Bigscreen Beyond – Small VR Headset | Hacker News Reader

Bigscreen Beyond – Small VR Headset

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170 pointsdmarcos180 comments

This is just the beginning of the wave of next gen headsets that are employing microOLED + pancake lenses, both technical breakthroughs that have only become available recently in the VR / AR space. Expect to see a lot more like this over the next 6-12 months (including Apple), especially once XR2 gen2 chips are widely available (this one not requiring it because it's entirely dependent on an attached PC). In fact, to some extent, I would say what we are seeing now is a rush to forward-announce by those trying to get in ahead of the big players that will be rolling out this tech. Hence why shipping is in Q3.

This is one of the reasons why I think the people discounting VR/AR are misguided or at least basing their thinking on incorrect assumptions. These breakthroughs will fundmentally change some aspects of the value proposition.

I think you are right about the timing strategy and about the tech improvements.

Displays and optics have been some of the blockers.

6DOF tracking seems to be mostly solved (albeit in a very costly manner) and seemingly settled on inside-out tracking.

Controls are IMHO a very weak point with no clear line of sight path to a solution.

Software could help, but so far I think that poor engineering did not help to highlight the hardware qualities of the various prototype we've seen (I've not tried everything but I would not call any of those a mass-market product)

Industrial design could be the magic sauce, this is why people have been hoping for Apple to save the day. Given their recent track record I am not convinced this will happen.

Apple can bring far more than just industrial design.

a) Have acquired [1] a ridiculous number of AR/VR companies including Limbak [2] who have conceptual lens designs which are far better than anything on the market today.

b) Proven supply chain and expertise with LiDAR, MicroLED, Photonics, Glass, Custom Silicon, Batteries, Power Management, Wearable Fabrics etc.

c) Up to version 6 of their ARKit SDK [3] and decade of experience in building ultra low power operating systems e.g. Secure Enclave OS, watchOS etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIr4Em03B5s

[3] https://developer.apple.com/augmented-reality/arkit/

>and decade of experience in building ultra low power operating systems e.g. Secure Enclave OS, watchOS etc.

The latest rumors say that the current headset requires you to carry a large battery separate to it all for 2 hours of battery life. That sounds like a failure to be ultra low power.

2 hours is fine for VR, you can’t play much longer than that anyways. For AR it’s probably not that great, however.

My point was that in order to reach a viable battery life they had to compromise by forcing people to carry around a large battery pack.

Killer app: figure out how to power it off the energy stored in my adipose tissue.

Would inertial charging like an automatic watch be a possiblity for a vr headset? I'd love that actually!

Probably not.

Inertial charging still requires that you put the effort in, the trick is that with watches it's very little effort – equivalent to winding the watch every few days – so you don't feel it.

If you have ever used a hand-crank torch or radio, or something else that converts effort into power, you'll know that it takes a fair bit of effort, and that's for low power devices. Inertial charging to recoup, say, 5k mAh to charge a smart phone for a day, would therefore require a lot of effort. This would be spread out over a day, but might feel like, for example, carrying a heavy backpack the whole day.

Could it be used to charge that external battery and significantly improve its autonomy? :D

Bah call me old fashioned but I prefer my tethered headset where batteries aren't a concern at all.

Pretty sure Apple will allow you to connect the headset to a Mac.

I'm quite excited about VR/AR while sitting at my desk with traditional mouse and keyboard. I also think console game controllers and the hand tracking controllers that ships with the Oculus and Vive are are excellent.

I think the greatest weakness of VR is total immersion. Its not clear to me that people will ever really want to be completely shut off from reality while in virtual space.

> Its not clear to me that people will ever really want to be completely shut off from reality while in virtual space.

I don’t feel that you’d want this all the time, but if for some reason you cant go outside; being able to be in a completely virtual environment gives you a giant sense of space

Is it possible to use one of these as a big screen for developing software?

It would be better and more portable than my multi monitor setup. Maybe I'd be able to focus and concentrate more.

Which would be the downsides?

>Which would be the downsides?

Your monitors would be a higher resolution than these. You would be tethered to your PC.

it works pretty well over Wifi with Immersed. I go all over the house leaving my laptop in my study and just carry a bluetooth keyboard around. But the resolution part is on point. It's one of the reason it's exciting to see these improvements rolling out, we can finally get over this resolution barrier.

I'm not sure what the field of view is with this, but I've experimented with that with a valve index and the biggest downside is that virtual screens end up quite low resolution, to the point that to have legible text they need to take up most of your field of view (to the point that in the same visible area where you could have four physical monitors, you'd need to have a single virtual monitor that's scaled up so you can read text on it).

The other thing to consider in terms of portability is that these have very high resolution displays (they just don't necessarily look high resolution because they take up such a large fraction of your field of view), and also need to be run at 100+ hz to minimize motion sickness. While this is easily doable with gaming graphics cards, many development-focused laptops don't have the GPU horsepower necessary to handle it.

Finally, it looks like this is using SteamVR headset tracking. This is an outside-in tracking system that relies on a pair of external tracking beacons that the headset needs to have line of sight to, to figure out its position and orientation. If these are moved, their position needs to be recalibrated. So it's also less ideal for portability in that you need to set up and run power to two other external devices and have somewhere to mount them while using the headset.

It's not FOV that's needed for virtual monitors displaying readable text in VR, it's resolution. Not the flat panel resolution either... the only resolution that matters for VR and AR displays is Pixels Per Degree (PPD). This is because unlike a real monitor or TV, you can't back away from the monitor to increase the PPD. For VR and AR displays, the eye relief is constant, thus the PPD is fixed.

You need >35 PPD to read legible text on a displays. 62PPD is the maximum resolution of the typical human eye.

So, if you can get the company to advertise their PPD (doubtful, but some display providers do and are truthful), then you can answer your question.

