Now, I might look like some sort of cyber soldier freak, but I'm telling you, we're
just wearing some really cool VR tech that's going to be coming out really, really soon.
I mean, look at this.
And I still got the controller and I can get back into the game. This is all of the crazy tech that you can find at the Shift All booth at CES and soon
it's going to be coming out for you guys. Let's talk about what all of this stuff is.
I just need to get it off of me first.
We're going to talk about this sci-fi pack mule oat bag in a minute, but what I want
to talk about first is two pretty cool innovations. First, the flip VR controller that lets you do this and you're back in the game.
One of the biggest issues with VR adoption is the inconvenience of getting in and out
of VR. You find yourself moving stuff around, you're putting on a headset, you're suddenly blocking
out the world. To solve that issue, we're seeing a lot of development in mixed reality from companies
like Meta and Apple who are basically trying to make it so that the difference between the
outside world and the VR world are as seamless as possible, but you still have these pesky
controllers that you're going to deal with. But until hand tracking gets really good for the time being, you're going to be stuck with
controllers plus controllers offer a whole host of benefits like joysticks, buttons for
easy movement. Pretty much every game you're going to play is going to involve a controller and a lot
of the times that means you have to find a place to put them. If you're trying to take the headset off, it's just clumsy.
You have these little things, they're dangling from your wrists in an inconvenient way.
But you don't have to worry about that with these controllers because the moment you want
to grab something else, you can just flip them out of the way.
Because you're doing this kind of flipping motion, they've had to make a very heavy duty hinge.
They've rated it for about 20,000 flips. Who knows how many that you will use in the lifespan.
I imagine if you're playing a game, it's going to be really intermittent. But for me, I've been having this problem of that it's such a fun fidget toy that I just
have it in my hand and just like constantly finding reasons to do this over and over.
This still has all the same inputs and capacitive buttons just like the MetaQuest touch controllers.
So you have an AB button, a menu button as well as capacitive and analog triggers.
And as you can see, because of the nature of this controller, they've had to move a
lot of the tracking to the outside. It's kind of similar to like the Knuckles controllers where there's a lot of sensors
on the outside. This isn't quite final hardware. As you can see, there's still like holes in it with the infrared sensors.
Those are going to be covered up by transparent plastic.
As it stands, I think it's a pretty cool product and it's also adjustable very slightly
for like hand size. So if you're somebody with like longer thumbs or shorter hands, you can pull and adjust
and it's more comfortable as well as you can adjust how far back and how far forward the
joypad and the connections lie. Now I think the controller advancements are pretty cool, but I'm also really impressed
by the Meganex super light. This is going to be their new generation for 2024 for their Meganex line of headsets.
And as you can see, it's really small. You may have seen our video on LTT about the big screen beyond.
It is a absolutely tiny headset that weighs just 127 grams.
But to get that weight, there was a lot of sacrifices that had to be made.
For example, you need to get a custom made face cushion that you can't really replace
that easily. You also needed to use stick on lenses.
There's no diopter options for adjusting for different prescriptions for people's vision.
There was also no way to adjust your IPD.
That's your interpupillary distance. Basically how far your eyes are apart.
The Meganex does is that it allows all of those conveniences that makes the headset a
lot more shareable and puts them in.
We have a swappable gasket. We have a diopter adjustment.
It's not working on this prototype currently, as well as we have adjustable IPD so that
you can actually share your headset, which was probably the biggest weakness of the big
screen beyond, was that it was kind of for you and only you.
And they're able to do that while still targeting a very small and very comfortable form factor
and a weight of just 250 grams. Each eye contains a 2600 by 2600 micro OLED display, very similar to the ones that are
in the big screen beyond. But unlike the ones in the big screen beyond, these are 1.3 inches, which means they're
larger. Why does that matter? Well, when you're trying to take a small like postage stamp size display and expand
it to consume the whole field of view for the user, that requires intense optics.
And doing a lot of hard work with optics causes internal reflections which can result in
chromatic aberration and fringing on colors, as well as it means you lose a lot of light
from your display. Like in the big screen beyond, for example, the actual brightness of the OLED display
is in the thousands of nits, but what gets to your eyes is around 100.
So they lose 90% of their light, bouncing stuff around.
A bigger screen means you're doing less bending and warping of that light to make sure it
gets to the user. Now, they quote that it's going to be above a 100 degree field of view.
They're not really going to disclose that information currently.
Field of view is actually pretty difficult to measure. It can mean a lot of different things, especially if you have a flat display versus a display
that's in the headset at an angle. From my impressions after wearing it, to me, it feels a bit wider than the big screen beyond.
To be fair, I have not had an opportunity to adjust the IPT or the diopters, so I'm
not going to talk a ton about focus or stuff like that, but honestly, with the same kind
of high resolution that we're seeing on the big screen beyond, the screen door effect
basically is negligible. Motion clarity from this test right now feels really solid.
There's not a ton of blur, and also there's a decent amount of brightness.
It's not the brightest display. I don't know what they have.
If they can crank it higher, I don't know what the limits are. For me, while it's not quite as comfortable as the bespoke fit of the big screen beyond,
I think with maybe a nice foam gasket, I usually tend to prefer those.
I would honestly be able to wear this for a really long time. The snow looks so good on the OLED.
There's no bloom or anything like that. At the edges of the display, obviously there's a little bit of color fringing, but yeah,
man, I'm so excited for VR to get actually this good.
I've been waiting for VR to be good for a long time.
I say this as an enthusiast, somebody who really enjoys their time in VR.
There's a lot of problems, and the level of convenience that stuff like this is providing
is really cool, but it is kind of coming at a cost.
This headset is going to be under $1,700 is what they say.
I think they're trying to target more of the $1,200 region, which still puts it in like
very pricey big screen beyond territory.
The controllers, however, are a little bit more reasonably priced. They're $400 for a pair.
Again, it ain't cheap, especially when you can compare it to, say, your index controllers
or your Quest controllers. This is all outside tracking.
We've got base stations up here, all sorts of stuff, but, oh, man, I feel cool when I
do this. Do you know what I feel a little bit less cool is when I'm wearing this thing?
This thing is called the MewTalk, and the idea is that if you're somebody who's doing
a lot of hanging out in VR, you're getting excited, you might be having a ton of fun
chatting with your friends, and you're pissing off your neighbors.
I'm talking at this volume right now, and if I put this on, you can't really hear me
talking that much anymore. But inside, it's not just a noise blocking thing.
It's also a microphone in itself, a wireless mic.
Because it's noise blocking, they've had to make a couple of accommodations. For example, there's a silicon gasket to keep the noise in, as well as inside, there's a
foam material to catch all of that spit, so it doesn't just pool up in there.
I don't think there's a way to cover up the mouth that doesn't feel either dystopian
or fetishy. You know, this is the kind of stuff I'd wear it at home mostly.
A CES show floor is like the worst case scenario for any sort of VR headset because of like
base tracking is so difficult, and you can see by how well this is keeping the tracking
going that it's actually really impressive. If you aren't that into VR, you probably haven't heard of Shift-All, but I think what they're
doing is really exciting, and you're probably going to hear their name a lot more in the future.
Speaking of the future, why don't you get subscribed to ShortCircuit and watch our future coverage of CES.
There's going to be so many cool videos. We've got so much cool tech. Do it.
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