This looks pretty cool, almost makes me with to get a VR headset. Except these ones are now owned by facebook, right?

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/vader-immortal-world-premiere-star-wars-comes-to-vr-with-story-humor-stakes/

I think this and another VR Star Wars reference you made a little while back got me kind of interested and I glanced at the prices for this Sony setup. I don't really picture myself purchasing one though. I remember Jon commenting on the general quality of VR a year or so back and I can't imagine a Playstation setup is going to be particularly great. It will have a limited library and ability. A PC based platform probably has the broadest library and ability but will miss platform specific lures and generally isn't located in a living room environment. Which makes me think of how funny it is that it seems like there are all of these various things that come and go that make having a living room PC (or HTPC) relevant and then not.

I will definitely admit that I don't know much about VR technology but it seems to me that unless you're an early adopter like Jon it's really going to be best to wait for a more universal system. Or for platform specific headsets to hit the bargain shelves.

This also reminds me about the Xbox One Kinnect. Did anyone else notice how effectively Microsoft killed it? You can pick them up for next to nothing but you likely can't use it unless you have one of the original style Xbox Ones. Then they stopped making the adapter cables so you could use them on newer consoles. A couple years back you couldn't find a cable for less than the price of a human organ. Fortunately, if you actually want to use the Kinnect on a newer console, it looks like the aftermarket kicked in to offer them (building one was always an option for the adventurous). I don't know what specialized cable might be required for a console specific VR headset but who's to say a pissed of manufacturer won't essentially brick your device by killing support for it?

Watching a review now and for some reason I thought this was a Sony exclusive but I must have confused that for some reason. Doesn't really change my commentary but I wanted to correct that.

I thought it was exclusive to the facebook Oculus ones, right? Which is annoying.

I don't get how they got to enforce exclusives for frickin VR headsets. That's two monitors and some inputs for the head tracking. Brave new world...

Oh ho ho I'd like to redirect you to about 30 scattered pages of a 361 page thread

I had one of the early models back in the day. 640x480 @ 60 Hz - combined. So actually each monitor had 320x240 @ 30 Hz. But the cool thing was that it came with a mouse driver so you could get headtracking into games that didn't officially support it. It was awesome. Until you got tired of the eyestrain and aiming with your head.

Companies aren't developing VR headsets to sell as a new PC peripheral category; everybody's just climbing over each other trying to create the next Big New Platform they can dominate as the content aggregator monopoly. They're not even that hot on VR particularly, it just needs to be 'something' platformy, and Wall Street was being super weird about wearables a couple of years ago so it was the most natural direction for everybody to go in.

This is why Valve and Microsoft are so cool about getting other people to make headsets compatible headsets, giving away their tech and everything. As far as they're concerned it's just outsourcing the only part of the platform that takes them effort.

This is also what's behind the push to make self-contained VR headsets. PC consumer expectations don't mesh up with the walled garden/content aggregator monopoly model. A self-contained headset that acts like a phone, though, maybe. Cold day in hell before I buy one though.

And yeah, this is also what's behind exclusive games for VR. They're trying to corral people into these closed platforms where they don't have to compete anymore. Buying up exclusive rights is an easy way to do that. See also: the Epic Game Store, which is currently spending unlimited amounts of Fortnite and Chinese investor money to drive Valve out of business.

I guess it's time for advancements in piracy...

Yeah so I went against everything that is right and good and actually bought the Oculus Quest just so I could play Vader Immortal. This is the first time I've directly interacted with Facebook so now they've probably vacuumed up all my personal information somehow and I'll never escape. They do let you sign up for an "Oculus account" and don't require a direct facebook account but I'm sure they will get merged at some point in the future.

I don't get why everything these days can't stop begging you to share your information with everyone to get "friends." I turned all that crap off.

I agree with everything Jon`C stated above. They've got their Oculus store that you must browse with a phone app. The app didn't ask for any special permissions other than for notifications (and it hasn't abused that so far -- only one notification telling me that the Quest was done updating itself).

Anyway, I haven't used any other consumer-grade VR thing ever. As I mentioned a long time ago I did go to The Void in Las Vegas and I played through some star wars thing there, and I really liked it.

I wear glasses and the little extendo-thing that came with the Quest works great to make it fit over my glasses; no complaints.

Vader Immortal is really cool and fun so far. There is a lot of walking around, looking at stuff, toggling buttons and gizmos and whatnot, climbing up and down ladders, etc. It's amazing seeing droids and aliens and Darth Vader life-size. Vader is really tall. I can't wait until the next version of this thing comes out with even higher-def graphics.

I also got a lightsaber and it was really fun to play with. So far only did training/practice with a droid and some of these:

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Marksman-H_combat_remote

Which was really cool. I felt like Luke learning to use the saber (but I didn't get zapped in real life when I missed).

The rumble in the controllers is really well-done. It's like the switch "high def rumble" or whatever they call it.

Movement through the world in most of the first-person games is meh. You press forward on the joystick which initiates "movement" mode. This shows a beam of light which you can point where you want to move. When it's pointing at the spot you want to move to, you let go of the joystick and you are teleported there. It seems like a lot of games use this so I need to get used to it. I think it will make games like an actual "action" FPS really annoying, but games like Vader Immortal are more slow paced and you can just stand in one place (so far) during combat.

I haven't finished it yet, my wife couldn't stop snickering when she came downstairs and saw me playing so I put it away.

My son played through a few demos and ended up buying Beat Saber which doesn't interest me at all so I didn't try it. There are a bunch of games on there I want to try but I haven't had time yet.

One thing that really bothers me is that there's no way to add different profiles. If my son wants to play Vader Immortal we have to figure out how to start it over and I will lose my progress. Apparently some games have save slots and others don't, it really depends on the game. That's really annoying. I guess they want us to buy another headset and then buy all the games again (there is no family sharing or anything like that).

I remember when Razer tried to add mandatory logins to their fricking mouse driver. Caused a huge uproar. Guess they were just ahead of time...

So who does the hardware for Valve's Index? I know they use to work with HTC.

No idea but I read just a little bit about it the other day. $1000 for the headset and controllers and some boundary stand things; it's nuts. Plus you need to buy a beefy gaming PC and be tethered to it? I'd rather play games at a lower quality for a few years until all that extra stuff isn't needed.

The Oculus Quest really isn't good for things like watching movies or doing anything that requires high definition. The picture is too grainy; I guess people call it the Screen Door Effect. Not bothersome at all in Vader Immortal because it was obviously a game. But it's really distracting watching Netflix.