VR the champions of the world?

[Skybird]

New fodder for the addiction! :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV-i-oN9EWM

[Skybird]

My goodness, The Riviera is an incredibly beautifully designed course and it's really fun to walk it, but hell, it's difficult! Every hole is a minefield, every green is riddled with nasties, the bunkers jam from left and right, there's not a tree out of the way and every path to the hole is an expression of the designer's latent sadism. I suspect the workers had to move all the earth with their bare hands on his instructions, their bones are presumably scattered everywhere just below the turf.

Great! The hardest thing I've ever played in Golf+ - and the first Hawaiian course wasn't exactly a walk in the park either. But at least that one was flat. This one now has the charm of a frozen heavy swell, with mini-golf obstacles scattered around on top.

Should I say it? 135 strikes on my first full round attempt. Thats a new record low. What could go wrong on this course, will go wrong. Every time. Its the Olympia course for 2028 I read - by the end of the day players will butcher each other in despair, I assume.
-----------------------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38W3qaVSy4Q

[Skybird]

Since one of the recent updates for Quest-related tech stuff, finally the advertised link between Quest and PC works for me, both cable and cable-free (via WLAN). Its still slightly more a hassle than with Virtual Desktop, but it works now. However, often without sound for me, and the usually recommended tips how to switch options in the Quest and on PC here and there to activate this and that sound related option do not always work for me. Maybe it is a specific issue with my setup, maybe it is not, I do not really see through and understand why what is happening. - (If you try it keep on mind that your firewall on PC must allow the traffic, either define an exception rule or switch the firewall off while you make use of Link. It does not work with Firewall on).

However, sound in Virtual Desktop is no problem.

Its also no problem in the Meta Steam VR app, which links the Quest directly to the Steam installation on the PC. That comes handy, I found, it allows to play complex, hardware-stressing PC sims inside the Quest that if launched under Virtual Desktop would stutter due to the overall system load of having to run the sim and VD as well. Why the simple PC-Quest 3 link in cases of such demanding sims also stutters, but with the Steam VR uplink does not, I have no idea, its a bit mysterious or inconsistent. But yesterday I ran for the first time ever ACC in the Quest3, which I tried before, but then had stutters and finally the "ctd", whereas less demanding titles worked.

BTW, in ACC the Quest is an eye opener, literally, much better than with the G2, and absolutely no comparison to the Rift 1 from years ago. It looks unbelievably good, and very sharp and crispy. It looks also significantly better than in the G2. Those pancake lenses make all the difference.

When you run into issues with a VR title and it kicks you out, always check the pixel density per game title, to be set inside the running Steam VR app, and test to - sometimes drastically - reducing it. It solved any issues I had with the higher resolution of the G2 and now Quest 3, my system is 6.5 years old and the gfx board is a GTX-1080 TI, thats now an old card, so it faces performance limitations more often now than it did six years ago. To the eye the visible difference between having pixel density at default 100% and reducing it to 60, 50, 40 %, is harmless. At least in the modern highres headsets now, in the Rift 1 it was much more critical.

I finally found a solid pool title, Black Hole Pool. Crispy graphics, excellent physics, but the way you handle the queue in VR with two controllers is a bit bizarr, you get zoomed down to chin-over-stick position when pressing one button, and then arrest the stick with another button to then carry out your strike, but your handmovements, so that the headset can track them, must be before your face and on shoulder's height, in other words you handle the stick with your fists raised like a boxer. The best implementation of VR pool so far was to be found in Sportsclub VR, formerly known as Pool Nation VR, but that is now broken for me like for so many other players as well, which is a pity, it was a good - and social - game as long as it worked (they did not develope it further after the Rift 1 era), and it had other games as well, especially a very good air hockey sim. Regarding Pool, Black Hole is better, though the handling is eccentric. Single Player is possible, but the focus is on MP and social experience, very clearly. Its mostly for the latter part that I recommend this, even if it is still in development on the Quest 3, it has the so-called App-Lab lable, which is something like "Early Access". The player lobby however I found always to be empty. So best use this with a friend or family.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGtAIJ042-4


Do not underestimate the value of VR social games for indeed having a social experience - and this comes from somebody who always was and for the most still is a single player! But the experiences with my Mum, with whom I regularly play both Walkabout Mini Golf and Golf+, have taught me this and I changed my stand on this a bit. She is also consiodeirng the Angler game I mentioned some post earlier, it also has multiplayer, but she finds the menu confusing. You must not necessarily play with random foreigners, though in Eleven and Racket Club this works well for me and I had only good, polite, kind experiences with other players so far, but certain games are better suited for social contexts than others, and a casual, laid-back gaming like Pool or Minigolf or Fishing are excellent opportunities to contact for example good friends, or family members. Instead of telephoning them, you chat with them in VR, and also play a bit while chatting. I enjoy it, also due to the fact that direct, personal talks with my parents nowadays sometimes run out of topics and words after all news of the last couple of days has been traded. The playing-the-game then helps tremendously to prevent the talk getting one-sided or lacking in topics and so leading to silence. That is very precious.

Another title well-suited for this is Wander, I mentioned it before, its in principle just an interface for Google's Streetview database, its like Google Earth, just without the generic 3D interface Earth has, in Wander the navigation is done on a traditional map from which you then can jump into the Streetview images. Here one user can link his avatar to that of the "tour guide", and then automatically follows the guide's movements and navigations aroudn the world, all while the group of users can talk live with each other. Also a nice social contact setup!

Google Earth btw also can be used in the Quest withou a problem via Virtual Desktop, Cable Link, Air Link or Steam VR app link. Its spectacular.

[Skybird]

Mixed reality really can knock me out of my shoes. And since a few hours I know that I bought the wrong pool game. :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MTPOn1FNww

Its called Miracle Pool and is still in development, can be had for free currently. It uses the graphics engine of Black Hole Pool, but already now is better than that title. That is because here you can play in uncompromised Mixed Reality. The adjusting of the time the table and handling of the queue is very, very well done, the latter thing better done than in Black Hole Pool, the armswork feels more natural. The game is intended to be played in roomscale so that you indeed can walk around the table, however, you can rotate the table via thumbsticks around its scentre so that you can stay in your place, more or less, to line up your shot. That is the way to go if your room is not big enough for that table.

I am very much impressed by this. Once finished, it could be another lighttower game for VR in general and Mixed Reality in special.

Imagine you line the table up and adjust it so that it matches the height of a real kitchen table - then you can lean on it when lining up your shot! Only First Person Tennis played in roomscale and you running in a big hall or on the grass of a big garden in real scale (yes,m you can do that) would be more curious to imagine.

There are quite some very good titles now for MR. Let nobody say the coloured MR in the Quest 3 is just an unneeded lkouxury feature. Used cleverly, it makes all the difference.

[Skybird]

Tennis in full roomscale, in a car park.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfaAgTPemrc

[Skybird]

My dad, 79, is angry at me a bit, and my mum keeps surprising me, she is 75: she is completely hooked on Miracle Pool and just called me and told me all about it after yesterday we already played it online and I talked her through the handling and menus. She absolutely loves it. Why my dad is angry? Well, after we stopped playing yesterday at around 1800H via internet link, she ate a bit, watched the TV news, and then started playing it alone: until almost 0500H in the earlymorning, consuming every power bank they have in the household.

She must have played on the pool table around 8 hours in a row. Now she feels slightly dizzy.

Well, after EIGHT hours in VR I would feel dizzy a bit, too.

My family. Full of crazies. :D

P.S. We still do Wander together, and play Golf+ and Walkabout Minigolf together. All sorts of racket& ball games however are too fast for her.

[Skybird]

And again my Mum (75) surprises me - the past two hours we played Cybrix both in coop and against each other. She loves it! And she drove her fangs deep into it.

Its a mix if Breakout and futuristic squash in a TRON world. The biog pro is that this game is very immune against causing nausea since you usually do not jump, walk or run, but stand still while doing a lot of Tai-Chi and Racket-style movements with both hjands/arms, two rackets held in both hands.

I had this from early time with the Quest 3 on and then forgot about it. She then surprised me with having found out about it herself and asking me whether this would be something for her. - It surely is: we played 2 hours in a row - then my father got a bit angry. :D

2 SP modes, 4 MP modes, in some modes MR is available. Is often quoted to not cause motion sickness. Like Racket Club VR, this game scores big time with clearly defined limited playing space needs, cooperating with the limited space you usually have in a living room. 1.5x1.5m to 1.5-2.0m or so is enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWdnBMRBzcQ

Edit. We get these long battery duration times because we use external 25000 mAh-powerbanks and fast USB cables (must be fast cables, else the battery in the quest drains nevertheless, just slower) to link them to the Quest. In fact, both of us have 2 external such batteries.


Sports games work very well in VR, but especially racket&ball games as a general genre work exceptionally well. A primary use for VR headsets.

[Skybird]

I could not be any less interested.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/02/tech/apple-vision-pro-what-you-need-to-know/index.html

Too expensive. Demand so far is just a fraction compared to other earlier Apple releases. And the idea that people would all working day long run around with these masks on their faces I find amusing, absurd, and misled. Like the Metaverse idea, I find this conception by Apple so far completely unconvincing.

And where are the games? Lets face it, games (and porn) drive the development. Like it was the case with VHS (well, not the games aspect, but the other one).

Possible that Apple took a gamble and will lose big time this time.

Now, all that functionality for that high price in a gadet the size of ordinary sunglasses - that would be something different.

On a sidenote the general development of the VR market is like this: the growth is not as high or fast as they hoped, but: it is a constant growth with a slow rate. I very much like that because it shows a more evolutionary growth instead of a hyped revolution that lives short and then burns out. Thats why I think Apple will fail with this VR mask, it delivers not to the players who want more affordable kit, whilwe the Quest 3 may be technically inferior but nevertheless features a benchmark tech standard that seemsto indicate a breakthrough in customer's perception of critical techn stnadard treshhold. Means: it is affordable, but nevertheless now delivers a resolution, image quality and overal quality that convinces more potential customers than any headset before in the past 6 years. The cable-free feature also adds tremendously.

I think Apple must reduce its price dramatically if it wants this mask to become a success, just selling it to en vogue compoanises who do not really need it, may not be enough. Not above 1000 coins. I am sceptical that Apple will succeed where Zuckerberg so far failed with his Metaverse. In the end, you simply do not need these virtual "universes" for business office work. They are an overpriced computer game only. And as I see them: they even are costly and very boring computer games.

[mapuc]

After having a talk with my local computer salesman I have decided to wait until I have a stronger Gaming computer than the one I have today, before buying a VR set.

I think 6 GB graphic isn't enough and the speed of the motherboard isn't that fast either.

I can't remember all the thing I have in my computer. I do know it does not fulfil the medium req. needed to get something out of playing a VR-game.

In fact I'm on the outlook for a more heavy Gaming computer with at least 12 GB graphic. and more than 3.5 Mhz. cpu.

I WILL buy a VR-set right after I got this new Gaming computer.

Markus

[Skybird]

Thats the charme of the Quest - you do not need a PC for it. But can optionally link it to a PC - now or later. :03:



If you want to go with PC-only VR headset, consider one I did not mention before: BigScreen. The makers of the same software are behind it.



Sooner or later I expect that HTC will show a new headset, too, but like with the Valve I think they will add a hefty pricetag to it. The Valve one now is outdated.

[Skybird]

Also, if you ever buy a gaming PC - do buy a BEEFY one. Buy one that gives you performance reserves, even if you do not need them right now.

My rig is from autumn 2017, an i7 8700K, with now 32GB (originally 16 GB) RAM and a GTX 1080TI with 11 or 13 GB, I forgot. That was almost overkill for my software needs back then, and it ran the Oculus Rift 1 fine.

Two years ago I replaced the headset with the HP G2 Reverb. It had four times a higher resolution, and I was not certain the old card and CPU could support that. Showed it can, if I lowered settings just a very little bit, the only exception is MSFS, which originally worked fine, but after one update of theirs started to give me problems. That reserve I had from my PC buying from three years before had paid off in full, I was very happy that I had decided for it. If I had a hardware that just so ran the Rift 1, it would have declared MIA when the G2 arrived - which would have been a costly desaster. The Rift had lost sound, and the display was too obviously outdated, and it was not available anymore in 2020. I HAD to buy another headset with its greater resolution, I had no choice.

The Quest 3 I originally only bought to test whether it would be suitable for my old parents, especially my mother, simple use and app availability and handling, all that on my mind. I then wanted to hand it over to her. But I was knocked out of my shoes and kept it, and ordered a second one for her.

What I sometimes mentioiend but do not do justice to is voirtual travelling. My Mum also loves it, and sometimes we do sightseeing in the world together. Google Eareth needs a PC link to run in the Quest 3, but the streetview part alone without the 3D-,map interface of GE is available via the app Wander, and it is a modern miracle. Also, there is so much video material in 360 and 180° and in 4, 8, 12K documenting other places, city sightseeing and nature, via youtube and other platforms or as dedicated standalone braodcasts, that you can get lost with just this alone already.

If I do not mention a PC-only link, all games of the past months I introduced here, are independent from PC.

As mentioned some time ago, the experience of watching your movies (streaming or from CD/Bluray), from inside a cinemahall, on the big screen, is fully worth it, and quite overwhelming. I do not watch "big movies" any other way anymore.

You do not need a PC anymore for satisfying VR experiences! ;)

Everybody getting a Quest must be aware of that a headtrap replacement is a must, the default one is designed to cause a pain and to force people to go into the money again for replacing it. Does not matter whether the repalcmement is wioth or without battery. The battery of the Quest is its weakness, it does not last long, with a bigger one it would have become heavier. So for longer sessions an external power bank and fast USB cable and for example a trekking belt pouch are highly recommended from my side. - Means, there are some follow-on costs you cannot avoid. My 128 GB Quest if full to three quarters now, there is also a version with 512 GB. Usuzally apps have only 0.5 to 1, sometimes a bit more GB, but new games deliberately developed as "VR operas" like Wrath of Asgard II, can have 30, 40 GB. If such big games are your thing, you better go with the bigger Quest from beginning on.


A silicon rim for the face cover also is recommended. The default one is just cloth. And when you sweat in the face... A vdentilator also is a good idea. A must, if you do virtual workouts, preventing lense fogging.

[mapuc]

Oh I did not know that this Quest 3 was an independent headset. While reading your comments about this VR set I was thinking how much computer power do I need to run best performance.

I made a search and found one for 3600 Danish Kroner(=483 €)It has 128 GB RAM build in.

This is definitely one I'm going to buy very soon.

Markus

[Skybird]

That is cheap, is it really a Quest 3? In Germany the 128GB verisons costs 550, the 512GB costs I think 650.

BTW, rechargable lithium batteries for the controllers are recommended (though normal one-way batteries and normal rechargable metal hydrate batteries work, too). One AA-sized battery is needed per controller. These rechargable lithium batteries need their own special lithium charger. look for a set at amazon that has the charger and 4 such batteries. I use VR a lot, sometimes hours per day, the batteries last around 1 week. One way batteries last less.

Just a reminder: you really want the Quest 3, not the price-reduced Quest 2. Really, you want the 3, not the 2, even if it is much cheaper.

The headset gets linked to your WLAN via app on your tablet or smartphone. I did it with two headsets in two WLANs, and it worked flawless every time.

Via the app you can also manage your Meta account, as if it were from within the headset, check the app store, messages, etc.

Once you get a new PC in the future, nothing speaks against linking the Quest to it then and run VR games from Steam directly, in 3D, as well as running your desktop applications, and if there is enough performance power: any 2D game on a huge virtual screen that mirrors your pc monitor/desktop. Sometimes that works good, and sometimes not (causing nausea). I play Wreckfest on a huge VR screen although that is a 2D game, but The Hunter I play not this way, it makes me motion-sick. Steam has just released its own application for the Quest 3, but Virtual Desktop works like a charm, too, in fact VD for me is the most reliable, easiest and hassle-free solution. Absolutley worth the ten bucks. One can link via cable, or via WLAN (cable-free). If using the Oculus link, the firewall on PC must be deactivated.

For watching movies from disk, you also need an according player software on PC. Streaming movies from online sources, can be done directly inside the headset, does not need a PC.

Maybe we meet on any racket game court in the future, sink some pool balls, or hit some balls around on the golf court? ;) I have most DLCs, only missing two or three that I am not interested in since in computer graphics they look too monotonous. Its enough if the host has the DLC, the guests must not own it to play it during that session. Its like this with many games, like Walkabout Minigolf for exmaple: only the host must own the DLC, the guests then get a free ride.

Imagine this. Sixteen subsim members doing a spontaneous Racketball match frenzy by just walking from the menu "hall" and trainign facilities out into the "free open" park and taking over the courts out there, like in a real place, several single and double matches played simultaneously and them all can be watched simultaneously by just standing inside the club perimeter and turning your head, like in reality. No text-line based lobby. No text interface for organising matches. Just doing exactly like one would do in a real tennis club with several courts, some free, some in use. You watch, you walk around, you play on free court. Its so natural. Their solution works brilliantly. Somebody calls you in voice, invites you, you walk over, step onto the court, and you two or four then play. Thats how lobby match making must be done.

[Skybird]

A feature that was added some weeks ago and that I overlooked until now. Nice for practice and warm-up before a round, additional to the already existing on-course practice modes and the dedicated student hotel. The stands offer a variety of sub-modes/games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5k3X1cAjz4

Modelled after the real world location:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9RbicVav-k

And this is a forum conversation from three years ago, it seems Golf+ is not completely new, but a rebranded older lable that already back then had a good reputation: Pro Putt Golf. It meanwhile got licensed by the PGA and now is the official PGA tour game.

https://www.avforums.com/threads/golf-formerly-pro-putt-golf.2387939/


And DeadEye VR released a sweocnd new golf club for the Quest 3, an imrpovement over th eone I have, it is 10cm longer and the weight can be altered within a 100gr limit, the controller also gets additionally secured in its mount with the wriststrap. It still seems to include the quesitonable silicon pads, which for simply do not sta yin palce sicne the glue does not hold. Heck, why did they choose silicon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFwOhHXXaFM&t=3s

[mapuc]

The reason to why this 128 GB VR headset was cheap was because it was a used model-As good as new.

The price range is between 4400 and 5600 Danish kroner. (= 590 and 750 €)
590 for the 128 GB
750 for the 512 GB

Markus

[Skybird]

https://www.amazon.de/Meta-Quest-128Gb-bahnbrechende-leistungsstarke/dp/B0C7W12RN2/ref=sr_1_3?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3 %91&crid=3NJFBJANLJZZV&keywords=quest%2B3&qid=1707060485&sprefix=quest%2B3%2Caps%2C105&sr=8-3&th=1

As a reminder again: the battery is limited, very demanding applications will keep you running 30 minutes and less. You will need a battery extender solution of any kind.

Apps very rarely are even free, or cost mostly between 5 and 25 Euros. Some big new blockbuster releases may cost more. But these are not what I am interested in. The bundled Asgard 2 game for example looks extremely impressive, and it is big - but its not my cup of tea, unfortunately (and blocked one third of the memory), so I deinstalled it again.

[mapuc]

Now that I know I do not need a more powerful computer, I got blooded teeth.

Within the next two month I will have bought a Quest 3 512 GB headset, with a golf-thing and a racket.

Markus

[Skybird]

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(https://tenor.com/view/larger-world-obiwan-kenobi-luke-skywalker-star-wars-gif-11666489)



Tenor
(https://tenor.com/view/larger-world-obiwan-kenobi-luke-skywalker-star-wars-gif-11666489)

[Skybird]

A completely underrated sikm title, I mentioned it beforek, the game has developed further since then, the physics were altered a lot. Certainly the best dedicated pickleball game so far, and one of the best racket&ball games around. I play it frequently, several times per week.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HLjfPVJrd0

[mapuc]

You mentioned batteries earlier.

What type of batteries do you use and how many mah. do they have.

The strongest chargeble batteries I found on the web have 5200 mah.
but only 1.2 V.

Markus

[Skybird]

You mentioned batteries earlier.

What type of batteries do you use and how many mah. do they have.

The strongest chargeble batteries I found on the web have 5200 mah.
but only 1.2 V.

Markus
I use these, and I prescribed these for my Mum, too. You need one batterie per controller. So two batteries in use, two in reserve. As I said, they hold for one week or longer, and I use the headset a lot.

Normal batteries you can also use, but the costs will maybe add up over the months.

https://www.amazon.de/Kratax-Wiederaufladbare-AA-%C3%9Cberwachungskamera-Controller/dp/B0BYDN1HSF/ref=sr_1_17?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C 3%91&crid=1RL9CNQ7EMP8O&keywords=lithium+aufladbar+aa&qid=1707098068&sprefix=lithium+aufladbar+aa%2Caps%2C76&sr=8-17

Mind you again, you must calculate for external batteries for the headset, too, the internal battery will not last for long. Either a headstrap with battery in it, or an external powerbank that is high in capacity and discharge power, and a fast USB cable. Many people ignore that, do not know it: the cable must support the high consumption rate, too. Powerbanks of same capacity cna vary in discharging power. Usually that is no problem. With the Quest 3, I found awareness of these factors to be critical.

But I would wait with that until you have had the headset for a few days and checked that your brain can get used ot it without giving you motion sickness. If that is the case, train yourself, like my Mum did (it works). No fast-moving games in the beginning, and not long use per day, then slowly increasing the usage per day. Important is to do it every day, its better than to do it every couple of days and then longer sessions, that does not work too well. People are different, some are prone to it, some are not, one never knows in advance for sure. The problem is less prevalent with a quality headset like the Quest 3, and with games that have good VR optimization. But it can be trained away, the brain just needs the opportunity to get used to it.

This is not to discourage you - try it, and you will see how it is for you. If you bought with a trustworthy trader or Amazon (!), you can give it back within a certain timeframe anyway.


We use these:

https://www.amazon.de/UGREEN-Ladekabel-Winkelstecker-Delivery-kompatibel/dp/B08HWKVHMK/ref=sr_1_9?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3 %91&crid=3IKP5ARZO8OHN&keywords=ugreen%2Busb%2Bc%2Busb%2Bc&qid=1707098814&sprefix=ugreen%2Busb%2Bc%2Busb%2Bc%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-9&th=1
(note this is a 100W cable)

https://www.amazon.de/INIU-25000mAh-Powerbank-Handyakkus-kompatibel/dp/B0B7438Q2Z/ref=sr_1_3?__mk_de_DE=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3 %91&crid=9GFAJJW5LKH6&keywords=iniu+powerbank+100w&qid=1707098969&sprefix=iniu+power+bank+100w%2Caps%2C94&sr=8-3

With a "slower" powerbank it could be that the headset nevertheless discharges, just slower than without external battery. One such battery usually gets me over the day's use. I only rarely use the battery in the Elite headstrap, its of similiar capacity like the internal battery and so doubles the headset'S default working time. But the powerbank has I think around 5x as much capacity, it lasts for hours. I carry it in a small pouch on my belt. The cable is 1m.

Power is an issue with the Quest 3, its is very hungry. Thats why they even slowed it down a bit - it so far runs not with its full power unleashed. Many do not know this! Means: it can be hacked to become even better - and slightly warmer. And that bwould not even be ov erclocking in the meanign of going beyoind standard values. The headset is currently operating with the brakes slightly applied. The problem is the standing time of the internal battery. One can handle this issue, and easily. One just needs to know it.

[Skybird]

These two should get you started.

Two general tips for a start:
1. never expose the inner main lenses to direct sunlight. They then work like burning glasses and burn the LCD display inside.
2. On the left side, the power buitton that also manually acitvates standby mode, sits directly above the tiny left side lense. Do not mistake the two with the mask on your face, you may damage the lense if you mistake it for the button and press it heavily, wondering why ther eis no reaction.

