None of my friends have a Meta Quest (or any VR headsets for that matter). On the extremely few occasions the headsets are brought up, all the conversations are the same; “it’s kind of cool but it’s made by Facebook”.
I wonder how many people would be in the market for a relatively cheaper headset like the Meta Quest if it wasn’t a Mark Zuckerberg project
Its a mixed bag. The Pico headsets are around the same price point but at that price point, you are typically paying with your user data as well. Its just a question of who you are giving it to facebook or some random ass Chinese company. While Facebook trying to own "VR" for itself is bad I will at least thank them for making headsets that make it more likely people are willing to dip their feet into VR. While facebook sucks, only having to pay 300 to 400 to get into something you may absolutely hate. They make for great "starter" headsets that you can probably easily find on the 2nd hand market for sub 200. Try out VR on a quest and if you like the concept and feelings of it probably invest more on a better headset. Hopefully we will hear more about Valve's Deckard soon.
Edit: I almost forgot to mention PSVR 2 which is pretty damn good but for 550, I don't think it will have a massive appeal to console games seeing as they are gaming on something funnily worth less than that headset. It being locked to only the PS5 is also a massive penalty against it and there is no news of a fan made driver for it on pc.
They’re not just entry level headsets. You can link them to a powerful gaming computer through Steam Link and then they’re the equivalent of a $1200 headset from Valve or HTC.
100% not equivalent. I said entry since it gets the job done but it has a ton of limitations. The biggest one is it having to compress the video via the link cable and it having to decode on its own cpu. So this can lead to a some artificating and some stuttering issues. This is a problem that can be solved if Meta chooses to use DP over usb via the displayport protocol but that makes engineering a bit harder and it runs counter to their whole point of the device being a standalone unit, this isn't even an unrealistic ask since this is how the PSVR2 works.
2nd one and this is only a partial issue but its still worth mentioning battery life. For many people having a link cable will extend the life of your quest 2 but it won't keep the same charge level so a session will probably stop after 2 or 3 hours. Which is fine for a single person but if you are doing this for a party or something, may not be enough time to let everyone have a go with the thing. So a standard headset will just have a dedicated power cable and can go for as long as you want it to. Like said I'm hesitant to put too much faith on meta since they can easily drop support for these headsets. To my knowledge the quest 1 still works with a link cable but how long do we expect that to be the case, maybe one day a software update with their oculus platform basically makes it impossible to use it.
If your computer has USB-C 3.2 v2 then you can play for infinite time over the charge cable. I have a couple on my MOBO and as soon as I switched to those ports I never had charging issues. I think that resolves the video compression issue too. I’m not certain about the video issue but the bandwidth of 3.2 v2 is double what the display port is. I’ve never had any issues anyway. I’m sure there are other benefits to the pricier headsets too, like not having to deal with Facebook, and possibly better interfaces and stuff, but for the money the Quest v2 is pretty awesome.
But Meta/Zuckerberg is squandering it. There is a huge disconnect between the price of thing (OVER $500) and the value proposition. It's bad at gaming. It's still less powerful than even current-gen smart phones, let alone modern consoles or gaming PCs... and what little gaming content is out there makes that abundantly clear. Asgard's Wrath 2 does it no favors given those realities. And what are the uses beyond gaming?
Exercise could be a compelling value proposition, but they aren't leveraging even that obvious marketing angle. "You can do your supernatural workouts!" How many people know what that is? I do, but ask a rando on the street. They have no idea. And what are the other options beside Supernatural workouts? Oh, nothing? Nothing for my stationary bike? Nothing for a rowing machine? Nothing for treadmills? With all those funds, they are not exploring the practical applications at all and the product is failing as a result. Instead, Zuck STILL hasn't given up on his Metaverse/Horizons MMO idea.
And that's before we even get into Meta/Facebook's inherent creepiness as a company.
I had/have the first two quests. But needing a Facebook account was one thing I had to think hard about when I got it because I wanted to delete my account. With Facebook getting worse and worse it means I have zero desire to get a new one.
And to address the article, I would say it isn’t that interest in VR is decreasing, people don’t want meta VR or anything tied to Zuckerberg. I would love a valve index personally, just need to wait to afford it.
I’m not suprised. On one hand, there wasn’t exactly a lot of marketing around it. I didn’t even know it was announced until last week, and I follow gaming news and some VR news. On top of this, its an expensive, casual device - the sort of thing a kid will ask for after seeing someone else using it, not something people are lining up day-one to buy. At least something like the Valve Index, for all its disadvantages, very clearly targets enthusiasts who will go out of their way to seek out newer or better products. If Valve decided to release a Valve Index 2 (or for a more direct comparison, a Valve Index Pro) I’d be willing to bet their day-one numbers would look better, even if their overall market is much smaller.
