what a ridicolous fanboy statement. brad is like many of us, JUST USING THE PRODUCT. it doesnt take a genius to know whats wrong with stuff. if actual developers/r&d needs a youtuber, they need to find a different job LMAO!
@@SINfromPLit’s obvious that Bradley knows a bit more than most users in terms of user experience and hardware. It’s this exact “the consumer knows nothing” that leads to bad product to begin with
@@Superwazop somnium creators claim themselves to be 'enthusiasts'. brad might know more than 'most users', but the average user who is deep and long into VR can tell the exact same thing. one does not even have to try somnium to know it's worthless.
@@paulct91 to my knowledge bradley did not contribute even once in vr software development. he is nothing more than a consumer. a consumer who is addicted to vrchat and barely even tests anything else. he built his following among burned out pcvr elitists who are butthurt that Meta is the leader, Quest is the most popular headset ever, and they are just looking for valve to save vr, when in reality they have zero real interest in vr. even in this video he doesnt reveal anything groundbreaking in terms of knowledge. lens distortion? chromatic abberation? screen door effect? these things are common knowledge for anyone who has been taking vr seriously the past few years.
Having controls on the headset is definitely useful, particularly for functionality you deliberately don't want to activate accidentally. The "only a few people notice it" approach is absolutely terrible for building any kind of tech, let alone XR. People don't notice anything and can't tell unless deliberately looking for it, especially from a brief, highly multi-sensory experience. It's how we got early LCD TV's with massive latency, and how we still have expensive HMD's with massive lens distortion that the software doesn't adequately address.
Well you can't work on making something better if most people don't notice or can't really describe what is getting to them so you didn't know there was a solvable problem for anybody yet. And in the case of VR type stuff you have to get used to some quirks anyway - the god rays, distortion, illegible text outside of a small sweetspot, visible pixels, the weight, tracking issues (etc) are all part of the experience to some extent - boundaries are being pushed and not everything can be as perfect as you would like in all situations. It may well be that wear this headset for a few hours and even though you did once notice you have adapted enough that now you are moving your eyes and head in a way that doesn't really trigger that uncomfortable feeling automatically, or just that by having a slightly different shaped head that bad distortion is not really in the FOV you use - if it can be improved that is obviously great, but expecting any single VR platform to be perfect at every category when they are trying to interface so completely with the wild variation of humanity. Which is one of the things that makes this headset sound interesting to me - the promise of more openness means that any of the bits that don't suit you may well be very easy to customise.
@@smallbutdeadly931 Believe me. You don't miss out much other than less money in your bank. A $150 phone is good enough of what you need because gaming on mobile phone is trash. If you need good camera just buy an actual camera!
@@evolicious or just get a mid-range phone for a couple of hundred like a sensible person instead of locking yourself into a contract for an overpriced piece of kit that was designed to be obsolete in a couple of years.
Great video Brad, very in depth. Hope the Somnium team don't regret inviting you too much. If they figured Brad certification could be obtained as easily as THX certification, or that Brad would be, like the man from Delmonte, and raise a thumb to say yes, they unfortunately got a rude awakening. Instead they got an ultra polite and softly spoken Gordon Ramsey. Fingers crossed they fix the issues. I get the feeling that those who like the Pimax Crystal and Aero (simmers) will still like and see a lot of value in this HMD and it's good to see a European produced, purely PCVR focused high-end headset on the scene.
We, of course will polish and fix a lot of issues which were mentioned to us. Majority of issues will go away with mass production and factory grade calibrations / inspections.
@@SINfromPL Demo units are often hand-crafted. Brad was brought in to user test before they move to mass production. If they brought him in after they finalized the design, he would have no use being there since they can't really go back on the design. You have to understand that companies smaller than Meta don't have the kinds of resources to spend a shit ton of funding on creating a multiple custom mass-production-ready units at factory quality when prototyping (most of the calibration issues are really really hard to deal with unless units are calibrated with expensive factory equipment saved for mass production). However the timeline does seem very rushed so we'll see if they can hold their end of the deal up with the date they promised consumers.
I am very encouraged by this company being willing to have Brad try out their prototype and rip it to pieces publicly. I was not previously interested in the the VR1, but I'm becoming interested now. And it's because of stuff like this. I've been running a Pimax 8KX for years and recently bought a Crystal and ultimately returned it (after a month of headaches with Pimax support). I have a love/hate relationship with Pimax. They make the most powerful consumer VR gear on the market, but they do not stand behind their products. And I don't mean just their support, but how Pimax operates at every level. Working with Pimax is always a gamble about how things are going to go, and there's pretty much always some level of jury rigging and working-around jank involved. I'm seeing signs that Somnium intends to make something that's kind of like what Pimax does, but with a company behind it that actually cares about supporting their customers and getting them a product that really works without having to go through BS. I am absolutely willing to pay a higher price for that if it means never having to work with Pimax support again. Offer a product that does what Pimax does, but without the jankiness of both the product and company, and I will buy it. Take. My. Money. But then again, Somnium may just turn out to be another Pimax.
@@SargonDragon Very much my thinking as well. I've nearly upgraded from my OG vive many times towards a Pimax, but one look at the mess they seem to be support wise put me off. Varjo seems like it might be a better competitor and worth considering - didn't take long to find quite a bit of detail on their OpenXR support etc, but with Somnium so close to production and Valve no doubt on the horizon too I'm waiting to see who is worthy and which product is most suited my desired uses. Which as I prefer Linux for all things probably pushes towards Valve as they seem all in on Linux support these days. However if your headset supports OpenXR and is open enough in the implementation of everything that I believe I can get it working without 'official' Linux support I'd take the risk if it is better in some other way. Worst case scenario I have to actually use that Windoze license from time to time when I want to do VR, annoying but not the end of the world if the VR experience is better.
$2000 would be a good price for the high-end model. $2000 for the BASE model seems pretty questionable, because it is the pile of features on the top-end model which actually distinguishes it from its competition. It seems like a reasonable guess that the top-end model will be $3000, and possibly more. The $2000 - $3000 price range puts it into competition with actual commercial-grade headsets, not to mention the long--heralded Index 2. Heck, if the top-end model is expensive enough, some people might wait to see if it's possible to jailbreak an Apple Vision Pro for use as a pure HMD. Basically: this headset is exciting as long as it doesn't have any serious competition. The more expensive it is, the less unique of a product it is.
💯 this. Given the competition, this is a tough sell. I heard the price when I saw the VR Flight Sim Guy interview with this company and at first I thought the base model was $899 and didn't think anything of it, I miss-heard the value. When I realised it was $1899 that makes all of the criticism Bradley has provided very valid and concerning. On top of that, I'm loathed to go back to what appears to be a front heavy bulky headset. For the price, honestly this has to be perfect and it's a long way from that.
@@dtrjones It is not a long way to fix those issues. Again, some might think it is, but there will be a lot of tweaking and testing happening in the last 3 months.
the BASE model is 1899 euros!? that's insane for what it is based on your description, it genuinely feels like it'd be better to just buy a pimax crystal with steam tracking plate and still be about the same price with better FOV, I was hoping base would be closer in price to the big screens 1000 price, I don't think i'll be getting a somnium, which sucks because that was genuinely the headset i was most excited for as an upgrade, feels like I might just be getting the vive pro 2 to replace my original vive at this rate
I just went for a Quest 3 and started the long wait for something like the Deckard. The Somnium to me seems just like an European Pimax, they may claim this or that, but we'll see when it actually releases.
The review / Impressions video I was looking forward to watching. Thank you again Brad So looking forward to trying the Apple Vision Pro in 2024 and definitely will buy one if you think its worth the money - also a Gen 1 AVP will surely hold its money maybe. Artful
The beyond is a solid step back. It's not small form factor, it's feature gutted. It's like saying a meat pie is small form factor because you removed all the filling and smushed the pastry into a small ball. Technically it's smaller but not really since its just a ball of pastry now.
@@thelelanatorlol3978 It has the features I want. It has a really nice mic, it has a good set of displays, it has some pretty dang nice audio once I plug my IEMs in, and it works with all my existing gear. They stripped back all the features I never use, which makes me immensely happy.
Sometimes less is more. I do not have any VR games that could benefit from eye tracking. I don't need to share my VR headset with anyone. I don't care that there is no passthrough, and that there is still a cable tethering me to my PC. I don't need inside-out tracking when my setup is stationary. I like the Beyond because they cut out all the extra (unnecessary) fat and made a headset that does one thing well, and that comfort for PCVR gaming.
Not too keen about hearing about the blurry line issue, oy :(( Really hoping this headset would fill my need for a wider FOV headset. Steve "flight sim guy" interview said they have a hardware fix (at an extra cost) for the chromatic abberations. I love wide FOV and always used the "Small" mode with my old 8KX and I didnt mind the FOV on the Index. I had the XTAL 5K an 8K and the letterbox style image was off putting. I just know when Pimax's wide FOV 12K gets released its going to be plagued with issues and the public will basiclly be the test pilots for it. Looking forward to what you and the other testers final evaluation will be. I did sign up on their website for "pre orders". I really like your approach for reviewing these headsets, so many others , Im talking to you MRtv, get caught up in the moment and and forget how to properly critique the headset. Thank again Bradly for your content!!
