpenVR.

Hewlett-Packard dropped out of the race already several months ago when annoucning they stopped work on the G2's successor.

Valve is rumoured to have a new PC headset in the pipe. Probably again quite expensive, like they always are. It will need to beat the Quest 3 if it wants to become successful. Either by aggressive pricing, or by technological features that beat Meta's headsets - while being seen as affordable still. No easy task in these times.

Of one thing I am still convinced, however: VR this time came to stay. Things just move slower and slightly different than profit makers hoped they would. And as long as Meta, the main drive behind it, does not ruin it again by implementing again twists towards some obscure businessmodel to lure people into its - still very much unwanted - Metaverse, VR will continue to evolve.

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Since I am so enthusiastic about VR and use it that much, I ran - unexpectedly - into the issue of low memory. My Quest 3 was full - and I decided that for me, with my intense use of it, it was a recommended option to upgrade it already. I got the 512 GB version of it, quadrupling the memory size of the 128 GB version. To me it is the number of apps, for other players who play adventures with triple A ratings, it probaly is the sheer size of a single game. Asgard's Wrath II which until this summer is a free addon for Quest customers, for exmaple has a size of 35 GB and more, whereas many of the apps I prefer to use are clearly below the 1 GB mark, and none exceeding a 9 GB limit. If you have experience with VR and know you can handle it (no VR sickness), and you think about buying a Quest 3, do not underestimate these factors, give them a good ammount of thinking. If you already liked VR, you probably end up easier than you imagine where I found myself at: a situation of buying twice - and this within just six months. I underestimated it. But then, the whoke Quest 3 totally surprised me - I thought it woudl in any way remain to be inferior to my PC-linked G2 Reverb, and wnated to test it only whether my old mother could manage to handle its menus, then planned to give the testing device to her. I was totally wrong!! My mum (76!) however still is fanatic about Golf, plays various racketball games and - does shadow-boxing with passion. LOL

The old 128 GB set now goes to my parents, too, so that they have two and can both use Wander together and watch films together (playing sport games and golf is not for my father anymore, he immediately drops in place and becomes desperate and dizzy: high age issue).

[Skybird]

Pimax will release two new headsets later this year, pretty much higher end and thus: costly. One is cable-linked to PC, the other is a - more expensive - standalone version.

https://www.overtake.gg/news/pimax-c...-headset.2013/



For comparison, Quest 3 offers 2064 x 2208 pixels per eye, the HP G2 Reverb 2160x2160 per eye.



Never cable-linked for me again.

No, I will not get these. Msakes o sense with my old, weka system. And even with a new one I would not, they are too costly.

[Skybird]

And a bit on Golf again. I have stabilized my handicap between 18.3 and 18.7, and according to the table in this article, amongst German real golf players that is a pretty respectable value already.

https://golfforscher-de.translate.go...en&_x_tr_hl=de



I forget all that when playing a round, however, and still get very angry with myself, I ruin my rounds with two or three holes of horror where I collect unnecessary mistakes and turn a par 3 into a 9 above par or something like that, and I do this not rarely. The psychological aspect of it is really very interesting, this inner war against yourself that you must wage all the time, the challenge to remain calm and modest even in the face of rage and frustration, and the hard oyu fight for cxlamer, the nore you lose thsi fight of course. Classical meditation paradoxon! Frustration, despair, fury are there, but then sometimes also some surprising satisfaction when a long put goes in you did not expect to end up in the hole, the extraordinarily good drive, the shot going exactly as intended. And then the next desaster awaits you already just one shot later, and you slice it 20m to the right and land the ball right before a tree trunk. Or it rolls endlessly over the green, drops off the green on the other side and with last energy falls into a water obstacle that happens to suddenly show up there. Or you balance the ball three times along the rim of the hole, and it does not go in, just bends its course. The relief when you finally got releaved from your misery, and then you dont kow what to do: curse and yell, or laugh about how ridiculous it all and yourself are.

You want to learn about the character and inner value of somebody else? Lead him onto the golf course. It tells volumes about whom you are dealing with.