They actually advertise 28PPD on their site. That's actually not too bad, but still not very good for reading text on a virtual monitor.

Note that that 35PPD spec comes from the equivalent PPD when viewing 12pt font on a physical standard 1280p 14" display monitor at a seated distance (eye relief) of 20" from the monitor. So, there's some subjectivity in that value. I guess if you're used to working in, say, 38pt font or so, the this 28PPD might be ok? (I didn't do the math)

What's the PPD required for a "Retina" display (one at which individual pixels are no longer distinguishable)? Is that 62 or some other value?

The Googles told me 60PPD (1):

"If there is any single number that people point to for resolution, it is the 1 arcminute value that Apple uses to indicate a “Retina Display”. This number corresponds to around 300 PPI for a display that is at 10-12 inches from the eye. In other words, this is about 60 pixels per degree (PPD)."

1.) https://www.anandtech.com/show/7743/the-pixel-density-race-a...

With USB 3 and/or Thunderbolt 4 exposing the pci bus to make external GPUs a possibility, if there is a larger base station I have to attach my laptop to, in order to use my VR headset for the initial generations, so be it. The idea of having a screen(s) as tall and wide as I'm willing to move my head is quite alluring. Virtual desktops ain't got nothing on that!

Yes, look up an app called Immersed. It does exactly what you want.

The downside has always been comfort and screen clarity, which this headset seems to solve!

Yes I do this routinely, using a Quest Pro.

The main downside is that the resolution just isn't there yet on the Quest Pro to make what you are seeing comparable to a real monitor. If you want to see the same "amount" of eg: text, you will be looking at a bigger screen in space - which is what I do. I stare at the equivalent of about a 32" monitor. It is OK if you only need to use a single monitor, but the advertised benefit of having as many monitors as you want isn't as great as you would think because they have to be so big that you have to rotate your head a lot.

You also need to be pretty good at touch typing. If you can't type without looking at your fingers, it becomes painful fast - even with passthrough showing you the keyboard or with a tracked keyboard (which shows up rendered in VR).

All of this will change with the next gen as they bump up significantly in resolution. I already use it routinely to get a "change of scene" and to focus more. It's quite fun to go into the public rooms and co-work with half a dozen other people doing the same thing from all over the world. So once the resolution goes up another notch I think we'll hit the point where it's unambiguously better for a lot of people than a real monitor and this will start to take off. For now, you have to have a reason or be an enthusiast to want to do it.

I would suggest trying AR glasses rather than VR headsets. I work on the go on Nreal Air glasses (basically a Full HD monitor in glasses form) over Samsung DeX and VNC. My phone turns into a track pad and I carry a small keyboard.

It is however unlikely that any competing headset will be laser focused on low weight/size like this one.

Sony has a headset like this, the VR2, which is supposed to ship Real Soon Now. Cabled.

Self-contained VR is going to look cheap for quite a while, because you need a gamer PC or a good game console to make it go, and you just can't cram that much graphics power and battery into non-clunky headgear. However, wireless with a local base station generating video ought to work fine.

The VR2 isn't anything like this... It has older lenses, is heavier, bigger, uses inside out tracking, etc.

To summarize for anyone not wanting to click around their website:

- $999

- Molded to your face

- 2560 × 2560 per eye (higher than the HP Reverb and nearly every other headset, lower than PIMAX 8K)

- 90° × 93° FOV (lower than most other headsets)

- 127g (excluding strap/cord, MUCH lighter than any existing headset)

- Does not come with controllers or trackers (compatible with existing lighthouses, bring your own)

Wow, that's an astonishing improvement in weight compared to other VR headsets. Here's Meta's line-up for comparison: https://i.imgur.com/JoTt10p.png

Meta's lineup isn't a fair comparison IMO, since those include significant compute power to a actually run the software, battery, inside out tracking, and are completely untethered, all for about half of what this costs. This is a tethered display that relies on separate controllers, lighthouses, and computation.

That said, lightweight is awesome. I think getting weight out of the headset is going to be really important for any sort of casual use of VR, but I don't think this product is good example of that, just because of all the other requirements.

I'll pay the extra to keep my face free of meta stickers. I don't care to share my viewing habits with that beast.

Same, I would not buy/use any Meta product if I can choose.

I have a very mild interest in VR but if the tech really improves this is something I could try. Past experiences have been disappointing.

It's not very likely anyone will offer a privacy conscious VR product, at least any more than we have now. You can run a relatively "Open" VR stack with Proton and Linux, but that's not really marketable to major audiences. Even selling it to Windows users didn't really work.

The last chances of a truly privacy-respecting VR experience dried up when "The Industry" walked away from OpenXR and other efforts to treat VR like a first-class technology and not a toy. Maybe not the worst choice in hindsight, but it's also the one that lead us down this road of "product-ized" virtual reality.

There is a big difference between Facebook having cameras inside your house and someone like Valve. We know that Valve makes money primarily from software sales, whereas Facebook's core business is collecting user data for targeted advertising, so you know they will taking advantage of every camera and microphone you give them. Facebook also has a terrible ethical history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook

Well, we need "someone like Valve" to make Open VR a reality at-scale. Otherwise it's just going to become another ad-infested content pipeline.

I do believe one of the reasons VR has been slow to gain traction is because of the bulkiness/awkwardness of the headsets. This definitely takes care of the weight, but it still looks ridiculous. I don't foresee people sitting on the train wearing these.

The right headset is around the corner, but this isn't it.

unless i lived in a very low crime rate area like japan, i would never wear a vr headset on the train

Anecdotal but I was on a flight recently and the fellow seated behind me brought his Quest2 for the flight. He said it was much better for watching movies than the poor quality of the in-flight screens. Makes sense since you can also download movies via Netflix or Amazon Prime

Sure you're not gonna wear one on your commute.

But on a long-distance train or a long plane flight? I could totally see people reclining and wearing this to watch TV and movies.