@@OdyBeRidin he was also really bad on quest 3 - he got six units and they all they imaginary issues - he really shat on Meta that they have do improve QC, yet he never shown a single photo or video of such issues. You would think that would be a content for his channel but no, we only got his testimony. Now he is in love with pimax, gets invited to somnium and gets his travel and stuff paid, yet in the comments says he wasn't paid to make video. All these guys are just super lame and have nothing interesting going on, they always interview each other, and immediately block anyone who dares to call bs out. He is already defending somnium. Ugly human.
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
Once you use something like the beyond, it kinda kills even the Q3. That's one of my least favourite things about it. I can't use normal headsets anymore, they feel like cinder blocks.
Ever since the Quest 3 and most importantly the Bigscreen Beyond came out this year, I never want to go back to bulky headsets like that. Alle developers should aim at making their headset as small as the Bigscreen Beyond. For me the Beyond is the only headset in years that made me genuinelly excited about VR again.
Yeah the size really does affect how much I’d use my quest 2. Like a brick on your face and sometimes me and my friends would skip vr sessions on go to flatscreen because it felt like a chore, quest 3 was a huge upgrade for me and I can only imagine the big screen beyond would be crazy
Be more creative, you can't always smush features into tiny spaces, why do you think the HMDs you mentioned are so feature lacking...? The "I" or "most" people don't want that is nonsense... this HMD in particular is now directly competing in the same $1,000 HMD space just like Varjo Aero, Pimax Crystal, Big Screen Beyond, and others...
@@paulct91 be more creative, somnium is a giant headset and does not sport a single new feature, and modules like hand tracking arent even done by them. there is nothing innovative about somnium, and its all from sellers of virtual land for real money in their dead metaverse.
No perfect headset out there at the moment, but for the price the Quest 3 fits my needs at the moment, although I am saving up for a Big screen for the comfort.
I always like your dives into products more than most due to how you seem to approach VR in a whole, thanks for making the video and I do hope they (and other companies) value your journalistic integrity and invite you to do more things like this in the future.
The price of this HMD is nuts because of the basic issues it has TODAY, it needs maybe 2 more years of R&D. It's been a while... It can be concerning when there's a gap between videos, but in this case there was travel involved. The great thing about your ability to review VR is that you already know what works and you can relay that to the HMD developers. Open platform don't always work, OSVR died. I think mostly due to the HMDs not being of quality, I had one that died 3 months after I used it.
If HMD developers needs feedback from youtubers, then there are two options: 1. they just make high paper specs DESIGNED to lure people who have more money than sense (vr flight sim guy) 2. they actually dont know what they are doing and just riding off hype words like OPEN, MADE IN EU, when in reality 99% of shit is not open sourced, and most parts are made in China anyway. It's just assembled in Europe.
@@SINfromPL "feedback from youtubers" is more marketing than development. That's the role of social media "Influencers". I did get the feeling that the headset isn't on schedule though, due to the lack of strap options. So perhaps it's not too late for them to take criticism on board and fix some issues (at least software issues such as barrel distortion correction). Bradley preempting a "rebuttal" press release would indicate that's not what they intend to do though.
Compared to other high end headsets it isn't sounding crazy to me. You can spend a great deal more on a headset now and you seem to get generally less potential with perhaps slightly more polish than this prototype apparently had. The world of higher end VR hardware is not cheap, and really the perception it should be is rather more twisted by Meta (etc) pushing hardware out subsidised by their other business and the ability to make enough of them to get lower production cost per unit. And none of the flaws he pointed too seem that challenging to me, I'd probably want to use my own headphones with VR anyway, the headstrap are one of the first things a user is likely to change/modify for more comfort as no matter how adjustable 'one size fits all' is never as comfortable, and the visual issues are likely more calibration than hardware.
@@foldionepapyrus3441 stop shilling. How is somnium any different than htc vive that came out in 2016 with stations and controllers for 800? In 2024, with natural progress in resolution, suddenly we have to spend 2.5x as much for the headset alone? It's not high end at all, stop joking
Brad, Somnium had you come BECAUSE they knew you'd neither be overly dazzled or inclined to hold back on any criticisms. While everyone wants to hear the good things about their products and creations, only those who are genuinely serious about creating the best product they can want to hear nothing BUT good things. The fact that Somnium had the balls to have you along tells me they'll continue to work at improving their HMD, if not quickly enough for their current launch date, then as tome goes on--and that's a good thing. Thanks for this discussion; as usual, your insights on VR in general are always fascinating and informative
Thank you for kind words. Of course we will fix all the issues and majority of them will be gone with factory level calibrations and inspections + updated warping with latest tested lenses.
I doubt that Somnium had any illusions that Brad wasn't going to rip up their prototypes. It's a risky move because the public doesn't understand the concept of prototypes, and they will automatically assume the same problems will be present in production units. Which could happen, but I do get the impression that the whole point was to get that harsh feedback so they'd know what to work on. I think the critical moment will be when they have Brad come a second time, and we see whether Brad is impressed with them having actually fixed the issues he pointed out or not.
If they're QD mini led then they're likely VA panels so... some VA ghosting is likely present as well. With 4 buttons on the top... seems cool but odd. They should make them smaller and put them on the side. A lot of people mount mics or small fans to the top of their HMD and with buttons there you have a lot less mount area.
This is why companies should have you test their HMD’s. You tell them what is necessary for a headset to be good. Thanks Brad! Hope you and your family have a Happy Healthy New Year!
fck companies who needs a youtuber LMAO! who the hell do you think brad is. tons of people could give the very same feedback without having a 100k+ channel.
Very different preview compared to flight sim guy. If MRTV where in the room, this would be THE best headset ever created as it stands. I hope they invite you back.
Mrtv was invited, but couldn't make it on time. Yeah, if he was there, we would have 8 hours worth of videos how awesome this is, especially for pcvr enthusiasts like him who aren't capable of playing anything at all lmao. He is just a giant billboard for vr lenses, straps, travel cases, hp reverb, pimax, and whoever sends him anything for free
And yeah vr flight sim is also just a shill. He hasn't noticed anything wrong with the headset lmao! Also a giant billboard and affiliate program shill. These people always hang out with each other and invite to their channels and stuff. Circlejerk community
"If MRTV where in the room, this would be THE best headset ever created as it stands." no shit! I used to trust his reviews back in the Pimax 5K days but that ship has sailed....
MRTV is a laughing stock since before the 'fantastic' HP G2 he used to shill. His deep involvement with Pimax is all the proof anyone needs how trustworthy he is.
When It comes down to the microphones on HMD's. It's usually the acoustics of the headset that make it sound crappy. I suggest putting the microphone(s) more outwards, then pointing the hole towards the mouth could fix certain issues. It can also be the resonants of the HMD shell that can cause issues. When making the hole for the mic. The hole itself to be like for example 2 millimeters. Then countersinking the outside of the hole to about 5 millimeters in a cone shape to direct sound to the hole center entrance. Creating more sound capture area. But HMD makers need to invest in sound engineers to make it sound right.
Seems like an interesting headset. But now that the first experiences are out it seems like the beyond will be the better choice considering size, weight, potential problems & especially price. I'll wait for the audio strap reviews and then probably buy one
The Outer Wilds VR mod uses has the light tied to touching your head with you hands. It worked increadiably well so, and it was was really reliable unlike a lot of other body systems in VR. I totally understand the desire to have additional controls on the headset from that.
Bradley, would you happen to know what the focal distance for the VR1 is? I recently got to try the Crystal and found it caused a very noticeable eye strain for me when sim racing that just is not there on any other VR headsets I’ve tried and owned and realised it was due to the use of 1m focal distance rather than the industry standard of 2m (give or take a little). I could feel the exact same fighting of the focus of my eyes trying to resolve the image in the far distance as I could when trying to resolve sub 1m distant objects on typical VR headsets (but something that was MUCH better on the Crystal which I suspect is why Pimax opted for the 1m focal distance). Many thanks in advance!
Will have to wait and see if the issues are corrected in time. For the price the HMD needs to be the best it can. As of now I'm waiting after the first release wave.
Hi Brad, thanks for your thoughts. I had only watched VR Flightsimguys coverage. Interesting he never mentioned anything about the display issues, but we are all different. I wear glasses but have better than 20/20 vision with them on, so I really value your opinion. I think the biggest elephant in the room is the price. The entry level, plus the as I call it steam eco system if you don’t already have it is a big ask. If valve don’t announce a new HMD, I’d argue how much of a better experience you would get from Sonium as compared to the Q3. From what I can tell it’s not worth the difference in price.
At 1900 bucks I'm gonna notice ALL the little flaws. There's a million little things that remind me that I'm in a VR headset playing a game, so I'd much rather see good Index/Quest competitors. Than all these OMGBBQPREMIUNDIAMONDPLUSULTRA headsets that cost an arm and a leg.
All issues will be fixed upon release. If that means we need to slightly delay it we will, but we are confident that all named "issues" are easily fixable and we will improve every single part of headset in then ext 3 months until first deliveries.
A company inviting you to test their headset is a serious show of confidence, it really makes me take this headset much more seriously. The price is out of my range personally, but that isn't a comment on the price just my own personal finances. I really hope this headset does well and that they continue in the future. For a first product from a new comer (in terms of hardware), it's impressive. Not perfect, particularly things like the "open" marketing, but I think they are by far the most interesting new player in the hardware space and I really want them to succeed.