To a degree I’d say this applies to anyone that works on a game except upper management. With games like these the devs/artists are almost always the passionate ones trying to put their best effort into their games but end up forced into incredibly condensed timescales by upper management.
I tried CS2 on my Deck after the update. I only tried against bots on Italy but found that given the hardware, it ran surprisingly OK. 40 FPS with default settings. Obviously the controls are not so great. I’ve read somewhere later that resetting Steam Input for this game to defaults is required but didn’t know that at the time.
Btw I played with the Deck on a stand and my left hand on the controller part while my right hand held a Bluetooth mouse.
Is that… comfortable? That sounds like a really awkward way to play.
It was kinda OK. It actually had the benefit of analog movement as compared to WASD. Biggest downside was the small screen.
Any reason you didn’t do all in on the controller or keyboard+mouse?
The game did not seem to work with controller only and forced me to use the trackpads and I cannot play FPS games with just a controller anyway. As for why no keyboard, the answer is simple: I was too lazy to get up and get my BT keyboard and my USB C dock (all my Deck accessories are stored in a dedicated bag).
Anything can be suboptimal hardware, the Steam Deck is no different from any other computer and does not even have to be a handheld.
And I do not play or own a Steam Deck or alike, if that concerns you. Accept other peoples hardware and ways to play, it’s a whole lot easier than whatever you’re doing.
The thing could be a budget gaming PC for some people. Most people are not going to be competing super hard; they just want to play the game and have fun. Who else would be taking up the bronze and silver brackets?
Steam Deck is not limited to handheld, you can hook it up to a desk setup with USB -C. Also, I used to play CSGO handheld. I’m in the low silvers even on PC and it doesn’t make a big difference to me skill wise. You can be really precise with trackpad + gyroscope.
Anyone else remember when “competitive shooter” also implied it could be run on a fucking potato with decent speeds? Or that competitive games aren’t still meant to be played for fun by the vast majority of people who are gonna be playing?
It’s not targeted exclusively towards professionals, is it?
Well it runs - just not as fast as you want. I personally would never want to play those competitive shooters that need pixel perfect aim on a handheld console… but that’s just me.
No, a 3ds to switch is a pretty apt comparison about a modern pc to a steam deck actually.
There is absolutely no reason why anyone would assume this should be optimized for a mobile device. You would be limiting its potential in PC, if they can’t provide the same experience across all devices, they aren’t going to. It’s a competitor shooter for one thing….
Where am I comparing apples to oranges…? I’m using different approaches to show that not everygame a company designs is going to be playable on all devices, it’s NEVER, been that way. So why would it suddenly change just for this one case…?
How is any of that relevant to a company being able to design games for what they want…?
But I will address this point. Yes it would limit what they could do to the PC version, look at what happened to coop for BG3 on the series S, sometimes devices just can’t do everything….
I also never put words in your mouth. I’ve used different methods to describe how companies make games for other hardware all the time.
Why should this game be different? Are you going to answer any of my questions or are you just going to continue to deflect with these endless fallacies?
I’m glad you’re making it apparent that you don’t know what you’re talking about. Sure you can’t compare it to a two thousand dollar PC with top of the line hardware, but it’s plenty capable, affordable and you can take it anywhere. They’re fucking awesome and have made PC gaming accessible to lots of people
I think people expect a game made by Valve to run on gaming hardware made by Valve, even if it’s only for casual playing.
Yes. Why else did CSGO get controller and gyro support? While Valve did not promise anything in that regard, there was the expectation that CS2 would basically be fully optimized for Deck. Maybe it will still happen. The “final” release is nothing but an open beta.
Sure but they haven’t cared about the state of their games in ages. Iike I’m all for pushing to get them to fix it and all, but think it’s weird that people are surprised. Especially when the vast majority of their focus has been on steam for the last forever
I play Destiny 2 on my Asus ROG Ally almost daily, and have played lots of PVE and Gambit, but hate Crucible. It’s really powerful, so I think it’s possible to play competitive games on a handheld if you’re comfortable with using a controller. Of course, you can plug it into a monitor and use the XG Mobile to get a decent graphics card. So yeah, I think a handheld can hold up to a gaming PC if you temper your expectations. You’re not going to be playing at 4k, 120 fps, but instead 720p 50-60 fps. Good enough for casual play all the time.
It has competitive modes, but I don’t know how well it would do at tournament play. I’m not a big fan of PVP, but I’m pretty sure the Ally is powerful enough to play most of those games if you lower the graphics to get a nice FPS. I just cited Destiny because it’s what I’ve been playing lately.
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Aktywne