Sony PlayStation VR

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It’s no surprise that the most expensive VR headset on this list is also the most fully featured. It’s not cheap, not by any stretch of the imagination, but the Vive Pro 2 benefits from a handful of exclusive, game-friendly features that you won’t find anywhere else. Sweet spot: The area right in the centre of the lens that affords the clearest view of the display itself. The larger the sweet spot, the better.

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The most niche entry on this list by far, the Nintendo Labo VR Kit can only be used by those who own a Nintendo Switch already. An extension of Nintendo Labo, the Labo VR is not so much a headset as a collection of wearable cardboard “Toy-Cons” that are built by the user. To enjoy Nintendo’s virtual reality creations, you slot the Switch console into a small cardboard unit that straps onto the head, with a pair of plastic goggles acting as the lens between eyes and display. From there, you add the buildable headset attachments, each of which has its own specific set of VR mini-games.

The best VR headsets you can buy in 2023

Mixed reality: A combination of VR and AR. Mixed reality takes the concept of AR – layering CGI over the real world – and improves upon it by enabling more complex interactions between the virtual and the real. When Facebook announced that it would be rebranding to “Meta”, it also revealed that it would be expanding into something called the metaverse in a major way. In the accompanying Tweet, Facebook-now-Meta described the metaverse in the most understandable manner we could find: “a place where we’ll play and connect in 3D”. The PSVR 2 is also slightly lighter, thanks to a slimmer design. Both those features make it more comfortable to play in VR for longer. PSVR 2: news and rumors To begin with, the Vive Pro 2’s display is the highest resolution we’ve ever seen on a commercial VR headset, with a boosted total resolution of 4,896 x 2,448 ( 2,448 x 2,448 per eye). It also now supports a maximum 120Hz refresh rate, as well as a wider 130-degree FOV. Provided your accompanying PC is powerful enough to meet the minimum spec requirements, then there’s absolutely nothing better for virtual reality gaming at the moment. Games like Half-Life: Alyx never looked so good. And that’s without compromising on the hardware front. By slotting in a new processor and increasing the available memory, Oculus (Meta – this is getting tiring) has drastically improved the performance of the Quest 2, opening the door for more ambitious VR games. Not that existing titles are left wanting: courtesy of a gorgeous near-4K LCD panel refreshing at a smooth 90Hz, games and other experiences look better than anything we’ve tested before.

VR headsets for all budgets in 2023 The best wired and wireless VR headsets for all budgets in 2023

At its core, that’s all the metaverse is: any collaborative virtual environment accessed via a VR headset like the Oculus/Meta Quest 2. Applications that fall under the metaverse umbrella have actually been around for a while now: VRChat and Rec Room allow users to don a headset, create an avatar and jump into a virtual world shared by others where they can play games, hang out or just sit and marvel at the scenery. IPD slider: Inter-Pupillary Distance slider – a physical or virtual slider that allows you to widen or shrink the gap between the two lenses inside the HMD. After all, some of us have bigger heads or wider-set eyes than others.One of the areas I wanted to focus on first was the idea of creating a vent in the headset to let air out, similar to the vents on the PS5 console that allows airflow," senior art director Yujin Morisawa wrote in a blog post. "Our engineers came up with this idea as a good way to allow ventilation and avoid having the lens fog up while players are immersed in their VR games". FOV: Field of Vision – how much of the virtual world you can see when peering into the lenses of your HMD. Most VR headsets have a FOV of around 100-110 degrees, which is just barely enough to make you feel like you’re inside the world, rather than just looking at a screen. Screen-door effect: This is when you can see the individual pixels of your headset’s display, arranged in a grid that overlays the image. It’s an unfortunate side-effect of the current limitations of VR technology; the higher the resolution of the display, the less visible the screen-door effect is. What on earth is the metaverse? Follow this particular thread to its destination and you might imagine something like Ready Player One, where the metaverse is a thriving world complete with a functioning economy and social classes. While it’s true that several companies are buying up virtual real estate in the metaverse, however, we’re a little way off the dystopian future Cline imagines in his novel.

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How to choose the best VR headset for you (continued) What’s the difference between virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality? If you’re a newcomer to VR, you will probably have seen or heard the phrases above. But what exactly do they mean?It’s by no means a perfect headset, however. The Cosmos still suffers from a few niggling flaws, not least of which is the bloated price tag. The Cosmos controllers are unwieldy, and the lenses have a pitifully small sweet spot, so you will notice strong blurring if you move your eyes from the centre of the image. HTC’s Viveport user interface, moreover, is far less polished than the Oculus or Steam equivalents. If these things don’t dissuade you, there’s no simpler way to put it: the Quest 2 is the best VR headset around. HMD: Head-Mounted Display – The catch-all term for the VR headset itself, excluding any peripherals.