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  • bubblyboo - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Well the specs are much better than the new Rift, but the price is also $200 higher.
  • bubblyboo - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Although since it's HP, the street price will probably drop in half in a few months.
  • mckirkus - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Brutal, released right after Oculus' announcement. This has 9.3 million pixels vs. the Rift S which has 3.7 million. Granted it costs $200 more, but Oculus' rebranded Lenovo headset (with some upgrades) means serious VR nerds will quickly abandon the Facebook software ecosystem. Time will tell if that's a good plan for FB/Oculus.
  • Applejackson - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Facebook's target audience isn't "VR nerds". The company that wants 6 billion people on Facebook wants at least half of them to buy into VR. The VR nerds will always be looking toward the next tech that's out of financial reach for most consumers.
  • Beaver M. - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Making nerds happy is the only way to make a mainstream technology out of niche technology.
  • PeachNCream - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    That's not entirely true, but it is a safe bet most of the time. Nerds are poor to awful when it comes to personal finance, after all.
  • Beaver M. - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Its not about their finance, its about mouth propaganda. They will tell everyone how great this is and others will believe them, because well... they are nerds.
  • PeachNCream - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    It is about personal finances. Nerds (tech enthusiasts is probably a better term to use here given that some people might take being called a nerd as insulting) are the sorts that will place a priority on buying a new gadget even if it prevents them from reaching basic financial goals like building emergency savings, paying down existing debt, or putting a sufficient amount into a variety of investment vehicles for retirement. The propaganda only comes after a purchase decision is made and said person feels compelled to praise the gadget, partly to shield their own psychological state from buyer's remorse and partly to seek the approval of or impress others with the things they own. In short, the show and tell comes after the personal finance error.
  • Beaver M. - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    Yeah sure, works exactly like that with their PC components too, huh?
  • SleepyFE - Monday, April 1, 2019 - link

    Yes
  • willis936 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Always charming to see the comment analyses: they never fail to stay out of touch with reality.
  • wumpus - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    Never mind the $200 extra cost, what I want to know is whether 4k@90Hz can be done by anything less than a RTX2080ti (or even one of them).

    There's a big difference between $600 and "$600 plus that $1300 GPU you happen to have lying around".
  • FSWKU - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    "The consumer version will cost $599, the price of the professional model will be disclosed at a later date."

    The pro model will be $649, according to HP's own press release: https://press.ext.hp.com/us/en/press-releases/2019...
  • Valantar - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    2k by 2k per eye. Inside-out 6DoF. Sleek design, not too large. Bundled controllers. $599.*Mic drop*

    How did HP of all companies become the leader in the VR space all of a sudden? Honestly, my only nit picks with this is built in headphones (they better be removable!), no mention of the field of view (which likely means ~100° rather than the far superior wide FOV solutions that are trickling out) and lack of eye tracking for foveated rendering. But with that, it'd cost at least $1000. For the price, this is excellent.
  • Jaxad0127 - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Article states 114-degree FOV.
  • Valantar - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Apparently I missed that! That's definitely on the "okay" side of mainstream headsets, even if 150 or more would be better.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Don't forget 90Hz refresh rate. The new Oculus Rift S only has 80Hz. Only thing I'm wary of is the LCD screen instead of OLED. I'll have to look into the Oculus Go and how that was received (I don't want a phone in my face, so I didn't bother researching it before, I want a monitor in my face :D).
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    LCD actually might be better for VR headsets.There's the subpixel advantage of RGB vs Pentile, and there's the increased overall pixel density. As you can tell from the specs, it's pretty significant. TH has a hands-on preview that talks about this a bit.
  • Valantar - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Yeah, PenTile would have a very visible detrimental effect on screen door effect and visible sharpness. While the contrast of OLED would be great to have, I'd rather have better sharpness.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    It's definitely a trade off, but what I've read so far indicates the Reverb eliminates the screen door effect entirely. That being the case, I'd say they made the right decision. The new lenses play a big role in clarity too, and they seem to have found the right combination.
  • nandnandnand - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    The target for headsets should be 220° horizontal, 150° vertical. 200° horiz, 135° vert. at minimum. Add foveated rendering to reduce rendering burden.
  • andyveryhandy - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Human horizontal FOV is basically 114 degrees. Vertical is higher, around 180 degrees I think, not sure. I can’t think of a single instance in which we would want VR FOV to be greater vertically than horizontally. That’s not how human vision works.