Okay, two more tips.
3. In case you get the Meta Elite headstrap with integrated 2nd battery (maybe there are better options from external developers), keep on mind that that external battery discharges when you swithc off the headset and let it sit for a day with bthe battery plugged in to the USB port. You will lose 20% of power per day that way. Unplug the battery instead, it then keepos its charge for a long time.
4.Like all lithoum betteries, these and powerbanks do niot like beign completely dpelrted or fully charged up. It extends the lognevity of thes ebatteriues over their life cycle if one operates then within a 20%-80% range, like it is recommended for laptops, tablets and smartphones as well. Especially fully charging means additonal stress for the separator layer in the battery. Can be easily avoided! I charge my powerbank and headset to not more than 78-82%. Once the mask is at that range, a plugged-in powerbank will orughly keep it at that level for longer time. Some games, like shadow boxing, i play without external battery , however, do gain better freedom of movement. But then these sessions never last too long anyway...

Okay, for starters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPQQ6vHlIN0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll5ywZZFM0A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzU7UrjkV8c


First users enjoy two free apps that come with the Quest 3 and that are meant and designed to demonstrate the handling and the possibilities. They all impress. The Quest 3 comes with "First Steps", "First Encounters" (demonstrating MR), and "First Hand" demonstrating hand tracking, the Quest 3 can operate with just bare hands, without contorllers). However I would also recommend to get "First Contact" for free from the app store, which was the similar demonstrator for the Rift 1 years ago. Its still actual and state of the art, and is very enjoyable and charming. First Contact and First Encounter are the two demos you maybe want to keep to impress the occasional visitor or guest, the other two you check out once and then can deinstall to save a little bit of storage. First Hand I did not even play to the end. - All these apps are for free, no hooks and no traps.

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_YegFqKSKc


I reiterate: handtracking and passthrough (=mixed reality) wants good light conditions, then it works very well, telling from my own experience.

[mapuc]

I'm starting to get very nervous, it's so much to have in mind.

Though more videos I watch though more uncertain I become.

I am going to buy a set and I am going to buy these two sport-equipment to these two sport game-Golf+ and Tennis

While watching a YT video about games I came to a game where you fly an American fighter plane in the Pacific during WWII where each operation starts and ends on a carrier that game looked very interesting.

I'm also thinking about going 3D on my ETS 2 if possible.

And I'm going to follow your rules about playing a few minutes each time the first week or so and then adding some minutes to my gameplay time.
This to avoid motion sickness.

I'm also looking forward to watch movies, which should be something special.

Markus

[mapuc]

When watching people play VR games on their set, like Quest 2 or 3 one can't help thinking about older computers and their graphic.

An average game on VR have about 5 GB.

Even here the progress towards top notch graphic is an ongoing process. The first VR's graphic was much to wish for.

How well will a VR NPC-person look like in 5 or 10 years from now ?

Markus

[Skybird]

I'm starting to get very nervous, it's so much to have in mind.
Though more videos I watch though more uncertain I become.
Dont worry. Prepare in stages. One or two days before the set arrives, install the app in your tablet/smartphone. Then you must not do it on "installation day". Watch that Meta video again one day before arrival, and make mental notes on the sequence of steps. The Quest also will guide you through the process, live. Really, its not to be worried about, i did it twice, and it worked both times smooth and free of problems.


I am going to buy a set and I am going to buy these two sport-equipment to these two sport game-Golf+ and Tennis.Wait with the tennis grip, no matter whether you mean table tennis or real tennis, it is nice to have, but not essential. Test the game you have on mind before. I play First Person Tennis with controller only and cannot complain. Eleven Table Tennis I use an adapter, yes.But even wothout it is one of the Must-Have titles. It simply the best sports game - the best simulation of a real sport - ever created so far: with and without adpater grip. Dont thrtow your money away too easily. Check in steps, and then decide. Its easy to spend a fortune on VR. But it is not necessary.


The decisive tool to have is the golf adapter, this one makes an undeniably stellar difference. If you want to play Golf, get it. The DeadEye VR adapters are probably the best in town, that company's DriVR 3 Pro is the one I use, its 10 cm shorter than the newer DriVR Elite. Check your playing room's free space.

While watching a YT video about games I came to a game where you fly an American fighter plane in the Pacific during WWII where each operation starts and ends on a carrier that game looked very interesting.I think I know which one you mean, I have it. My tip would be to go with the WW1 game in that series, the planes' speeds suit the limited air spaces dimensions better. There is also a modern air warfare game in that series, but peopel complained that all stuff in that, fighters and helicpters alike, fly more or less the same. But the WW1 and WW2 games are not bad, though not super-realistic. Arcade meets reasonably profound pyhsics. My tipm would be: bookmark it on the wishlist, and wait for a sale.

Once you have established a working PC-Quest link and Virtual Desktop installed, consider to get VTOL for PC on Steam, its a flightsim developed for VR from had to toe, and it shows it, and its brilliant, feels like the best of Microprose sims transported to the present. But first you must be sure your PC actually can handle both the game and the Quest - link you said the shop owner recommended you to expect not too much, or not?!



I'm also thinking about going 3D on my ETS 2 if possible.Again, dont forget what the shop owner told you on your PC. Note that we now speak about a non-native game for Quest, a PC title. Your PC must be such that it can run both ETS2 well and then the additional workload of mirroring the visual results of that into the headset. Cant give you advice, you just must try it out. But make it a lower point on your list of to-dos with the new toy you get.

You want to test whether your PC handles Google Earth mirrored into the Quest. If so, you are in for something big. Its a must have combo. Else you must reduce the experience to just Streetview (works in Quest autonomously).


And I'm going to follow your rules about playing a few minutes each time the first week or so and then adding some minutes to my gameplay time.
This to avoid motion sickness. Maybe you find out you are not prone at all. ;) At first, its sufficient if you react if you realise you start to feel uncomfrotable. Because if you ignore it for too long, it gets worse and worse - and then can last for hours after you stopped playing. Just try it out and wait and see what happens. You will find out soon enough. If you start to feel not well - stop. Thats all. If you do not feel ill, there is no need to stop playing. ;) - Myself, I can play in Vr for hours, everything, and dont get ill.


I'm also looking forward to watch movies, which should be something special.It is! One of my favourite uses in VR.The apps you want to check out for that are Virtual Desktop (which is anyway a musthave, in my opinion, an dfor me the easiest and most reliable way to connect the headset to the PC without any problems, and with sound), and BigScreen. Both give oyu severla cinema halls to choose from.:
Virtual Desktop I use to watch from disc. You launch he app in Quest 3, you launch the partner app on PC. The VD screen from the PC then repalkces the n atiuve VD interfac ein the headset - you see the desktop form the PC in the headset then, and what surrounding you have depends on the mods for environments oyu have previously misntaled on PC via Steam Workshop. The movie from disc you then handle the same way you would as if you would watch it on PC and your monitor, the controlelrs only repalce the mouse as entry device. - Ask me again when you are there, I talk you through the process. Its not difficult, really, its not difficult.

BigScreen is my choice to watch Youtube videos. It features several environments which huge movie screens. Youtube is easier to handle with this than with the dedicated Youtube VR app that is also avialable. The latter is quite rudimentary only, and anything but attractive to use. - Note,. quest knows two youtuvbe appa, one for normal 2D youtube, and one named Youtube VR. You want the latter to be installed (for free) in the Quest, of you want any of ther two at all.



Note that normal 2D videos no matter thweir resolution, 180°, and 360° videos are three very different types of movies. The bigger the screen, the better it is if the camera they were shot in had extrneely high reosltuion. HD pushed to 360° is quite blurry. 12K in 360°, as one example, is a revelation.


You can and must not plan everythign in advance, I woudl reocmnmend to just relax and let thigns come to you, and then you dela with them one by one and at your personal pace. Dont talk yourself into frustration early.


I will remind you of some good apps to check out once you are set up. I am quite convinced there are options that you so far do not even imagine. Like my Mum, she admnitted some days ago that there are so many things to do with the Quest that she never could have imagined it before. Keep on mind, the Meta apps tore has a return policy similair to that of Steam. You can give back amboght game, within 14 days, and if nto haviugn playe dit for longbe rthan 2 hours. stay below those 2 hours., clearly so, and you are save. I have tested and given back 4 or 5 games, and got confirmation within 2-4 days.

Also this, note that the Meta account and any Facebook account you may or may not have, are independent from each other now, they are no longer linked. They lost a legal battle against the EU, and have given up that former policy.

Also note if you installed and start a new title and it asks for permission to access camera and microphone, you best allow it, else your mixed reality may not work, and other people you link to maybe cannot hear you.

[Skybird]

When watching people play VR games on their set, like Quest 2 or 3 one can't help thinking about older computers and their graphic.

An average game on VR have about 5 GB.

Even here the progress towards top notch graphic is an ongoing process. The first VR's graphic was much to wish for.

How well will a VR NPC-person look like in 5 or 10 years from now ?

Markus
I know the Rift 1 from 2017, and the G2 from two years ago, and the Quest 3 from now. Comparing the Rift to the Quest 3 is a mindblowing experience. - Heck, was the Rift 1 blurry, and that monumental screendoor effect.... And yet, back then we thought it was great.


The better is the enemy of the good.

[mapuc]

Thank you Marc

I'm going to tell you when I got the Quest 3 and from there we take the advice in steps.

Markus

[Skybird]

I am here if you need me. :03:

[Skybird]

Oooops, I just learned this, and I think for at least some people its a biggie: on the Quest 3 you can play all XBox games via XBox game pass.

[Skybird]

Some very interesting and much requested improvements are coming with the new Quest 3 firmware update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPhqN4H1Kx0


And I have completely missed that the Decembre update added a new playing location which is my new favourite, an ordinary sports hall. The tournament arena I used before had this low-temperature charme of an only blue colour palette, but this place is covered with warm red-brownish paint and surfaces, from brickstones and woods. It looks very nice in the real game. My new favourite.

https://scontent.oculuscdn.com/v/t64.5771-25/39031567_1017756752847577_8492580456213082773_n.pn g?stp=dst-png_s720x720&_nc_cat=104&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=6e7a0a&_nc_ohc=aHS972_60PEAX-4XxCx&_nc_ht=scontent.oculuscdn.com&oh=00_AfC5NIBi0ATkfI7hrJTbCnd--hbj7Y4yYwz7P1TYo5XbKQ&oe=65C81AAA

[mapuc]

I'm watching some game videos to see how it may look like and what games there is.

In one of these video the man talked about motion sickness in the end of his video and I have taken notice of what he said.

"- If you start to feel dizzy stop playing right now do not think you can overcome it by continue playing- Instead you will suffer from this sickness all day. Better to take 30 or 45 or an hours rest before playing again. If the motion sickness come back after a few minutes play then decrease the minutes you play per day and slowly increase go up in minutes"

It is taken from memory

Markus

[Skybird]

I'm watching some game videos to see how it may look like and what games there is.

In one of these video the man talked about motion sickness in the end of his video and I have taken notice of what he said.

"- If you start to feel dizzy stop playing right now do not think you can overcome it by continue playing- Instead you will suffer from this sickness all day. Better to take 30 or 45 or an hours rest before playing again. If the motion sickness come back after a few minutes play then decrease the minutes you play per day and slowly increase go up in minutes"

It is taken from memory

Markus
Like I said. :03:

If you start feeling motionsick, immediately stop, do not carry on. Else it will get worse - andn then will last much beyond the time when you stopped. Somewhere in this thread, earlier, I told of what happened to me when I once tried a fairground attraction in VR, one of these killer caroussel things that rotated me along all three space axis (the developer has taken it out of this software sicne then, so I seem to not have been alone). I stopped and felt nothing, initially. But an hour later after that I became so sick hat I could not stand, sit or lay on the ground,but all the world was coinstantly spiralling aorund me, i was constantly revolving aorudn my body axis and could not keep balance, fell of my feet, spiralling on and on, and when being on all four, I rolled over and over, a sif I hjad a neural desease, it was heel, it realyl was, and I felt like needing to vomit all the time,l and couldn'T, it was beyond my will and control to stop rolling, and I felt sick as a dog, so sick like the first - and only - time I got thoroughly drunk and probably had a mild or not so mild alcohol intoxication as a stupid teen.

However, this is, I think a very rare an d very extreme example. I woudl have called the emergcny, if I would have been able to get top and operate the telophone, but I couldn't. It was hell, and it lasted I think 3, 4 hours.

This is not to scare you, Markus, and most people never feel it this worse as I did on that day. Just saiyng what the man in that video says: if you feel it creeping on you, stop immediately, you cannot overcome it by trying to outlast it - it only will outlast YOU. And the longer you go on beyond the early indications, the worse the price you have to pay later on. Even if it comes with a delay. Its better to stop immediately. And next day coming back, and then from day to day increase the playing interval slightly. The brain adapts. The brain can learn to get used to it. The brain will learn to compensa for the initial contradicting signals from eyes and the inner ear.

It also helps to start it with gentle applicaitons. They often get rated in three or four comfort levels, this means mostly the speed of visual action takign place. If you start with a dogfighting simualötion or a SciFi Lightbike race in Tron, that would nto be wise - better tsrat with somehtign where oyu are slowly moving only - or stationary. Billiard would be good. Wander. Golf+. Walkabout Minigolf. A board game like Catan. At the end of this: Eleven. - Then go to a title like Cybrix where you can just stand still and only play with your arms, since the paddles in both hands left and right can reach the walls of your playing arena. Then go to Pickleball One and use the training options in it, it has many, and when it is with ball machines, the machine will shoot the ball to your position - you must not run to the ball - you can afford to stand still, and there is no visual teleportation. And only when this works without causing discomfort, I would consider things that include more visual and speeds movement.

You can often switch movement to either automovement - the computer "moves" you and you see it - or teleportation where the movement is skipepd and you get teleprted to the endposoitionb of that movement in a split of a second. This is meant to help people beign sensitive to motion sickness. Turnign in place to eithe rside cna be done in either smooth, constant mvomeent, or in definable turns of 30° or 45°, the latter works against motion sickness. Finally ther eoften is the option that on movement the field of vison gets reduced - you get a telkesocpe view, so to speak, the field of vision is narrowed by blackness at the periphery of your field of vision, this also helps people to counter motion sickness.

My Mum is 75, totally unexperienced woth computer work or games. She elarned to adapt to VR sinc elast autumn. Intially she stayed not longer than half an hour. A few days she played virtual pool - almost 8 hours long, all night through. 75. Seventy-five. She now plays Cybrix, a mix of breakout and squash. Today I introduced her to Pickleball. She kills for it! And she has deactivated all visual aids as described above.

Dont let yourself get scared away. Try it, you just do not know how you react to it as long as you have not tried it. If you bought it via Amazon, there is no problem in returning it if you find after a week or so that you cannot tolerate it, no matter what you try.

Do not try early on 2D PC games via PC-Quest link . Games and frmarates must be optimised to reduce the risk of nausea and moption sickness. You see, I can play raicng games in VR for hours, and I have no problems, I am completely invulnerable to it. But if I play The Hunter on the big movie screen, that wlaking and head shaking when moving makes me sick quite soon. Its not meant to be played like this. On other occaisons it may work, however - I play Wreckfest this way, on the big moviescreen, via Virtual Desktop - and it is fantastic, a completely new game. One must test out what works for oneself, and what not.

Stop making endless plans and endlessly thinking about what could go wrong. Do it - and see what happens. If all else fails, return the headset. Amazon is absolutely no problem, within the return period.


Edit:
And sicne you asked about that flightsim game, this is the WW1 verison that I mentioned, it got better rewiews, and I agree on their reasons. But for hjeaven'S sake - for the reasons I just explained dont try this at the very start of your journey with the Q3, leave it for some later time.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5ZfQE-E9oo

[Skybird]

This must be supercool - if you have the space for it. Its for Quest 3, too, the video is old, and for the Q3 they give a minimum space of 10x10 meters.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOkODclp00M

[mapuc]

I want to place an order right now-However I have to wait until my annual statement have arrived which is in the beginning of March and I don't know if I have to pay more tax or if I get a refund.

My annual Dentist is approaching too which is in the end of February.

I have decided to buy the one with 128 GB. I don't think 512 is needed-Can always upgrade in the future

After having watched some videos and reading your comments which made me both nervous but also very eager to own a Quest 3.

Markus

[Skybird]

I want to place an order right now-However I have to wait until my annual statement have arrived which is in the beginning of March and I don't know if I have to pay more tax or if I get a refund.

My annual Dentist is approaching too which is in the end of February.

I have decided to buy the one with 128 GB. I don't think 512 is needed-Can always upgrade in the future

After having watched some videos and reading your comments which made me both nervous but also very eager to own a Quest 3.

Markus

If you do not buy latest blockbuster games with 30-40 GB, 512 indeed may not be needed. I have 128 GB, of which 32 GB is still free, and I could easily free up 15-20 GB more with some games I never play.

Just to be certain: you cannot upgrade the memory in your Quest, you can only replace it with the Q3 with more memory. Spareparts, controllers, headstraps and so forth however can be bought indivodually. I again remind of the NEED to buy any form of external batteery, just the internal one will not make you happy. I have a second right controller which is always mounted in the table tennis "racket", since that thing is a bit unpleasant to mount and unmount, it takes time. I have to switch controller activation in the app on my tablet, which is easier (only one controller for every hand can be connected at a time).

I just saw that Medieval Dynasty is being converted to VR, too, is to be released next month. A sandbox settlement builder, first person perspective, medieval. Sounds like something I will check out in more detail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL-dagoEkTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk0lmI5_hr4


Played a full round at Sawgrass today, and played the out round (1-9) with just 3 over par - brilliant for my standards, I usually take 10 over for 9 holes! Had a break, and ate, then returned for holes 10-18. But then I ruined my possible so far best result by playing the home round (10-18) with a messy 18 over par, and there I was left with my usual 20-22 over par for all 18 holes, which also is reflected in my handicap (20). When things go smoothly, I think I really have made progress in Golf. Until suddenly nothing works anymore and bad luck also takes its toll... Its like with Billiards, its extremely depending on day shape.

If you have not known it, Golf+ comes with three fantasy courses, which are okay, but you probably play them only once, they get you started, and thats all about them. The other courses you have to either individually buy, or "lease" access to all of them with a yearly abonement. The game has the official PGA tour license, and they surely know how to milk the coins out of it... - The courses vary in visual quality, like the real counterparts, and you have to decide, before you buy, whether you could like the visual representation in simplified computer graphics. Thats why I have not bought monotonous courses like St. Andrews, which in principle is just a flat open meadow with almost no further landscape features in it. If you are uncertain, we could meet online and I lead you around on the courses I have and that you are interested in - if I host it guests have access to my courses, they must not buy them. Via teleporting, they can be "walked" on.

So far I have
- TPC Sawgrass
- TPC Southwind
- TPC Scotsdale
- Pinehurst No. 2 (no good buy, it looks quite monotonous)
- East Lake Country Club
- Pebble Beach
- Kiawah
- Riviera Country Club
- Olympia Fields Chicago
- Yale
- Kapalua Plantation
- Las Vegas as shown a few posts above.


Also see my post #238 (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2895908&postcount=238).


With the exception of Pinehurst I regret no buy of these, they all have their own looks, character, local atmosphere and style, they are superbly recreated. Around a dozen more is to come over the course of this year.

There are three more courses which I do not plan to get, in videos they looked not so inviting to me, visually. Wolf Creek, Valhalla, St. Andrews. Wolf Creek looks fascinating in rela life, but in the game due to the reduced colour palette, it looks meeeh... Valhalla can be gotten for free if you write a review for it and also become member in the Golf+ club.

The game has several training and practice and shortened playing modes, its all quite interesting. I absolutely love it, with a Golf adapter. The socalled Battle mode is especially interesting, here you play three random holes against a real player whose performance was recorded - all your actions and statistics are automatically recorded and stored online, and from this material you get automatically listed in the world ranking list. In Battle mode you play against the recorded three holes of a player who is close to your ranking. I must say, thats really a neat way to do it!

[Skybird]

Wannahave! Wannahave! Wannahave! Timestamp 00-06-30 ff - this is insane! And does not need much space! :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87eSV33I-os

[mapuc]

It becomes more and more clear to why you fell in love with this VR set. After having seen some video clip myself I can only say I understand you.

Markus

[Skybird]

In a few minutes I will embark on a new course, Valhalla. I wrote a brief review, I accepted free membership in the Golf+ Club that also opens an extensive statistics page listing all my good and not so good deeds out on the green - and got Valhalla for free for that.

That leaves only St. Andrews and Wolf Creek missing in my collection so far. And for these they do not offer such get-it-for-free deals. So things will stay that way.

Tee time approaching, I must go... :03:

[Skybird]

I just found that DeadEye VR have a third golf club for the Quest 3 and Pro on offer, which is just claled "Pro". It is shorter, more compact, and with a controller attached it weighs, according to one customer review, around 380gr. Its also cheaper, with a price of below 50 coins, plus shipping/customs for us non Americans.



https://deadeyevr.com/collections/golf-clubs/products/drivr-vr-golf-club-handle-accessory-quest-3-pro

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61OtR0zvCFL.jpg

[Skybird]

Oh, and they got a fourth one, the new Elite Mini model with optional weight ring, - but this Elite Mini version in chrome and with shortened stick length, which I think comes handy indoors. I might be interested in this one. It is not made of carbon fibre like the others (extremely robust, telling by experience...) , but steel. It weighs 525gr without additional weight ring, and 600 gr with that weight ring. That sounds heavy, but you have to see it in relation to the shortened stick length, the added weight makes sure you nevertheless reach the same club head speed when swinging like with a real golf club which is longer.

https://deadeyevr.com/products/drivr-elite-chrome-stepped-steel-weighted-golf-club-compatible-with-quest-2-3-and-pro (https://deadeyevr.com/products/drivr-elite-chrome-stepped-steel-weighted-golf-club-compatible-with-quest-2-3-and-pro)

And this are all options. Note the third offer ist NOT for the Quest 3, since it needs a controller with halo ring.

https://deadeyevr.com/collections/golf-clubs (https://deadeyevr.com/collections/golf-clubs)

I also see that my version is now dropped in price, below 40 coins.

https://deadeyevr.com/cdn/shop/files/1Short.jpg?v=1707445358




https://deadeyevr.com/cdn/shop/files/3_0515c67d-6fe6-4bdb-bb48-2a94bfc53c8f.jpg?v=1707416475

[Skybird]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/14/tech/mark-zuckerberg-vision-pro-vs-quest-3/index.html

Apple versus Meta. Zuckerberg "reviews" the Vision Pro.

I think it is important to understand the two different concepts both companies have. Apple wants a closed ecosystem and users satisfied with augmented reality features, while Meta wants, at leats wanted in the past, to lure people into the Metaverse. Which i am absolutely not interested in. And apparently almost nobody else, too.

Currently, the Apple VR targets professionals and dreams of offices workers running around in their offices with that mask 8 hours glued to their face, so to speak. i cannot see that becomign reality. The Meta product aims heavily at the entertainment and gaming market, and I think it has the more decisive argument with that.

Zuckerberg may have revealed features for the next generation of Quest (Quest 4), and it may include eye-trackign again, like the Quest Pro already had. Probably also higher resolution displays.

Message of it all: the VR train is not likely to stop again. I red somewhere else that the growth of the VR market is not as fast as they hoped fpor, but grows slower - but steadily and reliably. Exactly like years ago I predicted!

And this statistics from Steam, the Quest 3 has jumpstarted to 2nd place amongst most used VR headsets on Steam. Yes, that mark is not place 1-. But then - the Q3 got there within just 3 months! And it will climb further and to 1st place, I am certain.

[Skybird]

Golf+ teases and advertizes Bay Hill Club as its upcoming next parcours. Video will follow once its out. Cant be long.

[Skybird]

Punch Fit VR has two big advantages:
1. as a workout, it delivers. Just that: it delivers.

2. its free. Maybe that wiull chnage onc eit leaves Applapb, but it is free since over oen year already, so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny-sfhSjD6c

Personally I appreciate that it does not feature knee bends, since my knees give me issues with these and I tend to avoid them in such games anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VuPpwW_ts4

[mapuc]

There must be some kind of chargeble batteries in the headset- So I made a search and found out that there is a 3800-something mAH built into the headset.

