Looks like Oculus has identified the source of the black screen problems and NVidia drivers and a fix is on the way:
My name is Manuel and I am part of the NVIDIA Customer Care team. First I’d like to thank some of the users who reached out to me and helped us along the way. We believe we have fixed the cause of this issue. The fix will be in our next GeForce Game Ready driver rolling out to users later this month. Stay tuned and thank you for your patience. - Manuel Guzman, Oculus
Two interesting ones from Survios, makers of Raw Data and Sprint Vector, If you happen to be going to GDC, they are going to be showing both off.
Vive pro price is going to be $/£799 and the regular Vive is reducing to $/£499.
https://www.vive.com/uk/product/vive-pro/
I am yet to enter the VR arena but will do so when I upgrade my CPU/RAM and Mobo, but would the Vive pro be a good choice? are there better options available? I will mainly be using it for flight and racing sims.
Gosh, by the current exchange rate, that’s $1121.50 US. Why so expensive in the UK? How much is the Samsung Odyssey?
Companies always do it to us. $100 is £100 is €100 in their eyes. The Samsung isn’t available in the UK or Europe.
I guess they are also pricing it for what the market will bare, but it’s not like the Pro will be revolutionary. I get that the ergonomics and headphones will be superior, but the optics will have the same small sweet spot and god rays issues that the Odyssey has. Nothing extraordinary here, but the price. Of course, I’m basing this on YouTube pre-production views.
Some interesting footage of Elite Dangerous through the Pimax 8K. Looks pretty tight…I can’t see any real screen door… Hope the next Rift gets to that type of resolution. Pimax doesn’t seem like the most stable company…so I would be leery of jumping on that bandwagon to be honest…
And a good Reddit comment regarding the video:
“This was posted a couple weeks ago and someone had mentioned that this isn’t a reliable way to gauge the clarity of the HMD’s lack of screen-door effect. If I recall, it had something to do with mixing the HMD’s resolution with the phone’s camera resolution, and ultimately the video resolution/compression. Additionally there are factors like the phone’s distance from the screen while recording, as well as the fact that they are zooming into the text in-game (which will obviously sharpen the text) as opposed to distant in-game clarity.”
Was just watching the review of the unit via Linus at Tech Tips on YT and I think he’s in complete agreement with you. Now granted, he did say that the unit felt heavy in comparison to the original Vive when used in fast paced motion titles, but that’s a non issue for most sim folks. That price though for non Vive owners (heck, even for Vive owners) is a steep one indeed.
I don’t think that this has been mentioned yet, but it looks like there is an interesting Vive and Vive pro mod to improve sharpness and remove god rays. I’m wondering if I can do this with my Samsung Odyssey.
Does GearVR have better optics than the Vives…?
That’s incredible! 
There is some minor skepticism based around a reduction in FOV, but mostly it’s just a whimper. The majority of vloggers seem to think that this is a great mod. I don’t have a Vive, but I would do the mod if I did. Not finding anything related to the Samsung Odyssey yet, but purportedly they use the same fresnel lens as Vive Pro.
It’s a sad state of affairs IMO … quality optics (lenses) are EXPENSIVE! Nice Gear VR Lens mod though!
I think I’ve mentioned in the past that I’m not a fan of Fresnel lenses.
Me neither, other than for the obvious reasons such as price and size.
But I find it a bit strange that a relatively low cost VR product, like GearVR, sports better optics than even the Vive Pro.
1 step closer to skynet…
That is really impressive, especially when the guy holds his hand and the device still detects the nerves firing.
I have not tried this…but: Kerbal VR
This is a WIP mod to allow the use of the HTC Vive (and any other HMD supported by the OpenVR SDK) in KSP. The primary focus is for use in IVA, and can also be used to walk around inside the VAB or SPH (room-scale).
IVA in VR puts you inside the cockpit of your craft. You can look around (and walk around if you have the physical space around you). Currently, it is possible to interact with cockpit instrumentation provided by the RPM mod (see note below); I am actively working on adding more immersive features for the cockpit (more coming soon!). The goal is to replace the use of the keyboard and mouse entirely with interactive cockpit controls (buttons, switches, control sticks, throttles, etc.)
Room-scale VR in the VAB and SPH allows you to walk around inside the building and see your craft at a 1:1 scale.
I know there has been a plethora of shooters out there in VR, but this one is actually quite good and fun and has a real borderlands/halo vibe to it, plus many other good things. It’s designed with co-op in mind, but can be played solo. Best of all, while built from the ground up for VR, it’s also playable on desktop as well, for those of you still holding out 
and yes, there is full cross play between desktop and whatever HMD you might be using.
If anyone is interested, I did get a chance to interview the developers, whose have some seriously impressive resumes I might add. But lots of good stuff from them and thought maybe some of you might be interested in it as well.
