First time in VR. Holy Mary, Mother of God.

What other options for VR headsets are there, when I don't want to be forced into having a facebook account? As in, anything else except oculus (or opperated by oculus - Samsung Gear VR is also out)?
 
Also, noticed that Half-Life: Alyx is discounted on Steam, highly recommended - it should be in every VR library and has motion options suitable for both experienced and new VR players alike.

 
What other options for VR headsets are there, when I don't want to be forced into having a facebook account? As in, anything else except oculus (or opperated by oculus - Samsung Gear VR is also out)?
If you are ruling out Oculus that rules out what imo is the no brainer "1st" VR headset the quest 2

It pretty much leaves the reverb G2 or the valve index.as.the 2 most obvious options.
(There are others but I wouldn't entertain them myself)

Index has better controllers , controller tracking and FOV
G2 has better image quality and convenience.

I have the quest 2 and G2. Both are great headsets, personally I would say the quest 2 is the better all rounder but given you have discounted it I think the G2 will impress IF you have the rig to do it justice.
 
I had my first go at lavecon, I got home and bought an index right away ED is amazing in VR... even the scanner is like a table in front of you.

My only wish is, the work with nvidia and utilise the new dlss supersamping functionality. Nvidia will be boosting supersamping performance with dlss which will allow us to raise the resolution or it will able us to keep the performance while near stations and in asteroid fields
 
I can't really play Elite now outside of VR. In my head it is a VR game. I played for a good few years on my Vive, but this year, due to it being odd, I defacto moved 200 miles away from my PC. However, I recently bought a new PC for this place, but still could not play Elite till I got my partner's Oculus Quest working on it. Now my problem is flying with a keyboard and simple joystick when I am used to a Warthog HOTAS and peddles.

VR could be better though. I don't think resolution is the priority, but rather getting rid of the tunnle vision. I think the effect and suspension of disbelief would be so much stronger when you can't see any edges no matter how hard you try.
 
I'll be the oddball here in saying that I don't really get behind the usual statement "once you try VR you can never go back". Of course you can if you feel like it, it's just a very subjective thing. While I play Elite in VR and I totally love it, I'm still playing it on a standard monitor ("pancake" is another term I really don't like much, sounds too much like that "PC master race" cringy stuff), as well as with head tracking via EDTracker. VR is another great, great addition that let me immerse more in the visceral aspect of the game when I feel like it, but if I'm in a hurry and just looking for a quick gaming stint, or feeling tired at the end of a work day, or having a bit of headache, or just simply if I want to enjoy the hugely superior clarity a monitor can still give compared to most of headsets, the sheer practicality and ease of use of simply launching a normal game on a normal display and enjoy it as it is, that can't be beaten.
I won't deprive myself of a possibility just because now I have a new one that is undoubtedly better in some aspects, but only in those aspects.

Horses for courses, of course. 🙂
 
I can't really play Elite now outside of VR. In my head it is a VR game. I played for a good few years on my Vive, but this year, due to it being odd, I defacto moved 200 miles away from my PC. However, I recently bought a new PC for this place, but still could not play Elite till I got my partner's Oculus Quest working on it. Now my problem is flying with a keyboard and simple joystick when I am used to a Warthog HOTAS and peddles.

VR could be better though. I don't think resolution is the priority, but rather getting rid of the tunnle vision. I think the effect and suspension of disbelief would be so much stronger when you can't see any edges no matter how hard you try.
So the FOV isn't an issue for me. I just head canon it that it is my helmet restricting my vision.

That said it sounds like the index or pimax headsets would be a good fit for you. I am happy with my reverb G2 and quest 2 however
 
VR could be better though. I don't think resolution is the priority, but rather getting rid of the tunnle vision. I think the effect and suspension of disbelief would be so much stronger when you can't see any edges no matter how hard you try.
Both were issues when I was using the original Rift - text was hard to read. With the Index readability is fine. Higher resolution would be nice but isn't essential at all (although better anti-aliasing would be welcome), so I'm with you on field of view. It's nearly there top to bottom with the Index, at least when I'm wearing glasses, but still fairly noticeable to the side although it's better than the Rift was.

Actually being able to walk around without having a warehouse would be great too, but that's considerably harder to sort out.
 
So the FOV isn't an issue for me. I just head canon it that it is my helmet restricting my vision.

That's exactly my head canon, too. And besides, if you think VR FOV is limited, compare it to the FOV of the flat monitor in front of you, which might take up 50% of your FOV, at best, and includes immersion-breaking stuff like speakers on either side, a pc, a half-eaten chicken salad sandwich, etc. :)
 
Indeed, the limited FOV turned out to be a lot less of an issue than I was making of it before I bought into VR. After a few minutes in anyway, if you get involved in what you are doing your brain tends to cancel out trivial stuff such as limited field of view, screen door effect, god rays, the weight of that stuff on your head, etc....you can notice them while you are playing, but after a while, what you'll remember of your past VR gaming session will just be that you were there doing stuff, not how many pixels you were counting. That is, with the limited but still sufficient resolution of the Rift S at least. Can't speak for previous headsets, maybe hardly being able to read a thing might influence things a bit for the worst. 😅
 
So a question for VR veterans, not only of this game but VR games in general. Does that get better as I get used to it? Do I get "sea legs", for lack of a better term? If it does, I think I am going to get a Quest 2 of my own. After having played for maybe 20 minutes, I launched it in 2D on my own computer and it felt flat and tiny and boring. I truly feel like even just a very short time in VR might have ruined it for me in standard. It's now legitimately hard to imagine playing it any other way. I WANT to play in VR, but a half-hour at a time isn't going to cut it. I don't want to drop $300 only to make myself sick constantly!

