The author is mostly right about ImmersedVR from June 2020 when this was written, but Immersed and the hardware have both vastly improved since then.
I use Immersed everyday for my full workday. Oculus Quest 2 is a musthave. The resolution is high enough that the “screendoor” effect is gone.
I use only two displays. 1) 2880x1800 blown up to the size of a football field and pushed very far away.
2)1920 x 1080 closer and below for communication.
If you want to commit for work you should upgrade the headset. Get the elite strap plus battery, an aftermarket facial interface and prescription lense adapters from VROptician.
I’m pretty sure every OS gets virtual monitors now, but if not you can buy very cheap headless hdmi dongles instead.
One other great thing about Immersed is that the entire company is very active on Discord. I’ve talked directly to the CEO about bugs, and they even sent me a custom build when they accidentally broke a niche feature I relied on.
Is there a significant difference between the Quest 2 vs. HP Reverb G2 (for this application)? Any other headsets worth a notable mention?
I have difficulty with environment awareness. I'm surprised with how good I am at "knowing" exactly where my keyboard is, water bottle, jar of chocolates. But that kind of convenience is both unnerving when it works and tenuous nevertheless.
I'm also not sure it would be wise to attempt to be the guinea pig working out current conflicts with using VR workstation in combination with treadmill desks. It's quite an opulent "problem" to have/solve/consider but seems like an either/or tradeoff for people who do best with a single workflow environment.
They are completely different price points and purposes.
Quest 2 is $300 stock and primarily standalone. Can also connect to a PC for PCVR.
Reverb requires a PC. Is much better in nearly every category, but I think costs $800 plus $1000-$3000 computer attached to take full advantage.
Immersed only supports the Quest line currently and only as a standalone app. I’m not sure if they still support the Go, but I would only recommend the Quest 2 for new Immersed users.
Yes. The reverb's software and general UX are quite a bit worse than the Quest. Many would say that the only real contenders in the space are the Quest and Valve Index, and the Quest wins on both price and resolution.
But it doesn't win in compatibility, battery life, display quality, controllers, refresh rate or the fact you can lose access to the Quest if Facebook decide to ban your Facebook account.
Looking at the video in the article I couldn't imagine working like that, especially as a software developer who has to look at code all day. I assume the video is a little lower resolution than you'd see in real life though? I feel like maybe with the next generation of headsets this might be more feasible.
How long did you try it for and how much did you experiment with screen size, placement, and count?
I won't pretend it's for everyone, but it did take some time for me to get used to. I didn't have the option of buying multiple good monitors at the time, so I was forced to adapt, but now I prefer it.
A few hours, I realized pretty quickly that the resolution was a problem for text readability. I don't see how virtual monitor distance would help; I found the minimum size for readable text to be unacceptably large.
As soon as pixel density ~quadruples, I'll make a serious effort at switching to VR for work.
Quest 2 requires a Facebook account and the 'zuck' is probably recording everything you do and is selling it. Quest 2 Pro will have eye tracking which is even more scary.
While this is true, I managed to bypass the Facebook login requirement through a workaround and the Quest 2 has apparently recently been rooted. The method has yet to be made public yet but it's only a matter of time.
I cannot disagree though I would point out that nothing in the market really comes close to matching the value for money that the Quest 2 provides.
However, by bypassing the Facebook requirement, I like to believe that I'm screwing them over by depriving them of the personal data that they likely wanted to use to subsidise the low price of the headset.
Just search it on Youtube. I normally hate comments like this but I have reasonable reluctance to explicitly detail the workaround on a site where FAANG employees (and employers) frequent.
My intuition is that working in VR will be a poor experience until all of the font rendering is somehow pushed forward to the headset to do subpixel rendering..
I have used 15x7 bitmap fonts for so long evolving over progressively higher resolution screens that I can comfortably read what others perceive as impossible being tiny. The amount of screen realestate this gives is awesome, a 1080p laptop screen is enough for two side by side vim windows 119 characters wide.
My guess is we need at least 4K displays per eye for VR to be as readable as a 1080 monitor, without distortions beyond the sweet spot in the very center.
There were some Kickstarter projects a few years back for VR headset like this, but I guess none of them got any traction.
Pretty sure the PiMax "8K" (Misleading term since it's not 8K, it's just 4K per eye) fits the bill. They have had issues with production before but more recent reviews indicate a major improvement.
Do expect distortions on the edges though especially if you set it to display the full FOV.
> The resolution is still too low. It does not compare to even having 1080p displays. It is almost like having multiple 720p 40" displays
Surely this is the killer for using VR in this way, we can move our eyeballs to concentrate on sections of 2K or 4K physical monitors. Apples retina displays correspond to resolutions of 60PPD at a foot distance which only the most expensive headsets have (like Varjo) but with a much narrower fields of view
Like the author I think resolution needs to improve to make this a better experience. Also comfort is important. Quest 2, even with the elite strap is not quite there when it comes to comfort but maybe the Valve Index is.
What I would like to see is a way for these VR headsets to replace monitors completely. When I say that I mean being able to do everything a monitor would normally do but in the headset including jumping into bios screen at startup. Once that is available, with HMD resolution improvements, I could then replace a few of my $300 monitors and have more flexibility in my office setup.
This seems like something I should try (again). I could then stuff my PC into a cupboard and work on it wirelessly.
What I do not understand is if his keyboard and mouse are attached to the laptop or connected wirelessly too. If it is the later, what is the usual maximum range for the mouse/keyboard transceivers (including walls)? Do they generally have low enough latencies to play action video games lag-free? Same applies to wireless display from PC to the headset.
It depends on the wireless mouse, but some of them are effectively indistinguishable from wired mice. LinusTechTips tested a few a couple of years ago and that's what they found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orhb7Njj3h8
I use Immersed everyday for my full workday. Oculus Quest 2 is a musthave. The resolution is high enough that the “screendoor” effect is gone. I use only two displays. 1) 2880x1800 blown up to the size of a football field and pushed very far away. 2)1920 x 1080 closer and below for communication.
If you want to commit for work you should upgrade the headset. Get the elite strap plus battery, an aftermarket facial interface and prescription lense adapters from VROptician.
I’m pretty sure every OS gets virtual monitors now, but if not you can buy very cheap headless hdmi dongles instead.
One other great thing about Immersed is that the entire company is very active on Discord. I’ve talked directly to the CEO about bugs, and they even sent me a custom build when they accidentally broke a niche feature I relied on.
Feel free to ask other questions about Immersed.