Question Looking for VR hardware recommendations: lower cost alternatives to Valve Index

Hello

I’m looking to develop my first VR game as an enthusiast / hobby developer and it looks like the Valve Index is very likely an excellent choice for headset and controllers, but I wonder if there may be lower cost hardware that could give me what I need, including perhaps buying used.

I have a powerful development PC (Nvidia 3080 GPU) and don’t need to worry about whether other people can play my game on their hardware. This is basically going be an installation. Accurate tracking is important to me and I don’t mind if the headset is wired.

Any recommendations or observations would be seriously appreciated. Thanks

 

Oculus Quest 2 if you don't mind being forced to use a Facebook account. It is $300.

 

100% agree with that recommendation. Quest 2 is an absolutely stunning piece of hardware which made all my other (much more expensive) headsets seem crude and clunky by comparison.

I cannot confirm or deny that it is possible, with a bit of cleverness and persistence, to create a fake Facebook account solely for use with a Quest. In doing so you are probably violating TOS but not breaking any laws (but IANAL).

 

I agree with your recommendation on the Quest 2. It's amazingly well done from and a software and hardware point of view.

It's important to remember that creating a fake account can get your facebook account locked which limits your ability to use the Quest. Reddit is full of posts of people getting locked out for this behavior.

 

Thank you for responding @neginfinity, @JoeStrout & @kenlem – there’s definitely a lot of love for the Quest 2

How do you find it integrates with the unity editor? Can you just press play and view the scene on the Quest 2 the same way you’d do it with a monitor and gamepad? What’s the latency like for the headset and controllers when using the Quest 2 this way?

Is it possible to use just the controllers without the headset when doing concentrated work on the control scheme?

And how do you find the experience when using it to play games on the PC rather than as a stand-alone headset? (This is how I would be using it the vast majority of the time)

 

Hi. I'm using the quest 1 with Virtual Desktop app. I'm able to run my unity editor in VR without cable using steam VR and the desktop streamer app that comes with Virtual Desktop. Everything is working well

 

For all intents and purposes, Quest 2 with Link works just like any other tethered headset. Latency should be imperceptible.

 

You press "play" and the scene shows up in your HMD along with default controllers.

Basically, if you're using a cable, and use VR template project, it should be plug and play. If you want wireless connect through virtual desktop, that one is trickier.

You can raise the headset and look at the monitor at any moment, but headset is the one tracking the controller positions, so you can't stuff it in a box and still use controllers.

In majority of cases the lag is imperceptible.

 

Debugging is fine with the Quest 2. It basically works like you have a Rift installed. I will tell you that if you are making a "dark" game like I am, blacks are not represented very well with the Quest 2. A lot of that was apparently because of the software compression used to make Oculus Link work, so if you are developing a PCVR game and testing support on a Quest 2, tweak with the Oculus Link settings in the debug tool. Once I did that, the visuals were at least on par with the Rift S which I also own. There are several posts you can google about that.