Okay, here is a tough one.
I really really like my Oculus Rift S. Light, easy to set up, good tracking, good image quality. Could use a higher refresh rate imo. Facebook on the other hand - I don't like where this is heading.
(Remember the promises Oculus made when Facebook bought them?
https://time.com/38366/here-are-7-promises-oculus-has-made-after-getting-bought-by-facebook/)
So I decided to go the expensive route. I bought a Valve Index Kit. And I really want to like it. But it is really hard.
Initial impressions - Negatives first:
Heavier, not as comfortable as the Rift S. Neither for me nor for my girlfriend.
Get's really warm just by being on standby.
The basestations (2.0) are really loud. They emit a really high pitched tone. Jesus. I can hear them from 10m away.
The Glare / God rays - I never experienced such a bad glare in any other Headset. I had the Rift CV1, HTC Vive Pro and (I still have) the Rift S. Not only do you see god rays from white text on black background - you also have the weird glare on normal environments when you move your head around, looks like internal reflections.
I found an example video here:
I didn't watch the whole video so excuse the clickbait title, just wanted to make sure my Headset is not broken. And it seems to be a very common issue. My Rift CV1 was bad, but this looks worse imo. (full vid here
)
The good:
The Refresh rate is great for Beat Saber and FPS. It looks sooo smooth. I have a 240Hz monitor for 2d gaming, I really appreciate that.
The Controllers and the headset have that premium feel when you unbox it and touch it for the first time.
Finger Tracking is a nice idea. Gives you that tiny bit more immersion when you really grab something instead of pulling a trigger.
Tracking is the best I ever experienced (or at least on par with the Rift CV1 with 3 cameras).
Subjective: I trust Valve more than Facebook
Subjective: FOV - The difference is smaller than I thought. Just a tiny bit more. It is nice to have, but I expected it to be a bigger difference.
Neutral:
Set up is not as easy as the Oculus Rift S Setup, but it's still fairly easy.
The Price? Almost 3x the price of a Rift S. But hey, that is not the problem here. My biggest problem is the glare. It is really putting me off. I really want to enjoy it but it seems like such a big step backwards in image quality. I know that you probably get more used to it. But that alone seems like such a big downgrade that it is hard for me to justify my purchase. Really. I am _that_ disappointed that I sit here and write this shitty post instead of having fun :/
But what are my options? Reverb G2 has great resolution, worse tracking than my Rift S and not the 144Hz smoothness of the Index. And while the big resolution would be really great in theory, it is also much more demanding. My GPU is just an RTX 2080.