19:20 Looks like eyebrow, nose and upper face tracking will be out of the equation if that is all that the cameras can see :( Might as well go to the Inseye photodiode-based eye tracking route at that point.
I feel kinda sad about the vr scene lately. Alot of companies with no experience seem to be jumping in while the ones with experience are sluggish in progression. Standalone holding onto mobile processors just isnt cutting it imo, at least rn. yet the main pushing in tech is that route while PCVR is being left behind. And while the new steam headset could be cool, I dont think its gonna change anything. At the end of the day, we all know that we buy new vr headsets to sit in front of mirrors or hangout on vrchat cause theres minimal games being made that even make use of the awesome features in vr. this headset just seems like another generic beta test for something that some other company would do better.
So the main reason I'm looking forward to the VR1 is a specific combination of issues that other headsets have that are unique to me. #1, I HATE the glare that's present on pretty much all headsets nowadays. Go to pretty much any HMD review from the past couple years and all of them will say "there's this glare that's present but it's not really bad and you stop noticing it after a while so it's fine" but with me specifically, that glare never stops being noticeable and its presence totally ruins my experience. So the only HMD's I'm willing to buy from here on out are ones with Aspheric lenses, because they pretty much eliminate glare from the equation. Even the Bigscreen Beyond, a headset that people all over are praising for its pancake lenses, is still prone to glare as mentioned in almost every Bigscreen Beyond review I've watched. So, Aspheric lense setups like the Aero and VR1 are ideal for me. "Why not buy the Aero then? It's cheaper and from a more well known company." Well, the #2 issue would be my graphics card. I have a 6950XT because the 7000 series cards have horrible issues in VR, and I refuse to ever use an Nvidia card again. Since the Aero straight up doesn't work on AMD cards, the VR1 is pretty much my only option for a high resolution, high FOV, high refresh rate, eye tracked foveated rendering, Aspheric lense, functional on AMD cards, base station tracked headset for the time being.
@@SINfromPL never said I hate nvidia, they make great cards. For anyone else, I'd highly recommend getting an nvidia card over an AMD card. Their performance is just solidly and consistently way ahead of anything that AMD has to offer.
Did you try any version other than the full fledged XR version? Just wondering if there are comfort improvements to be had there, considering going from XR3 to Aero (there's more there than just mixed reality stuff but best example I can think of).
Great video Bradley and I think your opinions are technically valid. I would spend $2000 dollars on a headset. Base on your recommendation. Happy New Year.
The weight issue shouldn't be inherent to aspheric lenses, given that my Vive Pro 1 with GearVR lens upgrade is just fine on weight. (Certainly a lot better than a Quest.) I do need to fix up the distortion profile somehow though.
Basically in todays age, I feel optics designs that aren’t trying to improve center of gravity is a problem. And most companies doing aspheric are also trying to do dual-aspheric: which is even more weight away from your face
no worries. This was my first video since I got a haircut. And when I edited the footage, I realized that I already went back to swiping my hair lmao@@1369Stiles
This is making the awesome pimax crystal the option to go for. The price will be out of bounds by the time everything is add that is standard on the crystal.
For that sort of price, I would expect people to be singing its praises - deservedly. Having a thrown together strap, no audio, actually the list here is long - its just a no. I know full well that if key areas of a HMD are lacking, its going to result in me just not using it and at this stage Im done being a guinea pig.
Because you can not get high FOV with pancake lenses today and have high resolution. Our headset has 125 degrees horizontal FOV which is market leader in a consumer HMD.
@@ArturTechTales market leader? Consumer headset? LMAO. How about you release the god damn thing first? You've had 2 players peak in your market leaving metaverse in the last 30 days. You and your brother perhaps?
I'm just really tired of bulky aspheric lense devices dominating the top end. Aside from the nit challenge with pancakes, the pancake visual and comfort experience just craps all over aspherics and continued headsets with gigantism kill excitement for casuals. P.S. I owned a Crystal and mailed it back. Kept my Quest 3 and will wait for the first company to release a good $2,000 pancake/3.5k per eye + microOLED Vision Pro knockoff.
@adrenalinejunkie3828 the Apple HMD has pancakes and it'll be the first high end device that more than 7 flight Sim enthusiasts buy. As a former Pimax Crystal owner, the distortions were bad and I'd choose pancakes any day. I highly doubt aspherics will make up any more than 20% of high end headsets in a decade
Flightsimmers and Sim-Racers do basically the same, so are looking for similar devices. Only difference is that you need more fps in racing games, but everything runs a lot better than MSFS.
@@Leynad778 headset is either all around good or not. No such thing as hmd for simmers. Are there monitors specifically for sim? No. The same simmers swore by pimax fov for years, and even that feature is long gone.
@@SINfromPL Triple-screens are still very popular in Sim-Racing and only used for racing games. I prefer 49"-Ultrawide and also more common for sim-racing than other genres. Pimax headsets are certainly not aimed for casual VR-gamers as well and a heavy headset like the Crystal comes with quite some cons, but the resolution is almost necessary to get a visual clarity anywhere close to a display. I own the 8KX and it's clarity is slightly lower than the Pico 4, but the FOV is even on "small" significantly wider, so having an Index-like FOV mit higher clarity is IMO the best compromise today. At least one sim-racer who bought the BSB was very disappointed by it compare to his Quest Pro, which he still prefers. If you want 90 Hz, which is IMO necessary, you need to run lower resolution than the Quest 3 or Pico 4 with a tiny eye-box and more glare, so apart from the form-factor it actually isn't good enough for any sims regardless if simulating cars or planes.
I'm afraid Somnium will suffer the same fate the Quest Pro did. It spent too much time baking and now it's kind of outdated on release and way too expensive for mass adoption. Aspherical lenses - while having great light passthrough - seem inferior to pancake lenses because of weight distribution and comfort. As an enthusiast I can't see myself buying this HMD. I also firmly believe that sticking to lighthouse tracking will be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to long-term adoption. I see that tech being phased out, sooner rather than later. The future of FBT is either AI based estimation or a standalone inside-out tracked solution. SlimeVR has proven to me that they are reliable across 6-12h without charging and they are self-serviceable (if you built them yourself).
I don't think outside in tracking is going to go away, as it is just too reliable and accurate compared to the alternatives. And really isn't hard to set up - easier than running a speaker wire as the only connection the lighthouse needs is to a power supply, and you tend to have sockets all over the place. There are many users that won't really want or need such great tracking, so having an inside-out tracking system as an option is great for those people, and perhaps makes getting into VR/AR stuff seem more accessible, but for now at least that little cube on a tripod/ mounted on your wall is just better. Until some other tracking methods can really and reliably compete many VR use cases will almost demand the lighthouse and once you have got into VR you might well want to upgrade for the tracking that just works. Also while it is expensive if its as good and becomes as open as claimed there are not many competitors even close to the same ballpark for HMD display quality, and they are not cheap either with no promises of openness.
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
@@SadlyItsBradley Pancake lenses with much smaller FOV and other issues like glare will never be a go for me until those things are fixed. Sorry here I have to very much disagree with you Brad.
As I watch this, the open source part... kinda just sounds lazy.... Especially with the headset being that expensive, open source is good any day of the week, but making something open source because you haven't fully fleshed out the product on your own is another story. With them hosting competitions, sure community building is good, but to me sounds like another testament to their lack of work in that area (the area that the community event is focused on creating), "if the community gives us the answers then sure we'll fix it and give them a couple pennies by comparison" even though you already paid for a functional product, not one you have to help develop, yet here you are helping develop it...? But to be fair, these are observations from knowing next to nothing of the situation, I haven't been following the company.
What buying risk are you talking about? If they sell in Europe, you can just return it. Pay with PayPal or credit card for ease chargeback in case things go south. But there is no real risk involved here. Just guaranteed disappointment cause this headset doesn't do anything right
@@wickfut8917 no, and i don't need to. it was never interesting in the first place, and the fact there hasn't been any coverage FROM COMPANY itself for what feels like an eternity does not give an optimistic outlook. in an era where Quest 3 exists, it doesn't even make sense to come with it to the market. why would anyone be even interested in one? i feel like you gotta be a meta hater and just love paper specs and tether.
@@SINfromPL Sooner or later Apple and Google will join the party big time. VR is just a stop gap to achieving AR glasses at some point competing or even replacing smartphones if done right. Why would you wanna use a 5-7" display device if you can have several virtual large screens with depth perception. Pair it with decent UX and people will buy it like hotcakes.
@@GaaraSama1983 once we get to half a day battery time and regular glasses factor then we can start to worry. Not even Apple vision will replace the comfort of a single big 4k monitor. Work in today's headsets is a pure gimmick. And it's not like in 2 years we will get that magical lightweight headset.
@@SINfromPL I agree with that. Realistic timeline will be more like 10-15 years to reach comfortable 4k monitor experience. I also think that for a long time they gonna need to use an external unit to power the glasses. Can't bend physics and if you wanna achieve small glasses I don't see any other realistic solution from my amateurish baseline knowledge. Wouldn't mind a kind of powerbank unit in my pocket connected with one USB-C cable to drive the glasses.
