Pico 4 to Quest Pro

[TED]

I have the chance to pick up a used quest pro for a reasonable price - less than a new q3, and was considering upgrading my Pico 4. Has anybody used both and is it a worthy upgrade?

I've been very happy with the Pico 4, especially considering what I paid for it, however the QP with eye tracking seems very tempting. 

Any and all opinions welcome. It's only for use in DCS.

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

A big yes, as long as you "look away" from pass through. But for some reason, my eye tracking is broken somehow but it is still good.

[TED]

34 minutes ago, VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants said:

A big yes, as long as you "look away" from pass through. But for some reason, my eye tracking is broken somehow but it is still good.

whats the issue with passthrough?

[TED]

The only things really that bother me a bit with the Pico are some of the visuals - straight edges are not great, there's quite a bit of ghosting and the compression artifacts can be a bit distracting sometimes. 

[VR Flight Guy in PJ Pants]

It is worse than Quest 2, you cannot see anything around you. But you don't need them for DCS anyway

[Qcumber]

56 minutes ago, TED said:

I have the chance to pick up a used quest pro for a reasonable price - less than a new q3, and was considering upgrading my Pico 4. Has anybody used both and is it a worthy upgrade?

I've been very happy with the Pico 4, especially considering what I paid for it, however the QP with eye tracking seems very tempting. 

Any and all opinions welcome. It's only for use in DCS.

Yes. Definitely. I moved from a Pico 4 to a Quest Pro. It's a very good headset. Eye tracking makes a massive difference in performance. 

[TED]

1 hour ago, Qcumber said:

Yes. Definitely. I moved from a Pico 4 to a Quest Pro. It's a very good headset. Eye tracking makes a massive difference in performance. 

Kind of a subjective question i suspect, but in what ways is the QP better in your experience?

[Qcumber]

2 hours ago, TED said:

Kind of a subjective question i suspect, but in what ways is the QP better in your experience?

Even though it has less pixels than the P4 the image quality is better (subjective) and a wider fov. You can get your eyes much close to the lenses. Eye tracking gives a massive performance boost. I can push the foveated resolution high for a very sharp image which you can't do across the full image even with a high end rig. 

[freehand]

I went from the qpro to the pico 4 but currently own another G1 as I love it. 

[Mr_sukebe]

I had a Pico 4, but was so unimpressed that I gave it back.  
Being fair, that was mainly about my inability to get it linked up, I thought the image quality was fine.

On the QP:

- Eye tracking on the QP does help performance.  
- I found the comfort to be poor as stock.  It added velcro bands to mine which were very cheap resolved the issue

- I honestly can’t remember if the QP has better visuals, both are good

- clearly I found the Oculus software easier to deal with

[Qcumber]

7 hours ago, TED said:

Kind of a subjective question i suspect, but in what ways is the QP better in your experience?

I've just posted this benchmark to compare full image versus QVFR so you can see how much performance boost you can get. 

 

 

[TED]

22 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Yes. Definitely. I moved from a Pico 4 to a Quest Pro. It's a very good headset. Eye tracking makes a massive difference in performance. 

i had a bit of difficulty following the benchmark stats!

What kind of performance increase would one likely expect using DFR over FFR?

My setup is a 7900xtx, 5800x3d, 64gb ddr4.

 

[Qcumber]

F-4 take off Syria.trk

Edi: @TED Sorry text was missing for some reason. I have updated this.

These tracks compare 2 settings. One with the foveated region at 0.2x0.2 for DFR. One at 0.4x0.4 to represent FFR. All other settings are the same. These areas are 4% and 16% respectively; 4x greater so has a bigger impact on GPU usage. 

This track is an F-4 taking of from Syria (instant action mission). Quite demanding. With the lower settings the GPU latency remain below 13.9 and so maintains a steady 72 fps and us a smooth experience. The higher settings show nearly 60% of frames are missed resulting in a lower average fps and some stutter. I hope this helps. 

Edited March 21 by Qcumber

[skywalker22]

If you considering buying Quest PRO, a must have are these 2 upgrades:

1. Headstrap (best one there is)

2. Full light blocker (way cheeper then the original one, which costs over 40€)

I have both, and its an amazing experience in flying planes or racing cars.

