busybee fluffy rambles

Initial setup was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

The headset is super lightweight and fits my face incredibly well. Very comfortable, at first, anyway. Unfortunately, the silicone face gasket irritates my skin, as silicone tends to do, so I’m working on figuring out solutions for that. I’ll probably need to make a felt pad that I attach somehow. Or maybe one of the alternate gaskets might work.

There’s no built-in headphone port. Right now I’m using a USB-C to headphone adapter and some Sony MDR-somethingorother headphones, which are Okay, but not great. I have a Vive DAS that I was using with my Pimax and there are BSB adapters that might work (I printed an early revision of one and it didn’t quite work out but it’s a Process).

The default strap is Okay but not great. That’s another reason to get the DAS adapter working.

The built-in microphone is really good but dialing in the levels is a bit tricky. The default volume of 50 is way too quiet. At 90 it’s still really quiet. At 100 it clips like crazy. 95 seems to be the best spot. But anyway people had nothing to complain about with my microphone quality once I had the volume level dialed in.

It’d be nice if there were volume control buttons integrated into the headset, rather than having to go through the Windows volume control or grope around for the volume buttons on my keyboard. I’m not sure how that would work since there’s no dedicated onboard audio output though. (There really should be dedicated onboard audio output.)

I notice that the AFK detection gets triggered pretty easily and I don’t know what causes it. But taking the headset off doesn’t always trigger it like it should. For now I’ve just turned automatic AFK off in VRChat.

There’s also fewer basestation sensors on the BSB than on other SteamVR headsets, so it’s way too easy to occlude the headset from the basestations, especially while adjusting the headset fit. Or maybe it’s just that since it’s so small there’s not a lot of surface area to put sensors on to begin with.

Anyway. The screen is sharp. My eyesight is still good enough that I can see the pixel boundaries if I look hard enough but it’s far from what I’d call a “screen door.” And everything’s just so crisp and viewable. The optics aren’t perfect, though, as there’s visible interreflections, especially when I put the prescription inserts on. Supposedly they’re going to be sending me replacement inserts since my original set didn’t pass QC but they understood I was tired of waiting for my headset so they were fine with sending it early. So I’ll refrain from passing total judgement on that until I have my proper inserts.

The FOV feels really narrow after being on the Pimax for so long, but the narrower FOV is still enough for my immersion and has the benefit of improving performance overall (since there’s fewer objects to render and therefore fewer drawcalls and less texture thrashing), even with the higher pixel resolution.

I will be really happy when adding the eye tracking module is a bit less of a Project.

Even with the skin irritation it’s still way more comfortable than the Pimax, due to the significantly lower weight and the lack of intense pressure on the bridge of my nose, and of course the much better optics and resolution vastly reduce my eye strain as well. Also the screens being somewhat dimmer works in my favor as well; it does mean it takes a little longer to adjust to the screen, but the total lack of light leak means that even with the dimmer screens it’s still perfectly bright for my needs and after I’ve been in VR for a little while I don’t even notice.

So yeah I’ll be selling my Pimax.