Meta has officially announced their newest headset, the Quest Pro. Perhaps you're here because you're curious about this new headset. It's a $1500 device that adds pancake lenses, face/eye tracking, and better screens with QLED and local dimming tech. Most of the upgrades, however, have gone into the passthrough feature. It's 4x the resolution of Quest 2's passthrough and adds color and depth. All of this is an attempt to add augmented reality to the device.

For VR gaming the general consensus is that this headset is a hard pass. The upgrades for VR are minimal. The screen resolution remains the same. There is better clarity via the pancake lenses, which offer a much larger sweet spot. The panels also provide mechanical ipd adjustment and better contrast. The headset is more comfortable due to the thinner optics.

The sides of the headset, however, are left open to help with AR. As a result there is extreme light leak. There are magnetic attachments that fix this on the sides, but you'll still get the light leak from the bottom. To fix this, you'll need to buy a $50 add on gasket, an insult after spending $1500. Even if you think the new features like face and eye tracking would improve your VR experience, they are locked to standalone only and don't work in PCVR. What about foveated rendering? Apparently a dead end since the processing to perform it costs about as much as you'd save by using it.

There's no direct PC connection still (and probably never will be). It does use wifi 6e, so theoretically you might get better Airlink from the device, though using a cable will still be a better experience.

Even if you are super excited about AR, first impressions say it's still not there yet. And even if you did find something compelling to do with the headset, it only has a 1-2 hour battery life if using all its features. This isn't even long enough to last half a work day of meetings or work sessions, which is the main purpose of the device.

The Quest 3 is rumored to be coming next year and should have a lot of the VR improvements that the Quest Pro has (pancake lenses and an even better chip) while cutting some of the useless new features (face tracking) to keep the price down. That device should be between $300-$500.

Wait for the Quest 3.

It's been a long while for me!

Updated current settings:

Bitrate > Resolution > Supersampling > Refresh Rate

My settings for Nvidia 3080



OCULUS DEBUG TOOL

Distortion Curvature: Low

Encode Resolution Width: 3712

Encode Dynamic Bitrate: Disabled

Dynamic Bitrate Max: 0

Encode Bitrate (Mbps): 480

Dynamic Bitrate Offset (Mbps): 0

Link Sharpening: Enabled

Mobile ASW: Disabled



OCULUS DEVICE SETTINGS

Refresh Rate (90Hz) or (120hz)

Render Resolution: (3712x1872) 1.0x at 90hz or 1.2x at 120hz



OCULUS TRAY TOOLS

Super Sampling: 1.45 (I start there and adjust depending on intensity of the game using the Profiles). If you use Steam regularly instead, you can also super sample within Steam settings per game. I like to use Oculus Tray Tool's Visual HUD - Pixel Density and Performance to see how close I am to the Quest 2's actual resolution and how my performance is being affected.



VRPERFKIT

Google it. You need to manually put two files in the directory of each game you want to use this on. If you have a video card that supports it, you can get fixed foveated rendering and some sharpening. Currently my settings are:

upscaling

enabled: true

method: cas

renderScale: 0.95

sharpness: 0.9

radius: 0.6

fixedFoveated

enabled: true

innerRadius: 0.6

midRadius: 0.8

outerRadius: 1.0



Note that you don't have to do ALL of these things, but if you leave something out, you'll want to adjust elsewhere. For instance, if you aren't going to super sample and apply sharpening, then just crank the resolution scale up instead. You'll notice my resolution is at .9x scale, but that's simply to give me more room to super sample and save a little performance at the same time. Obviously if I cranked my resolution up to 1.7x then my super sampling would need to be completely different or be left out completely.

I'm in the process of revisiting these settings again. The question is whether 3970 encode resolution width and 550 encode bitrate is wasted performance. Some seem to think the Quest 2's decoding is locked into around 300, so increasing the encoding past that won't help. I seemed to notice a difference between even 400 and 550 when I made this post, however, so I'll have to look at it again. Quest 2's native apps render at 3660, so the theory is going above that isn't worth it for the width, though I've also seen that, due to the native resolution of the actual panel, going to 3970 can have benefits.

