Dumb question, but for connecting to my PC, are all USB-C cables the same, or is there “the one” I should buy? Will a USB to USB-C work?
I realize I am woefully ignorant on USB-IF specifications.
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USB-C cables are absolutely not the same.
You will need an E-Marker equipped high-speed/High-Power cable (Preferably USB-C to USB-C) for acceptable VR data transfer speeds between the computer and the headset, and quickest charging results.
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Thanks for answering the dumb questions (mine being the first). All this stuff makes my head hurt.
I did just spend two hours playing HL2:VR Mod wirelessly with mine. I connected through my household wireless AP (Ubiquiti UniFi, a few years old) without an ethernet cable to my laptop. In other words: laptop>wifi>AP>more wifi>Quest 3. It ran perfectly adequately for the game, and no appreciable lag or latency or whatnot. Very cool, wireless VR! 
ETA: The lenses and clarity bow my G2 out of the water.
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How is the tracking, compared to the G2?
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It’s so good I never even thought about tracking.
Hand-tracking works really well too and is seamless, pretty cool to navigate menus without having to use controllers, in a FS for example.
Thanks!
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The G2 tracking was good, I thought. But when I got base stations for the Aero, I noticed an improvement. Would you say it’s on par with, or better, than the G2?
That’s cool. Been waiting for someone to make a good and useable hand tracker. Is it possible to use your hands effectively in the cockpit in DCS?
Well, I personally consider the G2 tracking inferior to my Rift-S that predated it. When I upgraded to the Reverb G2, I noticed I was giving up tracking quality (both standing and seated; when bending forward or looking down it sometimes loses itself for a moment), and controller quality (controller tracking on the G2 is awful, IMO and the controls/shape is poorly-optimized). I don’t mean to offend anyone that really likes the G2 though, I considered it perfectly adequate for cockpit-simming for quite a while now, but never standing or controller games like VTOL VR, where I preferred the Rift-S.
The Quest 3 is superior to both the Rift-S and the G2, and I’ve noticed it is not picky about lighting conditions either; I was playing in a mostly darkened living room last night with only one table lamp on and it worked perfectly. 
Unfortunately I don’t know yet. I’m still struggling to print a usable joystick extension; the one without supports had some ugly stuff on the bottoms this morning. Am drying filament and re-slicing with a little support. That said, the main think I foresee using hand-tracking for is accessing menus. Being able to get to the oculus meta quest menu without a controller is very nice.
(It’s also smart enough to recognize my 5-year old’s wild gestures and gesticulations; in the tutorial he preferred using his hands instead of the controllers.)
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My impression is that G2 tracking on the headset and the controllers was always awful. Lighthouses are very good, oculus was the best inside out and that WMR always sucked. It’s a 3 year old sit down VR thing, so if the Q3 wasn’t better then we’re going backwards.
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Agreed. Another thing I’m noticing is a lack of godrays, which were pretty bad on the G2. Lighting is great, and the edge-to-edge clarity thing is just amazing. No more turning my head to aim the sweet spot to read text. Pretty cool!
My daughter still use my old G2. I must give it a try… I don’t remember the tracking being awful at all. I mean It had its limitations, but i wrote it up due to camera background interference and maybe the same applied for the Q3.
I’m glad to hear this isn’t the case, because even if I like the tracking of the Aero with base stations, I would rather do without the base stations…
My buddy…is looking closer at the Q3…
And explains a bit more in detail why it’s not as easy to recommend the Q3 if you already have a G2. I have no idea if he’s right or not, but this is what I meant earlier by having to watch all of his vids, to find out what he really means. This, of course, ties directly into how influencing on youtube works. 
I’m pretty sure he’s not correct in assuming that anyone who can afford a 4090 can also afford a Varjo Aero…
So my understanding is that the Quest 3 (or some software) decodes the video (or encodes it?) and sends it to the headset for connected PCVR via the Quest Link cable correct? The encoding/decoding (whichever) is done by the GPU in this case correct? Would a 2080Ti be able to do that with the success rate of the 40XX series cards? I’m just trying to figure out if I’m hardware constrained before I give it a whirl…
I don’t know @Troll, the screen grab for “your friend’s” video makes him look pret-ty excited. That, or he is trying to mimic a blow-up doll.
@BeachAV8R. Someone with technical knowledge will give you an educated answer. I, on the other hand, am the Forest Gump of all things PC-related. (“Not a smart man”). My Q2 worked very well on a 1080 with DCS at my current settings (now using a 3080). The only struggles were Syria, The Channel, and Guam. The Q3 I’d say is 10-20% better with a commensurate strain on resources. (Although in actuality I’ve found the Q3 to be smoother than the Q2 in both DCS and IL2. Might be “giddy Forest” enthusiastic placebo. Ir it might be real magic. Don’t know.) O say don’t overthink it…just buy!
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I told you so…
Yeah, it takes the PC image/sound and encodes it using a codec (like how a youtube video is transmitted) and sends it as data to the computer in the headset. That computer then decodes the stream and presents it. If you have a 4000 series Nvidia you can use a more fancy/efficient codec called AV1. If you don’t have a 4000 card you can use HEVC or H.264, which have different pros/cons. It basically comes down to a question of ‘how much bandwidth can I fit into this USB cable or wifi connection’, ‘which codec can both ends support for compression’ and ‘how much latency/overhead do I want to put up with’ in getting the image there on time. Note that it doesn’t skip a frame, but more degrades the image and puts ‘artefacts’ in what it shows - a bit like when youtube corrupts with low bandwidth. It is why it is a bit of a shame they didn’t put DisplayPort connections on the side, as it’s basically ‘computer to computer’ comms rather than ‘computer to display’.
For a 2080Ti you can’t use AV1 but if you have a wifi6e router or a good Oculus Link cable then it might not matter, as you can at least have lots of bandwidth even if your compression overhead is a bit higher on both ends.
This is just for PCVR streaming of course, as its primary use is for games than run on the headset and you buy in their store (it’s why it’s a good price and why there is no DP port).
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Yeah, I’m really loving hand tracking, although I haven’t gotten it to work with Quest Link yet. Perhaps a setting.
But that would insult blow-up dolls.
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I think with these sort of comparisons it is tough as I don’t really see it as a ‘Is the Reverb G2 better than a Quest 3?’, which is how they sort of set it up a lot of the time, it’s more ‘Is the Quest 3 clearly $500 better than a Reverb G2 you already own?’.
The Quest 3 is much better product than the Reverb G2 is every way and it’s sort of a waste of time arguing otherwise. It’s newer, it has better software and better hardware. It’s really good value for what it is as well.
If you had a 3 year old car and someone said ‘this new car is better than your car!’ then it is easy to agree with them. The question is then should you always buy the new car? With infinite money of course you should. (I did a car analogy!) 
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I agree, but there are a lot of G2 users around.
And in my case, when asking what @WarPig thinks of the Q3, I’m interested in knowing how it compares to the G2 because that’s our common ground, if that makes sense.
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That distills it down for me. If I can get the same performance out of the Q3 with a much bigger sweet spot (basically edge to edge I guess?)…I think it might be worth it…given the additional stand-alone features of the Q3. I’m still pretty amazed by my G2 though…so I’m wondering if it will just be an incremental upgrade. I felt going from the CV1 to the Odyssey was a nice step…and the O+ to the G2 a nice step… Maybe the Q3 will be another nice step. I’m still balanced on the fence (…but…but…I could be watching Happy Gilmore in pass-through while balancing on the fence!)…
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