What I wonder is following:

Is this batterie strong enough or do one have charge it every second hours or so ?

There is replaceable batteries(5200 mAH)-How good are those ?

Power bank-Here they advice one to not use these since the headset use 18W.

Does it exist a power bank who can generate stable 18W ?

Markus

[Skybird]

Markus, I already have given you all that information you ask for.

Yes, the headset's internal battery does not last too long. I depends on the app. It can live for 30-40 minutes with extremely demanding apps, or 60-90 minutes with low demanding apps. With a battery headstrap, you may get everything from 90 minutes to maybe 120-150 minutes. It depends on the app. And some headset hardware settings. If you limit frames to 90 instead of 120, that gives you some extra time for example - and in most apps it does not make a visible difference.

Yes, I recommended to go for a secondary battery from beginning on (if you want to keep the headset and do not return it). Either in the headstrap, or an external powerbank. What is to be known about a powerbank and the USB cable, I posted here, also links to what I have in use:

https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2901524&postcount=271

Take care for the cable quality and the powerbank output, as described. The models I linked to in that post are used by me and my mother, these I can confirm to work as demanded, without any issues.

The default headstrap hurts after short time and is extremely uncomfortable, they made it so that customers buy the Elite headstrap with or without battery extension early, the people get milked for more coins this way. However, the Meta solutions both are overpriced, and the battery Elite headstrap for 150 coins is not technologically optimized, for example if you switch the headset off - not just standby, but OFF - you must unplug the USB cable between extension and headset, too, else the external battery will discharge with 20-30% of its capacity per day. I must advise to calculate with a second external battery, but I cannot recommend the Meta product for this enornous price tag, the quality does not justify that price. However, it is to be worn comfortably, and the mask sits well with it. No pain from the strap anymore. Third party solutions are available, and are cheaper, but may have their own issues I cannot comemnt on, since I do not know these other items.

Anyway, you probabaly want to replace the default headstrap anyway - even for one without inbuild battery extension, the default strap simply is all too uncomfortable. Yopu also do not want a long extending plug on the external powerbank. Angled plugs. Its better, becasue ti is more compact.

But as I posted earlier, best way is you just go with the default headset in the beginning, and test for a few days to see if you are affected by VR motion sickness, and if so: how severely. If you order via Meta or Amazon.de, you can give it back, consumer protection laws protect you and work in your favour if ordering online much more than if you buy it in local shops. Online orders MUST be taken back withgin a certain time frame.

You can order extensions and batteries soon enough if you like what you get with the "naked" headset alone.

Just do not forget that a powerbank with high capacity alone is not enough. You need that - plus high output, and you need according USB cable. The two links in the earlier post - these work. Note that a powerbank with 25000 mAh extends the headset'S internal capacity or that of the battery Elite Strap by several factors - it will easily get you over the day. If you do not play 14 hours every day. :)


P.S. If you go for an external powerbank and cable, make sure the cable has angled plugs. To reduce wear and tear in the connector in the mask and to reduce the risk of breaking something if you accidenally hit the mask with plug put in.


P.P.S.
A silicon rim or replacment for the cloth face rim is highyl recommended. Sweat hygiene, you know. My mother and myself also use a thing cloth facemask between that rim and face skin. It also delays fogging of the lenses tremendously once oyu sweat even a ltite bit. And you will, if playing any sports game: from "just so" to "extremely", depending on what you are doing.

[mapuc]

^ Sorry Marc

I did remember you gave me advise on which type of batteries I should use in the handcontrollers, I must have missed the part where you mentioned the headset and what type of batteries/power bank you use there.

Within a month or so I will know for sure if I can afford a Quest 3 with some extra materials like batteries a.s.o.
(I really want a set)

Markus

[Skybird]

Also have some money for the apps, some are free, some are not. Prices usually vary from 10-25 coins, it depends. Sometimes apps are on sale.

Once you are there, you can try linking the headset to your PC and then use Google Earth VR (including Streetview) via Steam mirrored into the mask. The PC must be strong enough for that, of course. Then you would not need something like Wander. If it does not work, I would recommend Wander over Wooorld. But you want a VR access to Streetview at least, at all cost. Its one of these VR must-haves.

BigScreen is free, so is SteamLink, Youtube VR, OculusLink. Virtual Desktop costs coins, but I definitely recommend it, I use this before the others all the time. No other works as uncomplicated and reliable for me, and I am not alone with that judgement.


The Youtube VR app has recently, after many years, seen an update especially for Quest 3, it works much better now than before.



Miracle Pool is FREE. Get it, be amazed.

[mapuc]

When I know for sure I'm going to buy 5 items

1. Quest 3
2. 100W 25000 Power bank
3. This high speed cable with angled plugs
4. These 4 3500 mAH batteries
5. This anti-sweat clothes

When arrived I'm going to:

1. Check the equipment for any damages
2. Charge all the batteries incl. the power bank.

Thereafter I'm going to:

1. Adjust the Quest to my head and the lenses to my eyes.
2. Start it up and make the first settings.

It will take some weeks or month before I can start to play games and watch movies. Have do make my brain compatible with this 3D moving

Rest assure there will be a lot of questions

Markus

[Skybird]

Thorough plan, but why so pessimistic and expecting months to adapt? You will just see how it is for you - and then adapt accordingly. For my Mum it worked much faster than after one, two days she initially thought it would.


Powerbanks are very useful. In combination with USB-connected LED lights they work as mobile lampos t home in times of temporary power blackouts, for example. These USB-LED lamps come in incredibly many forms and variations. I have several powerbanks with snmaller capacites, just for this.



Again, the Quest comes with two introductory apps, First Encounter (demonstrates mixed reality) and First Hand (demonstrates hand tracking), and several others that could be seen as system software: for internet TV, socialising, view certain animation formats, messengering, there is also somehthing called Meta Quest Guide, and so forth. In the Quest App store I urge you to also get the introductory app for the old Oculus Rift, name is Oculus First Contact. Its free, very charming, and speaks volumes.



When adapting the headset's rim to your face, just handle it gently so that you do not break anything. Changing pupil distance is easy, a simple wheel at the bottom.



As said, BigScreen and StreamLink also are free. You wan tthre firts in any case, and at least try the latter.


You have a XBox, by any chance? They released an app that allows you, with an Microsoft/XBox pass/abonement, to play all XBox games on the Quest 3. Comparable to SteamLink, just that Steamlink lets the PC do the work. I do not have XBox, however. Crazy, eh? playing all XBox stuff without having an xbox. You need the pay abonement, however.

[Skybird]

Arnold Palmer's Bay Hill Club released. Will play tomorrow.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VCYN884kB8

[Skybird]

Sony considers openign the PSVR2 headset for PC use.

https://www.racedepartment.com/news/sony-%E2%80%98testing%E2%80%99-ps-vr2-for-pc-use.1805/

The second virtual reality headset from PlayStation launched in February 2023, ditching the combination of LED lights, Move controllers and an external camera for tracking used in the original. Instead, it utilises the more traditional headset camera set-up combined with new Sense controllers or a Dualsense gamepad.

Inside, it makes use of eye-tracking to implement foveated rendering, in theory optimising performance by prioritising what you are looking at. OLED screens are also used, running at a 2000 x 2040 resolution per eye.

It is currently priced at £529/€599.99/$549.99 and connects to a PS5 via a single USB Type-C cable. Close rivals include the Meta Quest 2 and 3.
Note: Sony did not confirm they will do it, they say they are "testing" the possibility.

If they would bundle it with Gran Turismo 7 for PC, they would have a very tasty bait on offer for PC players. But i do not expect that to happen - GT7 is an advertizing and teasing heavyweight argument for PS5.

[Skybird]

And this news is very important, I missed it ten days ago: Microsoft ditched support for Windows Mixed Reality (WMR)-based headsets, they will not work under Windows 11 from update 24H2 on.

So, if you considered to buy a WMR-based VR headset for pC, you better don't.

https://www.neowin.net/news/windows-mixed-reality-headsets-no-longer-work-with-windows-11-version-24h2-and-newer/

How much I love Microschrott. :arrgh!: I stay with W10, but wonder how long my G2, which is WMR, will continue to work. For racing, my PC is not strong enough to reliably support my Quest 3 linked to PC. I have just done my yearly (!!) update to W10, and plan to block further uopdate suhto,next year anyway. i wonder whether I should risk to ever update it again at all. Think I will not.

The best is that it is again Microsoft's own fault. They never cared for fixing the often erratically working WMR system and its inherent unreliability, but accused their customers of not being grateful for the mediocre mess they released at overpriced conditions. I hate to say it but: typically Microsoft.


It seems that the mnarket doe snot see several manfacturers agrreeing to unify their diferrent standards for VR, but that all developers except just Meta and maybe Valve simply will drop out. And what becomes of Apple's Vision Pro remains to be seen. A gamer's first choice it is not. Sony step to maybe open its PS headset for PC maybe is just born out of despoair: VR doe snot go too well on PS, but that is due to a lack of attractive VR games on VR. They better go all the way - or do not even care to follow it any further, but half-hearted.


The day when I lose the G2 workability and must use Meta's headset even on my 7 years old PC may be the day I get a new PC capable to run the Quest 3 even with complex sims. Or the Quest 4 or 5 or whatever it may be by then.


Moral of the story: I have one argument more for not voluntarily buy anything with the Microsoft label on it. Windows however is hard to avoid. But beyond that? No, thanks, even if they would pay me for using their stuff.

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b63ik3tbDm4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4G9OBWonE

[Skybird]

The author is rated as one of the top virtual golfers out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW2mXf9DItc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ7Qw-oDVwg

Two of three drives for me end up in involuntary fades/slices, Half the last third goes in a straight oine, but too far to the left then, due to overcompensating stand, grib and so forth. Only one is six drives goes straight and wher ewi want it to go. But then it lacks the range, my carries usually are only in the 200-220m range (plus rolling distances then). - The eternal battle that every golfer knows and fights - optimizing your swing culture! :D Its ridiculous how realistic this simulator is (with a DeadEye VR attachment).

On the DeadEye golf clubs, I would reocmmend to always prioritize the models with added weight at the tip. They are lohger than the short one, but the short one lacks the real swinging feeol fo the long sticks with wight, trhuzs lacking stability, precision and power. You must balance the stick length versus your room characteristics.

I now have a handicap of a bit under 16 over par. Played my first full roudn at Bay Hill yesterday, anoehgt beautiful course that has some really challenging - if not to say: mean - hole layouts, set in a nice environment with penty of water and its own chatracterisc feel and mood and atmospher,e settign it apart form the other course sin Golf+. That is very important for me, that the computer graphics with their - compared to reality - reduced visible detail do not become monotonous and repetitive. You do not want nor need three courses that all look and feel the same.

I play most days at least a 9 hole session, but most days a full 18 holes course. I improve but slowly. I play music via the included youtube player and have some silent, slow bar piano playing in the background. Such a session lasts 70-80 minutes or so, I sometimes may take a short brake after the 9th, and it really always is an experience, enjoyable. I really treat it like a stroll through the park, and a comedian's voice in my head comments my shots.

Damn sarcastic basterd he is. :haha:

[Skybird]

In real golf, there are for example screws that can be put in and out of the clubheads, they are made of different materials and allow to alter the weight of the head in the low single-digit gram range. I always thought they are crazy.

No more.

My mom got a new golf adapter, the follow up model to the one I use. This new one, the shortened "mini"-version of the current top model by DeadEye VR, is four finger widths shorter than my own club, and has, with controller attached, a maximum weight of 536 gr. My own club with controller has around 585gr, is heavy. Now, keep in mind that they calculate the weights they add to the head of this stick according to the need to reach the clubhead speeds of a real golf club - but with a shorter stick length. Its not that they are stupid when adding these overload weights, it is heavier than a heavy golf club in real life, but that is for a reason. People who know both VR and reality golf however swear that the swinging and the feel of it in VR feels 90-95% the same like the real thing.

Now, the clue here is, the new stick has nine washers in its head, each weighing ~10 gr, in total they weigh 92gr. If you take these out, you reduce the weight of the total combo from 536 to 438gr. Also added was a separately sold 75gr weight, a ring attached to near the top of the stick, so there is another reduction to 336gr, with controller attached. So, you can tailor the stick's weight in nine 10-gr intervals, and additonally combine that with that 75 gr ring weight on or off, adding even many more degree of weight tailoring. All in a range of maximum 538 and a minimum of 336 gr (controllers already attached).

Now, does it all make a difference?

Hell, it does!! My old club simply was too heavy for me, that simple. I struggled to reach the driving distances I now have with my first strike, by lowering the weight by around 60 gr I gained immediately 30-45m in driving. I also have less stress with my left side muscles (that pull the club when driving the first strike from the Tee).

I experimented with the club the past days, and found that I can feel a perceivable difference in the way any short or long range strike feels, and in the accuracy by which i dose the power when changing the weight by intervals of 20-30gr. I am stunned by this, I had not expected this. Its also a big compliment to the realism and the physics calculations in the simulation. I think they are breathtaking.

The club is with my mom now, she has changed the weights to her liking already - and immediately jumped forward in performance and range, too.

The clamp holding the controller, also has been slightly improved with this model. The line is used for fixing, too. It holds controllers of the Quest 2, 3 and Pro.

The difference between the normal edition and the "mini" version is length, and weight. The normal club is significantly longer, even longer than my old one. In cramped spaces and living rooms, that is a factor you must carefully consider. But I can fullheartly recommend the shortened version, it feels great when swinging it, absolutely believable. The mini stick is available with a stick made of polished stepped steel, with the normal club you have the choice between the stick made of that stepped steel, or carbon fibre. Costs are the same for both matzerials. The 75gr weight must be ordered separately. But i recommend to get it, shipping to Europe is very expensive (they ship only via expensive Express option, and customs get added on delivery, so you can easily almost double the costs for the club), the weight ring itself costs less than 10 coins. You want to experiment with it, I promise you, so get it with any main order of yours, and do not have it shipped it separately: the shipping would cost twice as much than the ring.

Its unbelievable how close to real golf you get with all this gear and stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ7HqhgoG9s&t=2s

Price for the normal club length is 85 Euros. Normal is 28"/71cm long, empty weight bare evertyhing 290gr, mini is 21"/53cm long, empty weight 250gr. They explicitly recommend the long stick for large play spaces only. We use the shortened version over here.

https://i.postimg.cc/15smT0hy/1.png (https://postimages.org/)

https://i.postimg.cc/XvV9YBCW/2.png (https://postimages.org/)

----------------------------

BTW, I have dropped my handicap further to now 13.4 :yeah: I play at the middle of three settings, usually with medium winds, fast greens, middle tees and medium pins. The handicap gets calculated like this (they orient themselves at the WHS: the World Handicap System, which is a standard in Golf:



Adjusted Par

We adjust the course rating to reflect different pin, tee, wind speed, and green speed settings. On a real golf course, scorecards don't assign a different rating based on anything but tee location, since players do not have control over these different conditions. If the course’s greenskeeper cuts a green shorter and then tucks the flag into a tough pin position, a hole might play much harder that day than the next despite still having the same rating. You can get a sense for the difficulty of each combination of settings by looking at the adjusted par value that is displayed when starting a round. Adjusted par is our estimate of the score that we expect a scratch (0 handicap) golfer to shoot if they are playing well on the selected settings.

Handicap Eligible Rounds

A round is only included in handicap calculations if you have the Affects Handicap box checked when starting a round and do not use any mulligans during the round.

Calculating Your Handicap

Values are provided for your handicap at all three difficulties, novice, amateur, and pro. Your handicap is a number representative of what you'd shoot on your best days rather than an average of your rounds. We follow the World Handicap System, considering your last twenty 18-hole rounds and using the best eight to calculate your handicap. Pairs of 9-hole rounds are combined to form 18-hole rounds, and scores are capped at a maximum of a net double bogey per hole. We provide graphs of your handicap history over your last twenty rounds and the breakdown of your current handicap, which you can view on the stats section of the GOLF+ website.

https://www.golfplusvr.com/images/faq/handicap-graph.jpg

Net Score

Your net score is your score in relation to the adjusted par. For instance, if you shoot a double bogey-free 42 on the front 9, and the adjusted par for your settings is 38, your net score would be +4. You can view the net score and adjusted par for all of your rounds on the rounds section (https://www.golfplusvr.com/rounds) of our website.

https://www.golfplusvr.com/images/faq/adjusted-par.jpg
Here you have a general Q&A and so to speak the manual for Golf+:

https://www.golfplusvr.com/frequently-asked-questions


It goes without saying that if an adapter is used, it must be callibrated with utmost care and precision in the options. That can be tricky and time consuming, but one cannot overestimate the importance of doing a super perfect job here. Have the real and the virtual club shaft deviating from each other by just one degree or 1cm, and it makes a signficant difference for your strikes and may turn straight drives into crazy fades and slices. Really, callibrate with utmost care and precision!

[Skybird]

I always thought that my driving distance were a bit on the low side of things. But I did some reading, watched two videos on age and handicap affecting driving distance, and found that I quite well fit into the general scheme they describe, with dropping handicap increaisng distance, it and age decreasing it. My age is what it is, but my handcap I improved quite dramatically while playing repeatedly on a dozen different courses, and when I am through with them all I start again with all of them, so I use each of them frequently, except maybe Pinehurst No.2, which I just do not like as a place.
https://i.postimg.cc/XJ84Q52W/1.png (https://postimages.org/)
This is one chart that generally describes typical representative ranges in yards (meters into yards: add 10%) for three handicap levels and various ages. I am age 57 and usually do not exceed around 220m, with my carries (drive in air, without rolling on the ground). In yards that would be around 240, so actually where I thought I did inferior with my drives, actually I do pretty well. Well, not the aiming...

Anyway, I switched from Amateur level to Pro level, the highest of three skill levels in the game. actually its just about switching off aids and aiming lines, which I did all not use anyway and already had switched off individually in the options, so de facto its no change at all for me - just that statistics get restarted from scratch, being maintained separately in both skill levels. Just me and the club and the ball and the green - thats how I like it.


Last handicap on amateur level +13.4. I will need time to build the stock for the new on pro. 20 completed rounds minimum.

[Skybird]

In Golf+ : Its good that I switched from medium difficulty level "Amateur" to highest level "Pro". Because they describe the differences usually only in the ammount of aids and helping lines available. What they do not say is that the playing, the swinging itself becomes even more difficult on Pro level, I mean every single degree of the clubhead's face turning, every minor deviation in your movement flow when swinging, mercilessly gets translated into effects in the game, where before the game may have assisted with subtlety to forgive minor flaws and errors (I did not realise that, maybe because I never played real golf and could not compare). My aiming thus has detoriated, my precision has suffered, its all pretty messed up, the last three days were increasingly frustrating, and I must add many strikes per round, on average 10-15 strikes more. It does not help that I also made it a habit to start form back tees now.

I did not immediately realise that the game mechanics had changed as well, its not mentioned anywhere, usually. That was cause for mounting frustration and also growing anger, it really were three very discouraging days, and I slipped into a gloomy mood.

I now by chance stumbled over one of the devs commenting several years ago, when the game was in early access, revealing that not just the aids and help lines get switched off, but that the game becomes very unforgiving regarding your play, your swinging of the club. It doe snot just delete optinal assists, but it really unchains the full difficulty of playing golf.

I felt better a bit when realising that. My play still is messy and I realised that i have plenty of work to do, but I now know that I did not turn bad all of a sudden, but that now I probably meet the game on a setting where it really is the hardcore simulation of the real thing. Or was I really to believe that after just 3 months or so i already would have improved my handicap from 56 to 13? :)

I have not detoriated - the software on Pro has just set the challenges to realistic marks and no longer forgives minor mistakes. And thats something I can live with. Back to square one, start new from beginning.

Why that is good? Because I do no longer waste time with learning bad habits and techniques on Amateur/medium level (I never played on easy/Novice).

I think this title has gotten me hooked on it in all seriousness. I have formed some real ambition and motivation to improve, far beyond the motivation I usually would build for a new computer game. And the answer to qhy this is so, is simple:

The illusion of doing the real thing, Golf, is so convincing.

[Skybird]

:huh:

:dead:

From handicap 13.7 on Amateur level to - well, not enough rounds played to calculate a handicap on Pro level, but on the 18 hole rounds I played so far I needed 35-42 above par. :/\\!!

Plenty of work to do... Pro level is the real deal. I played 9 holes without a Deadeye VR attachment/grip adapter, and then it was even much worse... On pro, its just you, the ball and the club and the green - no cheating, no easing, not assistance. Its pure. Its merciless. I love it. I hate it.

[Skybird]

Olympia Fields 111. :dead:
Riviera Country Club 110. :dead:

Sobering. :o


First handicap rating on Pro level: 31. :dead:


But much fewer people seem to play on Pro, probably due to the difficulty. With the 13 handicap on Amateur and the scores on the courses I ranked in the jhigh 5 digit range and low 6 digit range. With the higher strike count per course on Pro, I rank amongst the first low hundreds. I reach the sam ediatnces with drives and disanatcne shots, but the aim is all over the place, the body swing needs to be brought to much greater perfection and continuity. The longer I play on Pro the more obvious it becomes that the sim was helping the player on Amateur level with mild corrections of easy, slight errors and faults. I did not realise it, they implemented it quite well, and with subtlety. But I will now stay with Pro level. I tasted the blood. I want more. Next goal would be to do the courses with not more than +18 over par. But that will take time...

[Skybird]

After Kapalua yesterday with 105 and Sawgrass with 110 the day before, today I had to swallow the worst round I have ever played, a humiliating 115 at TPC Southwind. Quite frustrating, tbh.

I identify three big weaknesses in my play, and I so far cant hammer them out. First, I lack consistency in my strokes, both in terms of accuracy and power. Secondly, I am constantly fighting back against a horrible slice off the tee, and in trying to correct this through grip, stance and movement, this error compensation often results in even worse results to the left. Thirdly, I don't get enough distance in my shots.

The "Pro" level of difficulty is tough - and so very much so!

[Skybird]

Meta has launched a recall campaign for its separately sold Elite Battery Headstrap.

Shortly after the release of the Quest 3 and the Elite Battery head strap, there was a lot of feedback reporting problems with the external Elite battery headstrap. Many people sent theirs back and got them replaced with new ones without any problems. Officially, Meta said they were working on an update to the software.

This option seems now to have ended in a dead end, it doesn't seem possible. Meta is currently sending emails to Elite Battery Headstrap customers to check online the serial number of the purchased set. If you qualify for a faulty set in this way, you will be notified immediately online and they will send you a new one "within eight weeks" (quote). It is not necessary to send the old one back.

They took their time, but now this customer service act works.

I've only noticed that when it's off, the external Elite headstrap battery drains 25-30% per day if you don't unplug the connector between the battery and the headset. Plug it out, and there were no issues at all for me. Otherwise I had no problems, and I usually use an external power bank anyway. But many users reported that the headset no longer recognized the battery after a few charging cycles. It was dead, while holding a charge, or being unable to be recharged.

Assuming the new ones work flawlessly, its an alright item then. Still extremely overpriced, but lacking a few issues reported on other alternative products, and the headstrap itself wears very comfortably, i must admit that. I can wear it for an hour or two or longer, without any pains or headaches. Very comfortable. The only pains I currently feel is from swinging that golf club like Conan.

You will definitely need an external battery solution for the Quest 3. May it be the Elite battery headstrap, or that of another manufacturer, or a powerbank.

To be clear: the issue is with the Elite battery headstrap, not with the Quest 3 headset itself.

[Skybird]

A new update for Quest 3 increases battery life while using Steam Link or Meta-PC Link by 30-50% - while at the same time unlocking 120Hz for such PC-streamed games. This may sound paradox, but isn't, since the real work is done not by the Quest, buit the PC, and higher resolution images just get sent to the Quest 3 and must not be calculated by it.

Support for the new branch of 4000 series gfx boards by nVidia also is added, up to the 4090 series.

Some more changes and new features were added, that for most people probably are not that relevant.

