Wednesday 6 November 2024

22 Great VR Games for Relaxation & Meditation on Quest, PC VR, and PSVR 2

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In times like these it’s nice to be able to get away from it all, if only for a brief moment. If you have a VR headset you’re one of the lucky people who can enter other realities from the confines of your living room, so why not use it for your wellbeing? Here we’ve gathered Quest meditation games and experiences focused on VR relaxation. This list also covers apps on PC VR and PSVR 2, so there’s something for everyone.

Below you’ll find that we split up 20 VR meditation and relaxation experiences into several categories: Nature Relaxation, Musical Relaxation, Creation & Puzzling, Musical Creation, Meditation, Reflection, Mindfulness, and Exploration.

Update (November 6th, 2024)

We’ve refreshed our list with a few new apps and the latest info. Here’s a quick summary of changes since the last update:

Added Earth Quest (Nature Relaxation section)
Added Squingle Mini (Creation & Puzzling section)
Added Cosmic Flow (Meditation section)
Prices, trailers, and platforms updated

Nature Relaxation

Ocean Rift (Quest, PC VR) – $10

Ocean Rift is like an aquarium where you get to swim around with the fish. You’ll get to see lovingly animated sea creatures up close and you might even learn a thing or two with more than 40 narrated points of interest to find. And if you’re on Quest 3, Ocean Rift has a mixed reality mode that lets you turn your own room into an aquarium.

Real VR Fishing (Quest) – $20

You can probably guess what this one is about… but you might not expect that the app has some rather beautiful environments. So yes, you’ll be fishing and you can take it as fast or as slow as you’d like. Consider putting on some music or even a podcast while you relax and wait for the big one. Real VR Fishing also supports multiplayer so you can fish with friends.

Google Earth VR (PC VR) – Free

Google Earth VR is exactly what it sounds like… its Google Earth, but in VR. Beyond being able to explore essentially the entire globe as if you were a giant towering over it, the app can also be a wonderful way to relax. Find yourself a pretty place (there’s some great ones in the ‘Featured’ section inside the app), bring yourself down to ground level, and simply sit as a giant and take in the scene around you. You can even set the mood by adjusting the time of day. It can also be magical to just ‘wander’ starting from a familiar place and see where you wind up. Considering both the quality of the experience and the fact that its free, this one is an absolute must-try.

EarthQuest (Quest) – $10

EarthQuest aims to not only bring the Google Earth VR experience to Quest, but modernize it too. EarthQuest adds multiplayer so you can explore the globe with friends as well as natural language input allowing you to ask ChatGPT to tell you more about the things you find.

Musical Relaxation

Tetris Effect: Connected (Quest, PC VR, PSVR 2) – $30, $40

Tetris Effect is classic Tetris gameplay wrapped in an audio-visual experience which uniquely accompanies each of the game’s levels. As you maneuver the blocks you’ll hear sounds that fit into the beat. Don’t lose yourself too much in the sights and sounds though as some of the levels will take skill and practice to complete, even on ‘Normal’ difficulty. A post-launch update to the game has brought cross-platform multiplayer to Tetris Effect so you can vibe with friends no matter if they’re playing in VR or on a flat screen.

Sheaf – Together EP (SteamVR) – Free

Ever wish you could cruise down an endless highway, watching as the trees, buildings, and city streets pass you by while a synthwave soundtrack perfectly fits the vibe? Artist and musician Sheaf has created just that—a short VR experience which is hand-crafted to fit a three track synthwave album. For the great price of free, this one is a no-brainer.

Creation & Puzzling

Squingle Mini (Quest, $1) & Squingle (PC VR, $15)

Squingle is one of those games that you can look at and still not entirely understand what you’re actually seeing. But once you get your hands on the game all becomes clear: it’s a clever, trippy, and fun puzzle game that plays to VR’s spatial strengths. To put it simply, the goal of Squingle is to guide a pair of spinning balls through a pipe. Sounds easy enough, right? Well like any good puzzle game, Squingle starts simply enough but introduces more difficult concepts as you go—like a button that reverses the spin of the balls or one that changes the axis of the spin. And the pipe? It’s actually a bit more like a cosmic bowel that undulates with twists, turns, and parallel tunnels.

