You can buy a quest and don't need a PC for $300.

That's a poor substitute. And also comes with Meta baggage. I can't speak for anyone else, but I will never invite a meta product into my home.

So you don't know it's a poor substitute then?

What makes you say that? Whether or not I buy one has no bearing over how much computational power a device has: which is what makes it a poor substitute.

It's not just about the computational power though, is it?

It's a different type of platform and regardless, the second half of your comment ruled out the value of the first.

Are you arguing that standalone headsets are not poor substitutes? For that to be the case they would have to do things like be able to play Half Life Alyx at acceptable visual fidelity.

I'm arguing that you've made a pointless contribution by commenting on something you won't have in your home on principle; it speaks to a lack of experience and/or an evangelistic dismissal that disqualifies you from a reasonably impartial assessment. That you are also technically wrong is secondary.

How can a point be inherently pointless?

Yes or no: can a standalone headset play games like a PC-connected headset can? If yes, it is not a poor substitute. If no, then it is a poor substitute. This is the dichotomy I established with my comment.

It’s not a poor substitute - in a lot of ways it’s one of the best VR headsets you can get. Once you go wireless there’s no going back, and there are plenty of standalone games that don’t need great graphics to be fun.

I also don’t understand people’s aversion to Meta over Google, Amazon, etc. but that’s a personal choice.

> I also don’t understand people’s aversion to Meta over Google, Amazon, etc.

Objecting to Meta specifically here is a response to VR suggestions. The other two companies are irrelevant in this conversation because neither has a VR headset available for use (that I know of). It doesn't help that the Oculus Quest is the cheapest VR option out there, so it gets suggested every time the topic comes up, so those of us who prefer to avoid the three companies you mentioned tend to have a quick response ready.

You only get mobile game graphics quality on a Quest headset

The Quest headsets are standalone, only cost a few hundred dollars and are the most popular.

PSVR only requires a playstation 4 or 5 (depending on PSVR or PSVR2)

High end PC VR is expensive, yeah - but it's not been the only or even main choice for a while now.

>The Quest headsets are standalone, only cost a few hundred dollars and are the most popular.

And you can't the graphic quality of a mobile game or need a extra PC to stream your content.

Quests are a facebook data mining spyware machine, do you think they subsidize the low cost for fun? Why anyone would buy it, besides blatant ignorance, is a really good question. My opinion of Carmack has really cratered since he's been working at Oculus and peddling their anti-consumer adware crap.

Besides even the very top end headsets are still pretty early in terms of tech. Extremely narrow tunnel vision FoV that doesn't even come anywhere close to the 210 degrees required for full human vision, pixels visible on most and if they aren't you'll need an incredibly expensive rig to run those crazy resolutions at 90 fps. Games are also really pricey for what you get since they're targeting a niche market which by definition has to be loaded to be able to afford the setup anyway and has a sunk cost to justify. It's the console experience on PC. Plus you need to mount the trackers and find a way to manage that big fat cable for the headset, it's just piles and piles of expensive hassle for what's mostly still a gimmick.

I'm pretty sure it'll be pretty good a few generations of headsets in the future though, especially once on-the-level PC performance becomes more affordable and the game UX best practices improve. I'm glad the VR games industry is at least moving away from the dumb mandatory teleporting thing and letting people walk around normally now.

Ok, I wasn't making an argument for the Quest. I was making an argument against the idea that you need a $1500+ PC for VR, that's it. I don't have or want a Quest.

$300 is still a lot of money for many people for a single purpose device.

The most popular games consoles are the phones everyone has already, because they do other things, the game playing is effectively free. Not to mention that the games themselves have an upfront cost of $0 as well.

"Free" is hard to beat.

It's less than is required for high end PC VR that was suggested as the reason in my the comment I responded to. That was my only point.

The Quest 2 standalone route and the PS5VR route are both extremely limited options for "VR gaming", and that's saying something with how meager the PC VR video game scene is.

Depends though. I want my $1500 setup for things other than VR, like 4K gaming. I bought the Index on pre-order because I was already using and abusing my Vive daily. I ended up only using the headset.