Quest 2 and Pro also got lying modes, you cna use them while lying flat on your bed or couch, and still watch movies or play, or whatever. Its expected that this mode gets re-added to Quest 3 at a later time (it was planned or even implemented, but then was taken away for some unknown reason).

[Skybird]

VR needs discipline and spatial awareness - and if you dont have that, you better stick to mixed reality games (which works fantastic if done well, as I learned). :D :haha:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FcXxqthgUM

[Skybird]

Tja. No bright side of things without a dark side of things.



https://www-nzz-ch.translate.goog/technologie/privacy-vision-pro-ld.1820693?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_hist=true


Its rumoured that the next generation of Quest headsets will have eye tracking, too. I never craved for it, could happily do without it. But Facebook would not be Facebook if they would pass on this golden opportunity.



Back to golf. :D I play my rounds on Pro now with 105-115 strokes per 18 holes. :doh: My near future plan is to get below 100 strokes. My long term plan is to bring my handicap to 18 or better. Possible that I will not succeed with that, I really ran into a tough challenge here.

[mapuc]

Can tell you that I've come one huge step closer to purchase Quest 3.

Instead of paying money to the Danish IRS I get a refund around 3600 Danish kroner and a Quest cost Circa 4400-5200 Danish kroner.

I still have the annual dentist thing. Don't think the cost for this will be high.

Markus

[Skybird]

Cannot comment on your economic situation, its your assessment and decision making. ;) In case you later join the club - you're welcome. :salute:


I just once again remind of that there are some follow-on costs in case you like the mask and want to stay with it (battery and/or headstrap, cable, maybe golf attachment which is quite expensive to get in Europe, unfortunately). Thegood thing is you can test step by step, but not go "all in" from beginning on.



A spring sale is currently going on in the Meta app store, and I could imagine additional auctions will take place around Easter.

[Skybird]

Just finished my 11th full round on Pro level, and with the best stroke result so far, 103. It was East Lake, which is a par 70 course, so there is room for improvement. :D My results vary widely, from 103 to 123 :doh:. Its extremely challenging to become consistent, and I certainly understand by now why so many people say that Golf is one of the most difficult sports there is. Its true. So many body variables, which constantly change, environmental variables, even psychic variables - its extremely complex and challenging, and I am not even affected by stamina effects and 4 hours of walking and standing - I take around 80 minutes for a full round, thanks to teleporting. LOL

I currently play practically nothing else but Fallout 4 (2D) , Eleven (3D), and Golf+ (3D).

Although with the Nordschleife coming for ACC on April 1st - confirmed to be no April joke - and the imminent release of Pau for Raceroom, that may change, but probably not for long. I am "all in" now regarding Golf, and will book a test round - in real life - for guests in one of the two local golf ressorts we have over here, later this spring or early summer, when the weather is accordingly. They offer that for 9 holes.

Current ingame handicap on Pro is 23, but of course that is fluent, since I have not done 20 roudns minimum so far, but 23 ranksng me around 47000th place in the world ranking list on Pro level :D, the SG (strikes gained) rating has me on a similiar rank in the world rating list. Two more rounds, then I have played all tour courses I own at least once on this level, I will then start a new circle, the handicap only makes sense if you play a wide variety of courses, and frequently. I said my near future goal is to play 18 holes with not more than 99 strokes, I think that can be acchieved. Whether I will be able to drop my handicap to -18 - that remains to be seen LOL, its certainly a very long time project, nothing I will and can accomplish any time soon. Maybe not even this year.


Would never have guessed that I would be taken away this much by a VR golf game.

[mapuc]

Wasn't it not you who said that it may come some sale on Meta's homepage around Easter ?

I am following the homepage closely in order to get a pair of Quest 3 for a bargain.

Markus

[Skybird]

Wasn't it not you who said that it may come some sale on Meta's homepage around Easter ?

It may be so, but I do not know. I only see that many, many games are on sales at times, and that a spring sale started some days ago. Golf+ so far is not included, only a course pack of four courses for he price of three.




Just found: new golf course is out: Harbour Town Golf Links.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSwlUKlWh4U

[Skybird]

If you tell me what titles you are especially interested in, I can ring an alarm bell if I see something happening.

BTW, you must not buy courses in 'Golf+, but can lease them for one month or one year. I think a good way to go is to spend I think 6 Euros for one month of all-included abonement (additional to the game that must be bought anyway). Then you have one month to play on all courses as often as you want, check them out, and decide which ones you want to own beyond that month.


As I said you can also be guest in a session I host, we can do some games that way, but its 16 PGA tour courses now, and a dozen more or so will arrive during the rest of this year, so that is quite a lot.

Valhalla you can get for free if joining the golf+ club (for free), which also gives you access to excessive statistics pages of your career, and when you leave a brief customer feedback on the game'S appstore page, a day later you will get a note confirming that you now have received Valhalla for free. Its a private non-arena course (no stands, no audience) in a nice rural landscpae, I like playing there. Reminds a bit of Yale. Its only little hassle to get it, and free, so I would definetly take that chance to get it.



The three free courses Golf+ comes with, are fantasy courses only and nothing special, you may play them once or twice and then never again. Also, they are not representative for the visual quality of the later DLCs.

[Skybird]

This one's for Neal... :D


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ke-uqtHTf0

[Skybird]

The new Harbour Town course is again very beautifully recreated and - again - features its very own unique local atmosphere, I love it. And I celebrated it with my worst round ever played on Pro level, with a sickening 128 strokes. :doh:

I learned to smile again since then, but at the end of that round I was very angry with myself , and murderously frustrated. Really seriously frustrated. Just yesterday I did East Lake in 103. A difference.

There are three holes where long winding little rivers, water obstacles, lie hidden in the gras, waiting like snakes in ambush. And they bit, and several times. I wonder what sort of malicous character golf course designers must have. And why they cannot use spirit levels - some of the greens aorund the hills are as smooth like the cratered surface of the moon and feature ups and downs like a rollerocaster. Three times I manage to have the ball rolling off the green again, and with speed.

I have successfully corrected my terrible drive to the far right. At the cost of that now my drives go terribly far to the left. :/\\!! And not really that far as that they would impress the girls. Far from it. Usually the outcome is: I get the exact opposite of what I wanted to acchieve in effect.

My chipping leaves plenty to be desired, it goes long and rolls endlessly when it should go short, and when I need a sdhort chip I manage to send it across the whole green anbd make it rolling off the green on the other side. And the sandwegde, that thing and me hardly will beocme friends anytime soon. Don'T hit the ball, but hit into the sand before the ball, they say. Use the putter's grip for the hands, they say. Feet aroudn shoulders wide, they say. And plop, the ball flies 40 cm and goes inbto the sand again. I have managed to send it fiorm bunker to bunker, or sometimes out of the bunker - but with not less than three hops inside the same bunker first.

Its no good for the faint-hearted. This is a cruel, merciless sport. One needs to be a sick, deranged psycho like me to like it. :arrgh!:


What a fantastic sim.

[mapuc]

If you tell me what titles you are especially interested in, I can ring an alarm bell if I see something happening.

BTW, you must not buy courses in 'Golf+, but can lease them for one month or one year. I think a good way to go is to spend I think 6 Euros for one month of all-included abonement (additional to the game that must be bought anyway). Then you have one month to play on all courses as often as you want, check them out, and decide which ones you want to own beyond that month.


As I said you can also be guest in a session I host, we can do some games that way, but its 16 PGA tour courses now, and a dozen more or so will arrive during the rest of this year, so that is quite a lot.

Valhalla you can get for free if joining the golf+ club (for free), which also gives you access to excessive statistics pages of your career, and when you leave a brief customer feedback on the game'S appstore page, a day later you will get a note confirming that you now have received Valhalla for free. Its a private non-arena course (no stands, no audience) in a nice rural landscpae, I like playing there. Reminds a bit of Yale. Its only little hassle to get it, and free, so I would definetly take that chance to get it.



The three free courses Golf+ comes with, are fantasy courses only and nothing special, you may play them once or twice and then never again. Also, they are not representative for the visual quality of the later DLCs.

To start with I am going to buy 5 thing.

1. Quest 3
2. Chargeable batteries 3500 mAH or higher
3. This 100W power bank
4. This cable(who connect power bank with the headset)
5. This mask(when sweating)

Later, when I'm fine with it-meaning can use it for 30 to 60 min. without getting motion sickness I'm going to buy games and tools(Rackets, golf stuff etc)

Markus

[Skybird]

Yes, but what software, I mean? You get youtube VR free, some other stuff, but none that will carry you over months and years. I assume you get Golf+ anyway - anything you set your eyes on beyond that?

[mapuc]

I haven't been looking closely on what I would like to have in my game library. Only demands is:
Non-violent games.

I'm thinking golf+, tennis, table tennis, billiard and a game you showed us some years ago-Canoing(don't know if that's a game)

Markus

[Skybird]

Mirage Kajak. Sorry, that is PC only. If your PC can handle the burden of running the game and also the headset, it works (I do it), but you said your system may not be able to handle VR headsets.

Tennis is First Person Tennis then.

Table Tennis is Eleven, yes, a must-have.

Billiards, you have the choice between Mixed Reality-including Miraclepool (which I would recommend), and Black Hole Pool. Miraclepool is currently still free, but will cost once it is out of Beta - probably also for older users who got it free. I will not criticise them if they do it this way.

May I also suggest Racket Club, and Wander if you want access to Google Streetview material.

Thrill of the Fight is the best workout title there is, I think. And its cheap. sequel is coming later this year - then with multiplayer.

BigScreen is free. My preferred choice to watch Youtube videos in a real movie hall. It can do more, but I dont use that.

I get Medieval Dynasty and C-Smash (a squash-breakout-style game) later these weeks, I leave a note on whether I think they are good.

I tell you when I see these titles you are interested in on a sale.

[Skybird]

Looks awesome, an attachement simulating a tennis racket's and pickleball paddle's grip. Those I have seen so far where quite long, too long for my playing area, but this one keeps it short by turning the controller in the holder by 90°. Will get it, that is stuff made for me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvIi5K5EDz8


https://i0.wp.com/solidslime.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Untitled-1-1.png?resize=980%2C974&ssl=1

[Skybird]

I am following this one. TBR later this year, I recall to have red Q3/Q4. The physics in it already now feel very different than thos ein Pickleball One. I never had a chance to try Pickleball in real life, so I have no clue which of the two is more realistic in its ball-versus-paddle-physics.

https://pball.pro/


-------------


I went through the process of completely recallibrating all golf clubs in Golf+. I spend the better part of two hours for that. But it was worth it, it seems I had somehiow messe dup the first round of doiung this months ago, and having messed up something. I now have much better range in my strikes, especially the first drive.



If you ever get into Golf+ yourself, pay attention to this callibration, they do not document it well (=not at all), and it is easy to miss. Which could cost you 50m in range when using the driver, as in my case. - Hah, finally I can reach out in full... Should help a bit to bring the handicap down - assuming I manage to aim better. LOL..



I more and more learn to like the "Battle" option in the game, too. It chooses randomly course and conditions and lets you play 3 randomly choosen holes against the recorded file of some other real player, because everything you do in Golf+, moves and statistics, gets recorded and stored in the cloud, some of it limited to 90 days. This way you play a pseudo-multiplayer short match against a "canned" human performance whose avatar and strokes you see on the court as well. If you win, you earn ingame-currency to personalise your equipment further.

[mapuc]

Forgot to add another game to my wishes.

Bowling. Don't know if it exist in the world of VR.

Markus

[Skybird]

Two games at least exist, I tried one of it. Boring. Refunded.



Same for Darts. Tried, boring, refunded.



I like a certain airhockey game (there are several) that is not further developed and has too big grips and disc, but is superior to the others because it features the original's dramatic speed. Plus its free. You want to try it. Remind me of it once you are set up, I direct you to it.

[Skybird]

https://media1.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExNXdneTlqYXdlZXVsbDZxZHBmaGN2dnZ rcTdpNHFkMWI5YWE2enpyYiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfY nlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/xT0GqBJf5FNUGKoVrO/giphy.gif


Objective accomplished: staying below 100 strokes.

Bay Hill: 94. :Kaleun_Cheers:

I celebrate with a Double Bailey. :yeah: I rejoice!


And I easily gave away 4 balls, the score could have been even better.


Its insane how much daily form and psyche influence the daily performance, just two days ago I was fuming and depressed for getting a 128 round. Not to mention the now correctly callibrated clubs, I have readjusted the shaft lengths one more time so that they now seem to fit my body size even better.

[Skybird]

This contains two unofficial but extremely helpful guides. The one is on the the game Golf+, the other on attachements available for it.



https://www.vrgolfbag.com/


Thanks to the author Cvan65.

[Skybird]

Cruel Pinehurst. The victim is me, in action.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BsS42BTvWk

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NETvfTbJoM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUf7FPa_FwA

[Skybird]

"Merde."

https://i.postimg.cc/BnJ220DJ/Steilhang.jpg (https://postimg.cc/rKYdL7QH)

[Jimbuna]

'BUNKERED' :)

[Skybird]

^ I play with Bundeswehr balls. They have seekerheads to bust every bunker they find. :D
The old course at St. Andrews has some bunkers like this one, too, but I do not have that course. The bunker in the picture is at the fantasy course "Castle Links":
https://i.postimg.cc/QtvJH8NQ/A1.jpg (https://postimg.cc/r0CrHLrs)

https://i.postimg.cc/7L3kB6d6/A2.jpg (https://postimg.cc/VSkpvYYQ)

-------------------
Meanwhile, my second objective has been accomplished as well, much earlier than expected.

https://i.postimg.cc/4ygcRPgp/handicap.jpg (https://postimages.org/)

I have played once all 15 courses I own and play (2 default courses I dont like and never play, they are fanatsy, years old and boring, and 2 DLC courses I did not buy since they mean nothing to me). The game gives me a modified handicap of 18.7 now. Modified means that settings like wind (I play at medium of three settings, and at coastal reserves at strongest setting), pin height (medium of three levels), speed of the greens (second-fastest of four settings), and tee choosen (always the back tee) have an altering effect on the calculation, the scoring gets bonusses for increased difficulty. In normal life, such bonusses are given only for choosen tee, since wind, speed and pin cannot be standardized in reality like you can in computer formulas. In real life they would calculate with the 8 best rounds you did in your last 20 rounds (40%), so does the game once you have had the minimum of 20 rounds, so far I played just 15 rounds on Pro, (over 60 on Amateur), of which the game scored the best 5 rounds so far (33%) . Five more rounds and the first full scoring will be complete.

I play every day, 18 holes, and sometimes additionally one or two battles and practices. I'm getting better and better, slowly but constantly - expect if it is one of those days, you know... . :yeah:

Currently editing a small video on the one free default course that I sometimes play, and that comes free with the game: Castle Links.

Over 90% of my VR time and over half of my total computer time gets spend on golf now.


Next objectives: to stabilize my scoring with a full handicap score from 20 rounds, and to bring the handicap further down to at least the 13 I had on Amateur level (where it was easier to accomplish).


Honesty demands to admit that I tell just half of the truth. :D If I would manually pick the six best rounds and would not weigh in any diffculty setting (not even chosen tees like in reality is scored) but just take the numbers as they are, my handicap would be 26.

[Skybird]

Thats me again - trying my best. :D



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkEkIBHMX9k&t=24s

[Skybird]

It shere, and it works very well in Fist Person Tennis, Pickleball Pro VR and and Pickleball One. Attaching grip tape follows.



From day of shipment to day of delivery Sweden to Germany: 2 days. It took him just some days to get the item processed first. Comnpoany is named Solidslime, the make many such VR atta chmeents, I also have their Eleven table tennis attachment, it is very good.



https://i.postimg.cc/vBhzGCDM/20240327-135625.jpg (https://postimg.cc/ZB93c7rD)

[Skybird]

Quest game optimizer. I have not tested it myself, so leave it uncommented.

https://anagan79.itch.io/quest-games-optimizer


https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=145&v=inE6HTKZ-ZM&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fanagan79.itch. io%2F&source_ve_path=MTM5MTE3LDEzOTExNywyODY2Ng&feature=emb_logo&themeRefresh=1

[Skybird]

Drei Dinge braucht der Mann:

https://i.postimg.cc/J4kwCJSW/20240328-115452.jpg (https://postimg.cc/mtBpQcbd)




And since I wear this, I all of a sudden play better golf! :yeah:


https://i.postimg.cc/hhWQZTQ0/20240328-153728.jpg (https://postimg.cc/jncjLWXW)

[Skybird]

The pool of available VR games has grown by a new release I waited for and which I would call a truly enriching highlight so far. Medieval Dynasty: A New Settlement is out since yesterday.


Visually it is solid, but not spectacular. Gameplay-wise, it really gets me hooked. It is essentially a survival- sandbox and construction game. No battles between armies, no slaying of dragon, noi fight and conquest is to be done, but just surviving from day to day by doing the rotuines of daily work: famring food, hunting, chopping wood, exploring the world for places and ressources, building a house or a vollage, running it my basic management. This is done in a quite intuitive handling of things, natural grab-and-do mechanisms, and simplification of real world actions. It feels consistent, streamlined, well cosnidered and implemented.


I like that this is a laid-back experience in that you do not get constanlty fight battles against invading armies. Your fight for survival is more "subtle": dont care for having food to eat and water to drink and shelter to protect you from cold seasons and heavy weather, and you die. Simple.



I came across a few more minor bugs, nothing serious or show-stopping. I see great potential in this game. Absolutely recommended!


A revelation was the moving around in caves, the interaction of darkness and shadow with the light of the torch I held. For some reaosn I liked this detail very much.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy_bpFRM8sA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsdlN9uPO4

[mapuc]

Have a few questions

1. You have on several occasions mentioned 100W powerbank
Question: Do you have some kind of fixing to fasten it to the headset ?

2. Do you have to swing the golf club hard, as you mentioned in another game thread ?

I have a room where I can play golf. It's my kitchen where I have 2X2 square meter free space.

Markus

[Skybird]

Have a few questions

1. You have on several occasions mentioned 100W powerbank
Question: Do you have some kind of fixing to fasten it to the headset ?

2. Do you have to swing the golf club hard, as you mentioned in another game thread ?

I have a room where I can play golf. It's my kitchen where I have 2X2 square meter free space.

Markus
The powerbank is not strapped to the headset. I use a 1m wire to connect headset with powerbank, I carry the latter in a belt pouch on my hip (if I use it, whcih is not always the case). If I sit, I place the battery loosely beside me on the couch or table, again with the wire. I linked to the items I use, at Amazon, in an earlier post.



The Golf club attachement I now use, is 55cm long. - The playing area I move around inside, is around 2.50x2.30, if need be one axis could be "extended" by 1m if I play table tennis for example and must jump to the left and right, far away fromm the table, to save a ball; one corner of that normal playing area however is covered by one edge of my bed, at knee height. But I swing above it, dont touch it. I play Tennis and Squash games with a racket attachment that "extents " my right arm by around 13cm. So, in my space, I have no problems. If your 2x2 meters however are solid walls or furniture, then - I would get something shorter than my Golf club attachment. Or play with just controllers.



I also mark the center of my playing area with a hand-sized round tile that I place on the carpet. I can feel it with my foot and then know that I'm "safe" and can stretch my arms out in all directions and swing my bat attacks without breaking anything. I don't use the mask's virtual guardian system.



The Golf club I use is designed to mimic the weight distribution and feeling of mass when swinging a real golf club. And yes, I swing it with all my power, thats why I have sometimes muscle problems currently, I am still not used to it. To copy the grip and holding of a real golf club allows you to exactly use the same grip, stand and swing movement of your whole body. That is needed to get realistic reach and precision.


My club weighs around 530 gr with controller attached, but it is shorter than a golf club. I read the maximum weight for heavy golf clubs is around 480gr for the biog things, the shorter irons obviously are lighter. The higher weight at the tip is needed to bring the shorter attachement club to same club head speed when swinging like swinging a real, long golf club. I can take off a 70gr weight, however, and then additionally can tailor it further in 10gr intervals to vary weight in another 90gr range, so with controller attached I could make that club as light as 370gr. But you loose stability in swinging, and thus precision in that way. It becomes more "gamey".



There are severla companies, all from the US it seems, who produce good attachmentes made of good, solid materials (stay away fom plastioc stuff from asia). Some of these are lighter, and shorter than mine. Mine already is the shortened version of the default model, which is I think around one hand's width longer. I would have preferred that, but saw possible conflict with my spacing at home.



And yes you have to swing that golf club with all your power. However, you can cheat in the callibration where the computer measures your swing three times, and then adds virtual power to it to give you, with the power you invested, the range for every iron that it should have according to the table. Swing with 50% of the power of Tiger Woods, but get the range of his shots nevertehless, so to speak. Experts will want to tune the software to mimic the ranges they get with every club in real life. My power supplementation is 7% for driver and then goes down to 4% with the shortest iron, the lob wedge. This way I can reach the beginning of the fairway from back tee even on holes where the fairway is critically far away from the tees, and if the gap between both could be a sand or water obstacle, then, well, then this sucks. With at least a clean shot I can bridge at least these long distance traps, since else they could turn into showstoppers. The game says the driver has a range of 279m, without any callibration I can drive the ball from Tee just 180-210m, by my own power. With the way I tweaked it, I can get up to 220, 230m in flight, and then some more rolling. I wnat it "realiostic. I am not Tiger Woods or Arnold Palmer, you know, just a newbie trying to survive out there on the fairway. The simulation aspect is priority for me, not to pretend I am some pro player that I am certainly not.



You can test Golf+ first with the default controller, then you see how you move around in your flat and how much "space reserve" you have, but 2mx2m is sharp, really. I known however that there are players doing it with that, and I did it myself too, with the Rift and on cable headset. Other games benefit from the passthrough mode: mixed reality. I play table tennis with the table set up in the wall and on the balcony of my room, I see the surroundings in real, just with the overlay of the table, or my boxing opponent. Other sports game often use "portals through which the virtual reality of the game gets displayed, the portal itself however is placed and treated like an item of our real world, a screen. That works very well, you have seen it in videos I posted. Golf however does not have that.



I would not have the space to place a billoard table in my living room. But now I do, I place it on top of my existing furniture.



You just have to try and then see if you can figure it out, Markus. Just again and again sitting on your head and forming thoughts why it maybe could not work will get you nowhere. Get one set, test it, see what it does for you and how you react to it, and if you dont like it, give it back, via Amazon no problem (14 days). And there is much more good stuff for a VR headset than just golf.;) Cinemas, for example.

[em2nought]

You could Über the St. Andrews realism by standing in your shower while you played. :D

[Skybird]

Is "singing while golfing" mandatory at St. Andrews? :)
Imagine this, flocks of golfers on the course, all howling and yelling while making their strokes, and their partners holding shower handgrips over them. :D
Typically British. Eccentrics.

[Skybird]

Markus,
alternative club attachments:

40 cm long, cant say anything on the weight and swinging feel. But it is a popular model and cheaper than DeadEyeVR. Its light, 172gr without controller (~130gr) say sone feedback.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kvU9UpqiCQ

Two more alternatives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=731M6066T-Y

This one has a formdiable grip but lacks weight. I have it, know it from practice. But it is short. Its an early model by DeadEyeVR, and still available.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLIeShW4OPk

And this one is the club I now use. It comes in two versions, the normal verison is the one shown in the video, there is also a shortened version which is my choice, it is around 53cm. The standard version is 74cm, thats 21cm more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u11ML_82es

Can't you find a bigger play space?

A note on deadEyeVR, their products are probably at the top of the quality list, but their service is not. I did three orders, anbd ion allc ases had to remind them later on to actually process the order, then they logge dit into the shipping company'S system - and did not bring in the parcel for another week, then it took 10-12 days for shipping additonally to the 1 week wasted and one week waiting time - and this they call premmier or express shipping and price it heftily. Four emails never got replied to, a criticisim I voice dat the end wa snot answered, and the total costs with shipping and customs doubled the item price of 90 coins, I had to pay twice as mjuch, almost. That is hefty and not many in Europe are eccentric enough to do it, I assume. But with the club itself I am now totally happy, its fantastic. So: product great, price hefty, service lousy. For American customers it is significantly cheaper, though not really "cheap".

