So I've been playing ED with VR for quite a bit, and being a bit of a VR fanboy I've changed headsets quite a few times. Since I've had an opportunity to try all sorts of them with it, and figured I'd give a brief rundown of each that I've tried for the folks interested, as some of the info may be relevant to your selections (even if the selection isn't your exact headset).
TL;DR Conclusion: The increased resolution of the newer headsets is well worth the price, IMO, if you're still on a headset like the the original Vive or Oculus CV1. The game goes from being blurry and unsatisfying to a near realistic experience. Increase FOV makes a big difference in gameplay, as your peripheral vision can help greatly in how you perceive speed and the like; I suddenly feel like I'm going much faster in canyon runs than I did before. Finally, despite the "through the lens" comparison pics, I still strongly recommend OLED over LCD panels. Whatever improvement that you get on the LCD by way of screen door effect will barely be noticeable in actual gameplay (regardless of how the screenshots focusing on 1 little part of the screen may make it seem), but what you lose by way of colors is definitely noticeable. The OLED screens are so vivid and so amazing. With that said, I'm sure there's some health benefits to going LCD over OLED... if they're worried about what an OLED tv would do to our eyes, I can only imagine what an OLED head mounted display would do to them =D. That's probably worth looking into if you have concerns about being blind because of VR later in life lol
By way of headset recommendations: I'd focus on resolution first, FOV second and then color clarity third. Ultimately, the Rift S seems like a good purchase if you're a first timer getting into VR with a good gaming PC, otherwise I'd personally go for the PIMAX XR series if you're already in the VR space because the FOV and OLED screens just seem too nice to pass up on; just be prepared that it sucks to set up and some of the QOL you've gotten used to (like your base stations turning off automatically if you come from a Vive) are not there.
Additionally- Having finally played heavily with a headset that does not suffer from the "sweet spot" issue my Vive Pro does, I can no longer recommend the Vive Pro to folks unless you are willing to change out the lenses. It's supposedly a simple process, so just check out a tutorial first if you are considering one, but if it doesn't sound like your thing then I'd consider another headset, IMO.
- Oculus DK1 (LCD): My first VR Headset, and the first major one that came out. Needless to say, ED looked like a mosaic on this thing. Surprisingly lightweight though =D Not that I cared, I still gushed up a storm at how amazing it all was because of the novelty, but if I'm being honest I couldn't see a thing. If you can get your hands on one, just keep it sealed and put it in a closet for safe keeping. Don't play ED on this lol.
- Oculus CV1 (
LCDOLED): Upgraded to this once it was available. The resolution was better than the DK1 (obviously) but it was still somewhat challenging to read. I found that playing ED was enjoyable enough, but still didn't feel "natural" because of how difficult it could be to read the text in game. The "screen door effect" was very very real. The sensors on this thing were free-standing and frustrated me to no end, because if you bumped into them then it would require fixing your setup. I'm clumsy; this sucked. - HTC Vive (
LCDOLED): I swapped to this headset after a while because I got tired of the sensors on the CV1 and also because the IPD settings on it could not reach a range that worked for me (71mm). Having the Vive's base stations mounted on the walls were a huge help. I've been using the same base stations since I first mounted them years ago, as they are compatible with the next 2 headsets I got after. Same with my controllers (irrelevant to ED, but the oculus controllers felt superior to the Vive controllers if you were interested. I miss those). Video wise, there was no discernible difference between these two, though the Vive's IPD settings were much nicer for my big ol' head so I enjoyed my Vive much more. - HTC Vive Pro (OLED): This was the game changer for me. The high resolution OLED screen was utterly insane in comparison to the regular Vive or the Rift. The screen door effect, while mildly present, was practically unnoticeable for me. But what was noticeable was the drastic color difference between them; the colors were so vivid and jumped out at me. There was a bit more of a screen door on the OLED than there would be on an LCD screen of the same resolution, but again I barely noticed it at the resolution and the colors were well worth the change. Things looked properly "real" to me. The biggest downside of this headset was the very limited "sweet spot", which made it hard to look around. There are mods which you can do to your headset to improve this (replacing the lenses), but I was always a wimp and was afraid I'd break mine so I never did it them =D One downside to this headset was the audio: it comes with built in earphones and they suck. You can improve the experience a bit using equalizer software (I have a setting file for the software Equalizer APO which, when applied to the Vive Pro headset, makes it sound decent. If you need it, just let me know), but all together this was a drastic downgrade over my previous 2 headsets by way of sound since I could use whatever I wanted with them. I mention the headphones here and not with the others because you can't remove these headphones from the Vive Pro; you literally have no choice but to use them.