It's honestly hard to be excited about brick vr now that something like the beyond exists for me haha. I hope companies try to move on from vr bricks sooner than later.
@@iamboringvideos6832the sacrifices are worth it though. Most people who've spent a longer time in vr will probably agree. Comfort and usability is just so important. Features come later, if a majority of people can't even spend more than 30min using an hmd. Compromises do have value as well though, and there's a place for many kinds of hmds, depending on the people buying them. Standalone, mixed reality, social vr features, or maximum comfort are things everyone would probably like for their headset, but most headsets that try to do it all, fall short heavily in certain areas.
Thanks brad , you ARE the only influencer I trust and watch for a review product I hate UA-cam and their strategies to count on influencer to promote their shitty product for getting views only You are not thanks again
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
I bought $100,000 of their crypto and it dropped to $4,000 in a matter of MONTHS. I try to reach the Somnium team but they keep blocking me. We should sue them for stealing so many MILLIONS of peoples' money and then making this garbage outdated headset that NO ONE wants.
I want micro-oled, pancake lens, inside out tracking, wireless, display port connection, bigger fov then Q3, 2.5k or more per eye, steam vr compatibility and eye tracking in one headset. I'm willing to pay a lot for it. It seems to me that the VR1 doesn't have much more going for it then the Crystal and Aero for way more $$. Bigscreen is heading in the right direction IMO.
Amen on all that. And get foveated rendering and encoding into the mainstream. Annoying how the lowest fruit keeps getting ignored, not everyone has 5090ti money
OLED is not compatible with pancake lens technology, it's just the physics of polarisation. You lose >80% of light in pancakes (each reflection loses 50%, so 75%+material and coating scattering) and OLED won't be bright enough. Even very bright LCD gives 80-100 nits with pancakes, and with OLED you'd have 40 nits as a result. So, you can wait, of course, but it won't happen even in 5 years - TVs manufacturers are only now trying to sell a tech with a quantum dot layer boosting OLED brightness (QD OLED), so if that works commercially it will then take at least 6 years to see that tech in higher density displays. BSB has micro-OLED kind of working with ok brightness, but has lots of other issues as result of high magnification optics since bigger micro-OLED displays are not available.
@@Fiztex553 the question is, do you need more than OK brightness ? Honestly i feel its overrated. Its bad enough ive got a display stuck to my eyes, i dont want to burn my retinas either. On Quest Pro my baseline is a third of max brightness, and 4/5 when I wanna treat myself or say im flying at night. When im in third of max, my eyes eaaasily adjust and it becomes normal very quickly. Not ideal, but workable. TLDR im willing to sacrifice some brighteness for OLED Pancake
Yeah, me too! I just want a truly better HMD but, with inside-out, MR cameras, controllers (included), and limited to only Valve Lighthouse tech. (Too many Lighthouses died on me already...)
What do we, as humans, *need* from VR hardware? Humans are quite good at tolerating low fov , glare, dirty screen effects and heavy things attached to our heads, under certain circumstances. Consider Le Mans drivers for instance, or motorcyclists, or scuba divers, or anyone enjoying summer outdoors wearing sunglasses. Do scuba divers often complain about low fov? For many HMD "requirements", good enough is good enough. I don't mind the weight of a motorcycle helmet when riding a motorcycle, but I aint running a half marathon in one. Flight simming has the unique requirement of reading tiny text at a fixed distance. In the real world, outside of flying planes, when we want to read small text we just bring the text closer to our faces. It is therefore inevitable that for the foreseeable future we have different HMDs for different use cases. Maybe they will sell loads to flight simmers, although operating in Varjo's killzone is commercially brave, and Pimax seem to have sorted their crap out now. AR? If I had the budget for a VR1 wouldn't I just buy Apple?
@@ArturTechTales lol I was super tired and half awake on the couch, typing this in on my dying smartphone, I just made a stupid comment to give Brad engagement 🤣 I just tried to summarize the video, so sorry about that 😋
Even outside of the elements that are straight up issues, the spec choices feel totally incongruent with the price they're trying to charge for even the base model. I hate that I say this so often when a new headset enters the market, especially given that I detest Facebook's stranglehold and understand the loss leader strategy isn't viable for most companies, but the VR1 just doesn't do nearly enough to try and justify its price or position in the industry.
If you speak INTO the mic a bit cloer it'll sound better. (I have the same one). That's if you want a huge mic on video (why?). You're not close to it and the mic is still in shot, worst of both worlds.
![[UA] Eternal Fire проти NAVI | EPL Season 20 Malta](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/chvlsDygrZM/mqdefault.jpg)
You’re exactly the type of person these companies need to be using for R&D. Props to them for reaching out. Thanks for all the great content.
what a ridicolous fanboy statement. brad is like many of us, JUST USING THE PRODUCT. it doesnt take a genius to know whats wrong with stuff. if actual developers/r&d needs a youtuber, they need to find a different job LMAO!
@@SINfromPLit’s obvious that Bradley knows a bit more than most users in terms of user experience and hardware. It’s this exact “the consumer knows nothing” that leads to bad product to begin with
@@Superwazop somnium creators claim themselves to be 'enthusiasts'. brad might know more than 'most users', but the average user who is deep and long into VR can tell the exact same thing. one does not even have to try somnium to know it's worthless.
@@SINfromPL"Average" doesn't equal that, just casual.
@@paulct91 to my knowledge bradley did not contribute even once in vr software development. he is nothing more than a consumer. a consumer who is addicted to vrchat and barely even tests anything else. he built his following among burned out pcvr elitists who are butthurt that Meta is the leader, Quest is the most popular headset ever, and they are just looking for valve to save vr, when in reality they have zero real interest in vr. even in this video he doesnt reveal anything groundbreaking in terms of knowledge. lens distortion? chromatic abberation? screen door effect? these things are common knowledge for anyone who has been taking vr seriously the past few years.
Having controls on the headset is definitely useful, particularly for functionality you deliberately don't want to activate accidentally.
The "only a few people notice it" approach is absolutely terrible for building any kind of tech, let alone XR. People don't notice anything and can't tell unless deliberately looking for it, especially from a brief, highly multi-sensory experience. It's how we got early LCD TV's with massive latency, and how we still have expensive HMD's with massive lens distortion that the software doesn't adequately address.
most people even if they would notice anything, are too afraid to say anything bad.
Well you can't work on making something better if most people don't notice or can't really describe what is getting to them so you didn't know there was a solvable problem for anybody yet.
And in the case of VR type stuff you have to get used to some quirks anyway - the god rays, distortion, illegible text outside of a small sweetspot, visible pixels, the weight, tracking issues (etc) are all part of the experience to some extent - boundaries are being pushed and not everything can be as perfect as you would like in all situations. It may well be that wear this headset for a few hours and even though you did once notice you have adapted enough that now you are moving your eyes and head in a way that doesn't really trigger that uncomfortable feeling automatically, or just that by having a slightly different shaped head that bad distortion is not really in the FOV you use - if it can be improved that is obviously great, but expecting any single VR platform to be perfect at every category when they are trying to interface so completely with the wild variation of humanity. Which is one of the things that makes this headset sound interesting to me - the promise of more openness means that any of the bits that don't suit you may well be very easy to customise.
For that price, we deserve to be picky about the small things that make the experience even slightly uncomfortable
Tell that to smartphone makers lol
Man I wish I could afford a $2k smartphone...
@@smallbutdeadly931 Believe me. You don't miss out much other than less money in your bank. A $150 phone is good enough of what you need because gaming on mobile phone is trash. If you need good camera just buy an actual camera!
@@smallbutdeadly931 Make payments, just like everyone else on the planet does.
@@evolicious or just get a mid-range phone for a couple of hundred like a sensible person instead of locking yourself into a contract for an overpriced piece of kit that was designed to be obsolete in a couple of years.
$1900 for the ENTRY LEVEL version?!?!
Holy hells! At that price point, your level of criticism was a glowing review o_O
1900€(Euros)
Great video Brad, very in depth. Hope the Somnium team don't regret inviting you too much. If they figured Brad certification could be obtained as easily as THX certification, or that Brad would be, like the man from Delmonte, and raise a thumb to say yes, they unfortunately got a rude awakening. Instead they got an ultra polite and softly spoken Gordon Ramsey.
Fingers crossed they fix the issues. I get the feeling that those who like the Pimax Crystal and Aero (simmers) will still like and see a lot of value in this HMD and it's good to see a European produced, purely PCVR focused high-end headset on the scene.
We, of course will polish and fix a lot of issues which were mentioned to us. Majority of issues will go away with mass production and factory grade calibrations / inspections.
@@ArturTechTalesah yes mass production will fix everything, when you can't even have a proper demo unit lmao
@@SINfromPL Demo units are often hand-crafted. Brad was brought in to user test before they move to mass production. If they brought him in after they finalized the design, he would have no use being there since they can't really go back on the design. You have to understand that companies smaller than Meta don't have the kinds of resources to spend a shit ton of funding on creating a multiple custom mass-production-ready units at factory quality when prototyping (most of the calibration issues are really really hard to deal with unless units are calibrated with expensive factory equipment saved for mass production). However the timeline does seem very rushed so we'll see if they can hold their end of the deal up with the date they promised consumers.