Read Our Hands-on

Puzzling Places (Quest, PSVR 2) – $15, $20 (free demo)

Puzzling Places is a series of 3D puzzles made out of 3D scans of real-life places. Going from flat jigsaw puzzles to 3D puzzles will stretch your brain in satisfying new ways as you use all your 2D jigsaw strategies (like sorting by color, edges, and the like) while leaning into your spatial reasoning sense to find the right connections between pieces. Even more satisfying—when you’re done you have a tiny 3D diorama to explore! Since launch, Puzzling Places has been updated with a multiplayer mode so you can relax and puzzle with friends, and mixed reality mode on Quest 3 so you can solve puzzles right in your room.

*Free Puzzling Places demo on PSVR 2

Vermillion (Quest, PC VR) – $20

Vermillion is a free-form painting app designed to replicate the oil medium. You can do everything from basic paint-by-number to completely freestyle painting with color mixing and the use of various brushes to achieve different effects. With a multiplayer mode up to four players total can paint together. You can also paint in your own space thanks to mixed reality on Quest 3, or even do co-located painting with a friend so you’re both painting in the same physical room.

Gadgeteer (Quest, PC VR) – $15

Have you ever wished you had a whole room and a box full of tracks, balls, and dominos to build the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine? You’re in luck. Gadgeteer will let you finally imagine your childhood dream of filling an entire room with a crazy chain-reaction-machine without the cat knocking everything over. Beyond being able to build whatever you want in ‘Sandbox Mode’, Gadgeteer is a full fledged puzzle game with 60 puzzles to complete and a pleasant soundtrack to boot.

Read Our Review

Cubism (Quest, PC VR) – $10

Cubism is a casual VR puzzle that plays a bit like a 3D version of Tetris. Its sleek, casual design makes it great for relaxing seated play. But fear not, while the puzzle concept is simple, Cubism will have you scratching your head in short order as difficulty increases across 60 stages. The bright, void-like environment makes it easy to forget about the woes of the real world as you focus on finding the right fit for the pieces before you to the backdrop of a beautiful piano soundtrack. Thanks to hand-tracking support, you can even play without needing to pick up your controllers. A post-launch update has added a mixed reality mode on Quest 3 so you can solve puzzles from the comfort of your own room.

Vrkshop (PC VR) – $20

Vrkshop describes itself as a “VR woodworking game” and aims to recreate a hands-on woodshop where you can measure, mark, cut, nail, and much more. With a realistic wood-cutting system, the app challenges you to use the tools at your disposal to create furniture and other objects with no explicit instructions.

Color Space (Quest) – $10

Color Space is a virtual reality coloring book where you get to bring life to a full 3D scene rather than just a flat page. Step into one of 26 environments and start adding color as you see fit. As you color the scene, it will start to come alive with animated elements and ambient sounds.

Musical Creation

Electronauts (Quest, PC VR) – $20

Electronauts is like a VR DJ station with training wheels. Though you can take the training wheels off if you’re especially talented, the training wheels are actually part of the appeal; Electronauts does an incredible job of letting you express your inner musical creativity even if you don’t have instrumental talent. The game serves up some 80 tracks, each which function as a custom sound-kit with unique instruments, backing tracks, and more. And as a huge bonus, PC VR version of the game are multiplayer, meaning you can jam out with a friend. The track list is heavy on the EDM side (though there are some chill songs to be found) so if that’s not your cup of tea you might want to look elsewhere.

Read Our Review

Drops: Rhythm Garden (PC VR) – $7

Drops is a musically focused experience where shapes that you place make different sounds when struck with falling balls. With an endless flow of balls, you can construct a cacophony of sounds on the fly, adding new shapes and creating new paths as you go. Think of it like a Rube Goldberg machine, but for making minimal, meditative music.

Continue on Page 2: Meditation, Reflection, Mindfulness, and Exploration »

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Tuesday 5 November 2024

Apple Releases Long-awaited Panoramic Display Feature on Vision Pro in 2.2 Beta

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Apple has released initial access to the long-promised panoramic display feature for Vision Pro’s Mac Virtual Display, which now brings three virtual screen sizes via its visionOS 2.2 beta release.

Having initially launched with Vision Pro back in February, Mac Virtual Display only included a single virtual screen size, albeit allowing Vision Pro users to have multiple app windows open at the same time.

Many were hoping Apple would release the new ‘Wide’ and ‘Ultrawide’ display formats for Mac Virtual Display last month during the company’s online Mac product reveal event. Now, as reported by MacRumors, visionOS 2.2 is here in beta, allowing Vision Pro users who opt in to finally take advantage of long-awaited wider screen real estate.