Which means: be careful with whom you play a round together, you may reveal more about yourself to the other than you are aware of.

[Skybird]

Breathtakingly brilliant. I got the base version and used it a lot in the past two weeks, some of the advanced features like tomographic scan imagery need additional financial investment and abonements, that is a bit too much over the top for me, I do not study medicine. But for layman, the base version, still 30 coins heavy, really is very, very recommendable if at least a small interest in the matter is given.



When realising the utmost fragility and tinyness of some structures there are, you cannot escape to feel reverence for the miracle all this really is.To see in real scaling how extrenly tiny and compekx and tiny some glands or the inner earbones are that are so very important for us to live and enjyo the world and life and health - its beyond speech if you see it yourself, become aware of its real size, and then note the non-negotiable importance of it all. A miracle.


The title must be Human Anatomy VR - do not mistake it with another app named Anatomy VR: its far less advanced.




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And while I talk education apps, a call-out for Stellarium, this by now well-known software for Windows and Android. It is available in VR, too, and offers in principle the same experience like the other two versions, just in full 3D. Works very well.

[Skybird]

Sale in the meta appstore, until April 28th.

[Skybird]

Subside - This is an upcoming game that - as the first review says - reminds immediately of Kajak Mirage, that immersive it is. Available at Steam as a Demo. I tried it (in Quest 3, via SteamLink), looks, sound and physics indeed are breathtakingly good. The second video shows a much bigger wild reserve.





Its also coming to Playstation VR, whether that also indicates a Quest standalone version I dont know. Its just one guy doing this. Wowh!



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I also have had a very good start with a game that for some by now has an almost legendary reputation, the VR version of Into the Radius. It feels like playing Tarkovski's film Stalker, just with more story telling and a bit action and horror, it is as mysterious and enchanted, in a dangerous way. The atmosphere indeed is creepingly intense, you feel very isolated and endangered, and since you sneak around in dark places I have had my shock moments already and times I got sudden goose pimples. Heandling is quite intuitive, and I can already see after just one hour why so many say this is one of the best games in VR to be played. Very intense.

[Skybird]

Do you know Carrom ? It was new to me, it reminds a bit of Pool/Billiards, but is played with chips. Seems to be very popular in especially India, parts of Asia and increasingly in the US. In Germany it is practically unknown.



If interested, ther eis a solid VR simualtion in the AppLab, and it is free so far. It plays solid, the AI shows me my (newbie) place easily, only the menu could use some polish, the selection of the dominant hand does not reliably work. Visually, its very good. Allows 1-4 players with up to 2 AI bots.


As usual with such games, the music is the first thing I switch off.


So far its a free demo, so no risk in trying it out.

[Skybird]

The next Golf+ course they release is apparently Quail Hollow, soon to arrive.

[Skybird]

This news really is a bigger-than-biggie: Meta opens its Quest operation system for other VR headset producers. And if the calculation behind this move works out as hoped for, then this can and will have dramatic and mostly positive consequences for the VR market. And could in the long run reinforce Meta's dominance on the market, leading to a monopoly. However, a unification of VR standards imo is necessary, because Microsoft dropping out of VR support (Windows Mixed Reality), Sony stopping production of its headset version 2 (not selling well because Playstation does not have enough VR games in store), and the most popular (by user numbers) VR headset on PC still being an almost 5 year old piece of tech, holds a message in itself.


It must get simpoler, cheaper, more affordable. The interest is there. The market groes, constantly, but just slower than market anaylsts hoped it would. Which maybe is good, I think: growth at natural speed over revolution. However, if you get too slow, things stall. I thunk the Quest 3 really serves as a doorkicker, sicne it is both independent and PC-usable, and combined great technical ability with affordability. Have you noticed how little we hear of Apple's seven-times as expensive headset? It costs three times as much than I have spend on the Quest plus all hardware like batteries and grip attachments (and those from the US really were costly due to shipping and taxes) plus all software I use on it.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Skybird

The next Golf+ course they release is apparently Quail Hollow, soon to arrive.

For the next hour or so I'll be on the Green.