PICO 4 what do you think?

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
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So I got a chance to test a little this evening.

Specs:

AMD 5800X3D, X570, 32gb 3600mhz CL16, 3090FE

To keep everything as close to controlled as possible I flew a landing challenge to minimise variation and observed the FPS counter. Both headsets were running at their “optimal” resolutions of just over 3k x 3k per eye (Pico at 3152x3152, reverb at 3164x3092) and the same settings in the SIM, with DLSS Quality mode enabled.

OpenXR toolkit was running for the FPS counter but with no optimisations applied, for the G2 windows was set as the active OXR runtime, for the Pico Steam was set as the active OXR runtime (virtual desktop requires the use of steamVR).

Reverb G2 - 46-48fps
Pico 4 - 37-38fps

So my earlier suspicions were correct, there is a very significant overhead on running the Pico, the G2 will achieve approximately 25% better performance with the same settings.

Worth noting that the Pico was actually quite smooth despite the lower perf, but the compression did make for a notably poorer picture in MSFS, particularly in the cockpit. it was still not bad at all and again the lenses are simply better across a larger portion of the image but definitely not quite at the same level as the G2 here. The FoV is significantly better and you can actually use your eyes to look around rather than moving your head more with the G2 which makes things feel more natural, but the overall image is not quite up to snuff vs the G2.

I do very much like the Pico 4 - it has a lot going for it with the lenses, notably better FoV, particularly in the vertical, the motorised IPD is cool (though of limited use if you don’t have anyone else using your headset), the controllers are better in every way than the G2, it has standalone ability, wireless ability, the play space setup is worlds better and the passthrough is actually useful. The only thing that Particularly stands out as being short of the mark are the stock face gasket (too firm and bulky) and the fairly poor battery life.

Sadly however the performance overhead and compression make it a distinctly poorer choice in my case for MSFS and likely many other sims too. I will most likely be holding on to the Pico 4 for now for general use, but I won’t be retiring the G2 for sim use yet.

If they had included a direct displayport connection like the neo 3 there literally would have been nothing to recommend the G2 for imo. Shame… to be honest were it not for the performance delta I’d actually probably consider trading the slight loss in absolute image quality for the bigger FoV and sizeable sweet spot… it may warrant further investigation with what sacrifices are needed to get performance to match and what effect it has on image quality. That 25-30% as it stands for a like to like comparison is however extremely significant in a sim that already struggles.

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So this is definitely true.

Further playing, I’ve bumped the bitrate in VD up to 150 from 100 (it increases latency a bit but still can’t notice any) and lowered the default CAS sharpening in VD down from 75 to 50.

This has got the image quality in MSFS much closer to the G2. There’s still some compression artefacting but it’s much more acceptable and the image is substantially improved.

By going from DLSS Quality down to Balanced, and adding in Foveated rendering from OpenXR toolkit the Pico is now comfortably above 45fps and thus matching the G2 at the previous settings for framerate with relatively little impact on visuals… Of course the G2 could benefit from the DLSS quality change and foveated rendering but given it wouldn’t take me from the 45fps threshold up to 90fps there is nothing to be gained by doing so other than the ability to raise some of the other graphical options.

So currently I’m not so sure… I think this result could be a trade off I’m willing to live with here with slightly lower absolute visual quality, but a better FoV and sweetspot plus all the other benefits of the pico.

Also have to give a shout out to Guy at VD - what an application. Sat in my virtual city apartment (with a great view) with my PC’s desktop on a virtual monitor in front of me - controlling MSFS as if I was sat at my actual computer and then launching into VR is amazing.

So the answer is, I guess, It’s complicated. More play time required I think.

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O am still holding off on m first VR headset purchase. The pico was so close, if it would have had a Displayport it would be a no brainer. I do not want to deal with the stream overhead and lower quality. So my hope are with the quest 3 or maybe that valve wakes up from their coma and start announcing the dackard, the pcvr saviour ;D

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Many thanks to you. These reports are fantastic insights and will help others and me a lot.
It’s almost touching to witness you wrestling with yourself over the right settings and not wanting to give up the Pico 4 so soon for MSFS.

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Reducing the sharpening in VD is definitely key in reducing the obviousness of the compression artefacts in MSFS…. Obviously you have a very slightly softer image but less squirrely and more stable if that makes sense.

I’m going to call it a wash visually at the moment with the G2. The G2 has the win in absolute detail due to compression losses, but the larger FoV and massively better lenses of the Pico 4 are the counterpoint. Depends which is more important to you personally and I think I’m leaning towards the Pico.