Apple said during the feature’s unveiling in June the update would bring an “ultra-wide display that wraps around you,” allowing for resolutions “equivalent to two 4K monitors, side by side.” Mac-side dynamic foveated rendering also keeps content “sharp wherever you look,” Apple said.

While it’s unclear exactly when Apple plan to push out visionOS 2.2 to the stable branch, it’s likely to come alongside the next ‘X.2’ updates for iOS, iPadOS, macOS Sequoia, watchOS, and tvOS, MacRumors suggests.

In the meantime, to enroll in the visionOS 2.2 beta, simply follow these few steps:

Updating Vision Pro via OTA updates

Sign in to the Apple Developer Center with with your Apple ID and accept the ToS.
Put on Vision Pro, and go to Settings General > Software Update > Beta Updates and choose the developer beta.
When a new developer beta is available, you can install it from Software Update.
From there, you should see the new ‘Wide’ and ‘Ultrawide’ options when tethered to your Mac.

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Interactive VR Film ‘Human Within’ Brings ‘Black Mirror: Bandersnatch’ Style User Choice to Quest in January

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Human Within is a sci-fi interactive VR film coming to Quest in January that explores how AI affects humanity. Departing from standard VR films, which are usually pretty ‘one-and-done’, the upcoming interactive experience promises to give you the choice in how the story progresses and ends.

Created by Signal Space Lab and Actrio Studio, Human Within is set to arrive on Quest on January 9th, and “soon” to SteamVR headsets.

Like the interactive Black Mirror episode Bandersnatch, Human Within is slated to offer the user choices and consequences, but also explore digital recreations of the films environments, displayed as point clouds, in addition to viewing some of the action from what the studios call “a virtual internet space.”

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Directed by Avi Winkler and Anne Weigel, Human Within follows engineer Nyla, and her sister Linh, who are employed at Forward Industries. Having pioneered a groundbreaking supercomputer that harnesses the human brain’s processing power, Nyla pulls back from the project after confronting its implications. But the sisters are forced by the company to continue their work, and Lihn’s consciousness is transferred to the metaverse.

Lihn’s now-digital brain is where the narrative plays out, presented as a mix of 3D spaces, and both 2D and 360 video, offering a total of five possible endings.

“At key moments in the story the events that take place are defined by the user’s choices. These moments define how events unfolded in the past and determine how it all ends in the present,” the film’s Horizon Store page says.

“We wanted to explore how advanced tech affects the human experience, and how we connect to one another,” said Avi Winkler, Creative Director at Signal Space Lab. “Launching at a time of rapid advancements, like ChatGPT 4.0 and Neuralink, Human Within no longer feels like science fiction, but rather a timely reflection on the shifting realities of modern life.”

Virtual reality was a key component, Winkler says, noting Human Within “immerses viewers in the reality of now – and where we’re headed – in a more immersive, nuanced way than through a traditional film or video game.”

You can pre-order Human Within on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and 3, regularly priced at $18, and wishlist it on Steam for PC VR headsets.

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Monday 4 November 2024

Only One PSVR 2 Game Confirmed for PS5 Pro Enhancements at Launch, VR Performance Patch Expected Later

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PlayStation 5 Pro is launching on November 7th, priced at $700, and while Sony is boasting a list of over 50 games getting day-one enhancements, so far only one PSVR 2 title has been confirmed to get a launch day bump: Kayak VR: Mirage from Better Than Life.

The ultimate expectation is PS5 Pro will allow all PSVR 2 titles to run at higher frame rates and possibly without reprojection, which supplements lower frame rates with ‘synthetic frames’ to reach a higher perceived refresh rate.

Hopes rest on the console’s new GPU that Sony says has a 67% more Compute Units than the current PS5 console and 28% faster memory, but also the new Playstation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) AI-driven upscaling feature.

PSSR isn’t coming to VR games at launch though; a patch made specifically available to PSVR 2 game developers is expected “in the future,” Sony’s lead PlayStation system architect Mark Cerny told CNET back in September.

While Kayak VR: Mirage does have the coveted ‘PS5 Pro Enhanced’ badge, making it the only VR native to do so, it’s undoubtably relying on the console’s overall increased horsepower, and not PSSR as such.

For now, there are technically three other PSVR 2-supported titles listed in Sony’s launch day list—No Man’s Sky from Hello Games, and Capcom’s Resident Evil Village and Resident Evil 4—although neither studio has made any claims as to whether their respective VR modes will see any enhancements.