Either way a more safe baseline where you won't hit too much in the way of diminishing returns would be bitrate to 350 and encode resolution width to 3664.

Here’s some randomness for you:  I proposed Saturday; she said yes!

Wow, congrats!

Today I tried jogging in place while doing Beat Saber. Nothing too crazy - just keeping my legs moving. I have an anti-fatigue mat that keeps me in place. My average heart rate went up 10 bpm as well as my peak (from BS without jogging), so it seems to be a worthwhile addition as long as you're careful!

It's been a long time since I've updated (about four years!). It feels like a lot has happened since then! I've been living with my girlfriend for several years now, so the days of just fixing a meal for myself to last all week is all but over. We also moved into a smaller apartment, so I had to get rid of my stationary bike that I had at home. Still, I've tried to keep and adapt my routine and continue keeping my weight down. My body really wants to live around 185-190, so anything higher that that usually is a sign that I need to slim back down.

Since I got rid of the stationary bike, I would go to the gym in our apartment complex and use the elliptical. This was fine until COVID hit and we didn't leave the apartment. I tried to supplement my exercise with VR - specifically Beat Saber - which was better than nothing. Still, I was having some health issues (turns out I have ankylosing spondylitis, an autoimmune disorder) and general mental issues from the stress of COVID times and gave up exercising for a while. When I finally got vaccinated and started working again last year, I noticed I didn't fit into any of my dress pants. Got the batteries replaced in the scale and realized I was back to 201 lbs! Yikes! So I started shredding again.

Currently I'm doing HIIT on the elliptical every other day at the gym. I think I'm on 30/60 but will be ramping up the difficulty soon. On off days I'm doing 30 minutes of Beat Saber at home (a specific playlist at 120% speed that is designed for exercise) and doing stretches. Right now I have less of an emphasis on muscle building and more on stretches and core building for pain management and strengthening my spine. Last year I was able to get to 190 lbs before I went out of town for a gig. I was able to maintain 190 lbs throughout the end of last year/beginning of this year when once again I avoided the gym due to Omicron. A few weeks ago my girlfriend had a similar "omg" moment of gaining COVID weight, so we've both been trying to shred again. The last month I've gone from 190 to 184 with the hopes of getting to 175 and then going from there!

As for diet, I still don't eat breakfast. Lunch consists of either fish fillets, a chicken patty, or a turkey burger with a 35 calorie tortilla and a half can of peas, corn, or green beans. Somewhat boring, but consistent. We've been doing meal deliveries for dinner since COVID and did Blue Apron for a long time. Now we do EveryPlate. It's pretty convenient since the calories and nutrition are listed for each meal. Each week I just choose the low calorie options (try to stay less than 750 calories). For a midnight snack I'll do greek yogurt mixed with PBFit (70 calorie peanut butter mix) or a small bowl of cereal. Sometimes I'll have a bourbon neat but try to keep it to one unless it's the weekend.

As for supplements, I'm currently doing Vitamin D, Fish Oil, and Turmeric. The turmeric is specific to my inflammation issues. I haven't added protein shakes back in yet, but I may if I start trying to balance weight loss with muscle toning/weight lifting.

Despite always having fluctuations in my weight, I'm pretty proud of the fact that I've kept the lifestyle changes and focus on health for nearly 10 years now. I feel that's the hardest part of diet and exercise - it's easier to do it for a few months for a temporary gain, but the truth is it's something you have to maintain for your whole life. I'm about to turn 38 and it's much more of an uphill battle now then when I was 28, but such is life! I'm glad I've kept this little diary of sorts, as I can go back and look at things I may have forgotten about! I started this as sharing stuff I was learning with others, but it turns out I was also sharing stuff I was learning with my future self!