I’ve been reading / light working in virtual reality for ~2 hours/day for a few months. My setup is a bit different than Ozzie’s, so I thought I’d share that here.
I use a Windows gaming laptop with the Oculus Quest 2, connected via Virtual Desktop instead of Immersed. Virtual Desktop has far lower latency, and slightly higher resolution than Immersed, but only shows you one screen at a time. The latency is low enough to be practically unnoticable (smaller than latency differences between similar computers, https://danluu.com/input-lag/) . A few months ago, it was Windows only, but since added Mac support. I don’t think the GPU on my laptop is important for my setup.
Pros
The main reason I use Virtual Desktop is to get out of my chair, either to lying down or standing up. When I hava a stomachache, headache, or soreness, I get a significant productivity benefit from being able to work lying down. By default my VR productivity is a bit lower than normal, but more enjoyable.
Cons
The biggest downside I’ve found is that VR definitely gives me myopia, due to vergence problems. Whenever I take off the headset, my distance vision gets blurrer for a few hours until my eyes adjust to focusing different distances. I think this gradually leads to long term myopia if not offset by vision exercises or something, but will be sovled in future headsets. I’ve tried placing my virtual screen at the focal distance of my headset, 1.3 meters, but that didn’t help.
Virtual Desktop takes many seconds to connect, and sometimes needs to be restarted, which is a significant flow-disruptor.
Overall, I’ll continue to use VR the same as I do now, and hopefully up my VR time/other screen time when better headsets come out.
I’ve been reading / light working in virtual reality for ~2 hours/day for a few months. My setup is a bit different than Ozzie’s, so I thought I’d share that here.
I use a Windows gaming laptop with the Oculus Quest 2, connected via Virtual Desktop instead of Immersed. Virtual Desktop has far lower latency, and slightly higher resolution than Immersed, but only shows you one screen at a time. The latency is low enough to be practically unnoticable (smaller than latency differences between similar computers, https://danluu.com/input-lag/) . A few months ago, it was Windows only, but since added Mac support. I don’t think the GPU on my laptop is important for my setup.
Pros
The main reason I use Virtual Desktop is to get out of my chair, either to lying down or standing up. When I hava a stomachache, headache, or soreness, I get a significant productivity benefit from being able to work lying down. By default my VR productivity is a bit lower than normal, but more enjoyable.
Cons
The biggest downside I’ve found is that VR definitely gives me myopia, due to vergence problems. Whenever I take off the headset, my distance vision gets blurrer for a few hours until my eyes adjust to focusing different distances. I think this gradually leads to long term myopia if not offset by vision exercises or something, but will be sovled in future headsets. I’ve tried placing my virtual screen at the focal distance of my headset, 1.3 meters, but that didn’t help.
Virtual Desktop takes many seconds to connect, and sometimes needs to be restarted, which is a significant flow-disruptor.
Overall, I’ll continue to use VR the same as I do now, and hopefully up my VR time/other screen time when better headsets come out.
Thanks for sharing. I think that the Windows options seem pretty strictly superior to the Apple options at this point.
I’ve used Virtual Desktop with the Quest, but it doesn’t allow you to use a wired connection (using a mac). With my wifi setup, it was pretty slow.
Sorry to hear about the myopia! I didn’t really notice that. I hope future units improve here.