Yezro might be the best alternative to DeadEyeVR out there.


But if you want a short solution, its the small DeadeyeVR DriVR or the Sunlaki.Both are short. But both are also very light.


Your choice. I recommend to test Golf with controller first, due to your spacing problem. Do not buy cheaper plastic items from China, people say they tend to break - and often. In the end you muist not play it as hardcore simualtion as I try to do, but can set up the game that it becomes more forgiving and gamer-friendly. Its still a fantastic experience then. Just the results and ratings loose comparability then. The tournaments they do online all are played on relatively high, sim-heavy settings.

[mapuc]

Thank you for your input Marc.

I'm not going to buy stuff like the DeadEyeVR together with the Quest 3 directly. First I'm going to get (forgot the word) with the set first.

As said before there's 4 things I'm going to buy beside the Quest 3.

1. chargeable batteries 3500 mAH or more
2. This powerbank
3. This anti-sweat stuff(forgot it's name)
4. This cable who shall go from the powerbank to the headset.

Markus

[Skybird]

By 1. you probably mean a headstrap replacement with integrated battery. Good.

With the powerbank in 2. I would wait, just in case you do not like the headset and want to return it. You have the 2nd battery in the headset repalcement, and Amazon would deliver such things quickly if need be.

The cloth mask in 3, good idea, and no huge financial investment. If you have none: a small ventilator I would rate even more important. It helps tremendously, also against warmth-induced nausea.

The cable in 4. you obviously need for the powerbank in 2. - if you get it.

For orientation: when I play 18 holes in Golf+ I need around 80 minutes. Usually that empties half of the combined battery for the headset and the headstrap together. Battery consumption can drastically vary with different software, however.


P.S.
a powerbank is a great emergency and repair light if used with one of these tiny LED lights that get plugged into a USB port. Its not wrong to have two or three such powerbanks at home, as emergency reserves. The light lasts forever. Some have the size of small or big USB sticks, and are extremely bright. They come in cold and warm white. You can alo put them into a cellphone charger that goes into a wall mount, if there is power but just no light in the place where light is needed.

[mapuc]

Ohh I meant to exchange the batteries who came with the controllers to these 3500 mAH and then use the Powerbank to the headset.

Don't like it..By reading all your positive words about it and all the videos I've seen, there's no doubt that I'm going to love it.

The only thing I fear is motion sickness That I can't use it even after some weeks or month due to motion sickness.

I'll give it some time to get my brain adjust to this Virtual Reality-I remember you once said this would take 1-2 weeks or something like that

I have a conservatory/wintergarten and there I have around
4 to 5X4 to 5 square meter free space. This can't be used during late autumn, winter and early spring.

Markus

[Skybird]

I have a conservatory/wintergarten and there I have around
4 to 5X4 to 5 square meter free space. This can't be used during late autumn, winter and early spring.


Why not? It sounds ideal! If its only the colder temperature - you will get warm with the right titles. Very. Promised. Watch out for ceiling height when swinging, it snot just the walls. Even more so if there is plenty of windows/glass walls...

-----------------------------

On my quest to compare sim with reality, namely my own performance, I red this today, from the German edition of Golf Post:

Club head speed and drive length are closely linked. Club head speed depends on various factors: power, technique, equipment and agility. The club head speed of professional golfers is well documented, especially on the PGA Tour, but what about the average golfer?

According to TrackMan's data, the average golfer has an average club head speed of 93.4 mi/h (150.3127 km/h), reaching a distance of 214 yards (195.7 meters). However, this does not apply to golfers of all handicap classes. As a rule, the better the handicap, the faster the club head speed. According to the USGA, the average handicap is between 14 and 15. A golfer with a 10 handicap reaches an average of around 95 mi/h (153 km/h), with a 5 handicap 101 mi/h (162.5 km/h) and a scratch golfer reaches 110 mi/h (177 km/h).

According to an estimate by swingmangolf.com, women reach an average of 78 mi/h (125.5 km/h) and a length of 179 yards (163.7 meters). Of course, it is not only the handicap that plays a role, but also age. But that doesn't mean that you can't improve your club head speed as you get older, provided you train properly, as these statistics show:

By comparison, the average PGA Tour professional reaches a speed of 113 mi/h (182 km/h). The golfer with the longest drives in the 2019 PGA Tour season was Cameron Champ, who achieved an average club head speed of 128 mi/h (206 km/h). Looking at data from previous years, however, it is also clear that such speed is an advantage, but not a necessity. At just 109 mi/h (175 km/h), Matt Kuchar was at the slower end of the PGA Tour pros in 2017/18, for example. Colt Knost brought up the rear with 102 mi/h (164 km/h).

For the ladies on the LPGA Tour, the average club head speed is 94 mi/h (151 km/h), which is in the range of an average male amateur, but according to the LPGA, they reach a length of 248 yards (227 meters), 34 yards (31 meters) further. This is due to greater drive efficiency, which is 2.64 yards per mi/h of club head speed, according to swingmangolf.com. For male professionals, this figure is only 2.57, while amateurs achieve 2.29.Well. My drives reach a carry (flight time until ground contact) of 190-230 meters. With that I am apparently quite normal, certainly not bad. Aiming is a different story... Maybe I try to hard to jujst put power into it. I will test to swing softer, and to control movement better, hopefully.

With clearly over 20 rounds on Pro level played now, my adjusted handicap has stabilized and currently fluctuates between 18 and 20. So there I am slightly below average Joe.

Das wird schon... :yeah: And I do not cheat and play with beefed up values like a second Tiger Woods. I play as myself, a normal average dude.

[em2nought]

and their partners holding shower handgrips over them. :D

In the states, most of our shower heads project from higher up the tile and rain down on us. We don't need a shower buddy to hold "anything" for us. :D

[Skybird]

Great show, it leaves just one question: is it immersive? :D

It is also an illustration of the long version of the DeadeyeVR DriVR Elite club, of which I use the shorter version. If you have the space both vertically and horizontally, I would recommend this over any other. Mind you, it is 70 cm long. In rooms with a standard 2.40m ceiling, this can be a problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqakK5tn0Is


Mind you, he plays at Topgolf Vegas, which is a graphically modern addition to the game, but also at the courses "Alpine" and "Castle Links". "Alpine" and "Cliffs" are very old maps that are not represenattive for the DLC courses, whcih offer far greate rlooks and better detail, I think Cliffs was the first course they did many years ago in the old game that still had a different title back then. Castles is okay and has a nice mood, but again is nopt on par with the DLC's visual quality. So do not judge the game by the looks in this video. Its a first impression video, he meanwhile seems to have gotten at least St. Andrews, I read somewhere.

[Skybird]

This guy made just three videos so far, but all three of them give some profound explanations and hint at good training options. The ball directon indicator was completely new to me.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg0Q_Js-8X8


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OH7f7Xjw3Bg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkCjH7mG8og

[Skybird]

SteamLink and Virtual Desktop - which one is better?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9S7fznoj7U

[Skybird]

The Steam Link app for Quest 3 has matured. When it was released, firts it did not even keep theloink reliably, and corruoted the flow of the game after 20-3ß seocnds. But now I have tested it with it srecent build, due to the Nordschleife in Assetto corsa Competzione beign released (many, many laps logged sincethen... : ) , and what should I say: woth my archaic gfx biard and olf system (almost 7 years) it ran the Schleife without a single crash.
However, due to the enormous demand and the high pixel load and the need to additonally cualcoate the wireless link, the sim runs absolutely playable, but not completely smooth as silk. I also had to reduce the cars on track to 16. But by the end of the day: it works, and suprisingly reliable, the limitations are due to my overaged hardware, its a fossile by now, but still does what I throw at it in work and jobload. (Even the gfx bioard is 6.5 years runnign now, I was used of seeing them smoking up every 3 years or so).



I tested it with other games as well, it works, and is the most comfortable way to play PC Steam games in the Quest. It takes Steam running on PC as it usually does in the background anyway, and downloading and running the Steam Link app on the Quest. You end up in the same Steam VR Home screen you get when attaching a PC-cable-linked headset like my G2 to the PC, but why would i want to do that anymore? The image in the Quest is so much better.



The only hickup is that after I finish playing a game this way, I am best advised to not end it inside the game optiosn, but to shut down Stema Link app comletel yand if need be, restart it. I oftn wofund that if leaving the game but retrnign to the Steam home end up in corrupted stability of the Stema App itself. Well, no big deal.


The same sort of app is offered for XBox abonements. I do not know that since I do not own an XBox, but if that works as good as the Steam app, then it must be fantastic for XBox players.

[Skybird]

Strange things are going on in my living room!


https://i.postimg.cc/xCvNmGVs/4508fbbfdcd16e1a8a87e2d98cb4f55f.jpg (https://postimg.cc/cgJJynHY)

The net is practically where the glass of the window and door is, half the table stands on the balcony.


https://i.postimg.cc/QNRxDKLC/1ab8b31edd813ae68125c6d774eb0f8a.jpg (https://postimg.cc/0r0qdQy1)

Same, part of the table stands on the balcony. To move around the table, I would grab the handle on the sides and simply turn the table, or drag it to another position. Simple as nose poking. Align the table height with the surface of a real table or any solid structure, and you can even lean on it.


https://i.postimg.cc/gkt9pfLD/8458b763e5dbb737f3a2c7c5ad234fee.jpg (https://postimg.cc/9r9gtgpR)

When you run left and right on the baseline, the window follows. I prefer to play in full VR fopr better immersion, however, this mixed reality solution (Meta calls it "Passthrough mode") works, and it works well.


https://i.postimg.cc/Zqd0pPzG/cd1a7f818b242d8ecdd12dc276d3dbfd.jpg (https://postimg.cc/94cWj7Mb)

Cybrix, which gets the better the more advanced the levels you reach, a mix of squash and breakout. It uses a quite big window into the VR.


https://i.postimg.cc/1zt2jM3d/d381e81259ff2393343fba799011f63f.jpg (https://postimg.cc/Yv5d46gN)

Racket Ball. I use the mixed reality mode only to align the playing area wiht real world boundaries, then switch to full VR for better immersion. The cabin inside which you play limit your and ball movement to the rear and sides - with glass walls - anyway, so once aligned, mixed reality is no longer essential for security.


https://i.postimg.cc/k4MZkmvq/e1a1cf002db748b7516e7e0bc8ba6d6d.jpg (https://postimg.cc/Lq7N1GWb)

The Thrill of the Fight. From second highest of four difficulty levels on it really is a serious, sweat-driving workout, below that level its tame, even boring (Youtube videos usually do nto do it any justice, always film low level opponents that just stand still and take the beating). The ring will be tailored in size and in such a way that it fits best into your defined guardian cage inside Meta'S space setup. The bigger your guardian cage, the more to real size the ring will grow. Theoretically, if you have the space, you can chase him through most of your living room - or let him chasing you... Or you have an intimate infight with only 1.5x1.5 meters of ring size. :D


When hitting and kicking things in VR, situational awareness for your real world surrounding is of paramount importance. Never forget where you really are. I place a marker on the floor, right on the centrepoint of my playing space that I could feel with my feet. That way I know that I stand where I am safe, no matter how wild I swing or making a step to any side. Also, frequently zeroing your position via button on the right controller is important.

The screenshots do not do it all justice, and the perspective is slightly distorted, compared to what you see in the headset. But belie it: mixed reality in the Quest 3 works incredibly well. The game in question must have the option for it hard-coded into it, you cannot play just evertyhing in mixed reality mode.

[Skybird]

This app from the applab (=early access, in development) is chess in mixed reality squared, so to speak.

Look closely. You can have both colours' pieces fully virtual. But then you can also have your own real pieces on a real board, the Quest then will recognise if you move these - and project virtual pieces of your human or AI opponent onto that virtuaol board. That way, you have full haptic feedback from playing with real pieces on a real board.

It is a bit like with VR apps for piano playing where key marking get projected onto the real, material keys.

Nice! Half material, half virtual. But note that the feature currently is experimental and does not yet work reliably.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usoKcn7VH5g


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGsDQX2ZYtI

[Skybird]

BTW., this is a list with titles at the applab.


https://applabgamelist.com/Best



Thes egames mostkly are old games, games in development, early access candidates, things that are no longer developed, or that are crap (many are, probably most are).



I got Pool, Chess and Air Hockey from this place.



You cannto find these in the Quest store, they are hidden, you must use a PC to access the site, click on the game, log in with your Meta ccount - and then it transports you into the interface of the normal Meta store and then things work as usual, just on PC. You buy or mark the download, in your Meta account, and next time you activate your Quest 3, you find it available for download. It works, i did it three times.



The applap probably offers fa rmroe titles than the Meta store where you only find finished titles officially tested for Quest 2/Pro/3 compatability.

[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- .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYeVDDtixSw

[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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7b8W5A-Ag

[Skybird]

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


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaMXxLmJxEA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6XKIFTGVjU

[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.

------------

If you have not noticed it :D, 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.

-----------

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-crystal-light-giveaway-win-a-freshly-unveiled-high-end-vr-headset.2013/

https://www.overtake.gg/attachments/pimax-crystal-light-specs-vs-crystal-jpg.746724/

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.goog/guter-golfer-handicap/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de (https://golfforscher-de.translate.goog/guter-golfer-handicap/?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de)

https://i.postimg.cc/ydjb2Jjx/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)

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. :D 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. :yeah: 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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbfLqdhgOW4


------------


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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGmLI8msoGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-B9dFaUzmE

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



-----------




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.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=878V7QPuSWY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVjo0gDl1Dk

[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.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O0xbcK43gI

[Skybird]

The next Golf+ course they release is apparently Quail Hollow, soon to arrive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY6XVdJ-73k


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

[Skybird]

Meta just released a statement that it's hardware section booked a 30% increase in revenues due to Quest 3 sales in 1st quarter 2024.


However, sales in Q1 2022 where even higher in total, since the Quest 2 back then let the Vr market literally explode in sales numbers. Part of that customer basis was not ready to already now move to Quest 3.



I think they will remain the cheapest VR headset offer since they must not make their profit from hardware sales, but get it from their all dominant appstore sales. Other companies do not have that extensive software background.

[mapuc]

<

Despite losing money at a rate of more than $1 billion per month since June of 2022, Meta affirmed its commitment to Reality Labs, saying, "we continue to expect operating losses to increase meaningfully year-over-year due to our ongoing product development efforts and our investments to further scale our ecosystem."

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/meta-loses-another-38-billion-on-vrar

Markus

[Skybird]

The point is that with the Relaity Labs and Applab and the software ecosystem they do not need to be making profits with VR hardware like the other companies producing VR headsets. Itzs the softwarecosystem that generates their profits from VR - at least sufficient o more than comensate for the non-profts from hardware sales. This way they saturate the VR market with their brands, even more so that now they open their operating system and plan that Asus, Lenovo and other companies release hardware of their own, but with Meta OS, merging them into the brand'S ecosphere. Clever move, imo. The Quest however promsies to remain the key player, since it may not be the outstanding perfectionist in any of the different performance sectoirs of VR headsets, but excelles sufficnetl yin all of them, and notallowign any weaklnesses of its own, this way presenting itself as the VW of VR, so to speak, the dominating generalist most people will turn to.



What should I say? I have packed my PC-bound G2 and stored it away. The one bigger player that turns into a victim of VR development, was surposingly or not surprisngly Microsoft'S Mixed Reality. Thats why they deactivate it in their windows versions. Microsoft never succeeded in really debugging it and improving its sometimes shaky reliability. The dying of Mixe dRelaity by Windows is not the customers' fault, but completely Microsoft's own fault. They messed up another hardware "revolution" of theirs. Not the first, but just the last in a long chain of failed Microsoft hardware attempts.



New Picos seem to be on their way. A new Valve headset is expected, too, after many years. I expect both to be much more expensive than the Quest 3.

[Skybird]

Version 65 is coming. Small but good refinements, "stealing" from Apple.
https://youtu.be/FLF6OvfHrKI?si=ifPVgk5COIIOya_r

[Skybird]

Looks stunning.
https://youtu.be/U78hfstGW3U?si=kHSqj4S6idBycENZ

[Skybird]

A classic from the last millenia is back, redesigned from scratch for VR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ox_cUdXHMmQ

[Skybird]

30 days ago I accidentally hit the "Prime" button when playing an Amazon order. I got their 30 days free test period. In that time, I watched the first season of Fallout - good -, and just recently the first season of The Rings of Power, a LOTR spinoff, also good. I now noticed that inside BigScreen, they have players for streamign platforms like Netflix and Prime. So, watching Prime series and Prime movies in one of BigScreen's very nice movie halls is easy peazy , bringing all that stuff up to the big movie screen. Since I place 1-2 orders per month at Amazon and found them to have several other series I am interested in, from Yellowstone to Westworld, and some more, I have decided to stay with Prime for the time being, it pays off easily for me. Also nice that movies I would not care to buy on disc or to buy tickets in cinemas, often are released early on streamign platforms and before disc release anyway, and then can be leased for 3-4 Euros, being watched in my private movie hall. Thats - MUCH - cheaper than a real cinema ticket or buying a Bluray.

Just to remind that it is a big mistake to underestimate the magic of VR for simply watching movies or series on the big screen. No home TV theatre can compete with that, none.

I still can mirror discs via PC into the VR mask, if it is a movie not available on Prime.

Big shows I have not watched on TV anymore since many, many months, and already since before the Q3 arrived. I currently let a service treaty with a cable TV provider run out, I do not need them anymore, and the German news shows and political reports simply are too bad as if I want to pay more for them than I must (via GEZ).


I also learned not before now that I can link blutooth hardware to the mask, and easily. Mouse or keyboard for exmaple, if need be, or a gamepad.

[Skybird]

Skybird that I am, I must try this, it reminds me of Condor Soaring Simulator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7CLztP5am4



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJRsnPleCJM

[Skybird]

Holy cow, this ^ is frickin' awesome...!!! Superb physics, it seems, soaring in - as far as I recall from and compare to Condor - realistically modelled, ground and cloud dependent thermals, wind anyway, groudn effects, wave riding, and an excellent sense of really flying, intuitive controls with upper body leaning forward, backward, left and right, plus line controls. Graphics are good, good enough at least could better maybe, but I cannot complain, its fine, down to blossoming flowers on the ground. So far three flight regions. Several glider: motor glider, paraglider, speedglider, hang lgider ("dragon glider") - even a camera drone.



Find of the quarter, unexpected surprise! I love it. This will get a very lot of time from me.

[Skybird]

You can see by this guy's eamaple that the sim is serious.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_eZgLZ8uE8


Well, there can be no doubt that some topics from reality can be simulated unbelievable well in VR. VR is not for every topic, it needs its matches in objects choosen - but if the pairing is choosen well, its only cool, cool all day long.

[Skybird]

A whole collection of introduction and training videos.

[/URL][URL]https://www.youtube.com/@5drealities477/videos (https://www.youtube.com/@5drealities477/videos)

Understanding their model of simulating thermals obviously is very important:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XymBOf_ITFo


Why an FPV drone?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QigbKjPGfo

[Skybird]

A 92 round at TPC Sawgrass lets my handicap drop into the 17s for the first time ever. That was hard work! Took me almost 40 played rounds since I switched to Pro to get there.



I like that it is so difficult. That way an accomplishment really feels like an accomplishment.



Next goal: handicaps in the 16-range.



I am also nibbling at the 90-strokes-per-round barrier. Slowly I get there. Lots of frustration included...

[Skybird]

As a reminder, Meta is clearing its remaining stocks of Quest 2s, which come in 128 and 256 GB versions. The first is juicy an offer, the latter is no more: see the costs below.

In Germany, Amazon offers these 128 GB versions for 250 coins.

I usually would not recommend to go with it anymore if you want a VR headset for general, mutliple uses. But if you are believing that you know yourself good enough to say you are interested only in a very special, clearly defined subsection of the huge software market for VR, and these are titles - or is just one title - that do not need or do not run in Passthrough (=mixed reality) mode, then this offer might be for you, because it saves you an awesome lot of money. I have especially those titles on mind that are not technically extremely demanding (Quest 2 has significantly less performance power than Quest 3) and that are known to show only minor visual differences between both versions. Of course, dont expect that you could save 300 coins over the Quest 3 and get the exact same experience, you would deceive yourselfg there, but the Quest 2 is still good enough that it hinders many users to migrate to the Quest 3 already and is the most sold headset so far, I think thats not for no reason. Quest 3 sales are good, but are still handicapped by the popularity of the Quest 2, without the Quest 2 around, Quest 3's sale numbers would explode.

I mention this only for those who consider themselves interested in VR but are scared away by the price. You get a bit less, yes, but compare the prices:

Quest 2 128 MB - 250 coins
Quest 2 256 GB - 500 coins
Quest 2 + Elite Headstrap+Battery - 300 coins
vs.
Quest 3 128 GB - 550 coins
Quest 3 512 GB - 700 coins
(German Amazon prices)

The headstrap with battery alone usually costs 150 coins, both for Q2 and Q3.

The Quest 2 with 256 GB cannot be recommended, it has a clearly disadvantegous bang-for-the-buck ratio.

Its a compromise that may work well if you really know you want to limit to such specified titles to use. However, my general recommendation stands, its in favour of the Quest 3.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG3bnqn6M3Y


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JE8K_DrK8A

[Skybird]

The latest Steam survey indicates a clear trend, the Quest 3 is about to overtake the user base of Valve Index headsets. Quest 3 is risinbg, Index is falling, it seems that after the Indey beign aorudn for so many years many users now decided it is time to repalce htis opld tech with a more modenr tech toy.

https://www.uploadvr.com/quest-3-used-on-steam-as-much-as-valve-index/

However, the Quest 2 leadfs the charts, and this will remain to be the case for more time to come, due to its current pricing - Meta sells of its existing stocks for a bargain.

And Steam statistics again, there are now more VR players (on Steam at least) than there are Mac players. On a sidenote, while Mac players drop in numbers, Liniux players also increase in numbers.

https://www.roadtovr.com/theres-now-more-vr-than-mac-players-on-steam-mostly-from-mac-shrinking/

[Skybird]

I made a quite minor change to the way I hold the grip of the Golf club, or better, I rotated the clubhead more counter clockkwise than before. And what a difference this small change makes! I had a frenzy in my recent sessions, and as a result pushed my handicap down into the 16s! :yeah: Things slowly but surely start to click together.

[Skybird]

https://vrhealth.institute/2022/05/26/supernatural-dethrones-thrill-of-the-fight/


https://vrhealth.institute/portfolio/thrill-of-the-fight/


We observed an energy expenditure of 9.74 kcals to 15.32 kcals per minute during our tests.
That is quite much, and more than I woudl have expected. But using TOTF frequently, I find the statement believable. I still have not met a better - and if wanted: exhausting - cardio training in VR. Youtubers usually do not show that, but the AI bots can be tuned to be almost invincible and supernatural. So, everybody can find his match here. Not superrealistic boxing - but a rocksolid cardio training.



Mind you, the business model of such institutions usually is to get a fee for their efforts, and titles whose creators are not willing to pay such a fee, will not be included in their testing. So, advertizing also is part of this business model. :03:


https://vrhealth.institute/methodology/



Why VR fitness actually works:
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/companies/lets-get-meta-physical-why-oculus-fitness-actually-works-7faf3274-eda6-4fa1-8a3f-4f7e754e51ea

[Skybird]

Lufthansa has announced that it will provide passengers on certain flight routes (in the US, I think) with Quest 3 headsets during the flight, for entertainment. This and the fact that Meta has signed cooperation with several US universities to provide Quest 3 headsets to them for various purposes and courses, opens the door for the possibility to introduce new users to VR who never used it before, may have heard of it, now can test it, get convinced of it and then may want a headset in their private life as well.
Clever moves by Meta considering that they are opening their OS and will see it being used on VR hardware by other manufacturers as well.

[Oubaas]

The involvement of Meta is exactly why I quit using VR.