I am very encouraged by this company being willing to have Brad try out their prototype and rip it to pieces publicly. I was not previously interested in the the VR1, but I'm becoming interested now. And it's because of stuff like this.
I've been running a Pimax 8KX for years and recently bought a Crystal and ultimately returned it (after a month of headaches with Pimax support). I have a love/hate relationship with Pimax. They make the most powerful consumer VR gear on the market, but they do not stand behind their products. And I don't mean just their support, but how Pimax operates at every level. Working with Pimax is always a gamble about how things are going to go, and there's pretty much always some level of jury rigging and working-around jank involved.
I'm seeing signs that Somnium intends to make something that's kind of like what Pimax does, but with a company behind it that actually cares about supporting their customers and getting them a product that really works without having to go through BS. I am absolutely willing to pay a higher price for that if it means never having to work with Pimax support again.
Offer a product that does what Pimax does, but without the jankiness of both the product and company, and I will buy it. Take. My. Money.
But then again, Somnium may just turn out to be another Pimax.
@@SargonDragon Very much my thinking as well. I've nearly upgraded from my OG vive many times towards a Pimax, but one look at the mess they seem to be support wise put me off. Varjo seems like it might be a better competitor and worth considering - didn't take long to find quite a bit of detail on their OpenXR support etc, but with Somnium so close to production and Valve no doubt on the horizon too I'm waiting to see who is worthy and which product is most suited my desired uses.
Which as I prefer Linux for all things probably pushes towards Valve as they seem all in on Linux support these days. However if your headset supports OpenXR and is open enough in the implementation of everything that I believe I can get it working without 'official' Linux support I'd take the risk if it is better in some other way. Worst case scenario I have to actually use that Windoze license from time to time when I want to do VR, annoying but not the end of the world if the VR experience is better.
$2000 would be a good price for the high-end model. $2000 for the BASE model seems pretty questionable, because it is the pile of features on the top-end model which actually distinguishes it from its competition. It seems like a reasonable guess that the top-end model will be $3000, and possibly more. The $2000 - $3000 price range puts it into competition with actual commercial-grade headsets, not to mention the long--heralded Index 2. Heck, if the top-end model is expensive enough, some people might wait to see if it's possible to jailbreak an Apple Vision Pro for use as a pure HMD. Basically: this headset is exciting as long as it doesn't have any serious competition. The more expensive it is, the less unique of a product it is.
💯 this. Given the competition, this is a tough sell. I heard the price when I saw the VR Flight Sim Guy interview with this company and at first I thought the base model was $899 and didn't think anything of it, I miss-heard the value. When I realised it was $1899 that makes all of the criticism Bradley has provided very valid and concerning. On top of that, I'm loathed to go back to what appears to be a front heavy bulky headset. For the price, honestly this has to be perfect and it's a long way from that.
@@dtrjones It is not a long way to fix those issues. Again, some might think it is, but there will be a lot of tweaking and testing happening in the last 3 months.
the BASE model is 1899 euros!? that's insane for what it is based on your description, it genuinely feels like it'd be better to just buy a pimax crystal with steam tracking plate and still be about the same price with better FOV, I was hoping base would be closer in price to the big screens 1000 price, I don't think i'll be getting a somnium, which sucks because that was genuinely the headset i was most excited for as an upgrade, feels like I might just be getting the vive pro 2 to replace my original vive at this rate
It’s made in Europe, that alone is quite expensive
I just went for a Quest 3 and started the long wait for something like the Deckard. The Somnium to me seems just like an European Pimax, they may claim this or that, but we'll see when it actually releases.
@@rtn6518me too but i would never buy a vive HMD so please dont be sad that i wont take your advice here. quest lifecycle is way to short
That "off the shelf" headstrap literally is a Quest 3 headstrap, I had that very model on my Quest to fill the gap while I waited for the Kiwi strap.
i wish u made more videos :)
me too
The review / Impressions video I was looking forward to watching. Thank you again Brad So looking forward to trying the Apple Vision Pro in 2024 and definitely will buy one if you think its worth the money - also a Gen 1 AVP will surely hold its money maybe. Artful
After getting my Beyond, I doubt I could ever go back to these bricks these companies seem to love pumping out
Oh hey small but deadly
Yeah me too
The beyond is a solid step back. It's not small form factor, it's feature gutted. It's like saying a meat pie is small form factor because you removed all the filling and smushed the pastry into a small ball. Technically it's smaller but not really since its just a ball of pastry now.
@@thelelanatorlol3978 It has the features I want. It has a really nice mic, it has a good set of displays, it has some pretty dang nice audio once I plug my IEMs in, and it works with all my existing gear. They stripped back all the features I never use, which makes me immensely happy.
Sometimes less is more.
I do not have any VR games that could benefit from eye tracking. I don't need to share my VR headset with anyone. I don't care that there is no passthrough, and that there is still a cable tethering me to my PC. I don't need inside-out tracking when my setup is stationary.
I like the Beyond because they cut out all the extra (unnecessary) fat and made a headset that does one thing well, and that comfort for PCVR gaming.
@@rtn6518 Yep, but in the ones where it matters, it's a massive step forward.
Not too keen about hearing about the blurry line issue, oy :(( Really hoping this headset would fill my need for a wider FOV headset. Steve "flight sim guy" interview said they have a hardware fix (at an extra cost) for the chromatic abberations. I love wide FOV and always used the "Small" mode with my old 8KX and I didnt mind the FOV on the Index. I had the XTAL 5K an 8K and the letterbox style image was off putting. I just know when Pimax's wide FOV 12K gets released its going to be plagued with issues and the public will basiclly be the test pilots for it. Looking forward to what you and the other testers final evaluation will be. I did sign up on their website for "pre orders". I really like your approach for reviewing these headsets, so many others , Im talking to you MRtv, get caught up in the moment and and forget how to properly critique the headset. Thank again Bradly for your content!!
Mrtv like Flight guy are just advertisers.
@@SINfromPL Flight Guy was pretty hard on the Beyond regarding Glare. He wasnt shilling IMO
@@OdyBeRidin he was also really bad on quest 3 - he got six units and they all they imaginary issues - he really shat on Meta that they have do improve QC, yet he never shown a single photo or video of such issues. You would think that would be a content for his channel but no, we only got his testimony. Now he is in love with pimax, gets invited to somnium and gets his travel and stuff paid, yet in the comments says he wasn't paid to make video. All these guys are just super lame and have nothing interesting going on, they always interview each other, and immediately block anyone who dares to call bs out. He is already defending somnium. Ugly human.
Who are you...@@SINfromPL
I am a simple man. I like Bradley to rant about VR.
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
Better to rant about everything in this world where we do something countlessly wrong
Same here 😅
generaly large headsets never bothered me until I used the Q3.. then was like "OHHHhhh.. " spoiled. Thanks for the deep dive. Interesting.
Once you use something like the beyond, it kinda kills even the Q3. That's one of my least favourite things about it. I can't use normal headsets anymore, they feel like cinder blocks.
Ever since the Quest 3 and most importantly the Bigscreen Beyond came out this year, I never want to go back to bulky headsets like that.
Alle developers should aim at making their headset as small as the Bigscreen Beyond.
For me the Beyond is the only headset in years that made me genuinelly excited about VR again.
Yeah the size really does affect how much I’d use my quest 2. Like a brick on your face and sometimes me and my friends would skip vr sessions on go to flatscreen because it felt like a chore, quest 3 was a huge upgrade for me and I can only imagine the big screen beyond would be crazy
Be more creative, you can't always smush features into tiny spaces, why do you think the HMDs you mentioned are so feature lacking...? The "I" or "most" people don't want that is nonsense... this HMD in particular is now directly competing in the same $1,000 HMD space just like Varjo Aero, Pimax Crystal, Big Screen Beyond, and others...
@@paulct91 be more creative, somnium is a giant headset and does not sport a single new feature, and modules like hand tracking arent even done by them. there is nothing innovative about somnium, and its all from sellers of virtual land for real money in their dead metaverse.
@@paulct91 its just a matter of time
I primarily care about FOV and brightness (with a large dynamic range).
These are the two things that pancake headsets especially suck at.
No perfect headset out there at the moment, but for the price the Quest 3 fits my needs at the moment, although I am saving up for a Big screen for the comfort.
I always like your dives into products more than most due to how you seem to approach VR in a whole, thanks for making the video and I do hope they (and other companies) value your journalistic integrity and invite you to do more things like this in the future.
The price of this HMD is nuts because of the basic issues it has TODAY, it needs maybe 2 more years of R&D.
It's been a while... It can be concerning when there's a gap between videos, but in this case there was travel involved. The great thing about your ability to review VR is that you already know what works and you can relay that to the HMD developers. Open platform don't always work, OSVR died. I think mostly due to the HMDs not being of quality, I had one that died 3 months after I used it.
If HMD developers needs feedback from youtubers, then there are two options:
1. they just make high paper specs DESIGNED to lure people who have more money than sense (vr flight sim guy)
2. they actually dont know what they are doing and just riding off hype words like OPEN, MADE IN EU, when in reality 99% of shit is not open sourced, and most parts are made in China anyway. It's just assembled in Europe.
