The BEST VR Headset in the WORLD Just Got BEAT! - The Varjo XR4 has Arrived!

we are taking virtual and mixed reality further than ever thought possible yeah holy [Music] crap hello and welcome to Friday news day your number one resource for the entire week's worth of VR news and hboy do we got some VR news this week I know it's a little late but I promise it's for good reason a few pretty massive things happened this week including vario launching its newest VR headset this is the truly insane xr4 and I got to try it out firsthand I got a lot to say on it but that's not it valve has just released their very own direct VR streamer and it's actually really good HTC has finally launched the vi tracker ultimate and a huge change is coming to VR chat we got all that and so much more this is is an insane week so let's just get right into the news after a word from this video sponsor Squarespace look it doesn't matter what you do whether you're a game developer 3D artist putting together a portfolio or you just have a niche interest you want to share you're just going to need a website and Squarespace makes that process easier than it's ever been with tons of customizable templates an array of design tools seamless mobile compatibility you can have a website up that works everywhere in just minutes and it'll look pretty good too and you can start with the free trial at squarespace.com and when you're ready to launch visit squarespace.com thrill seeker or use thrill seeker at checkout and you'll get 10% off your first website or domain purchase it's a great deal but we've got a lot of news to cover so back to the video okay so as I was writing this news day yesterday something massive happened valve just released a quest application called steamlink and it's essentially a valve made virtual desktop or airlink style streamer app for Quest headsets allowing you to stream steam VR games from your PC to your quest using direct steam driver integration and after testing it out for a bit I was actually really really impressed I think I'm just so used to everything in VR taking at least a little bit of troubleshooting to work especially with wireless VR streaming but streamlink just worked on the first boot up and it was pretty crazy the app has a few settings like bit rate and encoded video size but even with auto everything on a Wi-Fi 6E connection I didn't notice much compression and everything felt pretty darn smooth and I got to say at least for me steamlink absolutely without a doubt just replaced airlink meta's built-in solution for doing this job and at least for basic steam VR usage you know just hopping in and playing VR chat or a game I'm probably going to use this over virtual desktop as well now virtual desktop has some amazing benefits like av1 encoding and mixed reality pass through Etc there's still a lot of amazing things that it does but seam link was just so easy to connect that it's kind of hard not to recommend plus it's free so yeah definitely go check it out I think it's really interesting that valve would make this app at all but who knows maybe things are just starting to line up for some hypothetical wireless headset that maybe connects to steam VR using the same thing I guess we'll see but now we got to talk about the xr4 and whether you're a super casual or the hardest core of VR enthusiasts if you're just fascinated with VR technology like I am well I think you're about to be real happy because this thing is kind of a big deal and at this point I'm seriously considering selling yet another kidney to get my hands on one but let me give some quick background so vario is well known for making Cutting Edge VR headsets that are mainly Ed for Enterprise usage they do have a consumer oriented headset the arrow but their Flagship headsets have always been the XR series and for the past few years the xr3 has been without a doubt the most advanced and probably the best VR headset money can buy at least by a few metrics the xr3 has four displays with the crazy high resolution light R sensors on the front itrack auto adjusting ipd it's pretty packed with tech and obviously all of that doesn't come cheap the xr3 cost a whopping 6 Plus ,000 and you needed a yearly $1,000 subscription on on top of that to even use it really it just wasn't built for General VR use instead it was for big companies like Boeing and Volvo however all of this has kind of changed with Wario's newest headset and the xr4 is pretty much better in every single way while being half the price and now they're selling directly to Consumers without a subscription yeah so let's talk about the headset it was just revealed earlier this week and luckily I was able to head down to its reveal location at ITC a military and industrial simulations conference in Orlando to try it out for myself which was also pretty fun and the xr4 Rocks some pretty impressive specifications gone are the four displays of the xr3 this time replaced by a pair of true 4K mini LED displays that are whopping 3840 by 3744 per eye which currently makes it the highest resolution VR headset on the market even higher than the Vision Pro for example the field of view has also increased to around 120° horizontally it has full it tracking with automatically adjusting ipd and of course a lots changed on the front of the headset as well including a design that looks I don't know pretty familiar a pair of 20 megapixel pass through cameras and a significantly upgraded light R sensor hander the depth accurate mix reality which we'll talk about in just a moment because the pass through experience on the xr4 is pretty trippy but there's also a few other big changes that address some of my biggest issues with their previous headsets vario actually included a microphone this time around which is great and there's also a built-in spatial audio system not really sure sure how great either one of these are the conference floor was quite loud but hey something is better than nothing I think the more interesting change regarding the xr4 is var's choice to move away from Bas Station tracking on the headset to instead opt for camera based Inside Out tracking with the option of a laser tracking face plate sold on the side and this makes total sense for Enterprise customers but there's actually something pretty interesting about it the controllers are made by Razer yeah like Razer which may sound crazy but believe it or not it's actually not their first time making VR control controllers Razer made these about 10 years ago so they've kind of been in the game for a while now but now that we got the specs out of the way let's talk about the xr4 experience because there's a few things here that specs can't really explain this is without a doubt the clearest VR image I have ever seen and it makes total sense at this resolution everything is just incredibly sharp allowing me to read even some of the smallest texts that was shown within the demos I was also put in a photogrametry environment that felt eerily realistic but in a pretty cool mindboggling way the real trick however was when everything faded away and I got to see the XR fors pass through and this was by far my favorite part of the demo the clarity and resolution are amazing but the xr4 hands down has the best pass through mixed reality I've ever seen on any headset it's not quite the indistinguishable from reality that vario claims and you can still tell you're looking at the world through cameras but it's certainly good enough to make