Maybe I'll give a go again when a reasonably priced VR headset that's like a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses, with extreme clarity, is marketed by a company that is not Meta.

I just don't care to deal with Meta intruding into my gaming, nor do I like having a brick strapped to my face.

Unless there's a sudden giant leap forward in the technology, and some company that is not Meta sells the new stuff at a reasonable price without requiring accounts and data mining software, I doubt that VR will be much of a factor in gaming five years from now.

I already see a movement away from VR-only titles by software developers.

It's a shame, because I like VR for flight and racing sims, but Meta buying Oculus was like enjoying a nice cup of punch at a party and then discovering a turd in the punchbowl.

As for other VR manufacturers, their pricing is tantamount to shooting themselves in the foot.

I think that it won't be many years before we're saying, "Remember VR?" and laughing. It will go the way of 8-track players and those huge video discs the size of a vinyl LP album.

:Kaleun_Cheers:

[Skybird]

I was angry when Facebook made a mandatory link of the Rift account with a Facebook account years ago. After some years of legal battles and tow years when the Quest was not sold in Germany - or who,e Europe? - Facebook/Meta then abandoned htis poicy. The Meta account needed for the VR headsets of today ARE NOT linked to the social media ccount of same name, its two separated accounts. The Meta VR account works like Steam works. You boycott Steam, too?

Secpond, the Quest 3 is cheap. They make a financial loss with selling it with the current price tags, hardware and production cost them more than what they get in mony form customers. Thats why every other headset of this sort costs more, and this will stay that way, becasue Meta makes compensatign wins with the software environment it had created and dominates, its the appshop that bring sthem the profit, not the hardware. Other manufacturers can no longer hope to easily rival the Meta Appstore, and so much add "honest" price tags to their VR headsets.

You could google for an independent cable-bound PC linked headset named BigScreen however, its linked to the software of same name. Its rudimentary in features, but is said to be superior in image quality. Its very small (but cable bound). Cannot comment on compatability, I dont know much more about it.

Yes, Meta is Zuckerberg and I hate it that he bought Oculus, but the deal breaker of making a Facebook account mandatory is no more existent. The Quest 3 is damn good, i dont want cable-linked headsets anymore. I use it every day, for movie watching, youtubing, sometimes internet browsing, fitness, Golf, Google Earth, racing. And I can do it comfortably on the balcony, in my favourite armchair, I must not sit on an office chair at my desktop anymore. Sound is good, image quality is amongst the top there is, handtracking is leader in class, controllers are outstanding. Apple's 7x more expensive headset hates the Quest 3.



You can wait for a long time before getting a better deal. ;) Except Meta products. More are in the pipe, and they too will be cheoaer tha producitinc osts.

VR is slowly, but constantly progressing, sales are not as spectacular as they hoped they would be years ago, but they grow slow, but constantly. There is a market clenaign currently, Microsoft dosangages sicn eit never got its probkems under control with Mixed Reality, Sony gives up since it made the kistake to not support its 2nd PS5 headset with the needed VR games - there is not sufficient arugment in favour of buying it when you cant use it, right? And Quest 3 suffers a bit that Quest 2 rolled up the market and many are not yet ready to once again buy a new headset already. But in Ste am user hcrats, Quest 3 now has reached Quest 2 user numbers, and overtook them recently. I predict that in the forseeable future the Quest 3 will be the dominant headset in use at Steam. And as I explaine dearlier, certaun policy chnages at Meta pened the OS for other producers, and the Meta Appstore will benefit from that. These othe rheadsets will enver become as cheap as Meta's own, however. I explkained in the beginning why that is so. Meta can afford to sell under production costs. So, I see a spitive future for VR, and the past years confirm me. Its slow, but constant growth at a not sensational but natural speed. Evolution before revolution. I think that is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKcON9aYPGw

Dont know what it costs. Note it has no native controllers, you must add their costs by buying third party controllers. And its cable-bound, that is a no-go for me now.

P.S. Oooops, I looked it up. Costs 1400 coins. A steal. :D And you need a beefy platform. And if need be: controllers.

[Oubaas]

No more Facebook? Hmmm. Maybe I'll contemplate looking at this Quest 3. Thanks for the info. I didn't know that they had done away with the Facebook BS.

How is the clarity of the Quest 3 vs. a Rift S?

:Kaleun_Cheers:

[Skybird]

No more Facebook? Hmmm. Maybe I'll contemplate looking at this Quest 3. Thanks for the info. I didn't know that they had done away with the Facebook BS.

How is the clarity of the Quest 3 vs. a Rift S?

:Kaleun_Cheers:Rift S....? :D That was 2019. I had a Rift 1, from 2017. No comparison. Its 2024, man. Those pancake lenses make a universe of a difference. You can glance at your phone and read small text on it with the Quest put on. Quest 3 vs Rift S: 4416 x 2064 px vs 2560 x 1440 px. 120 vs 80 Hz. 2.5 times higher processing power.

[Skybird]

Oubass,
this video is seven months old, done after release of Quest 3. It shows image quality through-the-lenses and compares it to Quest 2, the predecessor. Please keep in mind however that there have been several substantial upgrades to the Quest meanwhile, namely to Passthrough (=mixed reality, which looks better now than it did at the time the video was done). As I said, you can read text on your smartphone now with it, no problem if not doing fast head movements.
You also have no visible screendoor effect (fly screen effect) and super-obtrusive god-rays with the Q3. Its new socalled pancake lenses (no normal fresnel lenses anymore) really work miracles and wonders. I watch movies on movie screens, huge screens that is, and do not see single pixles, its as sharp as on a really good TV or moviescreen. I must not accept vosual compromise of any sort. Its fantastic to sit in your own virtual cinema hall.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_oQ1MdqKpQ


And this is a side-by-side through-the-lenses comparison with the actual Pico 4.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acpsRp19Nwk

[Oubaas]

Rift S....? :D That was 2019. I had a Rift 1, from 2017. No comparison. Its 2024, man. Those pancake lenses make a universe of a difference. You can glance at your phone and read small text on it with the Quest put on. Quest 3 vs Rift S: 4416 x 2064 px vs 2560 x 1440 px. 120 vs 80 Hz. 2.5 times higher processing power.


Thanks for all the info, Skybird! It looks like there has actually been some forward progress, finally. I'll probably give it another try, especially with the Facebook requirement gone.

:Kaleun_Salute:

[Skybird]

You're welcome. This thread is your friend, there is probably no answer that I have not already given in the pages before. :D


If your rig can handle it, try Quest 3 on FS. But put a cushion on the table first so that your jawbone does not break when it slams down. My rig unfortunetly does not run well in VR with FS, maybe its settings issue, maybe performance. It first worked, then came an update, and then it was broken for me. But it looks STUNNING. Also, Google Earth via SteamLink or Virtual Desktop. Thats what VR was made for!

[Skybird]

Here is celebration. First tiem ever that I pushed my handicap below 15. :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up: :Kaleun_Cheers: Free round for the house!

https://i.postimg.cc/d1JkTJ4f/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)



What's more, I seem to finally have gotten rid of my awful slice. Almost no right sided hooks anymore. Thats a biggie for me, it really was killing me. Best round played ever still is 90 strokes, I am trying and still waiting to get my first round below 90. Improving the quality of my play is very, very slow, but it feels substantial, like a lasting acchievement. And it persists over time, when I have not played for 3 days or so, which happened in the past two weeks. Means: I have become a better player at this golf sim, really. Its slow gains, its hard to get, but it feels good. Its not about just a statistical handicap value, its about the quality of strikes I now can do. Yes, very many players are way better than I am, but the point is I see the improvement in my own play, I see that I make progress, even if there are plateau phases that feel frustrating. All in all there is slow progress and that's motivating. Anbd they sa yin real life that Golf is hard to master and that progress indeed comes only slow. Can't agree more.

Over 90 rounds of 18 holes played now. Plus plenty of training, quite systematically.


I love this game!

[em2nought]

My favorite commercial in quite awhile! :up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpvLye7fOT4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XwBGpaIMH8

[Skybird]

:Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:

https://i.postimg.cc/Vs3sPWfZ/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)

I now have reached the handicap that I had when I left the medium difficulty level and switched to highest levell, Pro.

Several times I was close to get my first below-90 round, and yet - not yet... But its in the making.

Next goals: getting into the 80 strike range, becoming consistent in that, and getting a one-digit handicap below 10.

I am ruining the 18 hole-round too easily with just one or two badly played holes on every round where I loose needlessly 4, 5 strikes, mostly from bunkers of straying into the woods. If these dramas would not happen to me every damn time on every round , I would easily be 6-8 strikes down from my actual results, and would have scored already low 80 rounds. Sometimes I am furious with myself, and entertainment and fun are the last things that would come to any hidden observer's mind if he would watch me. :)

[Skybird]

Muirefield Village Golf Club will arrive next.



Seeing all these men near a nervous breakdown when sending their duds into the nirvana, the sand, the water there, makes me immediately feel much better for my own Golf game. :D


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnwzKHIm3Y

[Skybird]

No more Facebook? Hmmm. Maybe I'll contemplate looking at this Quest 3. Thanks for the info. I didn't know that they had done away with the Facebook BS.


In detail:
https://blog.golfplusvr.com/quest-user-without-facebook/

[Oubaas]

In detail:
https://blog.golfplusvr.com/quest-user-without-facebook/

Excellent. Thanks, Skybird!

:Kaleun_Salute:

[em2nought]

Seeing all these men near a nervous breakdown when sending their duds into the nirvana, the sand, the water there, makes me immediately feel much better for my own Golf game. :D


Plus no worries of being arrested trying to get to your golf course. :D

[Oubaas]

Elon Musk's Neuralink chip will probably have the most gobsmacking VR that you ever imagined.

Unfortunately, I've promised myself to leave this world with only OEM original equipment installed, so I'll have to pass up the opportunity.

:Kaleun_Cheers:

[Skybird]

Be careful with cable fires in the pacemaker!

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKCXofnU2R4


Just played it through. Again a piece of beauty, but EXTREMELY tricky, it brought me close to despair. I think I never played a round anywhere hitting so many strikes into the water. 108. Terrible result nowadays.



But boy, is it a beautiful course. But complex. Tricky. Really mean.

[Skybird]

https://youtu.be/yCat7IJgUtY?si=VwVGZqbKPq71eP-K

[Skybird]

Pickleball Pro VR by the makers of Eleven Table Tennis has seen a series of updates recently that all came within short time. The title unfolds very, very nicely and right into the direction I hoped (and expected from the Eleven team), the physics have been tweaked and especially the AI in the latest updates - yes, there now is AI play in 1-1 and 2-2 implemented in the Early Access version - impresses me, it has claws and fangs and is capable to stage some impressively fast and aggressive exchanges over the net. The aI is the one weakness with the other Pickleball game there is, Pickleball One: it is too tame. Well, this game now promises to become an AI of a different league.



Miracle Pool, the MR-only superb new reference for VR pool, has gotten a release date, July 20th. The Early Access version got outstanding feedback and reviews so far, the price will be 14 or 15 coins, early buyers (like I am one since today) get an bonus, I paid 11 coins. There were a few updates in the past weeks, and I assumed already that they would release this summer.



I have no doubts that these two will instantly raise into the hall of fame of VR gaming.



I wrote a small feedback to the dev of Pickleball One and pointed at the too easy, too pacifistic AI, he said there would be an AI with more aggression soon, and then came a new AI indeed, but the changes were really minor only and led to ball exchanges in 2-2 were the human player got almost excluded by the three AI players. In 1-1 versus the AI, the AI works its job reliably, but it lacks those fangs and claws that reveal that it really is hungry and wants to eat the player. The pro: I can spot and therefore react better to the ball display (with a small comet tail) in Pickleball One, in Pickleball Pro VR I found it often hard to correctly identify the path of the ball when it headed in my direction and then assess the correct distance when striking, thus my strikes often miss the ball then. I am also sitll irritated by the strnage pohysics feel when the paddle hits the ball, it is totalyl, TOTALLY different then what I am used to and somehow expect in Tennis, Table Tennis and other Racketgames. Buzt it seems to be like this in real loife, since both Pickleball games there are illustrate similiar ball physics, quite comparable they are. So I think that is not just coincidence (I never had opportunity to strike some Pickleballs with a real Pickleball paddle, so I have no comparison).

[Skybird]

Sony "threatened" that they would do it and now they did - their OS VR2 headset is opened for PC and is made compatible via adapter.

https://www.overtake.gg/news/playstation-vr2-headset-made-pc-compatible-with-new-adapter.2162/

Production was stopped for the headset due to lackign demand - whcih has been caused by Soiny itself, sicne they refused to support their VR by sufficient game developments and supporting VR game developers, so you do not find much on Playstation 5 that can be played in VR. Inconsistent company policy, in my book. Meta handles such things way more clever. Also, the solution on PS5 is too complex and expensive for what you get. Failure was predicted by market observers in advance, and they were right.

Technically the headset has good features, amongst them a real OLED display. Users say it wears very comfortably.

-----------

A new headset by Meta is on the way. No confirmed info, but it is named Quest 3S, a price index of 300 coins was spotted, and it has not three but just two sensors on the front. I assume it is not the next better headset (way too early for that), but the announced lite version of the Quest 3 - in other words a headset not with improved but degraded capabilties.

-----------

Pimax has released another headset. I never had them really on my radar, which probably was a mistake, I thought a headset of their enormous sizes would not, and the first ones had stellar resolutions for their time, frying gfx boards. My rig probbaly would nto handle them. But their markert presence shows durability, and they have a whole series of different models now, all cable bound, PC-only. Usually they quote very huge FOVs.

For me, there is no way to go back to cable bound PC-only headsets. Yesterday, I linked the Quest via Stemalink to PC, cable-free, löaunched the Virtual dEskptop verison for and on PC, and then watched the Bluray of Dune 2 in my biggets virtual moviehlal, the Sydney Himaxx cinema (was teared down some years ago). Stellar. Simply stellar. The movie - and the VR experiences. Like sitting in a real cinema. No home entertainment system with big TV or projectors can compete with that.

I also often watch Amazon Prime series via Quest 3 app from within one of the moviehalls provided with the Quest app "BigScreen". You enter the cinema of your choice, and on the big starting screen instead of choosing Youtube, you choose Prime. Done.

Visually, VR cinemas rock the house, and the roof flies away.

-------------

My Golfing is plateauing, I cannot advance any further, and I get the uncomfortable feeling that I simply will not learn to perform better than I do now. Which actually is not bad if compared to the statistics for my age group in real golf, but also, I loose faith that I can advance any further, lowering my handicap any further. I am stuck at an adjusted handicap 13+ and in the low-90s to low-100s strike range per 18 holes, and I cannot avoid ruining the round with two or three terribly played holes per round. So, that is the technical aspect, I gotta live with it, it seems. That does not change the fact that I still incredibly enjoy playing this. Especially the two last releases I love to play, they are lush, friendly, open, wide, the sky is blue and the grass is juicy and the sights are friendly, it really lifts my mood just to stand in these landscapes and watching them, its like a walk in the park. But every round I also have dark phases where I wage war against my own psyche, then it is more brutal than psychoanalysis. :D I really wonder where I learned all these dirty words and wild swearings...

-----------

The Alien game is coming, first ingame footage was shown. Boah... this will get frightening. I hate horror games in VR and avoid them, but I will try this one out. I played Alien Isolation on PC via VR hack, and that really had my hair raising, it was - well, it was extremely intense an experience. Scaring, really. And way too dark... LOL

[em2nought]

https://youtu.be/yCat7IJgUtY?si=VwVGZqbKPq71eP-K

That's pretty nifty. I'd really like to try a WWI flight sim in VR along with a motion simulator, maybe like this https://www.yawvr.com/

[Skybird]

This became one of my favourite ones from release on.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTrxUkbCEs

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiygAv0IMqI

[Skybird]

Kayak Mirage VR got a DLC: Soca Valley in Slovenia.



Kayak Mirage plays on Playstation and PC, and on Quest 3 only from PC via Steamlink or Virtual Desktop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWjL48dVUTQ

[Skybird]

Avatar update in Eleven.


https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-EA-zqSoX30?feature=share

[Skybird]

Visually it indeed is a feast. A VR triumph.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dNfeWwWUac

[em2nought]

Needs a great white shark and his theme music. :D Maybe a glass bottom on the kayak too. :up: I guess a bull shark would be more realistic since they don't mind fresh water. ;)

[Skybird]

Pistol shooting is no priority interest of mine, thats why the subscription and item costs are too expensive for my taste, but people interested in the topic may see it differently, like I paid "too much" for my Golf experience.
Halve the costs for the item and make it non-subscription, and I am in. :03:

https://www.acexr.com/

https://www.acexr.com/tutorials (https://www.acexr.com/arctus)

They offer two pistols. The handsets weigh 29.5oz and 31.7oz (836 and 899 gr) with a Meta Quest 3 controller installed and emulate the balance and size as a real pistol. Durable, realistic feeling trigger with a tactile & audible break & reset. Feature a pull weight of roughly 3 and 4 pounds (~1.36 and 1.81 kg).

[Skybird]

More ACE Shooting Simulator videos.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ace+shooting+vr


The night did no good for me. I am more and more seriously considering this. Wouldnt be much more crazy than the other spendings I invested into the Quest 3 and Golf and rackets. I was always interested, sometimes more, sometimes less, to get into sports shooting a bit, but in Germany it just is not worth the hassle, and is heavily regulated and socially sanctioned. If you live here and do it for sports, better dont tell your social environment about it. The only shooter in our family so far has been my father, small callibre pistol. And he really had to study and work hard for the license, and it wa snot even a full license. Regulation to some degree is needed, I think. But the Germans once again overdo it. They just love regulating things to death.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRO2RjqCOMQ

[Skybird]

The day has come, the final full release is just 2-3 hours away.


SP and MP with up to 4 players live in one match. I see this becoming an as popular social meeting opportunity as Golf+ is.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tefQay9hJy0

[Skybird]

Miracle Pool: wowh, its unreal how good the game has become! They finetuned the handling to a degree so good that it escapes description. The leading hand at the tip can now be "seated" on the virtual table and will serve as a stabilizer when you then fine-aim the shot by moving around your back hand, or shoot. The irony here is: I wrote a review for their Easy Access demo and suggested to alter the aiming in the demo and to turn it into EXACTLY THIS. Exactly this idea of a method and execution I had on mind. It handles brilliantly! You also have absolutely natural freedom to swing your rear hand back as much as you want when shooting, the hardware will not call you out for leaving the tracking range of the headset camera with yoru hand controller. Its unreal! My posture and arms psoitioins and movement are exactly as if I were leaning on a real table and were striking a real queue.

When I learned the demo, I knew that this was going to become something good. But truth it: what they now released exceeds all my hopes and expectations.

IMO this is a revolutionary game changer for computer Pool simulators. A must-have. Breathtaking.

Also a fantastic showcase to demonstrate VR and mixed reality to guests not knowing it.

I take the freedom to rate this with a spectacular 100 of 100 points. :yeah:


Edit: Meanwhile close to a hundred customer feedbacks have added up on the app shop site for the full version - and all of them so far are full 5 stars. Well-deserved!

[Skybird]

The latest Golf+ course is here, and it is something different: in Austin, the Butlers Pitch & Putt.



Butler Pitch and Putt is a historic 9-hole, par-3 golf course which has been a cultural staple in downtown Austin, Texas since 1949. With holes ranging from 60 to 105 yards, Butler operates on a first-come, first-play basis—no tee times, just drop a ball into the chute to claim your spot. Home of the Tito's Shorties Classic and supporting partner of Save Muny and Youth On Course, Butler Pitch and Putt truly embodies the spirit of making golf accessible and enjoyable for all.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAzIFMboBRo

[Skybird]

The new Golf "course" is a series of 9 holes, all par 3, all being 70-90 long. Its a lovely little place, and it reminds me a very lot of a certainn corner in the Volkspark Wilmersdorf in Berlin. Something very different, and a total change from the usual courses in Golf+ - but I saw it and immediately fell in love with it. I just would wish they would make a version at night with the lights on.

------------

The Pool experience keeps getting better and better. I found this solution and now am able to physically lean on my leading hand.

I use a height-adjustable walking stick, and the hand strap is so tight that it only stretches over the palm of my hand, no further. As a result, the stick hangs directly and vertically under the outer, lower ball of my hand at all times,

https://i.postimg.cc/Kc9ZYrXh/20240621-155202.jpg (https://postimg.cc/MXQkPBK9)

and if I lower my hand only slightly, it immediately rests firmly on the head of the handle of the stick that hits the ground vertically.

https://i.postimg.cc/xCZNLrkL/20240621-155233.jpg (https://postimg.cc/PpmqkRQq)

The game has then also "anchored" the virtual hand on the virtual table, and the movement physics are then more sensitive. Now I can make the outstroke movement with the back push hand and fine-tune the cue tip with the front guide hand without it wobbling, finally I hold the trigger on the left, then the cue is locked in its longitudinal axis and can only be moved back and forth in the direction of impact. Et voila! The whole thing feels incredibly realistic. The stabilization is no longer just virtual, but can also be felt physically. Incredibly realistic! Guys, it's almost like real billiards, believe it.


Its incredible that the back hand still is being tracked, I think the back hand controller is outside the viewing range of the headset's side camera. Is it just AI filling the gap here? I am stunned that they solved this movement so that it now can be carried out so naturally.



This sim is amongst the very best simulators I have ever played, like Eleven. It sinks hands down every other pool simulator on the market. Being able to do realistic natural movements, like in Golf, like in Table Tennis, makes all the difference.

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIU3DqVzNJA

[Skybird]

IF this is really coming, and it seems so he says, then this is something really big. PC games streaming to the Quest without needing to own a PC.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00RVQE4DLtY


I red rumours about it being worked on by Meta, but I rated it as unconfirmed. At least it seems to be confirmed that Meta IS working on it. But I am not yet convinced that it can be technically done at acceptable control, and visuals quality.



But I can confirm that owning a Quest and my current apps for it has really reduced my appetite for PC activity and PC gaming.

[em2nought]

Miracle Pool: wowh, its unreal how good the game has become!

Maybe I should get this so I can give the bargirls in Pattaya a run for their money. :D

[Skybird]

Latest update 66 still sees some of its features rolling out, but has improved for sure the visual quality of the mixed reality mode again. Again a reduction of distortions and lagging hand movements. The difference is obvious, and really stunining, especially when comparing to how it was at release date of the Quest 3. Night and day.



Say what yiou want, they really are coimmitted to updating the hardware constantly. Just their staggered update policy drives people crazy. Me too.

[Skybird]

Quote: "One hundred percent skill-based gaming."

I will test the free 30 minutes demo version this afternoon, since I already own a - good - gunstock.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-VUog49-cI


The developer meanhwile has added rifle-shooting.


https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/developer-post/8308312555873951/


Note, this is no arcade shoote rgame, but tries to be a simulation, including the sports aspect in it.

[Skybird]

^ Teufelaucheins - this is good, very good...! I stopped testing it after just ten minutes, more time was not needed to convince me, and I bought it. Its quite serious. Do not mistake it for just a game. Its also difficult, not easy. The gunstock can be well callibrated so to meatch the viurtuel rifle very well.

https://www.shotgungaming.com/clayhuntvr/

I had checked Youtube, there are several reviews, and quote some real world shooters seem to use it and say their real world shooting has improved. I think they are about observation behaviour, stand and attitude, and reaction times.

You can handle the virtual rifle with just the controllers in your hand, but I would say a gunstock is a must.

Surprise find. And a most excellent one. Hardcore simulation. If pidgeon and clay hunt and such things are your thing, try this out, its for its object what Eleven is for Table Tennis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIArPv-rKAA&t=1s


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll1tHG1PxVU

[Skybird]

Very specialised for simulating shotguns, also in weight!, not of much use in FPS or for use of military style assault rifles in FPS (controllers cannot be taken off and on on the fly).

I use a good but much simplier, more versatile gunstock. I rearranged the geometry, from tactical assault rifle to shotgun geometry. I also wear 1kg weight cuffs around both hand wrists.