You'll probably get used to it. Maybe this isn't the easiest game to start with, but I play it for hours on end without issue. I do remember that the first time I went into an asteroid field in VR was a bit more disorienting than expected, but now I can do CQC even without issues.
My only advice is to change the SRV setting to keep head parallel to the horizon. It feels normal, don't worry. It just means that bumps knock the SRV around instead of the planet. Without it you WILL get sick, even if you are a veteran.

Specific to the oculus, I would suggest opening the oculus debug tool and setting the pixels per density to 1.2-1.4, and keep that open before you run the oculus software. It will be harder on your PC, but if you can handle it that's super-sampling. Most noticable in cleaning up the edges and the clarity of distant objects.
 
Indeed, the limited FOV turned out to be a lot less of an issue than I was making of it before I bought into VR. After a few minutes in anyway, if you get involved in what you are doing your brain tends to cancel out trivial stuff such as limited field of view, screen door effect, god rays, the weight of that stuff on your head, etc....you can notice them while you are playing, but after a while, what you'll remember of your past VR gaming session will just be that you were there doing stuff, not how many pixels you were counting. That is, with the limited but still sufficient resolution of the Rift S at least. Can't speak for previous headsets, maybe hardly being able to read a thing might influence things a bit for the worst. 😅
That's one of the odd things about VR - it becomes normal, and loses its impressiveness factor as a result. But because it's now normal what was previously OK on a screen feels rather remote and limiting when you go back to it (in the same game, not an issue for others where that's just what you're used to). IME anyway.

I find the Index's FOV big enough to not notice it at all when I'm busy. When I stop being busy and just look around I sometimes wonder if no edge to it would complete the impression of being there (at least if I made a seat so what I see of the arms and legs and body matched what I felt). Larger FOV isn't necessary for gameplay reasons, more a QOL thing I think.
 
My only advice is to change the SRV setting to keep head parallel to the horizon. It feels normal, don't worry. It just means that bumps knock the SRV around instead of the planet. Without it you WILL get sick, even if you are a veteran.
I've been wondering why. Personally I found it made such a massive positive difference that there must be something fairly fundamental to our perception involved. I think that when moving around IRL we normally don't notice our own movement in that way but whatever we're looking at - look how unaware you are of your head bobbing when walking (and a VR game that bobs your head as you walk along can be pretty uncomfortable too). We expect ourselves to move but we don't expect the horizon to. Our other senses deal with the motion of us. Our body senses the movement and we know the surrounding scenery isn't going up and down, it's us who is. I wonder if a moving horizon would be less offputting with a hydraulic chair.
 
I'm a couple of months into my first VR ownership (Pimax 8KX). I am getting less and less prone to nausea although it can still strike without warning. I'm using a 1080ti which is a bit stressed by the 8KX - I'm hoping the better framerates from the OC 3090 I have on back order will make me even less prone to it.

For me part of the challenge has been learning to control the game again. There aren't enough button combinations on my Thrustmaster T-Flight - and even if there were, it would be a pain to try and remember them.

So I have decided to take the route of Voice Attack and HCS voicepacks. I'm still trying to tune Voice Attack to find the middle ground between responding to every intake of breath and not being sensitive enough. So at the moment I am flying in Elite in 2D while I learn the HCS commands using a reference sheet, and can see the VA window to diagnose what is happening - is it ignoring me because I used the wrong command, or because a valid command was not recognised?

So between all the fiddling with the Pimax to get it optimised, and all the fiddling with Voice Attack, it is turning into quite a long-term project. But ever since getting Elite Dangerous on release in 2014 I intended to get into VR when the hardware was good enough, and I haven't regretted it. I'm with the OP on that.
 
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I'm using a 1080ti which is a bit stressed by the 8KX ...

That does not fill me with confidence about my computer's ability to stream video to the Quest 2, as my GPU is nowhere near as good as a 1080 (though, the Quest also doesn't do 4k per eye!) I'm still using an older RX 590, which is near the bottom end of the minimum spec. My CPU is actually one tiny tick below minimum, but I'm hoping I can sneak by. My Quest 2 is supposed to arrive tomorrow, so I'll find out soon enough, I guess.

[ EDIT: after further checking it turns out my CPU, a Ryzen 5 2600, is above the minimum recommended spec. After playing a couple hours yesterday, I'm pleased to report the game ran silky smooth! ]
 
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