Without headstrap, your head starts to hurt very soon, I know I couldn't use the headset more then 45min before I didn't get it.

[Qcumber]

5 hours ago, skywalker22 said:

If you considering buying Quest PRO, a must have are these 2 upgrades:

1. Headstrap (best one there is)

2. Full light blocker (way cheeper then the original one, which costs over 40€)

I have both, and its an amazing experience in flying planes or racing cars.

Without headstrap, your head starts to hurt very soon, I know I couldn't use the headset more then 45min before I didn't get it.

Personal preference. I find the QP very comfortable, especially if you turn the back pad upside down. I also prefer no mask/light block. For anyone buying a QP try it vanilla first before buying any extras. 

[TED]

I pulled the trigger and will get the pro today, so hopefully get to test everything in the next few days. I got it unused, still packaged in the box for a reasonable price. I probably could have got it slightly cheaper if I shopped around a bit but the convenience of getting it quickly and the seller seemed like a good guy made it fairly easy. Very much looking forward to testing it all out. 

[7Coolhand]

I recommend to use virtual desktop and quad views. 

[TED]

20 hours ago, 7Coolhand said:

I recommend to use virtual desktop and quad views. 

Yep. Definitely. 

[TED]

Got it all setup in DCS and looks great! The only thing is I'm not sure the eye tracking is working. I've installed quad views but seems like it's only giving me fixed foviated rendering. Not sure why. Eye tracking is set up and calibrated on the headset. 

[Mr_sukebe]

1 hour ago, TED said:

Got it all setup in DCS and looks great! The only thing is I'm not sure the eye tracking is working. I've installed quad views but seems like it's only giving me fixed foviated rendering. Not sure why. Eye tracking is set up and calibrated on the headset. 

 

Have you enabled eye tracking in the headset itself?  I vaguely seem to remember that you need to be in developer mode to be able to change the setting.

[TED]

15 minutes ago, Mr_sukebe said:

 

Have you enabled eye tracking in the headset itself?  I vaguely seem to remember that you need to be in developer mode to be able to change the setting.

Yes i did. Although developer mode dpesnt seem to be needed for that now. I did the calibration and test in the headset and ot was following my eyes. Additionally setting up a developer account seems a real pain. Requiring id, business doc verification and the like. 

[Qcumber]

55 minutes ago, TED said:

Yes i did. Although developer mode dpesnt seem to be needed for that now. I did the calibration and test in the headset and ot was following my eyes. Additionally setting up a developer account seems a real pain. Requiring id, business doc verification and the like. 

Have you followed all the instructions here:

https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/Meta-Quest-Pro#if-you-use-link-cable-or-air-link

Or are you using VD?

https://github.com/mbucchia/Quad-Views-Foveated/wiki/Meta-Quest-Pro#if-you-use-virtual-desktop

 

57 minutes ago, TED said:

Additionally setting up a developer account seems a real pai

I don't remember it being that difficult. 

[TED]

Thanks. Yep worked it out. Wasn't difficult, I was just rushing and being stupid. I forgot to tick the box in VD for forward tracking or something like that. 

Now all works great. The pro looks wonderful. I'm very pleased. I'll write up a more detailed comparison later once my excitement dies down a bit and I've got time. Needless to say tooling around now at 80fps steady in all phases smooth and clear with really high settings is wonderful.

[Qcumber]

2 hours ago, TED said:

Thanks. Yep worked it out. Wasn't difficult, I was just rushing and being stupid. I forgot to tick the box in VD for forward tracking or something like that. 

Now all works great. The pro looks wonderful. I'm very pleased. I'll write up a more detailed comparison later once my excitement dies down a bit and I've got time. Needless to say tooling around now at 80fps steady in all phases smooth and clear with really high settings is wonderful.

Glad you like it. What are your system specs? I am thinking about benchmarking QVFR settings with different setups to help people with QP get optimal results. 

[TED]

3 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Glad you like it. What are your system specs? I am thinking about benchmarking QVFR settings with different setups to help people with QP get optimal results. 

7900xtx, 5800x3d, 64gb ram, 2tb SSD. 

With this I'm actually cpu limited. I can max everything and in the air i keep a steady 90fps but closer to the ground and once in a furball of fighter its drops to around 70 due to cpu limits.