Oculus Quest 2 Review - Into the Metaverse?

How the hell am I even supposed to start? I didn’t even have VR on my tech radar for the foreseeable future, despite the insistence of a VR-converted friend of mine. It had simply not been on my private tech roadmap due to budgetary restrictions. I also don’t have the necessary high performance gaming PC to use it with, and none of the standalone headsets really piqued my interest. But, as things so often go, an opportunity to dip my toes into that topic almost literally dropped into my lap. You see, my current employer usually sends out a gift package containing a few goodies in the run-up to our worldwide kick-off event in January. Normally, it’s just a bit of swag but this time, among company branded socks and a t-shirt, came something else. I found out about it when my Instagram stories suddenly lit up with pictures of VR headsets. My own package took a bit longer because UPS has become mostly useless over the last couple of years but finally, on the Monday before Christmas, the package finally arrived at my door. And sure enough, it was actually real: Amongst the company swag was an Oculus Quest 2. I don’t think I have to state that I didn’t get much done that day. There was method to that madness. With COVID-19 still being somewhat of an obstacle to travel, my employer had decided to move parts of their global kick-off into the much-hyped metaverse, which is why these things were sent out to staff. Having said that, while the device was provided by my current employer, they are in no way connected to, or involved with, this review. All the opinions and findings are my own personal opinion and neither solicited nor approved by my employer.

Hardware

So, with all these preliminaries out of the way, let’s take a look at the Oculus Quest 2 herself. The Quest 2 is shipped in a rather substantial cardboard box, containing the headset itself, two controllers, a USB-C charging cable, and a wall adapter. In my case, the wall adapter included was a continental European model, which makes sense, given my unit had been shipped from Germany. There’s also the usual stack of safety and warranty leaflets, as well as an optional silicone cover and a spacing module for people wearing glasses. The device itself is rather heavy at 502 grams for the headset and 126 grams for each of the Oculus Touch controllers. At 191.5 x 102 x 295.5mm, the headset isn’t exactly small either, although you don’t really feel the weight or the bulk too much when you’re wearing it.

If the size of that box is anything to go by, Oculus aren't keen on half measures.

That impression continues once the sleeve is removed. I still use that box as storage for mine because it's just so solid.

And here it is, flanked by the two Oculus Touch controllers.

The contents of the box is limited but contains basically all you need. The two plastic contraptions next to the Quest 2 itself are the glasses spacer (left) and the silicone cover for the face pad (right).

Internally, the Oculus Quest 2 resembles a mid-range smartphone, being powered by a Qualcomm XR2 SoC based on the Snapdragon 865 platform that is specifically designed for use in VR handsets. It comes with 6GB of ram and options for either 128 or 256 GB of storage, though my device has the smaller storage option. The operating system is based on Android but obviously heavily customised to for VR use.

First Impressions.

Yay, a charging adapter! Seriously, it’s gotten to the point where such a basic detail is something to celebrate. Thanks a lot, Apple! My enthusiasm was slightly dampened by the fact that, as mentioned above, it’s a continental European plug, which means I need to use one of the scarce adapters in my household if I want to use it. On a more positive note, the hardware itself is rock solid. The light grey plastic feels durable and not cheap at all, and there’s nary a rattle to be heard. The controllers fit easily into the hand and come with wrist straps to make sure they’re never far away if you happen to drop them. Speaking from experience, this is a great idea, as you do tend to get lost in whatever virtual world you find yourself in.

A closer look at the headset. Those side straps also holde the Quest 2's speakers. The round openings at the front of the headset are cameras for the Guardian and Passthrough systems.

The left-hand side of the headset also sports the USB-C charging port and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Detailed view of one of the Oculus Touch controllers. Those rings don't really cause any trouble when it comes to using the controllers and they're actually pretty comfortable to hold.

Setup is a bit of a mixed bag if I’m completely honest. There’s not even a quick start guide in the box. Also, since Meta own Oculus, a Facebook account is mandatory to set up the Oculus Quest 2. This might be a no-go for some and is actually the reason why the German competition watchdog banned the sale of the Quest 2 in Germany. Anyway, the first step is downloading the Oculus app for your phone in order to set up your Oculus account. The next step is linking the headset to the account. This requires entering a code displayed in the headset in the Oculus phone app. Hope you enjoy typing blind! Once you’ve done that, the hard part is over. The remaining setup is done on the device itself, which includes software updates. 

Adapting the headset to your personal needs is actually pretty straightforward as well. The lenses inside the headset can be set to one of three presets to match the spacing between the pupils of our eyes. The headbands can easily be adjusted to the proper width, though I recommend adjusting the side headbands while not actually wearing the headset. By default, the Oculus Quest 2 comes with a foam facepad preinstalled. This can be removed to fit an extra spacer for those of us who wear glasses. For those that prefer it, a silicone cover for the foam pad is included. Apparently, there were some cases of allergic reactions to the foam, so Meta decided to include this silicone cover just in case. I’ve since stopped using mine. 

First Use

With one word: WOW! That’s really all I can say. Everything feels more real than real, if that make sense, mostly as a by-product of being artificially generated, resulting in razor sharp lines and boundaries of the type you just don’t see at home. And Oculus makes no attempt to hide this artificiality, which is the right decision, given how far away we still are from a truly realistic VR environment. 

