My kids have made their wishes known: they want VR for Christmas. Although I’m computer-savvy, this is an area I know nothing about. Can anyone give me some basics, or even specific recommendations?
Do the kids have any opinions? There might be a particular system that their friends have and a different type would disappoint.
When I was a kid, Nintendo was what we had and none of my friends or classmates had Sega. But it was the exact opposite when visiting my cousins a few states away, all Sega.
Good question. I’ll need to get more specifics about what they’re looking for. They’ve only said “VR”, and not said anything about particular systems or applications. Presumably they want to play games. They are into Minecraft; is there some way to do Minecraft in VR?
Ohhhhh. Do you need a new lawn mower? That’s virtually real reality right there. 
And then spring the VR thing on them (sorry don’t know a thing about them)
Unless you have a Playstation to potentially use their VR system, the easy answer is the Oculus Quest 2. Dollar for dollar, it’s the best entry into VR and can be attached to your PC (for more power/game options) or run independently if you don’t have a suitable PC. Come to think of it, most of the other VR options straight up require a PC anyway.
It’s also the lowest priced “good” option and would be fairly easy to resell if you decide to do so. I’d rather drop $300-$400 on a system and eventually upgrade and sell than drop $800 and have it sit on a shelf after a month.
The biggest hang-up for some is that Oculus is owned by Facebook and you will need to link the Quest 2 to a Facebook account.
All of the VR headsets immerse you in them, they don’t allow any outside light in; therefore you lose spatial orientation in the place that you’re using them. When Microsoft had their retail stores, pre-pandemic, they had a section in the corner where you could try VR. While I tried it a couple of times (it was fun), it was sometimes more fun watching others move/twist/turn all over the place as they were battling aliens/ghosts/pirates in their view. Occasionally, you’d get to watch some fool do a full 360° & tie themselves up in the VR goggle cord; even watched one person fall over because of this. With the old Nintendo Wii where your controller was also the handle of your baseball bat or tennis racket you’d know to reposition yourself into the center of the room before the next pitch/serve; you don’t get that in VR goggles. Make sure the room that the VR will be used in is large enough & doesn’t have breakables nearby.
I make 360° flight videos for our customers. If you watch them on a monitor, the view changes as you move your mouse, if you watch them on your tablet/phone, your view changes as you move your device. I bought cheapie, $5 VR goggles at walmart where there was a slot in front where you’d drop your phone in as the goggles relied on your phone for a screen; they worked well for what they were as you really did get immersed in the experience just by moving your head, just like your view changes in real life. IOW, just be careful, you can but cheap VR systems that never need batteries & don’t have cords but probably aren’t what you’re looking for.
Thanks, all; gives me some starting points. I’m sure I’ll ask more questions later.
All the VR headsets have some sort of chaperone system that keep you oriented and warn you when you start to stray from the designated area. It’s not hard to keep your orientation once you understand how to use them. For oculus, I recommend turning on the option that shows you the outline of your play area on the ground at all times. And for wireless headsets - really, the quest/quest 2 - the cord is a non-issue. Using the controller straps and clearing the area of anything breakable is definitely a good idea.
Anyway, Jophiel got it. You almost certainly want a quest 2, unless your kids specifically have a playstation and want playstation VR. The quest 2 is very good, very flexible, cheap, doesn’t require a PC or console (but can work with a gaming PC if you have one), and the only downside is that it’s from one of the world’s most evil corporations, which is something you have to decide whether you care about. It does require a facebook account, but it doesn’t really involve facebook at all in using it otherwise.
Something just occurred to me–is one enough for two kids? Are there two-player games where we’d want more than one VR device?
The only multiplayer VR game that springs to mind is Star Wars Squadrons. There’s almost certainly others but not enough to warrant a second $350 purchase in my opinion.
In my experience it’s would be better to find some sort of screen cast solution so that everyone can see what the player is seeing. As someone above said, part of the fun is watching people, and if you can watch what they are seeing it makes it a lot of fun. I had a blast playing Superhot on an Oculus with a few friends. You need breaks and it’s fun to watch other people.
I have an Oculus Quest and it is astonishingly good. The graphics are never amazing, but there is genuine immersion. I have a boxing game with graphics that would be at home on the N64, but it feels as real as you could expect outside of scifi VR with physical responses.
It can also be plugged into a PC to play Steam VR games as well, but the reason it’s so good is because it’s not wired. If you have an excellent computer and wifi you can get third-party software to wirelessly connect to a PC, but I’ve never been able to make it work (my computer is aging).
There are some multiplayer experiences available but it’s not the focus of the platform.
If the Facebook thing is an issue, I’m pretty sure you can just make a fake throwaway account to be your Oculus account.
Oh, and make sure you have a decent space available to play in.
There are plenty of two player oculus games, if they both wanted headsets you could definitely make use of that. Additionally the headsets take some adjustment to get right in terms of strap length, eye spacing, etc. so every time you switch users, if they aren’t similar enough, it might take a minute or two to get all of that right, so it’d be nice to have seperate headsets for that reason.
That said, the headset/app supports streaming what the headset sees easily, so one of them can play and another can watch on a phone/tablet/pc.
Look at Oculus Quest - US Store Overview and then use the filter to see the co-op and multiplayer games to see what those options are.
You’d have to be mindful for the amount of space you’d need to have two people play simultaneously without running into each other.
There has been a built in wireless link similar to virtual desktop for a few months now. It’s still technically a beta feature and you to activate it in the beta options in the oculus software, but it works well. It simulates connecting the quest via USB cable, so you get the rift interface on your PC when you do it. You should give that a try, it may work for you. You do need a high quality wireless router pretty close (preferably within line of sight) of the headset to use wireless streaming, and the PC should be hooked up by ethernet cable to the wireless router for best performance.
I wouldn’t recommend this - these get banned sometimes, and if your facebook account gets banned you lose your purchased oculus games. That’s probably one of the worst potential downsides of the facebook connection until facebook starts monitoring your brain waves.
Facebook is going to (eventually) remove the mandatory FB account for Oculus users.
“As we’ve focused more on work, and frankly as we’ve heard your feedback more broadly, we’re working on making it so you can log in into Quest with an account other than your personal Facebook account,” said CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his keynote. “We’re starting to test support for work accounts soon, and we’re working on making a broader shift here, within the next year.”
Huh, that’s great news. I would have never expected them to reverse that decision, as their whole purpose for buying oculus is to try to get facebook to dominate the VR market and eventually create a virtual universe that becomes a big part of our lives that they control.
You’ll have the option of logging in under your facebook account or your Meta account…
The headset itself is a screaming deal. Buy one with a link cable and you can use it as a standard headset with your Steam account, no facebook required. Facebook has to be losing money with each one they sell at the current price, which is roughly 1/3 of the price of headset/controller combos from other manufacturers.