A number of third-party VR games have also pledged eventual PS5 Pro enhancements, including cyubeVR from Stonebrick Studios, and unreleased titles Arken Age from VitruviusVR and Subside from A2D Software.

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Apple Reportedly Delays Cheaper Vision Pro Beyond 2027, M5 Chip Refresh May Arrive Instead

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Apple may be taking a beat before it releases a cheaper follow-up to Vision Pro, which would more broadly appeal to consumers, instead releasing a hardware refresh next year that includes the new M5 chipset.

According to independent tech analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple has delayed the cheaper version of Vision Pro “beyond 2027”. Kuo, who is a respected figure in Apple supply chain leaks, claims in an X post that “Apple’s only new head-mounted display device in 2025 will be the Vision Pro with an upgraded M5 processor.”

“I think what really drove Apple to delay the cheaper Vision Pro is that simply reducing the price wouldn’t help create successful use cases,” Kuo maintains. “It’s similar to the HomePod situation—even after launching the cheaper HomePod mini, Apple’s smart speakers failed to become mainstream products.”

This comes in sharp contrast to a previous report from The Information in June that alleged Apple was charging ahead with a single, more affordable headset for release in 2025—let’s call it ‘Vision SE’, and leaving a more powerful ‘Vision Pro 2’ for later release.

Granted, there’s no way of knowing exactly what Apple is planning to do, as the Cupertino tech giant is famous for seeding would-be leakers with misleading bits of information in effort to catch them, so reports of the ilk should be taken with a heaping handful of salt.

Still, Kuo’s claim that Apple is pushing forward with what will surely be an equally expensive hardware refresh to the $3,500 Vision Pro may not be so farfetched.

In the midst of recent supply chain rumors claiming Apple has sharply slowed Vision Pro production, Apple CEO Tim Cook was keen to remind doubters in a concurrent Wall Street Journal interview that Vision Pro isn’t “a mass-market product.”

“Right now, it’s an early-adopter product,” Cook told the WSJ. “People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for. Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”

Provided Kuo’s claim is true, it would signal a decisive shift in the company’s release strategy, leaving the next Vision Pro to carry on its legacy, again putting the headset in the odd position of being both too expensive for general consumers, and too niche for a large swath of third-party developers to consider it a viable money-making platform, like Meta’s Quest platform is today.

– – — – –

Meanwhile, the XR competitive landscape is changing at a pretty fast clip. After the release of Meta’s $300 mixed reality Quest 3S, we’re still waiting to hear more about the company’s next big move to release a fleet of third-party OEMs running Horizon OS, which is ostensibly in service of Meta’s bid to become the “open” XR platform to Apple’s closed garden XR ecosystem.

Meanwhile, Google has signaled its preparing support for XR headsets on Google Play, which could portend the long-awaited Samsung/Google/Qualcomm headset that rumors suggest may try to compete with Vision Pro.

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‘Metro Awakening’ Trailer Shows Off First 7 Minutes of Gameplay Ahead of Release This Week

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To throw an extra bit of fuel on the fire, developer Vertigo Games released a trailer showing off the first seven minutes of Metro Awakening gameplay, which is headed to all major VR headsets this week.

Coming to PSVR 2, SteamVR and Quest 2/3/Pro on November 7th, the story-driven single-player adventure promises to be one of the biggest VR releases this year. And it certainly looks the part, at least from the new trailer that shows off the game’s early narrative, which is folded into its first combat tutorial.

Wading through your beleaguered but very alive underground community, you make your way down the metro tracks to join an expeditionary force after a recent mutant attack. The fight is brought to you sooner than expected though, giving you a chance to take over a fixed machine gun position and mow down a horde of beasts while balancing the gun’s barrel temp.

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With the mutants decimated, a coordinated attack at the South Entrance draws urgent attention, requiring you to clear out the once bustling community of the new threat and blow up the entrance to stem the tide of incoming mutants. Addled from the resultant explosion, you make the difficult decision to shut the community’s internal airlock, condemning two of your fellow metro dwellers to a certain fate. A third-person cutscene concludes the action, as you see yourself slump over in defeat to the screams of your surely doomed comrades.

To be fair, these first “seven minutes” seems to cut out a lot of the stuff you’d expect a first-time player to do, like explore the protagonist Serdar’s room and play with musical instruments, look at your photos and peruse all of the objects on your desk. You’d also expect players to eavesdrop on some of the lively conversations going on as you more completely explore the underground base before the attack that ravages it.

