busybee fluffy rambles

The good

It’s super lightweight. Somehow it’s a fully self-contained VR headset which is only a little heavier than the Bigscreen Beyond (UPDATE: Never mind, I had read somewhere that it was under 200 grams, but the official spec is much higher, although 440 grams is not bad at all!), and its design looks like it’s much better-balanced than the BSB as well, so the comfort is going to be great.

The controllers use hall effect sensors in the thumbsticks, which anyone who’s ever experienced stick drift will know is a very good thing.

They also have a decent number of buttons on each controller, giving way more control options, which will be super useful in VRChat in particular.

It’s also great that they’ve gone streaming-first-with-standalone, which gives it the best of both worlds when it comes to utility and functionality.

The bad

LCD instead of OLED 😞

The unknowns

What’s the battery life like? Will there be a way of adding an external battery pack? UPDATE: It will indeed support external battery packs.

Will there be a way of swapping out the facial gasket or otherwise seeing one’s hands while, say, performing guitar?

How stable will the playspace be? If I use playspace merging to work with my existing Lighthouse-based FBT setup, will I have to recalibrate constantly? In particular, will I be able to use it with the EOZ Immersive Gloves? Better yet, will it be possible to automatically calibrate against the lighthouse playspace using its built-in cameras as registration points? (I don’t see any reason why this couldn’t work!)

Or, heck, will it be able to do camera-based hand tracking when the controllers are put down, like the Quest? If I can get hand tracking while playing my guitar without any added hardware, that’d be amazing.

What are the speakers like? Are they going to interfere with the wireless IEMs I use while performing music?

How much will it cost?

Cautiously optimistic

I’m definitely interested in what comes from this, and I’ll be considering upgrading to it, since optimistically, it addresses basically all of the problems I have with my current setup.

I’d also consider switching back to SlimeVR-style FBT as part of that, although my original experience with SlimeVR was less-than-great in ways which make me hesitant to try it again (less about the tracking quality — which was problematic, but has allegedly gotten a lot better — and more about the physical experience of putting the trackers on and taking them off).

All in all I think IMU-based tracking is the future, but I stick with Lighthouse stuff right now because it’s much more stable and usable for my particular needs. But I’m not super wedded to it by any means, and both Lighthouse and IMU have their share of pluses and minuses. On balance I feel like IMU is overall better, it’s just not better enough to overcome its downsides for my particular needs.

Also, it’ll be at least three months before any hardware is actually available, and this is still running on Valve time, so I’m not in any real hurry to make any decisions.