(Honestly, the gigantic IMAX-sized cinema screen in VR is kind of the killer app nobody is talking about. Not to mention it's the highest quality 3D movie experience you can get, if you want to watch something like Avatar.)

Obviously nobody's going to be playing games on a VR headset on public transportation, at least not ones that require moving controllers in space.

I actually asked for experiences of people with VR headsets for movie watching. No one said they would recommend it. I was kind of surprised. Do you think they are good for that use case?

They're amazing. You really need to have the right software though.

I've got a Quest 2, and the app to use is Skybox, and I watch stuff over SMB on my local NAS. The key things are being able to adjust the size of the screen and the angle of the screen. I can literally lie on my back on bed and watch TV on the ceiling. And the visual quality tends to be somewhere between 720p and 1080p -- you can make the screen big enough to resolve all 1080p detail, but it's kind of too large at that point. I think I mostly watch around an "850p" level of detail.

I also watch it with my AirPods Pro paired up, and the app lets me manually adjust the audio sync by 100 ms to compensate for the Bluetooth delay.

Watching TV through various specific apps can be more hit or miss, as they won't allow you to adjust the angle of the screen for example, so you can watch comfortably while reclining, or the Bluetooth audio delay. I assume they'll all figure this stuff out eventually.

So the tech is absolutely all there, but the UX can be very app-dependent.

I've done it. It's a gimmick, like many things in VR. It feels neat once or twice to sit in a virtual movie theater, and then you realize that's stupid. If you are spending $1000 on a screen to watch movies, you are much better off with a big, high quality TV.

Well, it's definitely not a gimmick for me -- it's the main way I watch TV now, IF I'm watching it by myself.

It cost $300 not $1000 (at least when I bought it), and there's no big-screen TV that comes even close to the size of the screen in my headset. And there's certainly no room in my bedroom to put a big-screen TV anyways, which is where I'm watching something if somebody's watching something else in the living room.

I prefer my 50” 300$ 4k TV over the Quest for watching things. This is very much a too each his own thing, but I hated watching things in VR as I found it incredibly inconvenient, awkward, and it frankly didn’t look as good to me.

Anecdotally, it's great in VR. It's actually become a regular habit for me; there's nothing quite as cool as watching a 3D movie with a friend who's a country away on a giant screen. This wasn't the case when FOVs were worse, though.

I use it often. It’s great for a few scenarios:

- all the TVs in the house are taken

- you want privacy. This is more for dorm rooms

- you want to watch something with your family or friends who live far away. This is way better than zoom or facetime

- you want something that’s the size of a 500 in screen or larger

- you want to watch something in 3D. 3D movies never worked for me until VR and the Big Screen app

I agree. By the time you're watching something on a virtual big screen, it's pretty low resolution.

I take my NReal Airs on planes. I use it for movies etc as well as private computer usage. I would recommend.

I wonder why VR headsets have not been designed from modified headphones instead of ski goggles.

Those can be trendy and nice looking, and people are still wearing them outside, even the bulkier models.

Headphones do not handle off axis weight well. The headband would just fall off, unless they have so much clamp force they make your jaw hurt instead

Weight could be better balanced, I think. Batteries and computing could be at least partially located in the earcups.

> "- Does not come with controllers or trackers (compatible with existing lighthouses, bring your own)"

This feels like a dealbreaker for me, and I should be firmly in the target demo for this product (PC VR user, flight sim enjoyer) - putting up Lighthouses on my walls so I can do some basic VR gaming is IMO a pretty tall order.

There's a really good reason inside-out tracking has practically fully displaced stuff that requires you to install new stuff in a room.

I have a vive, and my lighthouses are on collapsible tripods that sit in corners of my living room when i'm playing. Takes ~5 min of time to set both up, point them in the right direction, and setup room boundaries in Steam. Works really well, if you prefer to do it that way! I think I would still prefer inside-out tracking, but I have very specific reasons for only using the Vive, so that's what I'm stuck with. I think it's a problem that can easily be overcome if you're interested in this headset, without having to drill holes into walls! It's definitely an extra expense though.

However, if their whole goal was "smallest lightest headset" then you can't really blame them for removing every single piece of tech from the headset they possibly could and outsourcing it to another device to maintain that claim. The right call? I dunno. But if this headset can be a drop-in replacement for my Vive one, I will buy the hell out of that. It's a strict upgrade for me with basically no extra expenditure of effort/money beyond the cost of the headset.

To each their own though!

> "However, if their whole goal was "smallest lightest headset" then you can't really blame them for removing every single piece of tech from the headset they possibly could and outsourcing it to another device to maintain that claim."

Sure you can - IMO (and of course reasonable minds can disagree) - you can surely blame a product when they've optimized to the point of going below-MVP.

I get the desire to be smaller and lighter than the rest, but IMO inside-out is table stakes and is part of the "minimum viable" requirement...

I've seen the portable lighthouse setups, but IMO that's even worse. I've done the lighthouse setup back when it was I had the Oculus CV1 - and those didn't even need to be positioned high on the walls, and IMO it was a huge pain the ass. I think I ended up using them a total of 5 times because of how much fiddling was required to get into VR.

PCVR is already a vanishingly small market, this particular quirk of the spec IMO puts the product below minimum viability.

This is a relatively small company, and this I think is their first foray into hardware. It makes sense they are targeting a niche market (PC VR users who already have a steamVR headset). Specifically, they are a company that makes Bigscreen VR, a desktop mirroring app. A lot of people bought Indexes, or Vives, and this is a possible sidegrade to those, especially if you are interested in the idea of "VR virtual desktops", which seems to be the entire point of this headset, with very high resolution and extremely low weight, and not even a 3.5mm jack for headphones.

Ditch your tripods and use shower curtain rods instead. Seriously, they are way better. https://james.darpinian.com/blog/mounting-valve-index-base-s...

