i love vr so as soon as i heard we were getting a bigger batter vive the sequel
i got really excited which might be why
i'm feeling pretty effing
let down right about now spoiler alert not only will i not be
spending a thousand canadian pesos for
an upgrade i don't plan to swap out my
original vive for this vive pro that i
got for free though not for the reasons you might expect
let's unpack the htc vive pro
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so here's everything that comes with it we've got the headset itself we've got
the new proprietary cable
for some reason we've got a new link box
that now has a power button that mostly actually just ended up annoying me and
if you're finding yourself going like
what the hell where are the base stations
where are the controllers then
you are not the only one the community
is understandably pretty upset about
htc's decision to sell the vive pro
only as a standalone headset without
other hardware that you will need in order to use it as anything other than a
stereo 3d movie theater that you strap
to your head now the good news is that as htc pr pointed out to me if you
already have a vive the vive pro supports both the upcoming scheme vr
tracking 2.0 lighthouse sensors that are rumored to enable play spaces of up to a
thousand square feet and the original ones so you can reuse what
you have until new controllers and base stations arrive sometime later this year
the bad news is that if you don't already have a vive the aforementioned
controllers and base stations ones that you're probably going to want to replace
at some point down the road to get the most out of your vive pro are going to
cost you over 500
to buy after the fact which is actually 30 dollars more
than buying an original vive which includes those uh tether cable a link
box and oh by the way
a freaking dive what
so this thing better be pretty freaking amazing now
one of the biggest differences outwardly
is this new mounting system and this is going to be a bit of a mixed bag for me
my wife likes it a lot better especially
as someone who anyway used to wear glasses because it's just got a single
adjustable strap here at the top and what you can do is you can just put the
headset on pull out these headphone pieces and
lower the whole thing onto your head then tighten it from the back
it's also got an improvement that's been made to the nose seal down here it's
like a flower petal inspired design that
blocks excess light leakage and the headphones are now integrated into the
headset and they actually have a pretty wide degree of adjustability so they sit
on your ears pretty nicely just like that now the
only problem with all of this is that i find it really uncomfortable
now htc acknowledges that it is heavier
and bulkier but the idea was that it would make up for this with the better
more even distribution of weight around your head and like i said before for my
wife it works really well but most of the games that i play in vr are pretty
fast paced with a lot of side to side movement so i want the lightest possible
hmd with a tight fit against my face
and for me this one i found i was getting a little bit of
side to side movement whipping my head in games like space pirate trainer audio
shield and box vr especially when
following through on a punch or especially on a hook
not to mention that it leaves a wicked pressure point
on my king-sized nose something that right now i don't have a
solution for so it was at this point in my testing
that i realized that htc's use of the pro moniker to describe this product
might be an actual indication of the market that they're targeting with it
and not just a transparent attempt to make their
higher end consumer product sound really really cool because if you think about
it a commercial entity one that stands to make money off of its vr headsets is
less likely to be concerned with little things like a few hundred dollars of
extra cost at the outset the lack of included accessories and the cheaper
packaging and
the beefier build quality of this unit combined with the quicker in and out is
going to make it a no-brainer for trade shows vr arcades and other such
endeavors but i don't run a lot of arcades so i kind of have to focus on
the living room gaming experience for consumers
and for that like the big improvement
was the move to dual 1440 by 1600 OLED
displays but is that enough of a game changer
oh man i don't know how like how do i put this
gently not really like it's an improvement
motion blur basically not a thing here
which is fantastic i mean vr headsets are a great use case for OLED since they
benefit from those quick response times and they typically don't get used enough
at least on a static object to risk burn
in but the improvement to the screen door
effect only puts the vive pro
subjectively a little better than the oculus rift it's still noticeable and
the resolution while higher and while it does improve the readability of text
is still low enough that there are obvious aliasing jaggies
everywhere it's nothing like when i tried the pimax 8k
though it should be noted that i'm not recommending that thing either it may
boast high resolution and a massive field of view but the version that i
tried anyway was a steaming pile of garbage when it came to tracking latency
and lens distortion both total non-issues for the vive pro
but that's not actually the end of my issues with it
one htc doesn't have any plans that they
could share with me anyway to offer a lightweight replacement strap and i
don't see an easy way to diy something more similar to gen one
two the killer apps a low latency wireless
adapter using 60 gigahertz and those base stations that will allow much
larger play areas they aren't available until sometime later this year and three
while the built-in headphones are well isolated and sound good enough for like
you know in-game pew pew pew sound effects they're a little tinny and
soulless for games that let you import your own high quality music files
so some people will find themselves wanting to take them off which is supported so
that's good but those same people are probably going to be at least a little
ticked off to find out that htc removed the three and a half millimeter jack
so that if you want to plug in your own iems you'll actually need a type c to
three and a half millimeter adapter why like i get that bluetooth is the
future but for crying out loud there's already a wire running
so bottom line then for the target market the pro market
this is a great choice
all things considered it's probably the best vr experience that you can get
i mean that inside out tracking approach that's used by Windows mixed reality
products like the samsung odyssey vr really does hurt accuracy but for anyone
else it really is a bad buy i would take a rift or a vanilla vive over it in a
minute i didn't even pay for this thing and i'm still packing it back up putting
it in the warehouse and patiently waiting for a more consumer-oriented
vive 2 to arrive that hopefully doesn't include any of
my issues with this one optima's nuforce b freight wireless
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