going on a quest

Yeah, VR is kind of cool.

I had my first experiences with VR a little over a year and a half ago. One of my buddies from work had me come over and try out his PSVR setup that he got. Saying that I was blown away is a bit of an understatement. I played the staples of VR gaming– SUPERHOT and Beatsaber. For months after that, I was psyched about VR gaming until I realized that getting a headset was a bit more expensive than I originally thought it would be.

Fast forward to the start of sophomore year. It turns out that my roommate owned a Vive. As clunky as it was, and as annoying as the base stations were, it was generally a pleasant experience. At the start of junior year, another one of my roommates had gotten a Rift S. Not having base stations made things much easier to set up.

Fast forward again to this Christmas. I had done a lot of digging, and I was thinking of getting a Rift S until I realized that the Quest 2 is nearly superior in every way. Oculus Link, the ability to play games on the headset with no wires… it’s tough to beat those kinds of features.

And so, I got the Quest 2. Let’s just say it’s just so much better than I originally thought it’d be. The Oculus Store has a surprisingly wide variety of games. Knowing that the headset wasn’t as powerful as even some of the earliest VR-capable graphics cards, I would’ve thought that the game support would be lackluster. Games like Job Simulator and Beatsaber were nearly identical to their PC counterparts. Beatsaber’s songs leave something to be desired, but thankfully we have BMBF to enable custom song support. Altspace and Bigscreen were pretty cool as well, and I feel like they foster a much more relaxed environment than VRChat ever could.

The Quest 2 runs Android. This means sideloading apps is possible, through Sidequest. All those games that are in the Oculus Store? Yeah, you don’t need them. Sidequest is filled to the brim with indie games, most of them being free. There are even ports of some classic games, like Half-Life 1 and Doom 1-3 in VR. It’s amazing what the community can do.

Oh, what’s that? You have games built for SteamVR? Well, yes, there’s Oculus Link. But that means that you’ll have to move your computer to a room with more space, have a long enough USB-C cable, and make sure you also have a monitor and keyboard set up in that same room, so you can start the Oculus software when you turn your PC on again. ALVR is the solution to this. No wires, no setup disassembly… All you need is a stable internet connection between your headset and your PC. It streams the SteamVR feed directly to the headset. It works much better than you might think, with only a slight quality degradation, and barely noticeable latency. It’s well worth the trade-off when the alternative is much more annoying to do.

I think it’s safe to say that my favorite VR games so far are Beatsaber, BONEWORKS, and H3VR. Beatsaber is just fun to jump around and play in, especially while listening to my favorite songs. BONEWORKS is super impressive, and honestly, I think it sets the bar for adventure action games in VR, even more so than HL: Alyx. The combat, the climbing, and the story mode are just all so fun. And in H3VR, every weapon just feels so satisfying.

VR has been a blast for me. Right now, with the addition of the Quest to the VR world, VR is more accessible today more than its ever been.