And what I never had on my radar: shooting shotguns on the range for 15 minutes - makes me sweat. Not excessively, but still so.

And yes, doing the crossovers right, is difficult. This will take me long time to master. But I am hooked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruzE4tbXhyI&t=585s

[Skybird]

Compare, for Assault rifle style:


https://i.postimg.cc/P5YrXgyw/20231103-124501.jpg


For shotgun style:


https://i.postimg.cc/6pyM1GBQ/20240629-135412.jpg (https://postimg.cc/3kQjkN4M)

[Skybird]

The makers of VRider, the motorbike simulator, are working on a hardware motorbike controller. It seems one stands before or on it like on a fitness scales and holds the controlbars which mimic that of a real motorbike. This would make sense since the game controls the bike not just by handle movement, but also by leaning your upper body forward and backward and to the sides, like a real bikerider would (and must).



https://i.postimg.cc/3JLM9CyJ/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)

[Skybird]

Clay pidgeon shooting has me getting hotter an dhitter for it. I spend quiote some time now to expeirment wiht different settings/angles of the ganstock'S elements to find seatings for the contorllers wehre they get as close as possible to allowing my hands takign naturla rests as if holding a real shotgun, but also having the headset's cameras tracking at least on of the contorllers' face plate with the IR LEDs. Eith every hcnage made to the hardware angles, the virtual shotgun model had to be tuned in the sim to move and fall in place with the scheme how the shotgun would be held up when aiming and being handled in my virtual as well as material hands. Its a bit tricky, but gets done ever faster the more one is used with the procedure, in pricnple its contorls allowing to both twist and move the virtual device along all three axis in space. I am now having a setup I feel as comfortable with as my current not too simple but then also not too complex (and expüensiove) gunstock allows. When I raise the gunshot with closed exes and then open the eyes, my sights are nicely aligned with the barrel of the shotgun, and the aiming dot at the tip of it nicely aligned as well.

I start to really enjoy exmainign the variuous shooting and tournament variants, though i struggle with the nomenclatura. There are three diffioculty levels, but all they seem to do is chnagign the cloud of projectiules, making it easier or more difficult to hit the clay if not having lined up a good aim. Where do I stand? In a series of 25 single clays, I get around 22 on easy, 18 on medium, and 2 on pro. :D Needless to say, it makes little sense, if approaching this as a simulator at least, if playing not at highest level. And yes - I suck at it. Its the first time for me doing this sort of stuff. The reaciton times are insane, and the precisin needed in swinging the barrel and crossing over the field, is insane as well. Not to mention that lead must be varied depending on the angle of the clay'S path, and your viewing line on it. Double clays is somehtign i will skip on for logn time to come, i fear, single clays are already a challenge.

The gunstock has a wieght of 890gr, when both controllers are put in. Adding two handcuffs with 1kg each, I reach a total weight of 2.89 kg, which is almost the same weight one of the lightest shotguns with steel barrel on the market, some Beretta model, weighs, at 2.8 - 2.9 kg. The baölanc eof wieght within the gunstock probaly is different from that of a real shotgun. It needs one of these more sophisticated gunstocks to replicate that as well. There are even electric-mechanical shoulderpads available, simulating recoil - real recoil of up to several kilogram bumps, if desired. Wowh. I am still a logn way away form gettign this isnane to buy such stuff. But obviously you can sink hundreds of coins into such equipment.

And yes, my shoulder and arm muscles give me feed back on the stress I put them under. :D Its not like pumpin irons - but I do it for long time per session. It makes itself felt.

I enjoy this more than expected - and accept the challenge it poses... Its difficult.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZExVxA04Vc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoZxSOc8v6Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJwYLa0Th9Y


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8F0OSwpNUc


They also hammer them damn clay pidgeons at night...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5q-UJu3Jwkk

[Skybird]

Made in the UK, I seem to recall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APYeethc9yc


When they go this far, they really should go all the way then and also bypass the trigger, like ACEXR does for its replica of the Staccato P 2011. At least in pistol shooting, triggers count heavy, and pistol trainers using also virtual shooting for training often say (on youtube at least) that trigger is more importan than simulating recoil. I beleiuve I understand why: trigger action comes before the bullet leaves the barrel, recoil comes after the bullet's flightpath can no longer get messed up by he shooter.

[Skybird]

I start to get better at this clay shooting thing. Reminds me of meditation, the mindset I mean. I have understood more of the ingame functions, which helps and prepares me better for the next series. More finetuning of the gunstock and in-VR callibration. American Skeet shooting becomes a favourite of mine, both singles, mostly, and also doubles. But the other modes are nice, too. There is quite some diversity in playing/shooting/tournament modes.

I got interested again into this AceXR pistol trainer, had two questions on terms and conditions, but they refuse to answer my two mails since almost a week. It seems they do not want more customers. Thats the second bad experience I have with a US company within 6 months now. :-? Too bad, that thing surely looks interesting, and even more so now that clay shooting already has me hooked. Also, they are running low on stocks for both the Staccato P and the Arctus.

[Skybird]

Ah, with one week delay they answered (AceXR). Only credit card payment or inner-US bank transfer. Too bad, I'm out. Was seriously interested. And a bit crazy. I mean its VR - how not to get crazy in VR?

[Skybird]

Spyglass Hill is the next Golf course to be released.

I am in a little Golf crisis, currently and saw my handicap slowly degrading again from 13 to 15. Just nothing fell in place anymore when driving or chipping, it got worse and worse, no matter what I tried. I finally gave up and took a break for over one week, since I tested Butlers. Today I played my first round abgain, and immediately things went smoother again. It was Sawgrass, and I improved my previous three Pro-level rounds there (110, 110, 108) to 97. As usual I made around 10 unforced errors, could be under 90 since quite some time already if these would not always, really always, ruin my rounds. :down: :dead:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7l1uebEPF5A

[Skybird]

Man, that is a tough course! Many of the fairways and greens are incridbly tight, become thinnner and thinner, like the funnel-shaped opening in a pipette tip - just that it does not lead the ball but that you have to aim for it and hit it! Visually detailed, but only in parts to my taste, the dry, bare areas are not so appealing to me. One of the most difficult courses in the game, definitely, and in real life another top 100. They say its even more challenging than Pebble Beach which is just a few miles away, and I agree.

My Golf appetite comes back into swing, so does my club. Good! :yeah:

The clay shooting also sees progress, I'm getting better and better at it since I redefined my understanding of "aiming". Its more about seeing and moving, about keeping visual control of all viewing field, and coordinating eye tracking with a perfect swing of the barrel. Totally different I would say than precision pistol shooting like my father did. I noticed that I have started seriously to consider one of the professional riflestocks available, to have better grab and feel at shoulder and chin and have realistic weights. I am considering the one from the UK, - LINK - (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showpost.php?p=2916392&postcount=435) , called Duckhunter, it is the slightly more expensive one, but they do not insist on credit card payment like the one from the US that only has credit card as option. The thing would allow to mount a total weight of 3.8 kg (in 15 gr intervals, so you can tailor it to mimic any shotgun you prefer) and with additional weight packs even close to 4.9 kg. I read the lightest shotgun with iron barrel is made by Beretta and weighs 2.85 kg. But the buy is not yet decided, I want to spend some more nights about it and then see what has become of the itching I currently feel. It would be a serious investment, not to be wasted by then loosing interest soon. And may become obsolete one day when the headset controllers change. I also do not like that they have not added a mechanism that replaced the controller trigger with somethign that feels more like a real trigger, like the people at AceXR have done with their Staccato P and Arctur pistols. These pistols have an additional emcjhnism placed between finger sand the controller'S trigger, giving two stage release and a pull weight of 3.9 pounds.

[Skybird]

What to do about it, you only live once, and you can't take anything with you. I ordered a Duckhunter virtual shotgun.

I will bring it to a weight around 3.45-3.5 kg. Thats seems to be a quite typical weight range for sports shotguns. Never held a real shotgun in my hands, but I read the balance point where front and back are in balance, is around one hand-width before the trigger. With that and weight adjustments in two points possible in 15gr intervals, i should be able to get a result that is close to what a real shotgun wouldfeel like when holding it and swinging it in those crossing movements. The barrel weight can be adjusted as a third option too.

From the UK, via UPS. I would have considered the American alternative as well due to its real wood shaft, but payment options left me no choice. The British model also is more versatile in balancing options.

I have become more and more hooked to clay shooting in the past days. It is quite meditative and remidns me - of course, maybe - a lot of archery and martial arts and all that stuff I did in the past.

I also tried out finally their game hunting options. Hectic. Not really my kind of thing, especially hunting wild boars has more in common with a totally out of hand bar brawl than clay shooting. There is also pheasants, doves, and a third bird I forgot. Think I mostly will stick with the clay. Skeet seems to tick my boxes. I am now on Pro (=top) difficulty level with all visual aids off. Difficult.

Its the mind that hits, not the arrow. Its the moment that decides, not the mind. You dont do it. Somethig else acts through you.

The software Clay Hunt VR is made by a Finnish company, btw.

[mapuc]

Your explanation around Clay and Duck hunt-Made me go Hmm wonder if someone will develop a machine gun and a fps game like Medal of Honour

Markus

[Skybird]

And whoi would pay for such an arcad eitem? Me certainly not.


I have heavily invested into Golf+, Eleven and Racket&Ball type of sports, and I would go for AceXR if they would offer paypal as payment option, or direct money transfer (which they offer only inside the US). Also, outside VR: racing controllers. What have these all in common? Very high degrees of realism. An aracde game may be worth it for some to buy expensive specialised controllers. But not for me for sure.



You can mimic the handle and butt geometry of any rifle with an ordinary gunstock like the one I so far have and posted pictures of. Its about the realistic weight, however, and the balance and the feel when swinging the barrel in those crossings. A gunstock that weighs with controllers attached 0.85 kg, and another one weighing realistic 3.5kg, is not the same.

[Skybird]

There are two main titles focussing on simulating the sports of Pickleball. Both are actively supported and developed.

Pickleball Pro VR by the makers of the famous Eleven Table Tennis has nicely grown and moved forward while still being Early Access. It has a really biting AI, 1-on-1 and 2-on-2, good physics, and those who know real world Pickleball usually say they nailed the physics (I cannot compare, I never had a PB racket and ball in hands). Meanwhile Multiplayer has been added, a training wall, and a programmable ball machine - not the easiest to program but as sophisticated like its pendant in Eleven. A very good simulator already, can only get even better. My problem with it so far is that the autorunning is too abrupt and easily interferes with the mere speed by which the AI sometimes fires its strikes, I then have difficulty with just perceiving the ball and correctly identifying its position in space, thus missing when striking with my own racket - or not even striking at all when the ball already has passed me when I saw it again. This is their homework they still have to do, and they seem to be aware of it, offering different ball colours and additional visual clues to mark it better in flight, but they have not gotten apparently that the perception problem is not with distant balls that they allow to additionally mark but with close balls where they have removed the mark again (it goes on and off depending on the distance to the ball). I am confident that they will solve this problem untl full release.

Pickleball One, title before was Lets Play Pickleball, also has moved on nicely and is visibly developed. Nof featuring a gym and a new centre court, I like it very much, but had a problem with the too tame and too pacifistic AI that for some months was in a state where every ball exchange degenerated quickly into a lame and boring, slow dink-dink-dink kindly-handing-over-the-ball. With the new July update, this has changed dramatically. Therer is now much more diversity in the AI's returns, slow balls, fast balls, dinks, danks and torpedos. In general the ball does not reach the speeds by which business gets done in PB Pro, with PB Pro mor representative of what you see in sports videos from real world matches, PB One is slightly slower in it's pace. However, that is a good thing, for it avoids the perception issue I described with PB Pro, and it allows for longer, more satisfying and enjoyable ball exchanges both in 1-on-1 and 2-on-2. In fact with July's update trading balls in PB One is one of the must enjoyable things I currently can do in VR. The slightly slower pace accomodates the inherent limitations of VR very well, imho. The physics feel slightly different than those in PB Pro, but have been tuned and moved closer to it, both games felt very differently in their ball physics early this year, but now more and more kind of "merge". In PB Pro it still is easier to really put pressure into your strike and produce fast shots, in PB One it feels as if there is an upper "speed limit", which however is not a bad thign for the reasons I just explained.

Its hard to recommend the one over the other, both titles imo are extremely good and I in no way regret to have invested money into both, I also play both frequently, cannot favour the one over the other. I just avoid to play the one immediately after I played the other, to have more time to adapt my senses to the slightly different feel of the physics.

In my opinion, both titles are must-haves if you like racket&ball kind of games like Racket Club, Eleven, Cybrix, First Person Tennis. There is no wrong being done if buying both.


-----


The Gunstock is in transfer now. Should arrive later next week.

[mapuc]

Your post gave me an idea where you combine a few games.
The idea is that a player have a Winchester model 1850, a horse and camping gear anno 1840
The hunt is between the year 1840 to 1860

Hunting like they did in this time period.

Just a crazy idea

Markus

[Skybird]

Your post gave me an idea where you combine a few games.
The idea is that a player have a Winchester model 1850, a horse and camping gear anno 1840
The hunt is between the year 1840 to 1860

Hunting like they did in this time period.

Just a crazy idea

MarkusThere is a virtual hunting game at Steam, I have it but am not yet decided on what to think of it, good ideas, fiddly handling of optics and ammo, not always ideal executions and not bug free, but I have not spend much time with it. Title is "Virtual Hunter".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEOOm1sKLfE

[Skybird]

This is me in action :D !

A full best-of-3 match in Pickleball One, recorded via Quest, thats why there is a small sound delay, it does recordings this way, sorry. There are not too many Pickleball One videos illustrating the latest status, they almost all illustrate just the old game versions that are obsolete.

Best game is at 00-06-42, the duel lasts almost a full minute.

I made many unforced errors. I tried to move the head little only so that the camera does not look too nervous and stuttering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJzp0OspoRo

[Skybird]

More "me" again. :D

9-Ball.Normally I play without that helping line, but I did nit want to look to shabby when beign on TV.

Chrome balls choosen! They look lovely, really! Like glass balls from a christmas tree! Virtual money won can be used to buy felts, tables, queus, balls...
Playing with a walking stick hanging on my left hand as described earlier, works miracles and wonders in this game! :yeah:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7GvNf4yxy4

[Skybird]

Working on my career as a youtube star... :D

Just some very laid-back ping-pong for warm up, without ambition, for warmup and demonstration. Diffulty 20%, I usually play at 60-70 (and at 70 loose most matches...). If I had filmed a competitive match, movements would have been fast and hectic and the camera would have shown hectic and shaky images causing nausea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k0_kOCkt9U

[Skybird]

The Pickleball match I posted abive was a 2-on-2, this one is a 1-on-1 which was quite tight in final result and I had to race to catch up with the AI.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u92dmaWs5E&list=PLGAwtMzu3bOVAcZuk2r2m6UuG1Em_Ys4X&index=2

[Skybird]

Aber Hallo...!
:Dhttps://i.postimg.cc/k553nNMW/20240715-124019.jpg (https://postimg.cc/QFvnmTTM)

This is awesome. And heavy, I changed the weights so that with controller put in it all weighs around 3.48 kg. The wieght distriubution I tuned such that the balance point (when you balance the rifle on your finger like scales and front and back are even) is around 3-4 finger widths in front of the trigger, roughly were the angle on the frame is. The barrel opening holds some three dozens of 15 gr-washers that you can add or take out, so does the small black box below the grip/trigger/controller, plenty of 15 gr washers in there, too. There is also a long massive steel weight of over 800gr in the shaft below the barrel.

This feels massive, and real. The shoulder piece can be changed, altered, tuned in any way you want, to match your preferences.

No comparision to the - taken for itself already not bad - Protube gunstock I so far have used. They both are separated by a couple of lightyears.

https://i.postimg.cc/8z6ZQt67/20240715-124421.jpg (https://postimg.cc/HrTwb03m)

I think this now is as real as it gets. Well, recoil, okay. But recoil is immersion only. Weight and weight distribution and balance is about affecting the actual shooting, aiming.

I must pause after 20-30 min, shoulders and arms hurt, and I am sweating. Together with the VR and software, this is incredible an experience. Sucks you into the virtual world like the golf sim does.

Space for improvements? Sure. As mentioned a recoil mechanism, like is available for the ProTube gunstock. But even more important maybe: a mechanism that forgoes or covers the controller's trigger, giving you the feel of a real trigger. The Staccato P 2011 pistol by and for AceXR has something like that, featuring double point release and 4 pounds trigger weight.

[Skybird]

I do clay shooting several times a day, international trap shooting, literally "flooding in" some training time in the starting phase of all this. 2-3 runs of 25 shots each, then resting my arms, comign back some hours later again, and after maybe a third session later again. But of 25 clays - single clay, no doubles - I score on 2-6 only, it varies.

I enjoy training in this sim with my superb new gunstock, but I can really not claim that I am especially good at it! :D :haha:

It seems this also is, like Golf, one of those sports where training translates only very very slowly into advances.

And I always have slightly sore muscles in my front shoulders and upper arms. It probably would be worse with a real shotgun, I assume, due to the recoil - from which I am saved in my VR setting.

[em2nought]

And I always have slightly sore muscles in my front shoulders and upper arms. It probably would be worse with a real shotgun, I assume, due to the recoil - from which I am saved in my VR setting.

https://media.workandmoney.com/49/cd/49cdc64c6b6f4509af2310e06f697a80.jpeg
:D:03:

[Skybird]

^ My next targets, promised. And stationary. Even me cant miss them. :arrgh!:

[em2nought]

^ My next targets, promised. And stationary. Even me cant miss them. :arrgh!:

Just make sure your floor isn't sloped. :har:

[Skybird]

Pumpgun. They wont touch the ground for quite some time. :D

[Skybird]

The techncially well-made Chess Club has gotten an awesome mixed reality mode. Also, you can now grab the board and move , twist and tilt it in any way so that you find a position where you must not have your chin on your chest all the time just so that you can look down on the board. Very, very good now. I would just wish the engine would be as good, its usable at higher levels, but still makes "unconventional" moves at times, not born out of competence, but lack of, I fear, still its an opponent you should not take lightly if you are not a deep diver in the chess ocean already.

Imagine this, you sit in your room, chessboard and pieces virtually handled with bare hands (not controllers!), and an avatar that is a friend or family member you are online with, you play and chat. If the avatars are created to mimic the looks of the real person, its quite a socially interesting experience. My mum does this a lot via BigScreen, fooling around in there like a little girl, its so funny when she throws things at me. In Golf we also stroll around together often. If you allow to get immersed, you sooner or later start to gesture and behave as if it all were real and the other were in matter standing near to you, seeing your hands and gestures. See, the brain adapts and compensates to some degree what mixed and virtual reality is missing. If you, on the other hand, always focusses on the deficits as your prime objective, than you miss a lot, and probably the best of it.

For family members being separated by hundreds of miles, visiting each other in this way is a real alternative to video-calls. The borders of the socializing context of video conferences are much tighter, you never forget that its just a video call. In a VR meeting like described, you can start to forget it.

[Skybird]

Finally I made my Racket Club video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjH0Sll_YNo

So that you dont get confused by the counting: its best of three sets, elevn points per set. However, the score per won game in a set is not always "1", but can be anything between "1" and "5". It depends on the length of the exchange, the longer the ball flies back and forth, the higher the score for the running game gets. That way you can equalise a standing even when you trail behind, and when you lead by a huge gap, you neverthless still can get eaten in one or two sudden bites.

When you serve, the ball must not first hit the backwall, that is a loss.

However, you can serve against the sidewalls and use the sidewalls during the game, as long as the ball does reflect from there to the ground, not onto the backwall, the backwall must never be hit before the first ball-ground-contact.

The ball is not allowed to dip twice inside the kitchen zone, that is a loss against the sending player. You must dose your effet and low power such that you can be sure the ball drops just once inside the kitchen on the other side, the second drop giving you the core must be outside the kitchen.

(The kitchen is the zone close to the net/centre wall, separated by a line from the rear playing field. )

You can return the ball via a volley at any time, even inside the kitchen (different to Pickleball).

This forces you to play with a very sensible awareness when you can afford to shmash the ball with power and speed, and when you must gently lift it over the centrewall(=net). Light touches and effet play changes with reflected shots and smacking torpedoes quickly.



You can smack the ball against your own backwall, in a last desperate attempt to get it reflected from there into the other player's zone. Its a last defence attempt. It sometimes works, mor eoften it doe snit. As I said: its for the occasional desperate situation... :)


The outside perimiter and its single and double courts is the multiplayer lobby, and the avatars of up to 16 players players you see there will meet and play right on the courts you see outside the window. In multiplayer its a fully functional living environment, a mini park, if you want. It works very well for organising matches: you walk to some avatars, and ask them to play, and then you all walk on a free court and start to play there. No menu organisation needed. Or you just stroll around and spectate running matches.

The game mixes ideas from Paddleball (which itself is a mix of Tennis, Squash and Pickleball), Badminton, and Squash. Its ideal for the limited space you have in your VR playing space, which most likely will be a living room with furniture. However, you need a not too small free playing space nevertheless, 1.70x2.00m is minimum, I would say. A mixed reality mode is available, it works good.

Its one of the very best VR sports games there are.


For the video I had to play tamer than I would in real play, since I needed to make sure my head movements stays as calm as possible and does not turn the camera image into a shaky mess making you vomit on your screen. In fact gameplay can get extremely frantic!

[Skybird]

The latest. Another 9-hole course.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga9zSSJDdOg&t=69s

[Skybird]

https://youtu.be/QPQYaA6jZcE?si=S-DMvpguL9OoSkA7

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKY0S5efl2I

[Skybird]

New course released. It looks pleasant and harmless, but has its - "complications"... :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz4lDhqndYw

They also added atmospheric pressure. The higher the location of the golf course in real life, the longer the balls will fly. Dont know whether the net effect of it is calculated correctly, but it certainly is impossible to not note the difference.

I have terribly declined over recent weeks, and dont know what I suddenly do so wrong. My handicap has suffered dearly, all routine seems to be gone. I cant get a shot straight anymore. Its really a deep golf crisis for me. I'm frustrated, feel deadlocked.

[Skybird]

A cable GFX card is now available for the Quest 3, which makes it possible to project flatscreen games from e.g. game consoles and Steam decks onto a large virtual screen in the Quest 3, similar to the way SteamLink or Virtual Desktop do with PC games that are mirrored into the headset.

That does not turn native 2D games into stereoscopic 3D games, but the big movie screen format of the visuals make already a massive, fundamental difference - telling by experience. For a favourite game, for example GT7 or anything, it makes an extremenly huge difference already, compared to just a flatscreen monitor or TV.

-------------

I also noticed over the past months that silenty the energy hunger of the headset seems to have been tamed a bit by Meta. The battery does not eaten up itself as quickly anymore as it did in the first weeks. The control electronics for both the Meta Elite Headstrap and the headset itself still are not optimal and if you want to treat their batteries with some care to extend their longevity/lifespan (I mean the battery's physical, chemical total lifespan, not the single charge), you must act with a bit of manual tweaking and plugging-in/plugging out and time awareness. Lithium batteries are living the longest if their charges move up and down in the range between 20% and 80%. Storing them fully charged for example stresses their chemistry more than is needed, reducing their lifespan.

[ For the same reason I charge my bicycle batteries only fully when doing a day-long tour, and then I charge them just before the tour, during breakfast, so that this state of 100% lasts not long - and I do the first battery swap then aleady when 30% of the charge is gone, to reduce the other battery's charge, too. this way I also would take note early of any technical problems with one oo the batteries - nothing worst than to have eaten up one battery completely and being the farthest away from home - and then being "stranded" with a broken second battery... :D That would not be fun strampling home then.]