The performance overhead is harder to deny, but it can be somewhat mitigated and the importance of it will depend on your system and how close to various performance thresholds you are.

eg If I had a 4090 currently or a future hypothetical 7950XT I don’t think the performance loss would bother me much as both would be running significantly above 45fps with high settings in the sim, and the CPU starts to get in the way before 90 anyway.

I’m going to give it a week or so and then I’ll make my decision on the fate of the G2!

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Wow, quite shocked to hear about 30% performance overhead. When I got the Q2 I thought I read that modern cards (eg 30 series) had basically no performance impact for background encoding - also I saw in task manager running VD would increase my “GPU 3d encode” usage but only to 30% or so, and not really impact the other metrics. I’ll try to think if I can measure the impact on mine somehow. Thanks again for the detailed feedback

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Wow!

I love this headset already, the Pico 4 :slight_smile: First a few things about the headset and general use, though most of this is well known by now probably… It is so comfortable to wear! Lenses are very sharp almost all over your field of view. I mean, the really outer edges are not that sharp, it becomes blurry. But what I found is that is more normal to also move your head a bit than to just move your eyes so far you can towards the edge of your vision also in real life… So for example when I look around in the cockpit everything I would expect to be clear - is clear. But more about MSFS 2020 later…

It works perfectly for PCVR games through Virtual Desktop, and the higher panel resolution and much better lenses, and the weight distribution making it so comfortable to wear - it all makes me want to sell my Quest 2. The Pico 4 blows the Quest 2 out of the water when playing PCVR games with Virtual Desktop. For stand alone games, the Meta store have more games of course. For now anyway. This does not matter to me when I have a high end PC that I can stream games from :slight_smile: Will I keep the Quest 2? Don’t know yet. Thing is, I never used that much anyway because I found it so uncomfortable to wear and the visuals so disappointing compared to my Reverb G2 that I never bothered… But the Pico 4 on the other hand… Wow! (Once more, I know).

Now, I saw Sebastian from MRTV saying that for now the Pico 4 wasn’t good with MSFS 2020. He is wrong. It must be something about his setup, connection settings or something. Because I connected through Wi-Fi with Virtual Desktop and it is very playable indeed. I never tried Picos own streaming program, neither through Wi-Fi or cable because Virtual Desktop is actually better that PicoLink with cable - every report I have read says so… but I will check it out some time I guess. I even have my Wi-Fi router in another floor in the house, so it might even be better if both my cockpit/PC in the same room as the router…

Pico 4 with Virtual Desktop and MSFS is not perfect. Compression artifacts can be seen and for me it is most noticeable for distant objects or the ground. I see someone suggestion trying to lower the sharpening a bit to make it less noticeable , so I will try that later. But, that being said for everything inside the cockpit looks fantastic and I will say that that part of the picture actually looks better on the Pico 4 compared to my Reverb G2. This is because of the better field of view and much better edge to edge clarity and sweet spot.

Another positive thing about Pico 4 and MSFS2020 - it is so smooth! I play with ASW which is Oculus Quests motion reprojection variant.

Will I now retire my Reverb G2 and fly with the Pico 4? Not sure yet. The battery life isn’t that great, and when I fly, the hours go by pretty fast. The battery life is no worse that Quest 2, but I will probably use an external battery solution for the Pico if I want to fly with it for longer sessions. The visuals outside are OK with some compression artifacts, inside the cockpit it is very good! Too bad the PicoLink software isn’t up to par with the Oculus solution for cabled connection. I guess that would have improved the compression artifacts further I guess.

About compression artifacts with other games through Virtual Desktop, like Half Life Alyx, Pavlov, Onward and such games - there I don’t see any artifacts! So It is maybe because MSFS2020 is such a demanding game probably that it becomes a problem.

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Yeah I was surprised. Haven’t compared in other games yet so may be exacerbated by the fact the G2 can run MSFS natively due to the OpenXR runtime. Performance on the G2 drops a bit if you use it with steam as the active OXR runtime.

I have to say pico with VD set to ultra and 100% resolution is gorgeous and gets over 30fps on my setup. With sharpening at 30% in VD the image is very close to the G2 at 100% as well… frames are about 33-34 vs 39-40 respectively

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Try lowering VD’s sharpening in MSFS - it made a huge difference for me. Not sure why it doesn’t show up the same in other games but around 30% works great here.

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This is great news, glad you’re happy with the headset. I’ve got a Quest 2 and Reverb G2 currently, and a Quest Pro coming next week so interested in the pancake lens improvements, and whether the Quest Pro will match or beat my G2 for MSFS.

