Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) drivers have reprojection tech like ASW. It’s apparently meant to be pretty good, although I’ve not personally seen it work.
Tracking in the SO+ is meant to be better than the original SO, but the big difference between a Vive or Rift and this is that there are no external tracking cameras or base stations. The way it works is that the cameras on the headset (which are wide view, not just where you are looking) detect the hand controllers as IR dots. That coupled with sensors like gyro’s in the hand controllers provide placement info.
The upside is that you don’t have to run wires around your desk/play area, with the downside that sometimes physical occlusion will happen, or rather in English, your body will block the headset from seeing where your hand controllers are. For things like desktop sims, it’s all good, as you are probably using a HOTAS and not waving your arms around all the time, while for things like a stand-up archery game in VR (because you put your hands behind your head to fire a bow etc) then the Rift / Vive are probably better solutions.
The big unknown for me so far, and why I am waiting just a week or so, is to get some early reports on how clear the new panels are in the SO+ for things like X-Plane or DCS. The ‘anti Screen Door Effect (SDE)’ tech they are using is meant to be very good, but I have some doubts it will make things clearer or easier to read cockpit dials or MFDs. That’s the big unknown, in that it has the best resolution but this new tech for anti-SDE.
@BeachAV8R has one on order, so he’s the Impulsive Guinea Pig and will report back I imagine. Either that or leave it in the box like he did with the Rift for a week.
Yeah we really need some comparison shots from a camera looking into the lens in a simulator cockpit or fine text. I will miss the rift controllers but probably need to sell it before it loses much more value.
The only comparison pics through the lens I’ve seen so far are pretty confusing, in that it definitely takes out SDE (which no-one likes, i.e. too grainy) but then the guy that took these photos swears it is actually sharper and easier to read text as well…
Well if you think about a camera’s autofocus searching to find the best focus, it probably has a lot easier time locking on with a high SDE display. It makes sense in my head anyway, also, refresh rate and all that look a lot different to a camera sensor than our eyeballs. Wish they had taken a picture of fine detail and tried to make the frame more identical. A small extra area of a lighter object can make the camera dim the whole image to compensate.
Yep, the author of the pic admitted it was a potato quality shot from his phone, but all he had. Looking forward to lots of people’s impressions very soon of stuff we play. Very keen to pull trigger, so trying to resist.
I just asked if he could do a flight sim cockpit picture, hopefully he has one. I’m having a hard time resisting too… but I wonder if the timing of this release is blood in the water from Oculus. It’s a perfect time to attempt to grab all the PC VR users let down by Oculus. Maybe some other worthy WMR headsets will pop up before X-mas to capitalize on Oculus’ failure.
Samsung is one of the few in the world that manufactures great panels, and in some ways Oculus and the others really have to depend on them for the tech. They are big enough to stick around, so glad they are doing this refresh now. Like you said, it’s healthy competition.
For me and the Microsoft Store up in Canada, the SO+ is now all out of stock, so that should prevent the ol credit card accidentally falling out of my wallet for a bit anyway…
If any of you do buy this early, be careful you aren’t buying the non + version for 499. As far as I can tell the Odyssey+ is XE800ZBA-HC1US
while the original is: XE800ZAA-HC1US
Ok I didn’t last long after figuring this out. I ordered after combing my .edu address and reading about a little trick. I’ll just leave this here in case you were to order it and then cancel said order because you “found it cheaper” somewhere else:
Ah, so just to be clear, you got the $75 from using your .edu email and then an additional 10% discount from hitting ‘cancel’ on the placed order, and then putting ‘got it cheaper elsewhere’ as the reason?
I must say I am really intrigued by the Odyssey Plus. I wasn’t following VR developments too closely, but this came somewhat as a pleasant surprise for me. This seems to be a sensible upgrade from the Rift. The Pimax 5K+ might eventually be the superior set, but I have yet to be convinced by Pimax as a company. So the Odyssey Plus might be a good interim upgrade until Pimax matures or there is even a next-generation successor by Samsung.
The big question though is where to buy this in Switzerland. Imported (non-plus) Odysseys are currently sold here at $600. Why isn’t Samsung marketing these in Europe?
I must admit that in the meantime I have paid the customs bill, which was an additional €80, but still paid way less than what these units are sold for in Europe by import dealers.
EDIT: I have no shares in BigAppleBuddy or other relation to it than as a customer. I just really like the service, the quick and helpful responses to e-mails and want them to stay in business in case I need to import something again.
So this is a pretty stupid question coming from someone who already ordered one…but is there a store similar to the Oculus Rift Experience store specifically for Odyssey compatible games? Or do I just check Steam for those titles that show WMR compatibility?
Windows Mixed Reality comes with its own ‘Home’ metaphor, so you wander around a big house and run apps from within VR. You can even talk to Cortana as well. It’s Microsoft’s play on ‘SteamVR’ and ‘Oculus Home’, and original was done for Hololens.
One of the places you can launch is the ‘Microsoft Store’ for WMR titles.
If you want to run Oculus Store exclusive titles then you’ll need ‘Revive’ that essentially facts your headset id for the software to think it is a Rift. Anything from Steam/OpenVR will be fine with the WMR ‘bridge’ installed.
PS Did you get an expected delivery date already, or is it backordered?