That said, series author Dmitry Glukhovsky’s fingerprints are all over this opening scene, which isn’t a surprise since he’s collaborating with Vertigo Games to create the game’s narrative, which is set before the events of Metro 2033 (2010).

While you’re waiting for the November 7th launch, make sure to check out our hands-on with Metro Awakening from September, which dives deeper into the game’s visual quality on Quest 3S, its immersive mechanics, and realistically snappy weapons.

You can also pre-order on PSVR 2, SteamVR headsets, and Quest 2/3/Pro, priced at $40 for the standard edition, and $50 for the Deluxe Edition, which includes cosmetic items, such as skins, accessories, and more, as well as access to a game’s concept art gallery.

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Friday 1 November 2024

Hands-on: Shiftall MeganeX Superlight Packs a Wishlist of Ergonomics Into a Tiny Package

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Japan-based Shiftall is the latest company making an effort to deliver an ultra-compact VR headset for enthusiasts who are willing to spend big on maximizing their PC VR experience. Despite the tiny package, the MeganeX Superlight headset still manages to deliver the optical adjustments that should be standard for every headset. Though undoubtedly expensive, the headset overall is promising, provided the company can finalize a few tweaks before crossing the finish line.

Available for pre-order in Japan, United States, EU & UK, the $1,900 MeganeX Superlight from Shiftall is purportedly set to start shipping between February and March of next year. You can check out the full breakdown of specs here.

This is a tethered headset designed for the SteamVR ecosystem. Shiftall is selling the headset by itself, which means you’ll need to bring your own SteamVR Tracking beacons and controllers—or drop another $580 to buy them new.

This week I got to check out a prototype version of the MeganeX Superlight headset and found it to be a promising piece of hardware that’s certain to be held back by its steep price.

Shiftall CEO Takuma Iwasa told me the headset is primarily targeted toward hardcore VR users, especially those spending long stretches in VRChat. Considering his own claim of more than 3,000 hours in VRChat, it’s clear he has a real understanding of the needs of this kind of customer.

That’s what led the company to try building a compact PC VR headset: Iwasa wants to deliver something that’s lightweight and comfortable for long sessions.

A big part of a VR headset being comfortable is about being able to adjust it to fit each individual. Getting the headset’s lenses into the ideal position for your eyes is crucial to maximizing visual quality and comfort.

To that end, I was happy to see the MeganeX Superlight includes a list of optical adjustments that I’ve long wished was standard on every headset: IPD, eye-relief, diopter, a flip-up visor, and even a lens angle adjustment.

IPD (or interpupillary distance) is standard on most headsets, it’s the distance between the lenses. Matching the distance between the lenses to the distance between your eyes is important to making it easy for your eyes to fuse the stereoscopic image, and for getting your eyes into the ‘sweet spot’ of the lens (the optical center, where the lens has the greatest).

On the MeganeX Superlight, IPD is set by entering your IPD measurement into the software on your computer, causing the headset’s motorized lenses to move into the desired position.

Eye-relief is less common to find on VR headsets. This is the distance from the lens to your eye. Not only is this important for maximizing field-of-view, it’s also important for dialing in the ‘sweet spot’ of the lens. That’s because the sweet spot isn’t just a plane, it’s a volume (technically speaking, this is often called the ‘eye-box’).

On the MeganeX Superlight, the mount which connects the headset itself to the headstrap makes it easy to adjust eye-relief by pinching a pair of pads which allows you to freely slide the headset closer or farther away from your eyes.

Diopter is even rarer than eye-relief. This setting changes the focus of the lens to account for a person’s vision correction needs. Rather than wearing glasses, users can dial in their diopter to enjoy a sharp view.

On Shiftall’s headset, there’s a small dial near the side of each lens which is used to adjust the diopter for each eye. Although this is a manual process (ie: you can’t just enter a value and have the headset set it automatically), Shiftall tells me that part of the headset’s setup process will include a calibration screen to make this process easier.

While a growing number of headsets include decent passthrough views via external cameras, if the goal is to simply look outside of your headset, it’s hard to beat your very own eyes. To that end the MeganeX Superlight has a little plunger on the headstrap mount that makes it quick and easy to flip up the visor for a glimpse of the outside world, and to flip it back down when you’re done.