your brain do some pretty funky stuff like I legit almost try to grab a completely non-existent virtual notepad it's pretty weird and I think the best example of the pass through cameras coming close to that indistinguishable from reality claim is when I was able to look through binocular lenses in the same way with the same clarity as my eyes which is also just a weird feeling but I think probably the coolest part of the experience was the XR 4's mixture of eye tracking and the pass through camera autofocus on the focal edition of the headset the camera's focus on what you're looking at using the eye tracking of course so if I look at my hand and then look away with my eyes the focus actually changes and it's something that you kind of need to see for yourself to experience like I want this on every headset after trying it it's pretty freaking awesome but I realized that's probably pretty unlikely at least for a long time the focal edition of the headset there's multiple versions is pretty much out of the price range of 99.99% of people costing an almost hilarious wait for it $10,000 but that's not the whole story the Bas xr4 is a little more affordable at around $4,000 which is still a lot of money but it comes remarkably close to something like the vision Pros price which makes everything in the next few months a lot more interesting now just to be totally clear I really only got to spend maybe an hour or so with the headset so there's no way I could recommend the headset this expensive off that limited demo my early takeaways is that this is probably one of if not the best headsets money can buy kind of like how the xr3 was you know just in certain metrics but that doesn't mean it's for everything at its heart the xr4 is still an Enterprise headset and there are a few things that still aren't perfect at least off my early Impressions the displays are awesome the mini LED local dimming is nice and the clarity is amazing but I think at a certain point there's definitely diminishing returns in terms of resolution and I think I might actually prefer the big screen Beyond's displays despite the resolution difference mostly due to the contrast ratio of micro oleds it's just something that I kind of can't get away from after seeing it still though the pass through is absolutely jaw dropping and kind of reality bending and it's something I want to mess with in the future and at this point I'm really interested in putting the xr4 side by side with the Vision Pro because right now just in general as a package xr4 is pretty King especially for anything simulation oriented very expensive but pretty awesome For What It's meant for but now moving on to something that I've been waiting a long time for HTC has finally launched their newest full body tracking system the Vive tracker ultimate for the past 6 years HTC has relied on Bas station laser tracking for its full body trackers and that's been perfectly fine but the ultimate instead tracks itself the same way as the Quest 2 or a quest Pro Controller does with camera based Inside Out tracking meaning you don't need base stations at all in fact you don't even need a PC to do it all while getting you know the same tracking that your headset would get and this all sounds amazing but everything's kind of not perfect right now there's a bit of a big issue that's holding it back in Standalone mode they only work with VI's own headsets the Vive XR Elite and focus 3 and with steam VR they also only work with those two headsets as well HTC did say they're adding Beta Support that allows any headset to work with steam VR in the next few weeks and that third party Standalone support may come in the future but for now it is advertised to only have official support for those two headsets which is kind of a bummer also they're definitely not cheap at essentially $200 each it would cost around $600 to get the three trackers required for full body tracking for example but that's still quite a bit cheaper than buying base stations and five trackers as long as they get support working well and I actually did get to try these out at GDC last year and I can confirm at least when I tried it that the tracking quality was practically the same as VI trackers they were really really good yeah just a few things are holding them back I think they'll get there so just this week VR chat implemented probably its biggest change yet at least internally with the introduction of in-game paid subscriptions paid out to creators this is essentially the very first time VR chat has ever had real in-game monetization and surprisingly the the AR chat Community is actually really receptive to it as long as it supports the Creator for the most part then I'm fine with it it'll overall be pretty good they definitely have to do these steps to in order to keep the platform alive I think the only problem that's been identified is that creators only actually receive around 50% of the revenue and this isn't because VR chats Being Greedy here's the basic breakdown if you pay out say 20 bucks to the Creator They will receive around $10 or the equivalent in VRC credits the platform being steam or meta receives around % or $6 and VR chat themselves will get the remaining 20% or around $4 which I don't know I guess kind of sucks at least on the surface but with the platform in the middle there's kind of no way around it unless you just go around the platform and really I got to say I'm pretty excited about what this can bring VR chat in the future like with actual monetization I can imagine fullon game studios finding it viable to build entire paid games and experiences within VR chat and it enables clubs like tube to add cool things like the ability to change stage effects for everyone in the world while bringing in Revenue to make the events even better and so yeah in my opinion this is all a pretty great change I think it's a positive thing for the entire VR chat community and I'm excited to see what it'll bring but I know it will certainly changed a lot of the social and interaction landscape of VR chat I think a lot more things are inevitably going to be paywalled which kind of sucks but this also means that creators are getting paid so that's a bonus and I think we're about to actually find out is that the most expensive free game ever is about to get just a whole lot more expensive and all right that was a pretty insane week of VR news between getting to try out the xr4 and the Vive ultimate and then valve releasing steamlink I think this has been probably one of the crazier and more exciting weeks I've ever had in terms of news but of course let me know what you thought and leave a question of the week down below I'll answer one in the next video I know it's been a while since I've done that but I'm bringing it back and I wanted to say thank you to all of my patreon supporters for making this video possible I couldn't do any of this without you but on that note don't forget to like this video if you loved it subscribe if you want more of this and hit that freaking Bell if you just can't live without it much love thrill [Music] out oh

Channel: ThrillSeeker

Views: 377,963

Keywords: VR, virtual reality, Varjo, XR, Quest, quest 2, katwalk, treadmill, XR3, VR3, Thrilseeker, VR headset, XR4, tuesday newsday, VR news, Valve index, Vive trackers, Vive ultimate, Steamlink, quest, quest 3, oculus, meta quest, meta, Thrillseeker, VR updates, VRchat

Id: WoiEhoxKXTc

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023