An Upgraded Display That Isn’t All That Updated
Still, with an Oculus Quest 2 and the Elite Strap, you’re paying $350; that’s still a $50 saving, right? Not quite. Because the battery life on the Oculus Quest 2 is shorter than the original Quest by at least a half-hour, as much as an hour. Facebook likely knew that, too, because it also sells the Elite Strap with a battery pack option.
The battery pack straps to the back of your head, around the dial of the Elite strap, and has the double benefit of increasing battery life and serving as a counterbalance to the heavy display. For an extra $129, you can finally have the fit, comfort, and battery life that the original Quest has, but that eats through the $100 “savings” and adds $29 to the final cost.
The heart of any VR headset is the display. After all, you’re essentially strapping a couple of screens to your eyes to trick them into seeing 3D. On paper, games on the Quest 2 should look better than on the original Quest. It uses a higher resolution display capable of a higher refresh rate.
But you won’t see (literally) those benefits immediately. Developers need to update games to take advantage of the new display and processor. That’s a process that’s still ongoing. And that’d be fine if the new screen didn’t look worse than the original Quest … but it does.
The first Oculus Quest uses a pair of OLED displays to beam images into your eyes. That comes with two distinct advantages. OLED is better at displaying “black” than LCD because it simply turns pixels off. In games with dark settings, that leads to a better overall look. It also means you won’t deal with as much light bleed because those pixels aren’t glowing.
Separate displays also mean you can properly position each in front of your eyes. Everyone is different, and in the case of VR, one of those important differences is interpupillary distance-how far apart your pupils rest. If the screens aren’t placed directly in front of your pupils, it can ruin the 3D effect and cause you headaches. Because the Oculus Quest has two displays, one for each eye, getting that right is as simple as adjusting a slider until everything looks right.
But none of that is true for the Oculus Quest 2. Instead of pair of OLED screens, it uses a single LCD screen. That change is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you get a better overall resolution, leading to better clarity and a reduced screendoor effect. On the other hand, the rest of it is awful.
That leads to light bleed and compromised visuals
Let’s start with the LCD portion of the setup. Instead of deep blacks that immerse you in true darkness, everything is a little greyer, and more light shines onto your eyes. Take Vader Immortal, a VR game set in the Star Wars universe. Early in the game, there’s a breathtaking moment where Darth Vader steps out of the shadows and walks up to you, stopping just feet away. He towers over you (no matter your height), and he seems to melt off of the shows on the original Oculus Quest. It’s an awe-inspiring moment.
Maybe that’d be acceptable if that were the end of the story, but the Quest 2 suffers from other shortcuts that downgrade the experience
On the Quest 2, instead of Darth Vader, it feels more like Grey Vader. Instead of melting out of the shadows, you see him slink out of a shady area. The effect isn’t the same. And it might not be something you’d notice if you haven’t played on an original Oculus Quest, but I have, so it’s impossible to unsee.