And last but not least—something I’ve seen on only one other company’s headsets—is an independent lens angle adjustment.

Many VR headsets have a pivot at the point where their headstrap connects to the headset, but the angle is entirely at the mercy of how the facepad rests on the user’s face.

On the other hand, because the MeganeX Superlight headset essentially hangs down from your forehead, a small dial on the side of the mount allows you to independently adjust the angle of the headset (and thus the lenses) regardless of how the headstrap is resting on your head.

Taken all together, these adjustments make it easier for a wider range of people to get the best and most comfortable visual experience from the headset.

And if you’re planning to pay nearly $2,000 for a headset that’s not only compact, but also includes a whopping 13.6MP (3,552 × 3,840) micro-OLED display per-eye, you’re definitely going to want it to have the adjustments necessary to give you the best visuals it can.

The MeganeX Superlight’s displays are incredibly crisp, to the point that there’s simply no visible pixels, sub-pixels, or even a hint of screen-door effect that I could see in my time with the headset. The virtual world not only looks completely sharp and solid thanks to all of those pixels, it also looks very vivid thanks to the rich colors and deep blacks shown by the 10-bit display.

While I need more time with the headset to be sure, my initial impression from memory was that the MeganeX Superlight felt like it had a slightly larger field-of-view, slightly larger sweet spot, and less glare compared to Bigscreen Beyond (its nearest competitor).

From a resolution standpoint, there’s so few examples of VR content that actually have the underlying graphical fidelity to show a meaningful difference—between Bigscreen Beyond’s impressive 6.5MP (2,560 × 2,560) per-eye resolution and the MeganeX Superlight’s even more impressive 13.6MP (3,552 × 3,840) per-eye resolution—that the improvement wasn’t obviously noticeable.

But it stands to reason that the MeganeX Superlight should be the superior headset in cases where high resolving power is most important, like in flight simulators where long sightlines to distant objects are common, and for virtual desktops where resolving fine text is crucial. I’m especially interested to try the MeganeX Superlight for the latter.

While greater resolving power is always a plus, there’s no question that if you want to run VR content anywhere near the headset’s native resolution, you’re going to need to pair it with top-tier PC.

At the headset’s native 13.6MP per-eye resolution and 90Hz refresh rate, your computer will need to pump out an absurd 2.5 gigapixels per second (assuming naive stereoscopic rendering). [Note: Shiftall says the MeganeX Superlight only works with modern NVIDIA GPUs. AMD is not supported at present.]

If you don’t already have (or aren’t planning to buy) an NVIDIA 3080, 4080, or better, it’s hard to make a case for paying $1,900 for the extra pixels on MeganeX Superlight over the $1,000 Bigscreen Beyond (assuming both headsets were otherwise equal).

While I was impressed with the array of optical adjustments, stunning resolution, and vibrant colors of the MeganeX Superlight, I have the same reservation about the headset that I did with Bigscreen Beyond: the lack of built-in audio is a big oversight. I understand that there’s some people out there who are happy to deal with putting on their own headphones or earbuds over top of their headset, but my gut is that most people prefer the convenience of not having to deal with yet another thing to put on.

Bigscreen Beyond has since rectified this issue with an optional headstrap with on-board audio. And making it optional is fine; the people who want it can get it, and those that want to use their own aren’t stuck with it.

Shiftall tells me it’s also planning to build an optional headstrap with on-board audio, but it won’t be available (or probably even announced) before the headset starts shipping early next year. I understand that making and launching hardware is extremely difficult, but it’s a real shame to not have an audio headstrap available at launch.

Another issue I saw during my time with the headset is some pupil-swim in the lenses. That means when your eyes move in smooth pursuit (as opposed to saccading) across the lens, the scene seems to warp in an uncomfortable way.

This is typically an issue with poor lens calibration, and it isn’t uncommon with prototype headsets which aren’t being made with final tooling or calibration processes.

While there’s no reason to think the company can’t dial in its lens calibration before launch, getting it right is very important. So it’s something I’ll definitely want to get another look at closer to the headset’s release.

Assuming Shiftall manages to improve the pupil-swim—as it says it expects to—the company is on track to deliver a pretty impressive headset. The only major issues are that of cost and the lack of on-board audio. Those two factors ensure that the MeganeX Superlight will remain a niche headset. But if the company can find a clutch of users that want what it’s offering, it will have further proven out the existence of a hardcore PC VR crowd that’s willing to spend big to maximize their VR experience.

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