Yeah I have lighthouses set up for my Vive and for gaming would only consider lighthouse-based tracking for any future headsets (I've tried inside-out for stuff like Beat Saber and it's night and day), but for casual movie watching or virtual desktop use it's definitely a tall order.

I think for the "casual" use cases it might be possible to get away with a single lighthouse (~$100) and no controllers (stick to keyboard/mouse, console controller, or HOTAS) but that's pushing it.

For me, wires are terrible for Beat Saber much more so than the loss in tracking. I did have the wireless HTC attachment, but that had its own issues, so I primarily use a Quest 2 now despite having a full lighthouse setup.

Inside out tracking is good for casual games, but you miss out on a lot of the experience in more in depth games. Lighthouses are also super easy to setup on tripods.

In what way? Most implementations of inside out do have controller tracking limitations due to body occlusion, but Quest Pro's controllers (which track themselves) suffer even less from this problem than Lighthouse does. Granted, it's expensive and a bit buggy, but it's a first generation implementation and it's not difficult to predict a revision that uses custom silicon instead of using a smartphone SoC per controller.

From my experience, only WMR had really terrible inside out tracking where it would make the value proposition of lighthouses obvious. Quest inside out tracking is good though.

The main advantage light houses offer is that it makes full body tracking possible, assuming people are willing to pay for 2-3 extra trackers AND more developers start supporting it. As of right now, I am only aware of 3-5 games and apps that support full body tracking.

This headset is going for the crowd already owning a kit, but wanting better visuals.

-Many Vive headsets are compatible with valve base stations, so there are many lighthouse kits around [0]

-This headsets supports both versions, 1.0 and 2.0

-Valve Knuckles are still considered the most advanced controllers on the market

0: https://www.vive.com/ca/support/vive-pro-hmd/category_howto/...

You can buy light house compatible controllers from either Valve or HTC

Lighthouses are a pain to install and configure just right. However, it’s also the most accurate tracking system to date and it makes full body tracking possible.

Cheap camera tripods or lighthouse holders make it much easier to deal with

So "lightest ever VR headset" is a lie. The LG R100 pips it at 113 grams. It's inferior in every other respect, but that wasn't the claim...

By that logic, a sunglass with 3D stickers is even lighter

Not really. They're qualitatively the same product: a head mounted binocular USB-C display with accelerometers/gyros. It's much easier to make such a thing than a full tracking VR system. If this is a VR headset, then so is the LG R100.

(Admittedly this product does include lighthouse sensors, slightly reducing the amount of third party equipment you need to implement a 6dof system.)

IMU-based and lighthouse-based 6DOF tracking are so far apart in fidelity that the LG R100 is unusable for anything beyond watching videos and I wouldn’t consider it a real player in the VR space.

should also mention: 90Hz refresh rate

<144Hz sounds suboptimal for a VR headset

Bigscreen is a VR app that’s been on the market for quite a few years. It focuses on VR movie watching in virtual theaters with other people. It works “ok” with current gen headsets. It feels like going to the movies wearing heavy ski goggles. The weight, comfort, resolution and optics of current VR headsets are not there yet. Looks like they sat down and designed the perfect VR headset that would showcase the experience they always wanted users to have in their app.

One cool often overlooked thing about BigScreen VR is the fact that 3D movies work perfectly. It's a great experience watching a 3D movie on a giant virtual screen.

I've rented a few 3D movies. The biggest limitation for me was the limited catalog and my dis-interest in action movies. It is such a great solo watching experience, I would spend more money on a more diverse catalog.

There's a player called HereSphere that works a whole lot better than any other VR video player on the market. Nothing I have tried comes even close to the level of smoothness, even over SMB on a crappy external drive.

https://heresphere.itch.io/heresphere-vr-video-player-quest-...

The demo is limited only by a nag screen if you want to check it out.

The big sell on bigscreen is you can watch the videos with friends (and their avatars) in the theater. It's a social experience first and a video player second.

I have a lot of respect for products taking bold decisions to excel in 1 axis, in this case weight.

Going for fixed IPD and producing 15 different size displays this commitment.

Compare this 127g to Valve index's 809g, anybody owning an headset knows the impact on immersion, especially mass away from the center of gravity (like the display)

"An Apple iPhone XR or newer is required for the 3D Face Scan. Bigscreen Beyond is manufactured based on this 3D Face Scan, and cannot be manufactured without it. If you do not own an iPhone, you can complete your 3D Face Scan by borrowing a friend's iPhone or using an iPhone at an Apple Store."

A bit of an insane requirement honestly. I guess they're assuming their target demographic would be wealthy enough to either have an iPhone, or be around people who would have an iPhone? Kinda rubs me the wrong way still, even though I'd be able to get it done if I so choose...

They are using the FaceID depth sensors.

And right now the only phone with them and that has a usable API is apparently the iPhone.

This was covered in a walkthrough with a VR YouTuber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvih_ljVc_w

Is it insane if it's for a custom mold? Personally I would rather borrow a friend's phone than go into a physical store for a scan or have them send me a plaster mold kit.

It rubs me the wrong way this continued idea that only the wealthy have an iPhone, or atleast it does when people just assume that's the motive.

That may have been the case around 5+ years ago when flagship Samsung phones were significantly cheaper than iPhones. Then Samsung (for example) moved away from plastic screens and chassis to glass and aluminum, the prices went up.

Here in Australia the flagship iPhone 14 pro is from $1,899 with the flagship Samsung $1,949. With the Samsung fold at a whopping $2,499.

A normal Samsung S23 and iPhone 14 both go for the same price.

Of course we're just talking flagships, with both brands offering lower priced phones around that half price.

When you look at the mechanical design of most VR headsets, a lot of weight, space and effort is spent making the interpupillary distance adjustable. They made a deliberate choice here to manufacture chassis with fixed IPD, and to mold the front. It moves the weight and mechanical complexity out of the headset and into the ordering and manufacturing process.

