Hi All,
An observation/cautionary advice. Hopefully, it's just affected me and no-one else. The plus side up front is that, now I've stopped with the O+ and ED, after about 3 weeks, my eyes have mostly recovered, although I'm back at the Opticians tomorrow to see if there maybe any lasting effect.
I've been playing ED with various headsets over the years, Vive, Vive Pro and, since it launched, the Samsung Odyssey+. I had the original PiMax 4k from KS but never really got that to do anything fun. 3-4 times a week I will be in ED for an hour or so, doing whatever, taking breaks as needed. Then I noticed I had deteriorating ( it seemed ) blurred vision during the day, watering eyes, couldn't read monitors at work, couldn't focus on a person standing more than 4 feet away etc. The whole effect came on gradually over the course of a few weeks but when I realised I couldn't read the number plate on a car 20 yards in front me, I knew I had a problem and the only thing I could think of was the VR headset so I stopped using it.
One week later ( no gaming ):-
No change, couldn't focus, reading glasses didn't help unless I pressed my face up to the monitor for whatever I was working on. Eyes watering most of the time when working. Kept turning my head to try and find a zone of focus in my vision. Waking up in the morning, for ~2-3 hours my focus is completely gone like swimming underwater without goggles initially but eases later in the morning.
Two weeks later:
Eyes had improved slightly. Far vision was starting to come back but I could still see I had a problem. Near vision still hadn't recovered enough for my glasses to help. Morning blur was reduced in both strength and longevity. Can't read any books on my tablet so no bed-time reading for me still. Pity because I'm reading Return from Ringworld - again. Can't get enough of Larry Niven.
Three weeks later:
Morning blur pretty much gone. I can see well enough to write this. Far vision much better but still not where it was. I feel like it's still improving so I'm hopeful the effect isn't lasting but I'll find out tomorrow if there's any impact on my glasses prescription.
With the VR I was always conscious that text in ED felt like I was staring at an old CRT from 2 inches away, although the O+ for me, is better than the Vive Pro. I would spend time changing various settings to increase resolution, e.g. max out SS, HMD SS, even turn up Steam SS to 400% although the combination is too much for a 2GHz 1080Ti.
I even changed all the HUD pixels to green because the O+ uses AMOLED with a pentile matrix for which only green sub-pixels are replicated for all pixels. It did improve the resolution noticeably but not enough. It's interesting that the Vive and the Vive Pro, with the most shocking SDE I've ever seen, never gave me these problems.
I do wish that VRgineers would make aspheric lenses we could use with other headsets so we're not stuck with lenses which zoom in on pixels rather than using most of the panel because I'm not paying thousands of euros for one of their headsets unless my girlfriend lets me sell one of her kidneys.
As for ED, I've tried going back to old style 2D gaming and I feel no immersion, the ships all look the size of a matchbox, there's no sense of scale etc, it just looks like a TV cartoon. Reminds me of how Clive Gringras and Warren Burch killed BBC Elite for me. After watching a wing of police vipers break formation and blow panels of pirate ships in Archimedes Elite, Beeb Elite was just naff. This is how 2D kinda feels for me which is frustrating because VR is still so immature not least because the panels are just not good enough for my eyes
I'm contemplating a Reverb or biting the bullet and getting an XTAL but I sense a rather serious convo with my optician first. I suspect they're just going to say that me and VR are done.
Will I listen - not likely...
An observation/cautionary advice. Hopefully, it's just affected me and no-one else. The plus side up front is that, now I've stopped with the O+ and ED, after about 3 weeks, my eyes have mostly recovered, although I'm back at the Opticians tomorrow to see if there maybe any lasting effect.
I've been playing ED with various headsets over the years, Vive, Vive Pro and, since it launched, the Samsung Odyssey+. I had the original PiMax 4k from KS but never really got that to do anything fun. 3-4 times a week I will be in ED for an hour or so, doing whatever, taking breaks as needed. Then I noticed I had deteriorating ( it seemed ) blurred vision during the day, watering eyes, couldn't read monitors at work, couldn't focus on a person standing more than 4 feet away etc. The whole effect came on gradually over the course of a few weeks but when I realised I couldn't read the number plate on a car 20 yards in front me, I knew I had a problem and the only thing I could think of was the VR headset so I stopped using it.
One week later ( no gaming ):-
No change, couldn't focus, reading glasses didn't help unless I pressed my face up to the monitor for whatever I was working on. Eyes watering most of the time when working. Kept turning my head to try and find a zone of focus in my vision. Waking up in the morning, for ~2-3 hours my focus is completely gone like swimming underwater without goggles initially but eases later in the morning.
Two weeks later:
Eyes had improved slightly. Far vision was starting to come back but I could still see I had a problem. Near vision still hadn't recovered enough for my glasses to help. Morning blur was reduced in both strength and longevity. Can't read any books on my tablet so no bed-time reading for me still. Pity because I'm reading Return from Ringworld - again. Can't get enough of Larry Niven.
Three weeks later:
Morning blur pretty much gone. I can see well enough to write this. Far vision much better but still not where it was. I feel like it's still improving so I'm hopeful the effect isn't lasting but I'll find out tomorrow if there's any impact on my glasses prescription.
With the VR I was always conscious that text in ED felt like I was staring at an old CRT from 2 inches away, although the O+ for me, is better than the Vive Pro. I would spend time changing various settings to increase resolution, e.g. max out SS, HMD SS, even turn up Steam SS to 400% although the combination is too much for a 2GHz 1080Ti.
I even changed all the HUD pixels to green because the O+ uses AMOLED with a pentile matrix for which only green sub-pixels are replicated for all pixels. It did improve the resolution noticeably but not enough. It's interesting that the Vive and the Vive Pro, with the most shocking SDE I've ever seen, never gave me these problems.
I do wish that VRgineers would make aspheric lenses we could use with other headsets so we're not stuck with lenses which zoom in on pixels rather than using most of the panel because I'm not paying thousands of euros for one of their headsets unless my girlfriend lets me sell one of her kidneys.
As for ED, I've tried going back to old style 2D gaming and I feel no immersion, the ships all look the size of a matchbox, there's no sense of scale etc, it just looks like a TV cartoon. Reminds me of how Clive Gringras and Warren Burch killed BBC Elite for me. After watching a wing of police vipers break formation and blow panels of pirate ships in Archimedes Elite, Beeb Elite was just naff. This is how 2D kinda feels for me which is frustrating because VR is still so immature not least because the panels are just not good enough for my eyes
I'm contemplating a Reverb or biting the bullet and getting an XTAL but I sense a rather serious convo with my optician first. I suspect they're just going to say that me and VR are done.
Will I listen - not likely...
