Oculus Quest Pro - Experience

[giftgruen]

Hello @all

 

Want to talk about my experiences with Oculus Quest Pro and IL2 - maybe the one or other is interested.

Some 'First of all' words:

- excuse my English - I am not a native speaker

- I am not a MP pro - more playing from time 2 time in singleplayer, both WW1 Flying Circus and ( since some weeks ) WW2 Moskow+Stalingrad map

 

My hardware setup is quite decent ( I5-13600KF as CPU and 4080 as GC ) - but not extraordinary highend.

Controls are all VKB Gladiator / Rudder pedals / WW2-Throttle Combo ( which all are great devices, I am very satisfied! ) mounted on a stand.

 

I started my VR life with a HP Reverb and a weaker PC (3070) and it gave me such a thrill that I decided to spend some money into this hobby

and first upgraded my Controls ( came from a simple Logitech stick ), then my PC, now decided to try out another VR headset.

( Yes - all in all we talk about quite a lot of money - and not everyone is willing to spent this for 'playing' - know that )

 

Some Headset experiences now:

 

After beeing rather unimpressed in the beginning, now, after some fiddling, I am really happy.

The Quest Pro is not a pure simulator headset - but I also wanted to give games like e.g. Half Live Alyx a try.

 

What you need to know to get happy:

- The headset is rather uncomfortable in the beginning. For me - It clearly needed a headstrap which made things much better

   On the good side: it runs much cooler than the HP Reverb.

- Stock sound is simply bad. My Me109 sounded like a Vespa.   

   Some rather cheap aftermarket headphones from Amazon ( specific for Quest Pro ) now do the job way better.

- It is absolutely inavoidable to fiddle with Oculus Debug tool and/or oculus Tray tool to get the best out of the headset

   Running the stock setup will not give you a good experience

 

My recommendations for VR settings ( for MY hardware - this of course will differ if you have a slower/faster hardware )

- 72 Hz is enough for me

- I don't use ASW ( motion reprojection ) cause the unavoidable ghosting imho absolutely kills immersion

  so the rest is done in a way that I have a stable 72Hz with some small headroom

- After some experiments:-In my opinion it's better to have MSAAx4 - and supersample only what the hardware is able to do with MSAAx4

  At the moment I have supersampling in OTT with factor 1.2 - and no additional supersampling in Steam ( do this at only ONE place, it multiplies )

 

I started with a cable setup and now use Airlink. This is ONLY okay, if you place a dedicated router in direct reach.

Dont try this with a Mesh WLAN or a "general household router" far away - you will not be happy ( I tried ).

Connect the PC to this routers LAN-Port and ONLY the headset to the WiFi. I decided to us a WiFi 6E router for this.

Enlarge your bitrate to 400 in ODD or OTT ( 500 didn't work for me - other web sources tell that 500 works - hmmmm )

With this setup, I cannot really feel a disturbing difference between cable and airlink 

 

The freedom airlink gives is not soo important for a simulation  but of course absolutely great for something like HalfLife Alyx or Beat Saber.

And the limited battery runtime ( something like 2h ) is more than enough for me.

 

Conclusion with this setup

 

In general, the Quest Pro now is far superior to the HP reverb. Clearance, Comfort (yes!), Colours, Smoothness and general feeling are clearly better.

YES. In the absolute sweetspot - e.g. when concentrating to read the airspeed from a Albatros' Wing tach - the Reverb is a tiny little sharper.

But that's really all. ( I assume that MP pilots need every extra sharpness to detect bandids far away - but, 10 degrees out of the sweetspot you're lost with the HP - no ?) 

 

To be honest - the Quest pro really could be much better with a higher resolution display.

There are situations where lines are 'bulky' and you see pixels - but the overall experience is absolutely okay.

 

PROs

- general satisfying setup now

- Versatile setup - not only for sims, but also for games where you move and walk around

 

CONs

- extra costs for headstrap, headphones, WiFi router ... 

- lack of resolution for simulation Pros

- Somewhat annoying startup procedure since airlink cannot be configured to automatically start ( but, hey, some clicks only )

 

The same headset with a 2500x2500 per eye ( and a 4090 firing it ) would be quite near to perfection.

 

Just my 5 cents ?

Edited September 22, 2023 by giftgruen

[Dagwoodyt]

With the Varjo Aero now selling at the same price and using display port seems like buying a QP that has already been axed from the Meta lineup is a non-starter.

[giftgruen]

Same price is not exactly true, since you need base stations and controllers in addition ( correct ? )

 

However - if you are only interested in flight sims or other seating games, you are probably right.
If you also play games with "full movement" - a cable solution is rather annoying.

So it's also a question of 'versatility'