I'm an Android user, but I get this requirement, because it actually gives you a better product.

Fortunately, I can borrow an iPhone from work

I was about to post this. Stupid requirement. Bigscreen needs to take the time and money to develop an Android or PC webcam solution.

> Bigscreen needs to take the time and money to develop an Android or PC webcam solution.

I don't really know if it's possible to get the accuracy out of a simple webcam that the IR blaster/FaceID hardware can get. Sure you can do facial comparisons to unlock the phone, but that doesn't give you as detailed geometry as the Face ID hardware does.

With a webcam, performance would unavoidably vary a lot between customers too due to the dizzyingly wide selection of webcams in use, all with differing performance characteristics. They'd have to contend with everything from USB webcams from 2002 up through the latest 4k webcams, not to mention image processing quirks those often come with like face smoothing.

I assume they're making use of the depth sensors on the iPhone? Some Androids have those and some don't, so that's going to be a terrible requirements page, but it might make sense to add later if they survive; for PC webcams, I think almost none have a depth sensor, so that's probably not even worth doing.

Microsoft Hello compatible laptops are required to have some sort of IR depth sensor I think, though it's less precise and accurate than the iPhone one.

And apparently does not have a usable API for this face scanning use case.

This makes me want to try and prototype something I've been thinking about for a while.

Keep the lens and display assembly + tracking cameras on headset but power and computing is USB-C to an android device.

So same concept software wise as the Go but not strapping a phone to your face.

With pancake lens and all I think you'd get a very thin and light headset with the same computing power as a Quest 2 with a better profile and something people might actually be comfortable wearing for many hours.

Like the Nreal Air?

Not to mention upgradeability from a graphics perspective. If your phone is the processing unit , this would also mean software that's almost always up to date. I hate that I get hit with an update about half the time that I put the headset on.

This issue with going this route is that smart phones are about to lose a physical connection port. At least the Apple ones will be first, but more will follow.

Magic Leap has a "compute puck" like this. Apple's headset was also rumored to tether to iPhones. I'm not sure what the most current rumor is.

The current rumor with the Apple headset is that it will be standalone and Apple will sell it at cost at $3000. It will run on an M chip though so they can justify it. No controllers needed.

Supposedly, Ive’s last decision was to kill the puck or hub which is why Apple’s headset is shipping so late, but the new rumors dispute that

And put that where, in your pocket? You know how hot phones get when generating high-res, high-refresh-rate 3D graphics?

clip it to a belt

Exactly, like an AV pack

Which is the approach Apple is rumoured to be taking:

"A waist-mounted battery, connected via a magnetic, MagSafe-like power cable to the headset's headband"

https://www.macrumors.com/2023/01/03/report-reveals-wave-of-...

Hold it in your mouth

Problem you run into is that the screens need a pretty fair amount of power and phones just can't deliver it. USB-C can't deliver it either.

Phones may not be able to deliver it, but isn't usb c spec for power delivery over 200 W? You'd go blind if a head mounted display used that much power.

Doesn't USB-C drive the 5120 x 2560 Apple screens? I mean, there must be a capable variant of USB 3.whatever standard, and a compatible cable. Maybe some phones already feature it (iPhones should, shouldn't they?), and, if it's a worthy thing, more phone makers will feature it.

Nice video overview of this headset from "Sadly its Bradley", a youtuber who has been testing this product under NDA for a couple years. Bradley has a lot of insider knowledge and makes good videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvih_ljVc_w

Worth calling out that Bradley has insider info partially because he bribes engineers at VR companies to leak stuff like full CAD models of unreleased headsets.

Worth calling out that Bradley has denied that claim entirely.

> The source in question came to me with a prepared information package. I did not personally seek out this person or attempt to bribe or entice them into leaking trade secrets.

Full clarification post here:

https://twitter.com/SadlyItsBradley/status/16251978833088389...

This is perhaps the wrong question, but how is it that he was able to create such a long tweet?

Twitter has a subscription that you can buy which gives you extra perks like longer tweets.

Woah twitter 2.0 is really here guys.

I didn't know that was included. Thanks for explaining.

Looks like it was just posted today. I appreciate his candidness but disagree with how he’s trying to spin it. Basically:

- He negotiated a revenue split with the source so he could publish the information publicly.

- He claims he didn’t know better from an ethics standpoint.

- He says the amount was small but gives no indication what that really means.

Interesting. Lightweight, $1000, iPhone only (for face scanning), but tying into the SteamVR/Index ecosystem. No inside-out tracking.

They advertise shareability via magnetically removable foam, but also say they've reduced weight by making 15 different versions for IPDs between 58mm and 72mm, suggesting sharing will only work well among those with similar IPDs.

Not super compelling IMHO unless you own a modern iPhone and you're already heavily invested in a gaming PC and the Steam ecosystem (which, admittedly, many are!)

To clarify, the face scanning part can be done with a friend's iPhone and it's a one-time thing.

It still requires you to have a friend and have a friend with the specific iPhone.

Or be anywhere near an apple store. How else would you rather they took a custom face scan

You know that apple stores are not in every country?

"specific" being any iphone made in the last 4 years (iPhone XR)

a modern iPhone

It uses an iPhone XR or above. The XR was released five years ago.

This is on my radar to keep an eye on at least.

I use a Quest 2 mainly for playing the modded PC version of Beat Saber, and it's decent but has some annoying drawbacks — mainly, it's front-heavy due to onboard compute and battery, which I've offset with a counterweight on the back of the strap, which in turn increases total unit weight. Also, while its inside-out tracking is convenient it's also very fussy about environment lighting, with it easily forgetting its guardian boundaries with minor lighting changes, and it occasionally loses tracking with sudden head or arm movements. It's also a Meta product and firmly locked into Windows (no hope of using it under Linux).

