The Best VR Headsets To Get Lost In Your Adventures
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The Best VR Headsets To Get Lost In Your Adventures appeared on www.forbes.com by Jon Martindale.
The best virtual reality headsets have come a long way in the last half decade. Resolution has gone up, and barriers to entry have gone down. Modern headsets have improved tracking, more detailed motion controllers and lower price tags for those looking to explore VR for the first time.
The Meta Quest 2 is one of the most freeing and accessible VR headsets ever made.
Accessibility has improved massively, too, with the likes of the Meta Quest 2 (formerly Oculus Quest 2) bringing standalone processing and inside-out-tracking with no clunky home additions. This makes it super easy to get up and moving in VR, even if you don’t have a gaming PC, or any kind of VR experience. That’s why it’s our pick for the best VR headset for most people.
For the intrepid VR explorers, there are excellent affordable VR headsets with high quality visuals and no other hardware demands too, or you can pick up a super detailed headset which needs the latest and most powerful gaming graphics hardware for a cutting edge experience, all across a range of budgets. Here are the best VR headsets money can buy, no matter how much of it you have to spend.
Best VR Headset Overall
The Easiest VR Headset To Get Up And Running
Best Premium VR Headset
One For The Hardcore Gamers
An Honorable Mention For An Ultra-Wide VR Headset
Best Windows Mixed reality Headset
One Of The Highest Resolution VR Headsets
Best VR Headset for iPhone And Android
An Affordable Option For First Timers
Best PlayStation VR Headset
The Best Console VR Experience… For Now
Best VR Headset For PC
HTC Vive Pro 2
Where Is Oculus?
It feels odd to have a list of the best VR headsets without the Oculus brand represented on it somewhere, but there’s a very good reason for that: Oculus doesn’t exist anymore. That’s not to say that the company is gone, or its headsets aren’t around, but the company that produces them is now known as Meta, and the branding on the headsets has changed in turn.
The Oculus headsets are now Meta headsets, possibly because of a move away from the toxic brand of the company’s original founder, or because Meta (formerly Facebook) is looking to unify its branding as it moves towards a future where everything important takes place in VR. Long story short: The Oculus Quest 2 is now the Meta Quest 2. Same great headset, new name.
Which Is The Highest Quality VR Headset?
This ultimately depends on what you want from a VR headset, as high-quality to some means the highest resolution, while others want a comfortable fit and ease of use. The most extreme resolution and refresh rate VR headset at the time of writing, is the Pimax 12K, with its dual 6K displays. It’s not officially out yet, but you can pre-order it if you want to, otherwise the Pimax 8K isn’t far behind.
As for the more mainstream brands, the HTC Vive Pro 2 offers the highest resolution at a high refresh rate, and it has a wireless option, giving it a leg up over other high-end competition like the Valve Index and HP Reverb G2.
Any of these headsets will have almost zero screen-door-effect, and will make games look more immersive and realistic than anything else out there. You do need a powerful PC to run them, though.
What Should You Look For In A VR Headset?
There are a number of important features and specifications you should consider when it comes to buying a VR headset. Here are the top ones to look out for.
Resolution
The resolution, usually listed per-eye, has the greatest effect on image quality in a VR headset. The higher the resolution, the crisper the visuals, and the less chance you’ll be able to see that grid of lines between the individual pixels—the so-called screen-door-effect. Higher resolutions can also mean a wider field of view, both horizontally and vertically, though that’s not always the case.
Higher resolutions do mean you need a more powerful PC to run them, or that you’ll have to deal with reduced frame rates and detail levels if using a headset that has its own processing, like the Oculus Quest 2.
Refresh rate
The refresh rate is how many times a VR headset display refreshes every second, and it not only makes VR look and feel smoother—with better animations and transitions between scenes—but it also makes VR more comfortable. Higher refresh rates help ward off motion sickness, so having a high one is a must. How high, though, is up to you.
The bare minimum is considered to be 90Hz, while some headsets offer 120Hz, or even up to 200Hz in some cases. The 120Hz headsets do look better, especially in faster-paced games, but they aren’t strictly necessary for a great experience. Higher refresh rates can also place more of a demand on your PC, so ensure it’s up to the task.
Tracking
Tracking with VR headsets comes in three forms:
- External trackers that follow sensors on the headset and controllers to track yours and their position in the real and virtual worlds. This six degrees freedom of movement tends to be the most accurate, with less chance of controller and headset occlusion, but it does mean more setup and space is required, and they’re an additional expense.
- Inside-out tracking that uses cameras on the headset itself to keep track of it and the controllers. This is super easy to set up with no external trackers required, but it can run the risk of losing sight of controllers if you ever pass them behind your back or place them too low or too high.
- Onboard tracking from smartphone headsets. These don’t know your physical position, only your tilt and facing, so you can’t move in and out or up and down, which can be disorientating, but in static games it’s not too much of a problem. This three degrees freedom of movement is the most limited of VR experiences.
Controllers
Motion controllers make a huge difference to your feeling of presence in VR, and make interacting with the virtual world very intuitive. They are an additional expense, though, and in the case of some, quite considerably so.
Most VR headsets come with some form of controller, but two controllers is better than one, and motion tracking on them makes a big difference. The best controllers in the VR space at the time of writing are Valve’s Index ‘Knuckle’ controllers, as they offer the most realistic interactions and excellent tracking.
Some headsets offer hand tracking using cameras, and this can be great for some experiences, but you are limited to tracking your hands where the cameras can see them, which isn’t always an expansive field of view.
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This article originally appeared on www.forbes.com by Jon Martindale – sharing via newswires in the public domain, repeatedly. News articles have become eerily similar to manufacturer descriptions.
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