@@SINfromPL "feedback from youtubers" is more marketing than development. That's the role of social media "Influencers". I did get the feeling that the headset isn't on schedule though, due to the lack of strap options. So perhaps it's not too late for them to take criticism on board and fix some issues (at least software issues such as barrel distortion correction). Bradley preempting a "rebuttal" press release would indicate that's not what they intend to do though.
@@Joric78 The way corporations treat famous youtubers the only human alive that is reliable is laughable
Compared to other high end headsets it isn't sounding crazy to me. You can spend a great deal more on a headset now and you seem to get generally less potential with perhaps slightly more polish than this prototype apparently had. The world of higher end VR hardware is not cheap, and really the perception it should be is rather more twisted by Meta (etc) pushing hardware out subsidised by their other business and the ability to make enough of them to get lower production cost per unit. And none of the flaws he pointed too seem that challenging to me, I'd probably want to use my own headphones with VR anyway, the headstrap are one of the first things a user is likely to change/modify for more comfort as no matter how adjustable 'one size fits all' is never as comfortable, and the visual issues are likely more calibration than hardware.
@@foldionepapyrus3441 stop shilling. How is somnium any different than htc vive that came out in 2016 with stations and controllers for 800? In 2024, with natural progress in resolution, suddenly we have to spend 2.5x as much for the headset alone? It's not high end at all, stop joking
Brad, Somnium had you come BECAUSE they knew you'd neither be overly dazzled or inclined to hold back on any criticisms. While everyone wants to hear the good things about their products and creations, only those who are genuinely serious about creating the best product they can want to hear nothing BUT good things. The fact that Somnium had the balls to have you along tells me they'll continue to work at improving their HMD, if not quickly enough for their current launch date, then as tome goes on--and that's a good thing.
Thanks for this discussion; as usual, your insights on VR in general are always fascinating and informative
blablabla, imagine making a demo for youtubers with glarring issues that "can be fixed" but havent been for years. stop shilling.
Thank you for kind words. Of course we will fix all the issues and majority of them will be gone with factory level calibrations and inspections + updated warping with latest tested lenses.
@@artursychovrather than putting out even more empty promises, maybe tell us how does one develop MR apps for this brick
I doubt that Somnium had any illusions that Brad wasn't going to rip up their prototypes. It's a risky move because the public doesn't understand the concept of prototypes, and they will automatically assume the same problems will be present in production units. Which could happen, but I do get the impression that the whole point was to get that harsh feedback so they'd know what to work on.
I think the critical moment will be when they have Brad come a second time, and we see whether Brad is impressed with them having actually fixed the issues he pointed out or not.
If they're QD mini led then they're likely VA panels so... some VA ghosting is likely present as well.
With 4 buttons on the top... seems cool but odd. They should make them smaller and put them on the side. A lot of people mount mics or small fans to the top of their HMD and with buttons there you have a lot less mount area.
@22:06 funny seeing Marek enter the room
Best wishes Brad, ty for always keeping me up to date on the latest VR hardware.
This is why companies should have you test their HMD’s. You tell them what is necessary for a headset to be good. Thanks Brad! Hope you and your family have a Happy Healthy New Year!
fck companies who needs a youtuber LMAO! who the hell do you think brad is. tons of people could give the very same feedback without having a 100k+ channel.
Very different preview compared to flight sim guy.
If MRTV where in the room, this would be THE best headset ever created as it stands.
I hope they invite you back.
Mrtv was invited, but couldn't make it on time. Yeah, if he was there, we would have 8 hours worth of videos how awesome this is, especially for pcvr enthusiasts like him who aren't capable of playing anything at all lmao. He is just a giant billboard for vr lenses, straps, travel cases, hp reverb, pimax, and whoever sends him anything for free
And yeah vr flight sim is also just a shill. He hasn't noticed anything wrong with the headset lmao! Also a giant billboard and affiliate program shill. These people always hang out with each other and invite to their channels and stuff. Circlejerk community
"If MRTV where in the room, this would be THE best headset ever created as it stands." no shit! I used to trust his reviews back in the Pimax 5K days but that ship has sailed....
@@OdyBeRidinhe was never ever trustworthy
MRTV is a laughing stock since before the 'fantastic' HP G2 he used to shill.
His deep involvement with Pimax is all the proof anyone needs how trustworthy he is.
When It comes down to the microphones on HMD's. It's usually the acoustics of the headset that make it sound crappy. I suggest putting the microphone(s) more outwards, then pointing the hole towards the mouth could fix certain issues. It can also be the resonants of the HMD shell that can cause issues.
When making the hole for the mic. The hole itself to be like for example 2 millimeters. Then countersinking the outside of the hole to about 5 millimeters in a cone shape to direct sound to the hole center entrance. Creating more sound capture area.
But HMD makers need to invest in sound engineers to make it sound right.
I've heard the Bigscreen Beyond has a really good mic
Seems like an interesting headset. But now that the first experiences are out it seems like the beyond will be the better choice considering size, weight, potential problems & especially price. I'll wait for the audio strap reviews and then probably buy one
it looks kind of too thick, i dont think i would want to return to such a brick after using an hmd with pancake lenses.
That’s kinda always my feelings, unfortunately
The Outer Wilds VR mod uses has the light tied to touching your head with you hands.
It worked increadiably well so, and it was was really reliable unlike a lot of other body systems in VR.
I totally understand the desire to have additional controls on the headset from that.
Bradley, would you happen to know what the focal distance for the VR1 is? I recently got to try the Crystal and found it caused a very noticeable eye strain for me when sim racing that just is not there on any other VR headsets I’ve tried and owned and realised it was due to the use of 1m focal distance rather than the industry standard of 2m (give or take a little). I could feel the exact same fighting of the focus of my eyes trying to resolve the image in the far distance as I could when trying to resolve sub 1m distant objects on typical VR headsets (but something that was MUCH better on the Crystal which I suspect is why Pimax opted for the 1m focal distance).
Many thanks in advance!
Their site isn't even mentioning what OS this works on, and I just want to know if it's compatible with linux out of the box. :/
9:50 barrel distortion is no joke, I had pico neo 3 once and it had worst distortion I've ever seen, borderline unusable
Will have to wait and see if the issues are corrected in time. For the price the HMD needs to be the best it can. As of now I'm waiting after the first release wave.
If these issues could be corrected, they wouldnt launch it with dogshit demo of a headset. Its not getting fixed.
The biggest issue with this headset appears to be the comfort. It looks front heavy and does not appear to have progressive style head mount.
Hi Brad, thanks for your thoughts. I had only watched VR Flightsimguys coverage. Interesting he never mentioned anything about the display issues, but we are all different.
I wear glasses but have better than 20/20 vision with them on, so I really value your opinion.
I think the biggest elephant in the room is the price.
The entry level, plus the as I call it steam eco system if you don’t already have it is a big ask.
If valve don’t announce a new HMD, I’d argue how much of a better experience you would get from Sonium as compared to the Q3. From what I can tell it’s not worth the difference in price.
Lol “sensor size is 1 by 2.3 inches” I wish! (I know you mean 1/2.3 inches)
I lost a bit of interest learning about aspheric lenses, I lost it completely at that price.
At 1900 bucks I'm gonna notice ALL the little flaws.
There's a million little things that remind me that I'm in a VR headset playing a game, so I'd much rather see good Index/Quest competitors.
Than all these OMGBBQPREMIUNDIAMONDPLUSULTRA headsets that cost an arm and a leg.
Just left Prague a day ago...
I had high hopes for this headset, here's hoping they delay it it a bit to improve upon its issues before release.
All issues will be fixed upon release. If that means we need to slightly delay it we will, but we are confident that all named "issues" are easily fixable and we will improve every single part of headset in then ext 3 months until first deliveries.
@@artursychov"issues"? More like it will be "fixed"
ok guess im gonna get the big screen vr headset afterall lol
I was going to buy one of those until I researched the BSB glare issue. For some it is fine and for some it is really bothersome.
Glare depends entirely on how far the lenses are from your eyes. Once I got my gasket dialed in, the glare is almost completely gone.
A company inviting you to test their headset is a serious show of confidence, it really makes me take this headset much more seriously. The price is out of my range personally, but that isn't a comment on the price just my own personal finances. I really hope this headset does well and that they continue in the future. For a first product from a new comer (in terms of hardware), it's impressive. Not perfect, particularly things like the "open" marketing, but I think they are by far the most interesting new player in the hardware space and I really want them to succeed.
somnium is bore
1900usd for base model headset only, no audio, no controllers, no base stations? they are out of their minds.
19:20 Looks like eyebrow, nose and upper face tracking will be out of the equation if that is all that the cameras can see :(
Might as well go to the Inseye photodiode-based eye tracking route at that point.
I feel kinda sad about the vr scene lately. Alot of companies with no experience seem to be jumping in while the ones with experience are sluggish in progression. Standalone holding onto mobile processors just isnt cutting it imo, at least rn. yet the main pushing in tech is that route while PCVR is being left behind. And while the new steam headset could be cool, I dont think its gonna change anything. At the end of the day, we all know that we buy new vr headsets to sit in front of mirrors or hangout on vrchat cause theres minimal games being made that even make use of the awesome features in vr.
this headset just seems like another generic beta test for something that some other company would do better.
The last hope for PCVR is valve with Steam basically being the ecosystem, not sure how fast Valve will bring out a successor though!