For me the Reverb G2’s comfort, audio and visuals ruined the Quest 2 for me and stopped me wanting to use it for PCVR, but the Quest 2’s far superior tracking and controllers, and the fact I could never the G2 to work with Revive so 70 percent of my games don’t work kind of ruined the G2 for me as well.

So for the past 18 months I’ve gone from enjoying all of VR to just using the G2 for Microsoft Flight Simulator and not bothering with anything else as I waited for headset to fix the problems I have with both my current devices.

I’m hoping the Quest Pro will make me want to use VR again, with good comfort and visuals, and great tracking and controllers. I also plan to use it for exercise and work as well, and I’m excited to try out mixed reality applications so I’ll swallow the £1500 as I think I’ll get a ton of use out of it.

I was concerned with its lack of displayport, but if you’re happy with the Pico 4, which also doesn’t have one then the Quest Pro should be solid experience too. I noticed with my Quest 2, using the official USB-C link cable at its full resolution of 5408 x 2736 the image quality is fantastic in most games, better than the Vive Pro 2 I bought to replace it. Half Life Alyx looks awesome, but it really couldn’t manage MSFS well compared to the G2, which I had put down to the G2’s better resolution, but maybe the compression is more noticeable in such a detailed game with tiny details on the horizon.

For me to keep the Quest Pro it needs to match my MSFS G2 experience overall as I’m not spending £1500 on a headset that isn’t as good as the one I already have for MSFS.

So we’ll see next week. Still you’re experience with the Pico encourages me!

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Thanks! I will definitely try that!

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The Quest Pro will have better lenses than the Quest 2. But isn’t the resolution the same as Quest 2? The Pico 4 has improved resolution and much better lenses than the Quest 2. Anyway, time will tell. What the Quest Pro will have is a wired usb-c cable connection that is useful - which the Pico 4 does not have at this time. I mean, the USB-C connection for Pico 4 is not very useful when you get better visuals through Wi-Fi and Virtual Desktop :slight_smile:

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The resolution is the same as the Quest 2 but the pixel density is higher. I’m not so concerned about the resolution number, (although I’d like it to be higher obviously) as the Vive Pro 2 resolution is halfway between the G2 and the Aero and yet had no better clarity than even the Quest 2, and noticeably below the G2.
Heaney from Upload VR said the image quality on the Quest Pro is very good, noticeably better than the Pico 4 and that the resolution is just one aspect of image quality, and the Pro is very strong in all other areas. I also really like the wired USB-C link cable, have always got much better results over that than wireless.

I’ve just got an estimated delivery date for Wednesday so I’m missing out on launch day which is disappointing but can’t wait to try it out.

They say they have a no quibble 30 day return policy so at least I can try it risk free!

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Good! I’m curious about the immersion factor in Quest Pro. As you know it’s not sold with the specific “mask” which allow you to be fully isolated from the exterior, just with 2 magnetic cache on the left and right side, which seems not enough. Did you get a chance to also order this specific VR mask?

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Ok, cool! I look forward to hear your impressions of it :slight_smile:

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I’m hoping I won’t need it, at least until the spring next year. When I had the Rift S, because the FOV was so bad I’d take the interface out and use an infrared illuminator to play in the dark.

I work during the day until 7 pm so mostly play at night anyway so I intend to use it in the dark with the illuminator. It works fine with all Oculus headsets, although not the G2 which relies on visible light.

But not having a facial interface offers two massive potential benefits as I see it. One, the biggest possible FOV, and two, this headset currently doesn’t touch your face at all which should be a massive upgrade in immersion.

I love the G2 but the poor edge to edge clarity. glare and the fact I can feel I’m wearing goggles pressed to my face means I can never truly forget I’m in a VR headset.

If this headset really gives edge to edge clarity, no glare and you can’t feel it on your face it should be pretty ■■■■ immersive.

So I’ll try the illuminator first and only buy the full facial interface when I have no choice but to use it in daylight.

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There is some discussion about this on the VD discord pico channel (about different game though), sounds like they think it is more to do with the runtimes indeed

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Next comparison will need to be something like ACC running in steamVR to take OpenXR out of the equation.

Of course complicated by the existence of opencomposite now, so you can technically run those games with the G2 bypassing steam now so it’s not an entirely fair comparison.

Would be great if virtual desktop could become its own version of a runtime (like WMR portal or steamVR) and run OpenXR games without steam in the loop.

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The qüestion: pico neo 3 link or pico 4?

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Sadly for me it is No cable - No buy.
I do not want to deal with streaming processing overhead nor visual artefacts. To top it all off I feel more comfortable with an cable instead of a Wifi signal next to my head for prolonged use. So I play the wait game.