Steam Hardware Survey - July 2025 results included (see latest post in this thread)

I'd love not to be able to tell oled from lcd, buying a new TV would also be so much easier, but unfortunately I find it extremely easy to spot the difference in blacl levels - given the right apps. Also strapped to my eyes making the screens gigantic, it so easy to tell lcd from oled. But for those blessed ones who can't see any difference in black levels between lcd and oled-with-spud in apps like Gloomy Eyes, of course there's no reason not to love lcd. I do love lcd too - when used properly like in Alyx and other bright apps/games. 

Btw, like measured before - Vive is similar to CV1, even with the spud CV1 is a lot darker than lcd, here the Index (which in another comparison was slightly darker than Rift-S) is compared to Vive (oled with or without spud) just as an example:

Black level in nits:

• Index: 0.153

• Vive: under 0.02 - with true blacks turned off via black smear compensation (default).

• Vive: 0 - with true blacks turned on, black smear compensation disabled via running the headset in secondary display mode.

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

By the way, Virtual Desktop has a brightness slider built in, and people who claim to be particularly sensitive to black levels have said that it helps a lot. I haven't bothered turning it down from 100%, but perhaps I'll experiment with that too.

My lack of lcd habituation is probably also because I constantly switch between CV1 and Index - and with Revive 2.0+ all my apps and games are suddenly available for both lcd and oled, and I'm very exposed to the differences. 

If I only used lcd, I probably would not know what I'm missing. I played Squadrons for a long time using only Index, and it was fine - I never gave it a thought that the gray loading screens should indeed be black, lol - but that changed when the devs added native Oculus driver support for the Steam version. 

To me it does make a great difference - like experiencing the Claustral Canyon first using Index res 200%, and it did not look "right" making me think it was a mediocre app - and then using the CV1 ss 2.0 and I was blown away. Close to a night and day experience. 

dburne said:

I am sure Reverb G2 numbers would be better but they much like the Index are very hard to get right now.
Still loving mine.

This typically occurs when the demand is too low. If they met the demand, we likely wouldn't see much of an increase. PCVR simply doesn't have the software ecosystem to justify the high-cost currently. Things are made worse with the pandemic.

But overall, the "hard to get" aspect of Index and G2 is not an indication of high-demand. Kinda the opposite.

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

The Black Levels in Quest 2 are a complete non-issue. I proved it plenty with screenshots from my own headset. If there is an issue with the black levels, then it would either be a defective unit or something wrong with the software. But whatever black level issues exist are either greatly exaggerated, or just the result of theorycrafting since, theoretically, the Quest 2 has lenses that "should" have reduced black levels.

But that's far from true. Whether I'm playing Quest native or tethered to Rift for PCVR, the black levels are gorgeous.

RuneSR2 said:

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

By the way, Virtual Desktop has a brightness slider built in, and people who claim to be particularly sensitive to black levels have said that it helps a lot. I haven't bothered turning it down from 100%, but perhaps I'll experiment with that too.

My lack of lcd habituation is probably also because I constantly switch between CV1 and Index - and with Revive 2.0+ all my apps and games are suddenly available for both lcd and oled, and I'm very exposed to the differences. 

If I only used lcd, I probably would not know what I'm missing. I played Squadrons for a long time using only Index, and it was fine - I never gave it a thought that the gray loading screens should indeed be black, lol - but that changed when the devs added native Oculus driver support for the Steam version. 

To me it does make a great difference - like experiencing the Claustral Canyon first using Index res 200%, and it did not look "right" making me think it was a mediocre app - and then using the CV1 ss 2.0 and I was blown away. Close to a night and day experience. 

That certainly does not speak well for the Index then.
My CV1 was permanently retired when Rift S came out. Can't stand the SDE. Don't miss dealing with the sensors.
It was great for it's time though.

dburne said:

RuneSR2 said:

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

By the way, Virtual Desktop has a brightness slider built in, and people who claim to be particularly sensitive to black levels have said that it helps a lot. I haven't bothered turning it down from 100%, but perhaps I'll experiment with that too.

My lack of lcd habituation is probably also because I constantly switch between CV1 and Index - and with Revive 2.0+ all my apps and games are suddenly available for both lcd and oled, and I'm very exposed to the differences. 

If I only used lcd, I probably would not know what I'm missing. I played Squadrons for a long time using only Index, and it was fine - I never gave it a thought that the gray loading screens should indeed be black, lol - but that changed when the devs added native Oculus driver support for the Steam version. 

To me it does make a great difference - like experiencing the Claustral Canyon first using Index res 200%, and it did not look "right" making me think it was a mediocre app - and then using the CV1 ss 2.0 and I was blown away. Close to a night and day experience. 

That certainly does not speak well for the Index then.
My CV1 was permanently retired when Rift S came out. Can't stand the SDE. Don't miss dealing with the sensors.
It was great for it's time though.