- The Pimax 8k Plus (LCD): I recently "upgraded" to this from the Vive Pro. This headset is awesome, but it's a real misery to set up. If you've never actually used VR before... I don't recommend starting with a Pimax lol. The additional Field of Vision is definitely real with this headset, though; I finally have peripheral vision back, and it's truly amazing. Additionally, it stays on my head so much better than the Vive Pro did, as it is much lighter than the heavy/clunky pro. This means I can look around with ease, and not feel like I have to adjust the headset constantly. The "sweet spot" where my eyes can focus on is also MUCH larger so I can actually look around with just my eyes, and I find myself "seeing" things for the first time in ED that I had never noticed on my other headsets because I could really only focus on 1 spot before. However, I do have some regret going for the LCD over the OLED model. The colors are EXTREMELY washed out on the LCD screens vs the colors on my Vive Pro, and it's taking me a while to go from such a vivid gameplay experience to such a dull looking one. However, I find the upgrade worth it overall for the peripheral vision I get back as well as the improved "sweet spot". Also, I'm back to being able to use my own headphones via the 3.5mm jack on it, and use the Bose Quiet Comfort 15s. The two together make me feel like I'm in a bubble, with nothing at all breaking the VR immersion.
EDIT: I am adding this after playing with the Pimax some more. The headset is very comfortable for long bouts of play. I further distance myself from my previous recommendations of the Vive Pro the longer I play with this. The VP was great, but it's very heavy. This one is just so light that I can wear it for hours and feel nothing, and looking around is so much easier. The VP's weight and small sweet spot made looking around it so challenging, but not this. Also- an additional benefit of the Pimax that I've found over some other LCD headsets: the washed out colors can be helped greatly by changing the Contrast and Brightness settings. By setting brightness to -3 and Contrast to +2, the game is looking MUCH better now. This is an option that is not available to all LCD headsets, and I've seen forum posts of other LCD headset owners complaining about it. I recommend making sure you can play with these settings if you intend to get an LCD display. Lastly: After playing around with some settings in PiTools, I found that the default values for stuff were not conducive to good performance in game. Thanks to the help of some internet posts, I have tweaked those settings and the game is running MUCH smoother at a much higher quality than I was getting previously, and even moreso than on my Vive Pro, despite the rest of my hardware remaining the same. I'm happy with the addition of PiTools, even tho the base stations not turning themselves off is still a PITA.
TL;DR Conclusion: The increased resolution of the newer headsets is well worth the price, IMO, if you're still on a headset like the the original Vive or Oculus CV1. The game goes from being blurry and unsatisfying to a near realistic experience. Increase FOV makes a big difference in gameplay, as your peripheral vision can help greatly in how you perceive speed and the like; I suddenly feel like I'm going much faster in canyon runs than I did before. Finally, despite the "through the lens" comparison pics, I still strongly recommend OLED over LCD panels. Whatever improvement that you get on the LCD by way of screen door effect will barely be noticeable in actual gameplay (regardless of how the screenshots focusing on 1 little part of the screen may make it seem), but what you lose by way of colors is definitely noticeable. The OLED screens are so vivid and so amazing. With that said, I'm sure there's some health benefits to going LCD over OLED... if they're worried about what an OLED tv would do to our eyes, I can only imagine what an OLED head mounted display would do to them =D. That's probably worth looking into if you have concerns about being blind because of VR later in life lol
By way of headset recommendations: I'd focus on resolution first, FOV second and then color clarity third. Ultimately, the Rift S seems like a good purchase if you're a first timer getting into VR with a good gaming PC, otherwise I'd personally go for the PIMAX XR series if you're already in the VR space because the FOV and OLED screens just seem too nice to pass up on; just be prepared that it sucks to set up and some of the QOL you've gotten used to (like your base stations turning off automatically if you come from a Vive) are not there.
Additionally- Having finally played heavily with a headset that does not suffer from the "sweet spot" issue my Vive Pro does, I can no longer recommend the Vive Pro to folks unless you are willing to change out the lenses. It's supposedly a simple process, so just check out a tutorial first if you are considering one, but if it doesn't sound like your thing then I'd consider another headset, IMO.
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