The Index is the next best thing but the current revision of that is getting a bit long on the tooth, so until Valve gives the Index a spec bump, things like this seem like the best bet for a headset upgrade.

The problem with bumping the specs of the index is that Valve knows how few people with VR headsets have a GPU that can push higher resolutions. GPU improvements have NOT trickled down, and going from the original Vive to the Index was already about a $420 new GPU, and that was before the insanity of GPU pricing the last few years.

Valve knows how many Steam VR users have like 4080's and 4090's, or AMD's flagship, and the numbers aren't good.

That's true. Honestly, I don't really need better screen tech in a new headset, just reduced bulk and weight and ideally better tracking. An Index v2 which targets the specs of the original in a much more compact and lightweight device would be plenty attractive too. It's just hard to justify its current price with how long it's been out.

You actually can use it under Linux with ALVR, from what I understand.

I also have a quest 2 and I recently bought the official upgraded strap and the official fit kit to go along with the custom lenses so I can see without my glasses in there and I just gotta say that the quest 2 is worlds more comfortable now. Before I would fidget around with it for tens of minutes before it would be even reasonably correctly aligned with my eyes with my complicated prescription on my lenses. But now I just put the quest 2 on my face and it's comfortable and I could see in it.

I also did previously own an index and also had custom lenses for that and I think the quest 2 that I own now is way better especially over USB but wireless is pretty good too.

I don't wear glasses so I can't comment on that, but I did upgrade from the stock strap to what's known as a "frankenquest" setup, where a Vive Deluxe Audio strap is connected to the quest via 3D printed adapters, with the counterweight velcro'd onto the back strap.

As far as comfort goes it's not bad and the headphones on the Vive's strap are a solid upgrade from the Quest 2's directional speakers, but I'd still prefer for any headset I upgrade to in the future to be more lightweight.

It looks amazing - an uncanny leap into the next gen computer displays. Can't wait till the leap after! This headset could be the beginning of normal computer users (like Hacker News readers) starting to use XR displays. Maybe... we are 1 headset away but we are close!

I don't understand the logic of the custom face fitting step.

Sure, it's nerdcool and might get you a slightly better fit to your face, but it makes it much harder for people to try their friend's headset and say "whoa! I need one too!"

Optimizing for virality as a consumer product designer is pretty much always the right business decision.

They very likely took that into account.

This is a design tradeoff.

The few times I tried VR headsets I have to say that I was annoyed by the adjustments and the cheap/weak materials that was used, also I noticed some drift after a very short time (likely due to wear for a demo headset, but still)

Not sure if custom made is necessary, but like with any eye wear, the correct size and alignment should probably be built into the device itself, it is more practical and durable.

I believe they've said that this was a choice to reduce the size and the weight, and it lets them bring the device closer to the users face. It also means that it can stay comfortably with just the one strap.

It's not just a custom face fitting; they also take your lens prescription and craft a unit that is specifically for you.

I haven't been anywhere near one of these units, yet, but I found this explanation highly compelling: https://youtu.be/mieWJ9vupqw?t=228

These look light enough and have high enough resolution per-eye to possibly use them as a PC monitor.

I feel like that would be my killer app to get me into the space. But I wonder if it’s worse for your eyes than staring at a monitor all day, or if the optics make it no different because you’re still focusing at a distance.

Good point! With a monitor you can easily glance away and focus on objects in the distance to exercise your eye muscles, something my eye doctor always has recommended. Probably not so easily done with these, which means it won't happen as often.

That said, I'd love to have something like this that's compact and provides the equivalent of a big, 4K or better, monitor. It's also too big of a gamble for me to plonk down $1K to find out, and it looks like it won't support an M1 MacBook Pro due to the video card requirements anyway, so I'll have to wait.

That's the entire business of the company behind this headset, which is why this headset makes the compromises it does.

I'm glad people are using "resolution" terms again, it was super cringe when enthusiasts were justifying low quality visuals by saying the terms were different.

old headset criticism: "hey the resolution is pretty bad" its not resolution bro, headsets use this other term that doesn't address your actual observation at all.

fun fact, nobody cares!

so now we have high quality visuals, the same quirky new terms that more closely match some technological aspect that nobody cares about, and equivalent resolution terms that manage expectations pretty perfectly!

Raw panel resolution remains a pretty useless number on it's own since it doesn't take into account field of vision which can radically effect perceived sharpness, nor the quality of the optics. 2.5K per eye is impressive but not new, it's the quality of the optics and form factor that are the differentiators here.

>"hey the resolution is pretty bad" its not resolution bro, headsets use this other term that doesn't address your actual observation at all.

That's backwards. PPD (pixels per degree) and MTF (modulation transform function) are much better measurements to use to compare the optics between different headsets because they actually measure the resolution and sharpness that your eyes actually see instead of just the resolution of one part of the optics stack.

>fun fact, nobody cares!

This is true. Resolution numbers are purely for marketing purely because people think bigger number = better product.

>and equivalent resolution terms

2560x2560 tells you nothing about if the actual image is a blurry mess or if there is screen door effect. It doesn't tell you if that resolution is being spread over a small portion of your view to be super high resolution or if it's being stretched over your entire field of view for an okay resolution.

- Wired

- 90 FOV

No thanks! Compelling though, if your use-case is viewing 2D content on virtual screens -- the metaverse app Bigscreen makes, a virtual environment for sharing 2D content.

Wow, I'm usually patient through slow "reveal" videos but I was surprised to feel disgust at how slow the pacing of that video is within 5 seconds. The very first non-black half second where it just showed the outline subconsciously triggered something that made me realize that this video is going to have terrible pacing.

odd, i felt the same way at that specific moment! i did end up enjoying the rest of the video though.

Being Mico OLED, this display has better blacks and a large dynamic range than Quest 2, Index, etc which are LED based.