-------------


I also struggle with improving in clay shooting. While i train a lot, I find it very difficult to indeed improve, especially with trap shooting, since here the clay speeds away from me at a steep angle, leaving me less time to fire while it still is in range. I experimented with different chokes for the barrels, and won some yards in reach with that, but of course that means also that I must aim even more precisely since the swarm of pellets is tighter, more dense. I hit the clay often too far outside, when the swarm of pellets does not damage the clay anymore since the clay simply passes through the swarm without getting hit by one of them. At least that is how I explain it to myself, I have no info on the real background. I do much better in Skeet, both American and International/Olympic Skeet. Still, even here: I still have the same performance level that I quickly raised to in the beginning - and then no more. Very mediocre at best, 8-15 hits per 25 shots, and mostly at the lower end of things. I would not mind to score low results if over longer time I nevertheless would see training effects, improvements, even if they just creep upwards. But I currently am deadlocked regarding my bad results. Its difficult to deal with, I mean handling the frustration, since this is, beside Golf, something I do with a bit more ambition than just wanting to play a game to kill some time.

[Skybird]

New fodder for the addict? A simulation of Padeleball has entered Early Access. Dying for racket&ball sort of stuff, I will need to try it out, no doubt on that! Its the first official Padelball simulation, AFAIK. Title is Padel VR Game. I could imagine thats just a project working title and will be changed later on. AI will be added by the end of September, they say.

[Skybird]

^ Obviously it needs work since it is Early Access and they admit it still is in development, but what there already is, is very promising. I have this on my radar screen now and hope for the best.

Padelball, if you do not know it, is a real and not just a fictional sport. Racket Club VR owes a lot to the real example, is so to speak the small brother of it. Or to put it this way: Padelball is Racket Club XXL.

First videos of the development date back more than two years, so they really seem to be long term committed. Early Access has just recently been started.


From real life, for illustration. Its like Pickleball in a glass cage.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9ABYEeOxOs

[Skybird]

Finally! Initially they said you could not have the 3D part of Google Earth in Quest 3 as long as you do not mirror it from PC Google Earth into the Quest 3, the Quest was said to not have the hardware to calculate it all by itself. Thats why they released "Wander" months ago, which exclusively focusses on Streetview and thus is still the best app if Streetview is what you want to focus on, the speed of downloading the pictures is just top of the competition, the interfaces is streamlined for supprting the needs of Streetview and spices it up with a few options that other travel apps with Streetview have not.

For the 3D part of Google Earth that models more or less the whole planet's surface in "cubistic art" or plasters it with 2D aerial photos, there was only "Wooorld" so far, but I did not like the bit unsorted and overcrowded interface and the tiny Populous-like map interface. They said to run the Google Earth software natively on Quest was not possible. Until now.

Not one but TWO new apps do right this: they do what Google Earth plus Streetview does, just offering other - and in one case: better! - interfaces.

"Fly" lets you stand in Marvel Superhero style on a flying disc with attached futuristic aero- turbine-something things that are animated and indeed help to not loose balance since they give you the visual feedback of that you do not hover in empty air but stand on somehing solid, though flying. Beneath and all around you you see the Earth surface and environments that you know from Google Earth, just that this is not Google Earth the PC app, you do not need to have your Quest 3 linked to PC. You fly and navigate either by minijoystick and contoller handling, or by leaning to the sides, backwards and forwards while you stand on your flying disc. This gives an unbelievably natural-feeling experience, that is elegant, intuitive, and lets you believe your were a bird enjoying to be carried by the wind alone. If you get dizzy when standing, you just sit and navigate by ministicks alone, much like in PC Google Earth, but the disc-flying mode works so much better!

I have waited for this, and stuff like this is what VR is meant for. Its a fantastic travel experience. You can only jump temporarily or constantly into Streetview, and travel via Streetview. But as I said, if you want to focus on a project with Streetview alone, i would recommend Wander for Streetview, it downloads even faster, and offers some good features in Streetview that the interface in Fly would not allow.

I got Fly in s ale for 7 Euro. I almost feel ashamed to not pay them more.

What I miss a bit is a better global map navigation option, you need to find locations by text search, and if the search name of the location is not stored in the software'S database, you cannot directly jump to it. But it is a minor thing only to be cured by using the next more famous location nearby for search, and then flying manually to where you want.

Again, the disc-flying thing is great and is what sets this app apart from other travel apps. I just love it. Better than opriginal PC Google Earth, although that control method can be mimicked, too, if you want.

"Earthquest" is a bit older, and I missed the release of it, found it just now. It does in principle the same like "Fly", but with another interface which has some things better and some things worse. Its not as elegant as Fly's, and a bit old-school, I am also confused a bit with their API options and direct map navigation also does not work well, or I did not understand how it works. I think they make some things needlessly complicated. The reloading of the Streetview image material is a bit faster than in Fly, I think, and you can also jump both temporarily or constantly into Streetview, like in Fly. Its a solid app, and which one you choose may be a question of taste. My own preference is Fly. Earthquest too is currently to be had for just 7 Euros. Usually both cost 10 Euros.

You do no longer need a strong Windows PC for enjoying Google Earth in your Quest. The Quest now can run the material by Google all by itself, directly.

This is the stuff VR was made for! In my book, these apps are must-haves. I would always recommend to not just get Fly, but also Wander, both make a fantastic combo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkMjzBNJDH4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSlS2B_mFG0

I use Google Earth a very lot and since many years. And yes, I think of it as travelling for sure (and I know what real world travelling is since I had my share of that, too). I am deeply thankful for that Google Earth and Streetview do exist, I have seen so much of the world by now that without these - and already before VR - I never would have seen. With VR, it simply turns into mindblowing experiences. I am thankful that technology offers me these options, and I enjoy them to the max. These examples demonstrate some of the best that VR has to offer.

Fly.
Wander.
Earthquest.

In this order.

Now you know.

[Skybird]

9 hole par 3, and 18 hole puts at Pebble Beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHRP4tv191k

[Skybird]

Subside is out for PC, I mirror it into the Quest 3. Its a visual feast, like Subnautica on steroids, more realistically looking. Swimming and navigating feels very natural. Its an experience that lets VR shine in all its glory. This is the closest you can get to diving without making your hair wet. Play value? Compares to that of Mirage Kajak. There is sort of exploration and baits to find to unlock new features and areas.



But - and that is a very, very rare thing for me in VR - after aorund 25 minutes I start to feel mild nausea and sweating, and I get uncomfortable. After a break of a few minutes, all was fine again. Usually I am absolutely invulnerable to VR sickness.

[Skybird]

Novembre 21st.

https://youtu.be/3vYdyOhi1pE?si=iLN87xz9zZv3lmTS

[Skybird]

:hulk:
The entrance to hell has a marked location, and they call the place Wolf Creek. Holes 10, 13 and 17 crash my morale, eat my soul and devour my psyche.

Every.
Single.
Time.

:Kaleun_Mad:
"Let go of all hope and then enter."


Dont talk to me. Not today. Just dont.

[Skybird]

The excellent Arkanoid-Squash hybrid Cybrix got a huge visual update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GxScE2WMOE

Cybrix is played with two Squash-like padels in both hands which can turn into for example laser pistols for some seconds if one of the smacked bricks releases an according upgrade you have to pick. The game is very good fun and gives a mild excercise training. I love it.


It can be played versus or cooperatively with another player.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8tKD2U0slI

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UvJi2ZdFQQ

[Skybird]

I wonder if this extension really can work, I mean the hammer's tick must be synched to the moment the virtual clubhead hits the ball - how to do that without any signal feedback between the simulation's internal timing of events and the spring loaded hammer?

https://deadeyevr.com/cdn/shop/files/2Snaptic.jpg?v=1724367344


My golf game has been a mess for a few months now and my handicap has dropped from 13 to 19. The physics of the simulation haven't changed, it's me. I don't get it.

I currently have 21 normal 18-hole courses, I don't count the gimmicks. I play them once per “season” (in random order), and I've just finished my fourth season, which means I've played 84 courses at “Pro” level, and each course four times. In the second season I needed 99 strokes less than in the first, in the third season another 78 strokes less than in the second, but now in the fourth season it were twenty strokes more than in the third. Statistically, with around 2000 strokes per season, this is probably not yet significant, and the handicap deterioration is probably due to the variable way in which the HC is calculated. So I think that I may not have deteriorated but am actually stagnating. But even that is annoying enough with such a high handicap. This is also supported by the fact that in the third season I played 9 courses with stroke rates in the 90s and the other 12 courses in the 100s - but in the fourth I played 11 courses with a 90s stroke rate and 10 with a 100s stroke rate.

Over the warm summer months I spend more time outside and played less golf, but the appetite has now come back in full strength. :yeah:

[Skybird]

FINALLY...!!! :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:
I finally, finally, finally, in my 85th attempt on Pro level, played a full course under 90!! Celebration! Party! Free beer for all! This indeed is a great relief, and a heck of an excuse to drink and dance and kiss and drink more! I played the new (beautiful) Lofoten Links course - with 87 strikes.

Man, that was a long lasting uphill battle, to get under 90! Frustration really had become immense, early summer I was close to quit the game completely, I just did not mention it. I thought I never would made it, that it is ruled out for principle reasons. Closest calls so war were Yale and Kapalua with 90, East Lake with 92 and Quail Hollow and TPC Southwind with 93. Four more 94-results.

But now it reads: Lofoten Links: 87. :yeah:

Finally...! :D I am off to partying. No acchievment worth to be mentioned in the world of golf. But a big record catching for me personally. It took me one year and 85 attempts to get there.


Lofoten Links is ranked by Golf Digest as the 25th most beautiful course in the world.

[Skybird]

I'm not stupid enough to get cocky now and set a new target of “85” or “under 80”. One swallow does not make a summer. The motto now has to be: “no more over 99, once again and then again and again under 90”.


I had a bottle of Freixeneit in the basement. I have brought it up and just opened it. I will make sure it will not last the day...

[Skybird]

I finished almost all the bottle a little prematurely, namely on an empty stomach. :Kaleun_Cheers: Ich bin ganz lull und lall... :har:

[Skybird]

https://youtu.be/sFMOUz33R9w?si=NnQeNtw6f6cGvs8T

[Skybird]

Want to have!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRazW2dCt60

[Skybird]

Another round below 90 - its an 85! My best round ever! Handicap has also been improving again for some time, I'm now back at 16. :Kaleun_Cheers:
Also playing in my fifth season now (I play each course once per), I so far have played all rounds under 100, only two digits results, no three digits anymore.


But I worked for this, trained a lot with the optional training modes. My main hand grip seems to have been my problem, and since I focus more on it again like I did earlier this year, things are improving again.

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1yeyKPZdWA

A difficult course, I read.

Myself, I've been getting back on my feet again since the days got colder and I've been playing more and getting more practice. Season 5 is halfway through, I've played all the courses only in double figures under 100 so far (my minimum target this time: no 100+ rounds), and even play some rounds in the 80s repeatedly outside the shorter course on the Lofoten. The eternal sound barrier has finally been broken. My results are improving continuously - slowly but steadily.

What do we learn from this? It's important to keep practicing in this game, to play regularly - if you take too long off, you lose your skills again. Even just in VR Simulation. For me it was the grip, I got sloppy there, as a result of which I distributed the balls evenly from right to left and across half the course. In the meantime, I got myself back on track, which didn't go off without a lot of swearing, louder swearing and uninhibited raging. Slowly I manage to heal my biggest weakness: lacking consistency.

Golf is supposed to be relaxing? No. It's war. Against yourself. Its good that I play alone in the room. People would not recognize me when playing Golf... Im angry. Im furious. Im loud. I'm ablaze. I suffer. I am my worst enemy. I use all the words you never should use. I hate it. I hate myself.

I do it again and again.

My handicap is now back to 14, one point above my best score last spring.

[Skybird]

Pebble Beach in 87 strikes today :Kaleun_Party:, and I just dropped my handicap two tenth below my best ever standing from last spring, so - all decline and loss from over this summer has been compensated, reversed and is forgotten: 13.1 .


I am definetly having a run currently. It could have even become a round below 80 at Pebble today - if at one, just one single hole I wouldn't have given myself all hell there is in this world - 13 strikes, endlessly back and forth at the hole while attempting to put that damn thing. That really wrecked my nerves.

But what it means by the end of the day: results in the 80s now slowly become more common - and the 70s-rounds get into reach, slowly, slowly...

And what a war it once was to break through that 90 strikes barrier! :ping:

If grip is good - all is good. :D

[Skybird]

https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/05/15/golf-plus-quail-hollow-club-virtual-golf

Golf+ has blossomed into a VR success and an entry point for the PGA Tour to create new fans. The game launched in late 2021, and its studio agreed to a five-year deal (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Daily/Issues/2022/12/15/Technology/the-pga-tour-virtual-reality-game-golfplus-partnership.aspx) with the tour in December 2022 (it also has licensing deals with the PGA of America for some courses, as well as Topgolf). Golf+ also won Best in Extended Reality (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/02/26/best-in-extended-reality) at the Sports Business Awards: Tech ceremony (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/03/06/sports-business-awards-tech-winners) during SBJ Tech Week (https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/SB-Blogs/Behind-the-Scenes/2024/03/tech-week.aspx) earlier this year.

Wright had plenty of stats to illustrate that success, too, most notably the 1 million-plus people who have downloaded and played the game -- of which 30% to 35% are new to the golf community. Its player base is worldwide, with more than 200 countries represented, and produces 3 million virtual golf shots a day. Wright said users skew much younger than the traditional PGA Tour fan base.

Golf+ polled that sector of new golfers and found that two-thirds said they did tune into tournaments if they’d played the virtual version of the course ahead of time. This paints a clear picture as to why the Tour sees value in the connection.


https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/-/media/Images/Newsletters/SBJ-Tech/2024/05/quail-hollow-sbj-tech-main.ashx?mw=768


https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/-/media/Images/Newsletters/SBJ-Tech/2024/05/quail-hollow-sbj-tech-details.ashx?mw=768


https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/-/media/Images/Newsletters/SBJ-Tech/2024/05/quail-hollow-sbj-tech-17.ashx?mw=768


By far my most played VR game ever. Three quarters of my VR gaming time get logged into this (VR cinema watching not counted, I practically watch all movies and most series in VR moviehalls now).

[Skybird]

:Kaleun_Party: My first Eagle...! :Kaleun_Cheers:




Pinehurst No.2, hole 8, thats a par 5, I took it in 3. :salute: Pila venit, vidit, vicit! :D

[Skybird]

All the stagnation and setbacks over the summer are forgotten. I have completed my fifth season and made massive improvements. I stayed around 220 strokes below the previous best season's result and achieved an adjusted handicap of 11.8, which means I'm currently ranked just below rank ~27,000 out of around 1 million players across all platform (Quest, Playstation, PC). I'm very happy, I'm finally getting some consistency in my game, it took me 115 rounds on “Pro” to get there, half of my 23 rounds this time were in the 90s, the other half were even in the 80s. Not a single 100+ round.

The next goal for next season is to increase the number of 80s rounds in the season and to get one or two in the 70s, I came very close to that goal three times in the 23 rounds this season. The new sound barrier to break has a name: "80". It must fall. It will fall! Basta!!

I can't get much better than I am now, I can feel it. I will always be out of reach of the real top players who play, say, -8 under par. That is science fiction for me, at least without altering my swing values. But I want to stay with realistic values and so needing to swing as realostically as possible. Achieving - and maintaining :) - a single-digit handicap: that would be a huge success for me. That's what I live for! :D That realosrtic swing is what is so highly addictrive for me. Compromnsiung nthe simulaiton aspectz just fpor cheating and getting better scoring is completely unattractive for me. I know that many of the top players do right this: scoring best by totally giving up realistical swing values. I dont like that. Its considered legitimate in the Golf+ world, but its not my taste.

I play 23 of the currently available 26 available full distance 18 hole courses over one season. I do not like the three I skip (Alpine, Cliffs, Canyons), they are fantasy courses and I just dont like them, two of them also are very old, severla years old, and they show it, visually. The three special courses there are, are nice to have and I sometimes have a bit of fun with them, but they are no regular 18 hole courses.


50 Birdies and 1 Eagle until here. Best rounds played so far were 85 on severla courses, longest drive was Castle Links hole 13, 378.5 yards, and longest hole out was Spyglass Hill hole No. 2, 46.7 yards. :D

[Skybird]

Te Arai is in New Zealand, and is a relatively new golf ressort.


It will become the opener of my sixth season!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK5uAyOKoGE

[Skybird]

This thing looks so cool. Another massive update after long time. Its now (since some time already) also a fully done 2D simulator, not just VR exclusively.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNqlDJ62paw

[Skybird]

:Kaleun_Cheers: My best round ever !! 81 at Jumeirah. Handicap now at 10 ! :salute:
The 70s - they call me, they lure me, they beg me ! :yeah: Its getting time to finally hear them! :D


https://i.postimg.cc/1555VCx9/HC-281124.png (https://postimages.org/)

[Skybird]

:Kaleun_Cheers:
https://i.postimg.cc/0QwJTP57/Te-Arai-Drive.png (https://postimages.org/)


:yeah:


Usually I strike carries around 210-240m, plus then the rolling.

[Skybird]

:Kaleun_Cheers: And since today my handicap is one digit only: 9 ! :yeah:
According to the eternal career statistic it took me 11565 shots.

And two (minor) real world physical injuries in the beginning of my voyage into Golf+. LOL

And so far three gloves. :D


https://i.postimg.cc/ZqxvqgZy/HC051224.png (https://postimages.org/)


By HC I am amongst the best 20 thousand players. On PC, Playstation and Quest together there are currently 1 million active players.

[Skybird]

https://youtu.be/xHvgrwoQcnc?si=oRWqFAy6kla_VMqg

[Skybird]

Google and Samsung are entering the competition with their own mixed reality headset. Apple's pricey and software-undersupported 3,500 dollar item has not really taken off (I could have told them in advance, with that price tag). The market is currently overdominated by Meta's Quest. There are now headsets like the Pimax Crystal and BigScreen that offer even slightly better display quality, but none of them offers that huge software support and that hard-to-beat bang for the buck ratio. Also, they are cable-PC-bound. Do not underestimate the value of being cable-free with your VR headset (I initially did, and now know it better), its a game changer!



https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/13/business/google-samsung-xr-headset/index.html

For the time being, I stick to it: the Quest 3 (not 3S) is the best bang for the buck candidate out there currently. By a big lead.

[Skybird]

https://i.postimg.cc/vB69mkLF/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)


I admit - not without help by the fairway which falls off quite steeply.


A very versatile, beautiful course, and one of my two or three favourite courses, by looks and beauty - but I find I very difficult to play, one of the toughest courses. I struggle to stay within two digit results here. Even underhanded, and riddled with traps and "minefields". Beauty and the beast - in other words: Castle Pines.


Maybe I only find Wolf Creek more difficult.

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImVejMviZFg

[Skybird]

My final year 2024 statistics since I switched to Pro level in early March. :D

17352 shots fired. I swear I grow a kraken' arms length.

https://i.postimg.cc/26R6rSvd/Unbenannt.png (https://postimages.org/)



https://i.postimg.cc/fb0c8kDY/Unbenannt2.png (https://postimages.org/)


Of 28 availab loe courses, I own all but play just 23, all of them the 18 holes full rounds. I skip on three fantasy courses that I do not like (Alpine, Cliffs, Canyons), and I deactivate log-keepign for the fun tracks, the 9 hole Par 3 courses and the Pitch&Put courses, which all are no standard 18 hole rounds. I play them fur fun occasionally, and they are fun for sure. Interestingly, when I switch off log-keeping on any course and play just for fun, I immediately play better and feel less psychoterror, i really seem to put myself under unwanted pressure when playing for scoring.

I currently got stuck in a little crisis again, the last three rounds at Muirefield Village, Castle Pines and Bay Hill went absolutely terrible. Granted, Muirerield and Castle Pines are not only the two most beautiful but als the by far most difficult courses in the game, but still, I really underperformed there this season. The fact that both courses regularly appear in the lists of various golf magazines among the 10 most difficult courses in the world is no consolation, because I have achieved better results there in the past. Bay Hill too was a desaster this Sunday, I still feel ashamed... Currently again the worm is in all Golf things I do. It comes and goes in phases.

Golf is hell. Not relaxing at all.

I heard nothing on their future plans, but I do know that their PGA license (they are the official game for the PGA Tour) that they signed in 2023 lasts for 5 or 6 years. My hope is they continue to add full 18 hole courses from reality, but I am not certain.

What does it cost me? If only considering the software spendings and repeated playing on courses, costs are such that roughly every full round I play costs me a ticket for one Euro. I have no issue with that, since the price gets cheaper the more repetitions I do per course. I am now in my sixth Pro level season.

[Skybird]

They say their statistics show them that if they add the distance of all shots fired by all Golf+ players this year, it would cover the distance Earth to Moon and back 123 times. :ping:

[Skybird]

Today was the day again, an absolute “Aha!” experience in the VR world. Dawn of Jets, an incredibly good-looking aerial combat simulator with a truly outstanding cockpit feeling, has seen the light of day in Early Access (MP still pending), simulating aerial combat with the first models of the jet age, i.e. aircraft from the Korean War era. There are around a dozen of them, each with an individual level of graphical and functional detail that is incredible for a standalone VR headset, and all the buttons you need are clickable. “You sit in it”, it doesn't have the high-res level of a DCS, but then DCS also needs a high-end PC. The world is also drawn in amazing detail, much better and much more than I expected, and can be displayed at different times of day and night around the clock, with a wide variety of weather constellations and different gradations of cloud formations. The feeling of flying is - I can only say: Wowh! It's really, really good.

You can also start and land from the carrier, and the landing is really tough, not unfairly difficult, but challenging, and the display of the meatball indicator during the final approach actually works, and as it should. Very good.



Handling and Controls are neither over-sensitive, nor too slow, they feel about right for me. Sounds are up to their task.


Its really unbelievable what performance can be squeezed out of the relatively limited hardware of an independent VR headset. Best Mig Alley feeling, in 3D. The cockpit detail can be compared to that of the early IL-2 titles, if not better, just that they are illuminated and interactive in DoJ.



The only downside I smell i the air is that air-to-air probably is reserved only to the upcoming MP (due to the needed ressources for AI calculations) , I did not see it offering dogfighting missions that went beyond shooting zeppelines and moving drones. However, my verdict is that this should hold nobody back from trying out the title nevertheless.



Quest 3 users can pick it up without hesitation, I'm sure we'll be hearing more about this title.



I was hesitent to set up videos, but then t he post wpuld be only hald as entertaining, but I must wanr that the 2D videos realyl do nto do this any justice, even let it look inferior. IT IS NOT, in stereoscopic 3D this really is VERY convincing! I am not exaggerating. The cockput immeriso and the feelign to really fly a n agile air fighter at speed is the by far best I have so far seen on the Quest 3, and it would even defends its place against - not the very latest generation of - PC dogfight flightsims. So enjoy the videos, but keep on mind that they tell you only half of the truth.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxIOWHecZoY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1UApf0Flls



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgBgGd8YkrI

[Skybird]

Oh, I was wrong. It HAS dogfighting Migs. :yeah: He shoots from way too far away, but take the video as evidence for the claim.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qan8kK2jjnw

[Skybird]

Heck, this ^ is good stuff, i haven't had so much fun with a combat flightsim since 25 years or so, it really catapults me back into the good ol' days. I flew this for severla hpurs today, now I am a bit dizzy. No wonder they rate this with 4.9 of 5 stars in the Meta store. Even in Early Access, this already is loads and loads of fun.

I put it on my list with must-haves for the Quest 3.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z4GJ0BUk9E

[Skybird]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAcMDjjgUEw

[Skybird]

This new course ^ is tricky. It looks quite harmless and friendly, and the fairways don't seem to hide any nastiness, the grounds are free and spacious, the sky is open and wide, it's beautiful. Nevertheless, this course causes me a lot of problems: the greens are really tricky, the ball keeps bouncing and rolling in the worst possible ways, and really badly. I have huge problems staying under 100 strokes. I play the fairways well, but the final approach shot and then the putting attempts always kill any previous advantage. That makes this course one of the top three most difficult courses in the game for me. :doh:

[mapuc]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTCvrS18bcc

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