I'm enjoying skyrim VR since 2019 it just got ESL support for mods, to me it's the best VR experience to date.
What a lad!
They’ll sell maybe a dozen at that price.
Nah, dozen youtubers will get it for free and noone will actually purchase it
The pimax crystal becomes suddenly cheap for 1300 with sound and tracking..
2k for a brick with no pancake and no audio. What demo is the headset for??
It's for youtubers to make a new video rather than covering new Quest 3 accessories with affiliate links
@@SINfromPL That got a belly laugh from me.
Will they have lower face tracking Addon?
Not that I know of, yet. They have mounting points and a usb c port on the bottom to facilitate things like the htc Vive facial tracker
So the main reason I'm looking forward to the VR1 is a specific combination of issues that other headsets have that are unique to me. #1, I HATE the glare that's present on pretty much all headsets nowadays. Go to pretty much any HMD review from the past couple years and all of them will say "there's this glare that's present but it's not really bad and you stop noticing it after a while so it's fine" but with me specifically, that glare never stops being noticeable and its presence totally ruins my experience. So the only HMD's I'm willing to buy from here on out are ones with Aspheric lenses, because they pretty much eliminate glare from the equation. Even the Bigscreen Beyond, a headset that people all over are praising for its pancake lenses, is still prone to glare as mentioned in almost every Bigscreen Beyond review I've watched. So, Aspheric lense setups like the Aero and VR1 are ideal for me.
"Why not buy the Aero then? It's cheaper and from a more well known company." Well, the #2 issue would be my graphics card. I have a 6950XT because the 7000 series cards have horrible issues in VR, and I refuse to ever use an Nvidia card again. Since the Aero straight up doesn't work on AMD cards, the VR1 is pretty much my only option for a high resolution, high FOV, high refresh rate, eye tracked foveated rendering, Aspheric lense, functional on AMD cards, base station tracked headset for the time being.
you hate nvidia, yet looking forward to somnium. man, what a combo!
AMD sucks for VR, RTX rocks, so it's a no-brainer.
@@SINfromPL never said I hate nvidia, they make great cards. For anyone else, I'd highly recommend getting an nvidia card over an AMD card. Their performance is just solidly and consistently way ahead of anything that AMD has to offer.
Did you try any version other than the full fledged XR version? Just wondering if there are comfort improvements to be had there, considering going from XR3 to Aero (there's more there than just mixed reality stuff but best example I can think of).
I tried the base version too. The vr visuals were basically the same if that’s what you’re wondering
@@SadlyItsBradleyyou had the problem that far away objects looked different?:)
I wish them the best of luck. Maybe they’ll do well in enterprise.
$1800 is a lot for a device marketed to the DIY community...
It's always a hallmark of the DIY community to eck out affordability from any project
All headset batteries should be removed from the headset and placed in the rear if the strap.
There is no battery in the Somnium
@@victormaniaci2104 Oh, I see. OK, all "other" headsets.
@@victormaniaci2104wait its not wireless?
@@whitygoose Nope, the Somnium VR1 is a cabled only headset. Nofio may build a wireless module for them down the road.
Great video Bradley and I think your opinions are technically valid. I would spend $2000 dollars on a headset. Base on your recommendation. Happy New Year.
I just want a widest fov, HyperVision 240, and "Retina" resolution to really see without seeing the pixels.... I just that.
The weight issue shouldn't be inherent to aspheric lenses, given that my Vive Pro 1 with GearVR lens upgrade is just fine on weight. (Certainly a lot better than a Quest.) I do need to fix up the distortion profile somehow though.
Basically in todays age, I feel optics designs that aren’t trying to improve center of gravity is a problem. And most companies doing aspheric are also trying to do dual-aspheric: which is even more weight away from your face
no dude.....for the love of god, swipe that hair the OTHER way
ahahahaha the hair swiping is back
@@SadlyItsBradley just want to clarify......i love your content
no worries. This was my first video since I got a haircut. And when I edited the footage, I realized that I already went back to swiping my hair lmao@@1369Stiles
This is making the awesome pimax crystal the option to go for. The price will be out of bounds by the time everything is add that is standard on the crystal.
For that sort of price, I would expect people to be singing its praises - deservedly.
Having a thrown together strap, no audio, actually the list here is long - its just a no. I know full well that if key areas of a HMD are lacking, its going to result in me just not using it and at this stage Im done being a guinea pig.
Wow, the organizers of CES said VR failed to be the next best thing. Thus, they change their focus to AI for this year.
why can't a company of former XTAL employees afford pancake lenses, when a company like Big Screen Beyond can?
Because they are not a successful company
@@SINfromPL I thought Big Screen was only a single app for META headsets
Because you can not get high FOV with pancake lenses today and have high resolution. Our headset has 125 degrees horizontal FOV which is market leader in a consumer HMD.
@@ArturTechTales market leader? Consumer headset? LMAO. How about you release the god damn thing first? You've had 2 players peak in your market leaving metaverse in the last 30 days. You and your brother perhaps?
So which hmd is currently the best putchase regarding visual/optical fidelity?
Varjo Xr4 and somnium vr1. In 3 months Apple vision pro
beyond strap review please
I'm just really tired of bulky aspheric lense devices dominating the top end. Aside from the nit challenge with pancakes, the pancake visual and comfort experience just craps all over aspherics and continued headsets with gigantism kill excitement for casuals.
P.S. I owned a Crystal and mailed it back. Kept my Quest 3 and will wait for the first company to release a good $2,000 pancake/3.5k per eye + microOLED Vision Pro knockoff.
@adrenalinejunkie3828 the Apple HMD has pancakes and it'll be the first high end device that more than 7 flight Sim enthusiasts buy. As a former Pimax Crystal owner, the distortions were bad and I'd choose pancakes any day. I highly doubt aspherics will make up any more than 20% of high end headsets in a decade
@@adrenalinejunkie3828 also, my only experience with pancakes is with Meta. I've also heard the BSB ones suck
@@adrenalinejunkie3828 lmao
HI BRAD
1900 euros? Well this thing is gonna be dead on arrival then.
It cant be dead on arrival, cause it will likely never arrive in the first place.
@@SINfromPL you mean dead before arrival? Probably flight simmers will like this. Im simracer and bigscreen is better for me for this.
Flightsimmers and Sim-Racers do basically the same, so are looking for similar devices. Only difference is that you need more fps in racing games, but everything runs a lot better than MSFS.
@@Leynad778 headset is either all around good or not. No such thing as hmd for simmers. Are there monitors specifically for sim? No. The same simmers swore by pimax fov for years, and even that feature is long gone.
@@SINfromPL Triple-screens are still very popular in Sim-Racing and only used for racing games. I prefer 49"-Ultrawide and also more common for sim-racing than other genres. Pimax headsets are certainly not aimed for casual VR-gamers as well and a heavy headset like the Crystal comes with quite some cons, but the resolution is almost necessary to get a visual clarity anywhere close to a display. I own the 8KX and it's clarity is slightly lower than the Pico 4, but the FOV is even on "small" significantly wider, so having an Index-like FOV mit higher clarity is IMO the best compromise today.
At least one sim-racer who bought the BSB was very disappointed by it compare to his Quest Pro, which he still prefers. If you want 90 Hz, which is IMO necessary, you need to run lower resolution than the Quest 3 or Pico 4 with a tiny eye-box and more glare, so apart from the form-factor it actually isn't good enough for any sims regardless if simulating cars or planes.
sheeeesh
A company that tries to monetize artificially scarce virtual real estate is already on my 'probably not' list.
besness in the front
What about HyperVision 140° devices? What is happening with this oh VR Guru?
Somnium is actually an investor of those. They told me interesting things about them. Not sure if I’m allowed to say. But they’re working on that
I was hoping Valve was working with them.
I am waiting to see what Valve has coming up . @@SadlyItsBradley
Prusa is overpriced and outdated. Makes me worry
Everything except wireless. 2024 can we fucking get some decent wireless headsets yet?
ur hair is awesome
Thanks!
I wish the headset didn't stick so far out from your face. It looks like it will be very front heavy.
Meh, would have been cool 4 years ago. Junk today.
"Junk" lol. If this is junk it could be sold used for 10 bucks right? Why people always exaggerate.
Your hair look good
I'm afraid Somnium will suffer the same fate the Quest Pro did. It spent too much time baking and now it's kind of outdated on release and way too expensive for mass adoption. Aspherical lenses - while having great light passthrough - seem inferior to pancake lenses because of weight distribution and comfort. As an enthusiast I can't see myself buying this HMD. I also firmly believe that sticking to lighthouse tracking will be the final nail in the coffin when it comes to long-term adoption. I see that tech being phased out, sooner rather than later. The future of FBT is either AI based estimation or a standalone inside-out tracked solution. SlimeVR has proven to me that they are reliable across 6-12h without charging and they are self-serviceable (if you built them yourself).
I don't think outside in tracking is going to go away, as it is just too reliable and accurate compared to the alternatives. And really isn't hard to set up - easier than running a speaker wire as the only connection the lighthouse needs is to a power supply, and you tend to have sockets all over the place. There are many users that won't really want or need such great tracking, so having an inside-out tracking system as an option is great for those people, and perhaps makes getting into VR/AR stuff seem more accessible, but for now at least that little cube on a tripod/ mounted on your wall is just better. Until some other tracking methods can really and reliably compete many VR use cases will almost demand the lighthouse and once you have got into VR you might well want to upgrade for the tracking that just works.