The Index is awesome, most users love the Index blacks and do not notice any problems. I'm just being very picky about extremely dark games and apps, and again, if you can't see any difference between lcd and oled, do go on enjoying life ;)

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/jak789/wow_the_black_levels_on_quest_2_are_really_really/

https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/94251/quest2-wow-no-more-dark-areas

RuneSR2 said:

dburne said:

RuneSR2 said:

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

By the way, Virtual Desktop has a brightness slider built in, and people who claim to be particularly sensitive to black levels have said that it helps a lot. I haven't bothered turning it down from 100%, but perhaps I'll experiment with that too.

My lack of lcd habituation is probably also because I constantly switch between CV1 and Index - and with Revive 2.0+ all my apps and games are suddenly available for both lcd and oled, and I'm very exposed to the differences. 

If I only used lcd, I probably would not know what I'm missing. I played Squadrons for a long time using only Index, and it was fine - I never gave it a thought that the gray loading screens should indeed be black, lol - but that changed when the devs added native Oculus driver support for the Steam version. 

To me it does make a great difference - like experiencing the Claustral Canyon first using Index res 200%, and it did not look "right" making me think it was a mediocre app - and then using the CV1 ss 2.0 and I was blown away. Close to a night and day experience. 

That certainly does not speak well for the Index then.
My CV1 was permanently retired when Rift S came out. Can't stand the SDE. Don't miss dealing with the sensors.
It was great for it's time though.

The Index is awesome, most users love the Index blacks and do not notice any problems. I'm just being very picky about extremely dark games and apps, and again, if you can't see any difference between lcd and oled, do go on enjoying life ;)

https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusQuest/comments/jak789/wow_the_black_levels_on_quest_2_are_really_really/

https://forums.oculusvr.com/community/discussion/94251/quest2-wow-no-more-dark-areas

I really love my Quest 2 for the sharpness. But, my first disappointment with it was going back to Vader Immortal #1 and seeing Darth Vader walk in. Compared to the Quest or CV1 it definitely hurt the experience.

Of course, if I didn't have it to compare, I probably would have been happy.

Sometimes the more you know, the less happy you are. 

Zenbane said:

nalex66 said:

I don't have Robinson or Gloomy Eyes, but perhaps I'll try some comparisons if I have time this weekend. But really, in all my VR (or other screen-viewing) experience, black levels have never been a concern or issue. The brain has a way of getting used to the current brightest and darkest tones in what you're looking at and filtering the image based on that. When you're in a movie theater, the darkest on-screen black is still much brighter than the surrounding real world darkness, but do you notice it throughout the movie? I don't.

The Black Levels in Quest 2 are a complete non-issue. I proved it plenty with screenshots from my own headset. If there is an issue with the black levels, then it would either be a defective unit or something wrong with the software. But whatever black level issues exist are either greatly exaggerated, or just the result of theorycrafting since, theoretically, the Quest 2 has lenses that "should" have reduced black levels.

But that's far from true. Whether I'm playing Quest native or tethered to Rift for PCVR, the black levels are gorgeous.

There is no doubt that the Q2 has the best lcd blacks and for the most part they are almost as good as oled.

However, even the VD developer, ggodin on his discord channel, has recently commented that he is always surprised how much better the blacks are when he goes back and forth from his Q2 to his oled Q1 and he hopes that Oculus develops another oled headset in the near future.  I hope Oculus is listening!

Like @RuneSR2 I'm kinda an oled fanboy for most darkish games (like Lone Echo) and I do not see the smearing that @nalex66 mentioned with or without spud on/off with everything except X Plane 11 (where it's a bit better off and may depend on the oled panels since they are all a bit different).

As good as the Q1/2 are with Link or wireless w/VD. I still think that you will get the best PCVR performance with a dedicated PCVR headset.  I find it pretty hard to believe that usb3 will ever match DP, but who knows?

The Q1/2 uses a bit more gpu power (~8-10% guestimate) due to data compression than DP or HDMI.  The new Nvidia RTX 3000 series has a faster encoder and this seems to help a bit.  I recently upgraded my +3yo gtx1080ti to a rtx3090 and I've seen a pretty big overall improvement (~+50% guestimate).  Is it worth the $'s, probably not for most, but as far as I know you cannot take it with you, lol! 

It's funny but I actually found that my 3090 improved my PCVR performance much more with wireless w/VD than it did with v23 Link.  Not sure why?  However, still no match with my dedicated PCVR headsets (Rift cv1 and Vive Pro) imho.

If I was able to try out a Quest 2 and be sure one of its IPD settings was good for me, I'd probably have swapped my Q1... I use the Q1 a lot stand-alone and Rift-S for PCVR.

Whether it replaced my Rift-S for PCVR would depend a lot on comfort... I've heard good things about the GOMRVR Halo strap so maybe if there's a Q2 price drop at some point I'll just take a punt. As with nalex, getting my money's worth out of it with PCVR probably depends on a PC upgrade for me, and availability of those 3080's or better. If Q3 is looking like maybe 18 months away, I'm good with waiting and my upgrade should definitely have happened by then!