cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Virtual Desktop vs Physical Desktop

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

So, I've had a fair amount of experience using Virtual Desktop to play untethered PCVR games, or at least they did as of last November. Some require me to reset the view when I first start up via Virtual Desktop, others work just fine out of the box. I've also had extensive experience now with playing my 'pancake' games in VR using Oculus Link, Virtual Desktop, and even Big Screen. With Virtual Desktop now officially being allowed to stream PCVR apps and the announcement of Oculus Air Link, I've decided to experiment with doing away with having a physical computer monitor. So, today I set up my computer where the router is in order to allow me to plug in an ethernet cable.

 

And already I can see a few pros and cons. To start with, thin black text on a white background can be tricky to read. For another, my mouse curser is a bit hard to see currently in VR. I have it set up for high contrast with sites that possess a light colored background. But virtual Desktop replaces my solid black mouse curser with one that is white curser with thin black outline doesn't show up well on a white background in VR. And I can't find a way to change that yet.

 

The screen resolution of the Quest 2 is markedly better then the Quest 1. But text in this forum, for example, is still a little bit blurry. Not deal breakingly bad, but enough that things look slightly out of focus. As such I can forsee possible eye strain trying to read forums in VR for long periods of time. Writing might also be a bit of an issue.

 

The final hurdle I can see is the inability to see your keyboard and mouse. I can touch type, sure. But your the ability to see something out of the corner of your eye has a larger part in touch typing then you might expect. Once the Infinate Office features are released that at least might be fixed, but for now I think I'm still going to have to keep a physical monitor.

 

Dag nabbit.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.
16 REPLIES 16

There's definitely no replacement for a physical monitor, keyboard and mouse for the immediate future imo.

 

I agree there are 2 areas that are involved. As you say, being able to see your keyboard, mouse and hands is the first thing and it's going to be really interesting to find out how well Infinite Office performs with that. You'll see the physical keyboard and your hands (I assume) so it's just the accuracy that'll be the thing. Will it be good enough to type fast? I doubt it'll be a match for seeing the real things, at least not in its first iterations.

 

And yes, resolution still isn't a match for monitors for productivity type programs which have toolbars and menus that are pretty small and detailed... even with a 4K monitor, DPI scaling isn't always implemented well and you end up having to get closer to the monitor than is comfortable... Windows built-in scaling still isn't perfect and you have to set various launch options within each app's shortcut to get it playing nice with a non-standard DPIs.

 

I think this is more of a problem for us older folk but I find even a 30inch monitor isn't big enough for some menus where the app doesn't have menu scaling.

 

VR will help with this in the future as you can size your virtual screens as you like and have multiple screens but VR headsets just don't have the resolution to match monitors and that's the sticking point for using non-VR PC productivity apps in VR. Eventually I think commonly used PC apps will have VR modes designed-in... or headsets will be high res enough that that won't be necessary. But I think CAD, 3D design and Photoshop type stuff isn't going to be very usable in VR.

 

I think ideally office apps need detachable scalable VR menus, which work well with the current limitations of hand tracking.

 

Infinite Office alone is probably enough reason for me to upgrade my Quest to Q2 because I think it'll have enough uses to justify the headset but full productivity in VR may be a few years off.

 

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

Yeah, I'd come to the same conclusion. It works. But was a bit too blurry for me. And not being able to see the mouse curser was a bit frustrating.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

Nekto2
Superstar

Great notes on VR for work!

 

> The final hurdle I can see is the inability to see your keyboard and mouse.

Have you tried new update v28 with VR image of keyboard?

 

It may help to use "accessibility functions" of your OS to help a little. Like to highlight your cursor position or to turn on high contrast mode for text reading.

And it may help to bring your virtual screen a little more close to your eyes then real monitor was. Like two time more close 😉

Nekto2
Superstar

With recent leak it seems that 2d android app are coming to Quest1,2 ! 🙂

Those like Zoom, Office and drawing apps.

Great! 🙂

Pixie40
Expert Trustee
@Nekto2 wrote:

Great notes on VR for work!

 

> The final hurdle I can see is the inability to see your keyboard and mouse.

Have you tried new update v28 with VR image of keyboard?

 

It may help to use "accessibility functions" of your OS to help a little. Like to highlight your cursor position or to turn on high contrast mode for text reading.

And it may help to bring your virtual screen a little more close to your eyes then real monitor was. Like two time more close 😉


Not yet. For one thing it currently only supports one specific bluetooth keyboard, to my knowledge. I'll have to try it out with mine, but probably isn't supported yet. I actually haven't gotten to try out many of the new V28 features. While my desktop was updated to it before I left town for 3 weeks, my Quest 2 didn't get that update till a week after I'd left town.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

After diving into my settings again, I'm trying the Inverted mouse. And that fixes the "invisible mouse curser" issue. I don't have the right bluetooth keyboard, so can't experiment with that part of Infinite Office. But I have experimented with the "bring your couch and desk into VR" features. And it's pretty nice. Once I get the right type of keyboard (or they update to recognize other bluetooth keyboards) I'll have a potential virtual desk that's not set up in my roomscale play space. Which will be handy.

 

Still, I don't think we're quite at where it needs to be for replacing a physical monitor entirely. There needs to be better IDP options. And better per eye resolution before that's possible. Less front heavy headsets would also be a benefit. But I see that happening over time. Still, it's neat to see things like this evolving in my lifetime.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

@Pixie40 thanks for the testing,

I wonder how many environments are remembered for couch/desk placements... I'm never 100% sure how many guardians my Quest 1 remembers but I think it's 3. Would that be the same for your couch/desk environments or is it just a single space for that?

Pixie40
Expert Trustee

I have no idea. While out of town I set up 3 different VR play spaces. One room scale, one stationary at the table (so I could use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard to play streamed desktop flatscreen games), and one on the couch in the living room. When I got home, my quest 2 still had my room scale playspace guardian. I only have the one Desk/Couch area set up right now. Note, by 'couch' I mean "marked where the computer chair is". I haven't owned an actual couch in 5 or 6 years. Looks like you can have more then one set up at the same time though.

 

The couch and desk are actually shown within your Oculus home environment as a floating surface for the desk and a basic 'couch' (in my case chair) with a 2d plane for arms. Still, you can see their position relative to you. Thus letting you easily find your couch/chair. If it's not in your room scale area, it switches to pass through mode once you leave your guardian, and back to your Home environment once you sit down.

 

Note, the Quest 1 can only remember 2 guardians at a given moment. That's one Room Scale play space and one Stationary play space. If you try setting up a 3rd one, it forgets the ones you already had set up. It's serviceable for replacing my monitor, but the issues make me not quite ready to completely abandon a physical computer monitor. Still, these issues may well get solved over time. And it's closer then the Quest 1 was. Or what my Cosmos Elite can do. So I'm able to foresee a future where people don't need a bulky monitor anymore. Technically, once my new router arrives today or tomorrow I wouldn't even need to set up near the tower unless using my HOTAS flight stick.

Lo, a quest! I seek the threads of my future in the seeds of the past.

Interesting.

I thought my Q1 remembered 3 but you could be right... maybe I'm confusing it with the one that my Rift-S remembers. It's my age.