Is this a repackaged "Megane X"? https://en.shiftall.net/products/meganex

If so, that's great! Previously it looked like Shiftall had a great product, but no budget to bring it to a large market.

Doesn't look like it, the Megane X has inside-out tracking which the Beyond doesn't.

It weighs twice as much.

The face-scanned insert sounds nice. Can you just sell me one of those for my $300* Quest 2?

*when I purchased mine

Very cool, don't care for the iPhone requirement for the custom fitting but I'm not sure how they'd get get around that since most people don't have an accurate 3D scanner just sitting around.

So excited for the future VR products like this!

Btw, does it consider the myopia users?

Most VR headsets allow you to wear glasses, this one no idea. I've had a couple of VR headsets and am -6.5 each eye, no issue with glasses myself. There are some places that do custom lenses for the popular headset models too but I've never tried them.

If you're excited for VR products I recommend checking out the existing competition. My old Valve Index (sold to help pay for a boat), has been available for a few years now and is comparable. Different refresh, resolution etc. and importantly a higher FOV. Were I in the market I'd probably consider another Index over this.

> Most VR headsets allow you to wear glasses

"Allow". Trust me, these things are not at all designed to be worn over glasses. It is uncomfortable as fuck and getting everything aligned properly so you can actually see is a pain too.

Buying prescription inserts is basically a requirement if you can't manage without your glasses.

> "Allow". Trust me, these things are not at all designed to be worn over glasses. It is uncomfortable as fuck and getting everything aligned properly so you can actually see is a pain too.

I don't need to trust you, I've owned three headsets so far, an Oculus Rift DK2, a HTC Vive and a Valve Index. I have a fairly large head (to the extent that many glasses don't fit me) and yet have never had an issue with glasses in any of the headsets. I also have -6.5 in each eye so can't use the headsets without vision correction.

It's not as convenient as not wearing glasses for sure, I had to guide the glasses into place in the headset, but I've played hundreds of hours of games in each headset, including many multi-hour stints in Fallout 4 VR which requires a lot of movement and Elite: Dangerous, and wearing glasses just wasn't an issue.

> Buying prescription inserts is basically a requirement if you can't manage without your glasses.

My experience would suggest it's not a requirement at all.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree because my experience with both a Rift CV1 and a Quest 2 has been drastically different.

I saw that the company that makes this headset offers prescription lenses for the headset, and they said they ask you for your prescription when buying, so presumably they will ship those lenses as part of the purchase price or for a small additional fee.

As far as FOV, it sounds like based on one video review that the company is giving a low estimate for FOV so as to avoid over promising, and they suggest that users may find the FOV is higher.

Prescription lenses works as long as no-one else wants to use it. I mostly used my headsets myself, but it was fun showing VR to other people.

> As far as FOV, it sounds like based on one video review that the company is giving a low estimate for FOV so as to avoid over promising, and they suggest that users may find the FOV is higher.

I'm not sure I'd trust that, I'd like to hear some other reviews first. The 90Hz thing is still an issue for me though, it turns out that higher refresh is important for immersion. I don't play "flat" games at higher than 60Hz, but 90 to 120 (HTC Vive to Valve Index) was a good change.

Check out the Vive XR Elite - just dial up your prescription inside the headset and it adjusts to your eyesight!

It has magnet attached prescription lenses. Note that all the popular headsets can have prescription lenses from places like https://vroptician.com/.

90° FOV is a no go for me. I already have a bit of imertion break on the index, these would just feel like crap.

Wake me up when we have at least 180 without early adopter prices.

Only 90hz though which is less than the valve index, but it has a higher resolution

Maybe it's a limitation of Displayport?

Bigscreen VR is the most disappointing VR app I've ever used. Please stop wasting time making hardware and make your app better.

I see the potential and I experience the need regularly: I want to watch movies with friends remotely in a cool VR environment that feels like we're watching together in a theater.

In practice my options are to:

- pay to watch "a vast movie selection" of 140 films, the majority of which are anime[1]

- run the buggy (and so aptly named) Bigscreen Beta PC client[2] which will probably crash during weird unlikely edge cases like your screensaver turning on and critically depends on your internet upload speed for a good movie watching experience for everyone. Get ready for frequent "wait is it showing a black screen for you guys?" troubleshooting. It only runs on beefy PCs right now but don't worry: a macOS version is being worked on circa 2019[3].

- send the video file to everyone and get them to download it to a folder of their headset (which involves running Android File Transfer; nontechnical friends will struggle) then start a shared room. Arguably the least painful option with the best overall quality.

When it works though it's so good. Watching a film in Bigscreen feels like watching a film in an actual theater. Their drawing and popcorn throwing features are hilarious and fun. Their spacial audio is a blast. Their selection of virtual theaters is plentiful.

Here's the experience I want to watch a film with friends in Bigscreen:

- log into my Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ account through Bigscreen

- create a new room

- pick a movie

- share an invite code

I understand for that to work Bigscreen would need to make complicated partnerships happen, so in the meanwhile I'd like to be able to:

- drag and drop a video file into bigscreen.com/newroom

- see an invite code I can join from my headset and share with other people

Please someone create this experience. You can use WebXR[4] to do the whole thing with the web stack you already know and you could probably just download a ready-made 3D model of a movie theater[5].

1. https://www.bigscreenvr.com/movies/catalog

2. https://store.steampowered.com/app/457550/Bigscreen_Beta/

3. https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/c7kx2n/bigscre...

4. https://immersiveweb.dev/

5. https://www.turbosquid.com/Search/3D-Models/free/theater

> the majority of which are anime[1]

I don’t see any anime on that page. Would actually be a plus for me.

Why would you be happier that there's less content, even if it's not for you?

I wasn’t saying anything about less content. What I meant is having a substantial anime selection would be a plus.

Would be cool if the headset was just an AirPlay receiver that could map the video stream into VR space. Although I suppose that wouldn't work for Netflix anymore since they killed AirPlay support.

