Anybody have any experience with these?
1920 x 1080, 120Hz
My desktop monitor has a higher resolution and refresh rate and doesn’t require me to have glasses on my face.
But I do like the idea of being able to haul goggles around for use with a laptop, and I tried it with a Royole Moon (unlike VR goggles that spend some of the resolution on peripheral vision to give you an immersive view oriented at games, this sticks the pixels where you’d view a screen) a while back. I didn’t think it was worthwhile compared to a laptop screen. Here was my take:
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Tend to fog up. Probably not an issue for XREAL glasses; the Moon has stuff to try to block out surrounding light.
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Annoying to not be able to see what one is doing occasionally without lifting glasses Probably not an issue; IIRC, the XREAL glasses have a button that flips between three levels of opacity.
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Pressure on nose began to get annoying after longer sessions. Probably could do better with better design, lighter weight; I could believe that XREAL glasses do better.
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Unless glasses are situated just right for any given eye, slightly blurry. This was obnoxious, and I expect a fundamental issue for any HMD, absent the introduction of some kind of motorized mount for the screens to detect and slightly auto-adjust screens. Edges also slightly blurry, probably require some kind of fancier optics to solve; users also report this on the XREAL glasses. The Moon was really aimed at movie viewing, for which this is entirely tolerable, but for reading text, it’s annoying.
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One more thing to carry with laptop and set up beyond just flipping open a lid, which is somewhat annoying.
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One more battery-powered device to charge, though one could feed off the laptop’s battery. Could also carry a power station.
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One more cable floating around.
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The Moon was intended to do movie playback rather than just act as a monitor, so took a few operations to get it into “monitor mode”. I can believe that other HMDs could work better.
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Connection that didn’t like talking to one of my laptop’s external HDMI display ports and would sometimes lose connection. I can believe that other HMDs would work better, maybe with a different display.
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Some screen area not at optimal viewing area. For me, the visual arc for the Moon was slightly too large and the edges were hard to see. I can believe that a different HMD might do better. I was able to use xrandr to just not use some of the screen on Linux, create a smaller, virtual screen; I’d imagine that one could probably use a similar fix with another display.
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Resolution on HMDs not as high as laptop display. Not the end of the world, but it’s rare for me to downgrade in resolution.
I liked the idea. I did not find the reality to be where I’d hoped for; they did not replace my laptop screen.
vulgarcynic@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
I’ve been considering a pair of X-reals out of curiosity but they are right at the tipping point for tech I may not use enough to justify the purchase.
7112@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I have a Gen-1 pair. They are great for traveling. If you game on your phone or steam deck they are also nice to have.
Price point is too high. There are lot of other options out there. I only recommend if you travel a lot or you want to turn your phone into a mini-laptop.
fangleone2526@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
Price used isn’t that high, can score an nreal air for 100 ish on eBay.
tal@lemmy.today 3 days ago
Yeah, that’s kind of my take as well.
If HMDs get to the point where they can replace laptop screens, then manufacturers can just exclude the laptop screen from portable computers and ship an HMD, so that’ll offset some of the cost.
I also don’t care too much about the price if it’s honestly something that I’d use day in and day out. If a manufacturer could give me a display that is equivalent to my existing, traditional monitor but perfectly fills my visual arc and gives me a private view of the screen, I’d be willing to spend $1000 or more; I use my monitor all the time, and in the past, I’ve kept monitors for many years before they get thrown out; they have a lot more longevity than, say, a GPU. My problem is just that, as I mention in my comment, my experience is that HMDs just aren’t a reasonable replacement for displays today, as they come with too many drawbacks. Even if the thing cost nothing, I’d still mainly use my laptop’s display. So at best, an HMD is a device that I’d use occasionally, for special-purpose cases. And that dramatically reduces what I’d be willing to to spend.
There are HMDs that do win in their own niches. VR displays like the Index are better than traditional monitors for playing VR games. The Royole Moon I have is better for watching movies on the go than a laptop screen. AR glasses like like XREALs are the only way to do AR; can’t really do it with a traditional display. There are probably some people out there who really, really want to do these specific things a lot, and for them, that might be worthwhile.
I’d still lug out my Moon if I knew in advance that I was going to be viewing sensitive stuff in a public environment. With video cameras and stuff all over in today’s world, I’m a little uncomfortable having passwords flash on the screen, for example.
But there isn’t any HMD that I’d use in preference to my computer’s screen for general use. And that makes the thing a toy or a specialized tool that I’m not getting use out of most of the time.