Also while it is expensive if its as good and becomes as open as claimed there are not many competitors even close to the same ballpark for HMD display quality, and they are not cheap either with no promises of openness.
You look 2 centuries younger
Hahahahah
Creepy, best stay off camera.
Xtal was overpriced garbage
Lenses you want to see do not exist at least not now and probably never will. And I generated generated lenses in the past.
My point is, I tend to prefer pancake lenses over aspheric. Even if they have different issues. That’s all.
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
@@SadlyItsBradley Pancake lenses with much smaller FOV and other issues like glare will never be a go for me until those things are fixed. Sorry here I have to very much disagree with you Brad.
@@artursychov no way, company founder or whatever is in favor of the tech they use. I remember when somnium was an open standalone headset!
With curved micro led >4k under 1 inch, who needs lens?
Price is uffff, sorry
wtf is that apple vr headset in the background. Is it fake?
...it's not apple, assuming you mean the white one on the left.
Always risking buying the initial drop for anything, unless your a content creator in the race for coverage.
As I watch this, the open source part... kinda just sounds lazy.... Especially with the headset being that expensive, open source is good any day of the week, but making something open source because you haven't fully fleshed out the product on your own is another story.
With them hosting competitions, sure community building is good, but to me sounds like another testament to their lack of work in that area (the area that the community event is focused on creating), "if the community gives us the answers then sure we'll fix it and give them a couple pennies by comparison" even though you already paid for a functional product, not one you have to help develop, yet here you are helping develop it...?
But to be fair, these are observations from knowing next to nothing of the situation, I haven't been following the company.
What buying risk are you talking about? If they sell in Europe, you can just return it. Pay with PayPal or credit card for ease chargeback in case things go south. But there is no real risk involved here. Just guaranteed disappointment cause this headset doesn't do anything right
Woof
I was looking forward to this headset, now my last hope is with Meganex
you always go from dogshit to dumpster?
@@SINfromPL I've not seen any reviews of Meganex , have you?
@@wickfut8917 no, and i don't need to. it was never interesting in the first place, and the fact there hasn't been any coverage FROM COMPANY itself for what feels like an eternity does not give an optimistic outlook. in an era where Quest 3 exists, it doesn't even make sense to come with it to the market. why would anyone be even interested in one? i feel like you gotta be a meta hater and just love paper specs and tether.
£1900 without base stations, controllers or speakers? f off with that, like.
I think it's going to be really hard for anybody to compete with the big companies.
always has been. there was never competition to Meta and never will be.
It doesn't seem like any 'real' companies are competing in the non-Quest pricing space... that is expected to be the next "IT" child.
@@SINfromPL Sooner or later Apple and Google will join the party big time. VR is just a stop gap to achieving AR glasses at some point competing or even replacing smartphones if done right. Why would you wanna use a 5-7" display device if you can have several virtual large screens with depth perception. Pair it with decent UX and people will buy it like hotcakes.
@@GaaraSama1983 once we get to half a day battery time and regular glasses factor then we can start to worry. Not even Apple vision will replace the comfort of a single big 4k monitor. Work in today's headsets is a pure gimmick. And it's not like in 2 years we will get that magical lightweight headset.
@@SINfromPL I agree with that. Realistic timeline will be more like 10-15 years to reach comfortable 4k monitor experience. I also think that for a long time they gonna need to use an external unit to power the glasses. Can't bend physics and if you wanna achieve small glasses I don't see any other realistic solution from my amateurish baseline knowledge. Wouldn't mind a kind of powerbank unit in my pocket connected with one USB-C cable to drive the glasses.
I'm glad I bought a crystal instead of waiting for this
It's honestly hard to be excited about brick vr now that something like the beyond exists for me haha. I hope companies try to move on from vr bricks sooner than later.
i dont think they really can without massive sacrfices
@@iamboringvideos6832the sacrifices are worth it though. Most people who've spent a longer time in vr will probably agree. Comfort and usability is just so important. Features come later, if a majority of people can't even spend more than 30min using an hmd. Compromises do have value as well though, and there's a place for many kinds of hmds, depending on the people buying them. Standalone, mixed reality, social vr features, or maximum comfort are things everyone would probably like for their headset, but most headsets that try to do it all, fall short heavily in certain areas.
Thanks brad , you ARE the only influencer I trust and watch for a review product
I hate UA-cam and their strategies to count on influencer to promote their shitty product for getting views only
You are not thanks again
Somnium Space - trust us, we are NOT masochists! 😀 Thanks for coming Brad! It was great to finally meet in person!
Why $Cube not found in larger platforms?
Just answer this question. You are blocking all the people who ask you about the coin. I don’t know why!!!
Brad's autism is stopping him from enjoying vr but instead hyper focusing on hardware detail. Poor Brad's not even tried praydog or Luke Ross's dozens of mods yet due to his strong autism.
@@Billdz184blickity blocked. Why you care about crypto anyways bruh?
I bought $100,000 of their crypto and it dropped to $4,000 in a matter of MONTHS. I try to reach the Somnium team but they keep blocking me.
We should sue them for stealing so many MILLIONS of peoples' money and then making this garbage outdated headset that NO ONE wants.
I want micro-oled, pancake lens, inside out tracking, wireless, display port connection, bigger fov then Q3, 2.5k or more per eye, steam vr compatibility and eye tracking in one headset. I'm willing to pay a lot for it. It seems to me that the VR1 doesn't have much more going for it then the Crystal and Aero for way more $$. Bigscreen is heading in the right direction IMO.
Amen on all that. And get foveated rendering and encoding into the mainstream. Annoying how the lowest fruit keeps getting ignored, not everyone has 5090ti money
OLED is not compatible with pancake lens technology, it's just the physics of polarisation. You lose >80% of light in pancakes (each reflection loses 50%, so 75%+material and coating scattering) and OLED won't be bright enough. Even very bright LCD gives 80-100 nits with pancakes, and with OLED you'd have 40 nits as a result. So, you can wait, of course, but it won't happen even in 5 years - TVs manufacturers are only now trying to sell a tech with a quantum dot layer boosting OLED brightness (QD OLED), so if that works commercially it will then take at least 6 years to see that tech in higher density displays. BSB has micro-OLED kind of working with ok brightness, but has lots of other issues as result of high magnification optics since bigger micro-OLED displays are not available.
@@Automan9 and dlss/fsr in all the VR games
@@Fiztex553 the question is, do you need more than OK brightness ? Honestly i feel its overrated. Its bad enough ive got a display stuck to my eyes, i dont want to burn my retinas either. On Quest Pro my baseline is a third of max brightness, and 4/5 when I wanna treat myself or say im flying at night. When im in third of max, my eyes eaaasily adjust and it becomes normal very quickly. Not ideal, but workable.
TLDR im willing to sacrifice some brighteness for OLED Pancake
Yeah, me too! I just want a truly better HMD but, with inside-out, MR cameras, controllers (included), and limited to only Valve Lighthouse tech.
(Too many Lighthouses died on me already...)
What do we, as humans, *need* from VR hardware? Humans are quite good at tolerating low fov , glare, dirty screen effects and heavy things attached to our heads, under certain circumstances. Consider Le Mans drivers for instance, or motorcyclists, or scuba divers, or anyone enjoying summer outdoors wearing sunglasses. Do scuba divers often complain about low fov? For many HMD "requirements", good enough is good enough. I don't mind the weight of a motorcycle helmet when riding a motorcycle, but I aint running a half marathon in one. Flight simming has the unique requirement of reading tiny text at a fixed distance. In the real world, outside of flying planes, when we want to read small text we just bring the text closer to our faces. It is therefore inevitable that for the foreseeable future we have different HMDs for different use cases. Maybe they will sell loads to flight simmers, although operating in Varjo's killzone is commercially brave, and Pimax seem to have sorted their crap out now. AR? If I had the budget for a VR1 wouldn't I just buy Apple?
Hahahaha we're never going to get the Deckard, let alone a PCVR headset that comes close to it
I'm getting Pimax vibes.
Aspherical eh, eye tracking eh, lighthouse eh, LCD with uLED backlight eh, optical issue eh, no audio eh, thanks for coverage Bread, looking forward to cheese.
Too bad to read this coming from you. But appreciate this opinion.
@@ArturTechTales lol I was super tired and half awake on the couch, typing this in on my dying smartphone, I just made a stupid comment to give Brad engagement 🤣 I just tried to summarize the video, so sorry about that 😋
@@BOLL7708 No problem :)
Even outside of the elements that are straight up issues, the spec choices feel totally incongruent with the price they're trying to charge for even the base model.
I hate that I say this so often when a new headset enters the market, especially given that I detest Facebook's stranglehold and understand the loss leader strategy isn't viable for most companies, but the VR1 just doesn't do nearly enough to try and justify its price or position in the industry.
If you speak INTO the mic a bit cloer it'll sound better. (I have the same one).
That's if you want a huge mic on video (why?). You're not close to it and the mic is still in shot, worst of both worlds.
Noticed Brad picked up a pico 4 on his trip