    A 200 degree horizontal field of view is more than 180! You’d be seeing things that are *behind* you.

    I think you might be confusing 360 video with viewing that content, but still don’t understand the argument behind lowering vertical FOV.
  • vertigo7272 - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Human vision actually is slightly more than 180 degree horizontally. You seem to forget we have 2 eyes. Most people can detect movement to about 210 degree. More over, we can actually move our eye balls, which gives us even greater Fov, nearly 270 degree. just try it, spread you arms and literally see what happens.
  • Valantar - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    You've got that entirely turned around. Human horizontal FOV is around 200-220°. Remember, 114° is barely wider than 90°. Are you claiming you can only see in a cone right in front of you? That's not how human vision works. And yes, your peripheral vision can indeed pick up things slightly "behind" you, even if all you're likely to register in that range of vision is movement.

    The focal area of human vision is far smaller than this, but peripheral vision is crucial to our perception of space (and thus likely also avoiding VR nausea!), and indeed for our perception of our surroundings more generally too. This is also why we need eye-tracking foveated rendering, as our eyes dart around within this wide field quite a lot. The outer 20-40 degrees could likely be rendered at 1/8th the resolution (and probably reduced texture complexity and color depth too) of the focal area, but without eye tracking that would be horrible.
  • Applejackson - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    Lol. Those numbers don't make any sense.
  • gighgihg - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I like when you guys say "add foveating rendering"as if any of the extant eye tracking solutions even have it working well or any games support it.
  • oddity1234 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Foveated rendering does not require any game support. The eye tracking hardware in the headset communicates directly with the GPU, telling it which parts of the image need to be rendered at full resolution. At no point does the application/game need to know what's going on. In fact, communicating with the application layer would probably be far too slow anyway; foveated rendering is even more time-sensitive than standard VR.
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    As Jaxad said, 114 degrees, actually. Plus some fancy-pants asymmetrical lenses. The headphones are removable, and it looks like they have weight/comfort/breathability under control. Eye tracking would have definitely raised price and isn't mission critical. Seems like they pretty much nailed it at this price point... I echo your sentiment about HP taking the lead. I did not see that coming.

    Unfortunately the sweet spot price for me is a bit lower, but they're going after the premium VR crowd. Perhaps they will release a cost-reduced version at some point, or else I'll be picking up an Odyssey / similar on sale around the time MW5 Mercs hits.
  • Valantar - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I agree that the price is still high (price has kept me out of VR until now, and even if this is better in terms of price/features it's still quite a bit of money - too much for me to do more than consider saving up for it), but compared to the Vive Pro? Better features for noticeably less. Rift? Far better features for only slightly more money. I'd say this is where "premium" headsets should be in price (for them to sell decently), and this finally comes close to the featureset to match the price.

    In a few years I hope we have mainstream headsets around this feature level for $300 or so (with the $600 ones having eye tracking, foveated rendering and wide FOV), but for now, this is a big step in the right direction.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Yeah. As I said, they nailed it at THIS price point. So while I have huge respect for the Reverb, and I think it mops the floor with the competition, all of these models are more money than I want to spend for a part-time display. Samsung has the first gen Odyssey on sale direct for $250 which is more my speed. But by the time MW5 Mercs hits, I'm hoping a better option will be in the $300 range.
  • wrkingclass_hero - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    LCD or AMOLED?
  • Alexvrb - Wednesday, March 20, 2019 - link