Chromecast receiver maybe? Most streaming services support chrome cast. Not sure about implementation and licensing.

..or just watch movies together in VRChat like everyone else. Bet it's a less janky experience than what you describe.

Seems like it would a great addition to Plex. I can already share libraries with friends/families, would be awesome to have a VR client and an option to add someone.

It sounds like you're a Quest user. You should be aware that Bigscreen was released on PC in April of 2016 as one of the original VR titles back when the Vive and Rift were brand new, years before Quest was even possible. The "stream your PC screen in to a virtual world" part is the core feature, everything else is a later addition.

That's also why your complaints about the PC side of things don't really make sense to me, as someone who's been using Bigscreen since the literal beginning.

> run the buggy (and so aptly named) Bigscreen Beta PC client[2] which will probably crash during weird unlikely edge cases like your screensaver turning on

A lot of games will do weird things if a screen saver turns on. That's why there are standard APIs to disable the screen saver while they're running, which are also used by media players. Bigscreen, like most games, does this, so if you're even getting the screen saver kicking on something has gone wrong specific to your setup.

> and critically depends on your internet upload speed for a good movie watching experience for everyone.

Yeah, that's the nature of hosting a peer-to-peer stream. The host needs to have the bandwidth. Are you expecting Bigscreen's developers to provide high bandwidth video relaying to their users for free?

> Get ready for frequent "wait is it showing a black screen for you guys?" troubleshooting.

I've watched many movies with friends in Bigscreen and never had this. Plenty of issues getting audio hooked up right thanks to the need to use an awkward virtual soundcard on Windows, especially with surround sources, but video always worked fine.

> It only runs on beefy PCs right now

If by "beefy" you mean literally the original 2016 recommended specs for PC VR, a 4th-gen Intel quad core and a GeForce 970, then sure? A PC that was maybe $1500 including the monitor when it was built in late 2014. Then yeah, sure, "beefy".

It's never going to run on any Intel integrated graphics systems that exist at the time of this post, but there are four generations of dedicated GPUs and eight generations of Intel CPUs that have come out since the first machine I hosted a Bigscreen room on, which is still my secondary gaming PC to this day.

In the end it's still a VR game, if your computer struggles with Minecraft it's never going to run VR anything well, but basically anything that honestly deserved the title "gaming computer" in the better part of the last decade should be able to do it.

> but don't worry: a macOS version is being worked on circa 2019[3].

Apple has basically neglected the idea of gaming on macOS. They were already far behind on OpenGL and then abandoned it entirely for Metal, which is great for portability between Mac and iOS but for titles that will never target phones or tablets it makes the Mac a much more annoying niche to develop for.

Both Valve and Oculus had at least discussed if not announced plans for Mac support for their VR systems initially, but even then basically only the Mac Pro could actually meet the minimum requirements.

---

You understand why the direct streaming approach isn't going to work out, but that's also why they'll never do what you ask for with regards to being able to upload a video. At that point they'd again be providing bandwidth and also have to deal with piracy issues. P2P streams are not their problem in any way.

You use a scr33n sav3r? What happens when you use your Browser to do your ideal steps. Does Browser DRM block it from working? Have you tried Firefox?

So they compromised FOV for a lighter headset. Not a great choice IMO. From using countless headsets, I can say the number one thing that distracts from presence is low FOV; far more so than bulkiness or wires. And presence is the goal above all else.

Presence is not the only thing that matters for VR, once you get past short demos. Comfort is actually huge and this is clearly going to be the most comfortable headset available by a long way (once the hard strap is available).

The spec sheet FOV may not be the absolute largest available, but it doesn't seem that compromised. FOV is tricky to measure and just looking at numbers to compare two headsets may not give the whole picture (pun intended). The custom fit and prescription optics allowing the lenses to be at the optimal position for your eyes without needing glasses may make the FOV better in practice than other headsets with a larger theoretical peak FOV which isn't achieved due to imperfect fit.

Norm from Tested[1] and Brad Lynch[2] are two of the most knowledgeable and experienced VR reviewers out there and they've both used it and did not report that FOV was noticeably worse than Quest. The clarity of the optics, the resolution, and the contrast ratio will be much better and could easily make up for a couple of degrees of FOV.

I'm surprised I haven't seen people talking about using this as a monitor replacement for laptops or desktops. People talked about it for Quest Pro but this has significantly more pixels per degree and is much more portable (for 3DOF use at least) and comfortable, which could address the biggest issues with Quest Pro for that use case. I would definitely buy this over Quest Pro if I was interested in monitor replacement.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3k0T1mvahY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvih_ljVc_w

For monitor replacements there are already dedicated devices. Lenovo ThinkReality glasses for example: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/thinkrealitya3

I’m confused - you seem to have linked to a set of AR glasses? Ive been waiting eagerly for professional VR so hoping that you posted the wrong link and Lenovo already has it!

Professional VR/AR has been available. Varjo is the standard. Rumor is that Apple has been using them to prototype their software before their own hardware availability.

47 degree diagonal square FOV and 1080p resolution make this an entirely different, and frankly uninteresting, kind of device.

FWIW, ThrillSeekerVR who helped who provided some unpaid feedback on the development of this headset, also mentions in his video that he personally measured the FOV as higher than the specs list and quotes the CEO of Bigscreen as saying that he plans to "underpromise and overdeliver" on that front: https://youtu.be/mieWJ9vupqw?t=183

Screenshot from above video: https://imgur.com/0JVeyRC

Tethered, base station tracked, and no top strap so all the weight is on your face... Maybe it pays off but I'm not so sure.

with more and more tech being put next to the brain i wonder if we'll see an increase of brain cancer cases this decade..

Eye tracking is must for fauviated rendering

Foveated? It seems to be the orthography, nifty improvement yes.

Oh yes, speech to text can be a real pain in the VR

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