I got to try the Vive Pro for a few hours. A friend got the entire package (i.e. including the new lighthouses and blue controllers).
Visuals:
Visuals:
- The screen resolution is a clear upgrade over the existing Vive (and Oculus CV1). In hard scenarios like black on white text it's still easy to recognize the subpixel structure if you focus on it, but the advantage is clear, and also present for games - especially those where you aim at distant enemies, I tried Serious Same TFE.
- Screen quality in terms of brightness, contrast and colors seemed really good (Vive is also great in most of those aspects though).
- Unlike some reports, I do think that the optics were somewhat improved over the initial Vive. In high-contrast black background scenes I didn't see as many/clear artifacts as I can on the standard Vive (or get as much bloom as on CV1). However, Without doing a direct A/B test it's hard to be certain.
- It's certainly much faster to put on and fit comfortably than the standard Vive strap, which is a huge advantage especially when demoing it. That said, at least for my head, once you spend the time to adjust the normal Vive to fit exactly it works well too.
- The weight seems similar, but the weight balance is significantly improved.
- No problems there, the built-in headphones are convenient and the mechanism for opening/closing them works well. Given that I was talking to my friend most of the time it certainly wasn't a very audio-focused test though.
- Tracking was almost perfect, but this is also what my experience with lighthouse 1.0 is. Maybe slightly less jitter at high distances, but again hard to be sure without A/B testing.
- What's certainly impressive and just plain cool to see is the tracking cone of the new lighthouses in the room overview though. It almost seems like a half-circle. Should make some setups much easier.
- Now this is the part I would never have expected before trying it. The controllers feel cheaper than my Vive controllers. The plastic is much easier to deform in some places and feels softer/thinner, and if you grip them more strongly they might creak. One idea I had was that maybe newer Vive controllers are also like that, and that this might explain why my launch units seem rock-solid (and survived being thrown into a wall at with silly levels of force) while many appear to have issues with them.