    LCD but if you read up on it, it's actually an advantage for them in this case. See my comment above.
  • eastcoast_pete - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    As least by specs, definitely a step forward. Question @Anton: Is this compatible with eye glasses, or can (affordable!) lenses be had, and if yes, up to what strength? Several existing VR headsets are either incompatible (= useless) or very uncomfortable if you need to wear "corrective lenses" (from my driver's license). In many parts of the world, that applies to almost half the potential customer base.
  • mebalzer - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I do not have a problem with price. Every VR system I purchased has started out at or above $600, including the original HP WMR. I personally think this is a home run for HP who also creates a VR backpack for the enterprise/professional market. As far as continuing to use the MS inside/out tracking, I personally have not had any issues with it and use it for a few games. In fact as we are seeing with both WMR and the Oculus Quest, large spaces are quite possible if you are willing to add high contrast random lines to your walls & floor. Something I discovered as soon as attached one to my VR-NUC belt system and walk around outside realizing grass, shrubs and bushes did a great job of creating patterns, whereas a parking lot with its black asphalt either lost tracking immediately or soon after. It is still my goal to open up a VR center in a large space for Architects, Engineers, Urban planners and designers to review with their clients in a 1:1 scale space.

    Of course wearing a PC on your back is less than ideal, and due to the requirement of sending the camera feeds back to the PC has hampered wireless solution like those for the HTC Vive & Vive Pro. It would be interesting if the Oculus inside/out tracking does its positional tracking within the headset and providing only sparse point cloud and even positional tracking data only, reducing the bandwidth needed to be handled by the USB port. This may account for its $400 price tag even though it uses LCD panel (s?) like that used in the Oculus Go that sells for $200.

    Also, as others have posted, LCD is not that bad and other than not being able to reach same levels of black, they seem to have less mura and pixel noise. Plus, I can't say either the Vive or the Rift have very deep blacks. As a developer you create content that minimizes dark scenes anyway.
  • Dug - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Sense a lot of games even with high end video cards won't be able to output that resolution @ 90hz, what will be the best compromise? Can you lower resolution of game and let display upscale? Or do you try to keep native resolution and reduce all the fancy graphics?
  • Valantar - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Both are viable options, both with unique drawbacks and advantages. Most VR games seem to go for more stylized art styles and less photorealism, as this scales better across various levels of detail, allowing you to maintain resolution. Jaggies in VR are extremely highly visible (as the actual amount of pixels in your main field of vision is low), so AA and good upscaling is a requirement for lowering resolution - but it can be done well.

    Of course, foveated rendering with eye tracking would all but solve this, as you'd only need full resolution rendering in a ~60x60-degree circular field, and could even reduce detail within the outer 30 degrees of this along each axis in a few metrics (sharpness of fine details, text, etc.). This way you'd be able to increase graphical fidelity dramaticaly while maintaining frame rates.
  • darkswordsman17 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    What happened to making USB-C (with DisplayPort) as the standard VR headset connector (enabling an easy single cable solution)?
  • Alexvrb - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Ah yes, the single cable. Well there's the lack of VR-capable devices that have USB-C ports that meet all the requirements. Not just any ol' USB-C port will work. You need one that supports a sufficient tier of DP/HDMI (and a way to shunt the stream from your GPU) capable of driving the twin LCDs, and probably PD. USB-C is kind of a complete fustercluck. You can have a "USB-C" port that doesn't really support jack squat and it's still USB-C. Nothing appears to be mandatory except USB data of some speed and a tiny bit of power. So every port is a mystery. As mentioned if you don't have PD your headset probably still needs a separate power cable (or more USB cables). I mean even without PD there are ports that can deliver a lot of power at 5V, but they usually aren't found on PCs, and can the headset manufacturer guarantee that? So they might demand a PD profile of 2 or 3. Speaking of PD, voltage can go up to 20V @ 5A depending on profile! Confused? Good.

    The whole one cable to rule them all plan has kind of backfired. They've standardized everything but nothing comes standard! Separate cables combining into one cable works just fine.
  • simulanis - Thursday, March 28, 2019 - link

    Virtual Reality is the best technology for education
  • kompanions - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    Waiting for virtual reality took charge of future education. There is no doubt that VR is improving the learning experience. From augmented reality learning apps to virtual reality labs, both are future of schools and colleges classroom.

    Source: https://www.kompanions.com/k-lab.html
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