The first view of your home environment will really take your breath away.

The environment is controlled either by the touch controllers...

...or with simple gesture controls, though the latter is not supported by all apps. You'll have to get used to detached hands though, they're standard in the Quest 2.

Having said that, I love the floating menus, and windows, the ability to move them around as you see fit and push them to the side. If only multi-window support for apps were supported outside of experimental features. I also love the different environments, which are the VR counterparts to the home screens and wallpapers on more conventional devices. All in all, the OS seems pretty polished and is generally easy to use. The “First Steps” app that comes preinstalled on the Oculus Quest 2 is not just a good starting point for VR noobs like yours truly, but also has some nice little games included.

All home environments, the Oculus counterparts to home screens are fully 360°.

They range from space stations (my own current home environment)...

...to igloo-shaped chalets and other interesting environments for every taste.

The interface is pretty easy to understand and can be repositioned as required.

A browser is also included, though Firefox VR is also available from the Oculus App Store. Multiple open windows are not supported yet though.

Safety

This is not a topic I would usually touch on in one of my reviews, but with a VR headset, the situation is naturally somewhat different. When you’re using the Oculus Quest 2, you will become completely immersed into the virtual world you’re interacting with and lose track of the real world outside of the headset. Naturally, this poses certain risks, namely running into obstacles, tripping over stuff on the floor, or accidentally going over a step or ledge. To this end, the Quest 2 has two major safety features built in.

The first one is called Guardian, which will effectively create a safe zone around whatever play area you set up. The Quest 2 comes with a series of cameras around the headset to fix its position in space and will use these to detect when you’re getting to the edge of your play area. This safe zone can either take the shape of a circle around your current position, which is ideal when you’re sitting down, or it can be freely “painted” in the room, for which the Oculus will pass through the images captured by the external cameras to allow you to orient yourself in the room. When you approach the edge of your play area, Guardian will slowly fade in the barrier as you get closer, and turn red when your head or controller are passing through it.

Speaking of Passthrough, that is the second feature. This will take the picture of the aforementioned cameras and display them in the headset, allowing the user to get a fix on their position without taking off the headset. By default, this function can be set up to allow the real world to “bleed through” when you’re at the edge of your play area. It can also allow pets or people entering the play area to bleed into the virtual environment, though I haven’t tested this latter function yet. There is also an experimental setting to turn passthrough on and off by tapping the side of the headset twice, ideal for getting a quick fix on your surroundings without taking off the headset.

Extended Use

At the time of writing, I’ve had the Oculus Quest 2 for about a month, give or take a day or two, though it feels far longer. It’s mainly been used for gaming, help with my mindfulness & meditation exercises, general media consumption on the likes of YouTube, both in 3D and in 2D, as well as a limited number of corporate events. On the whole, I really like it. General usage is pretty easy, especially when you’re already used to gaming and boot up times are nice and quick. 

Things are a bit tricky for people with glasses though and it can be tricky to get your glasses to properly fit underneath the headset, and actually stay in that position, as any movement of the headset will also knock your glasses out of position. There’s also an issue with glasses fogging up relatively quickly underneath the headset, especially when using the silicone cover over the facepads, which is why I’ve stopped using it.

The level of immersion into the VR world continues to amaze me. You really forget about the outside world, which makes Guardian all the more important. One of the reasons for this is definitely the positioning of the speakers, which are located in the side headbands and as such don’t sit directly on your ears. This results in a surprisingly spacious and immersive soundscape while also preventing “hot ear syndrome”, something I’m particularly susceptible to. There is a dedicated headphone jack (take note, Apple!) in case you want it, but I prefer the open layout, as it gives you a bit of extra awareness.

Maloka is a free mindfulness and meditation app, and as such an oasis of calm among the often chaotic apps available in the Oculus App Store.

Having said that, I do feel slightly restricted by the apps available in the store. A lot of them appear to be movement-centred, which makes sense given the freedom of movement the Quest 2 allows for, but I’m not really interested in that. There’s a reason why my most-played game on the Quest 2 is currently Gun Club VR, which requires very little movement, apart from moving the controllers to aim at whatever pop-up paper target you’re shooting at. The one type of game that would appear to be pre-destined for VR, flight simulators, appears to be in extremely short supply on the Oculus Quest 2. In general, the app selection seems rather limited, with only a few big-name titles and a lot of small indie games that, to me at least, seem either abandoned or not really interesting. This trend continues into non-interactive VR experiences, a.k.a videos and movies. The majority of these seem to date from a time a couple of years ago when the first mobile VR headsets as well as low-cost solutions like Google Cardboard came out, and let’s just say that these haven’t aged gracefully!

For those that need a more direct approach to stress relief, there are apps such as Gun Club VR. Bonus Points for featuring the CZ-75, my old service sidearm.

This is one of the plus sides of VR - actually interacting with whatever object your holding rather than just using keyboard combos. In this case it was dropping out an empty mag and loading a new one, now just to release the slide.

Sometimes, all you need is a paper target at 10 meters and a full magazine.

Work

But what about work use? This was a company-provided device after all, wasn’t it? Yes, it was and honestly, I’m not sure what to make of it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve used it to watch some company events, namely some of the big keynote speeches, but beyond that, the jury is still out. Don’t get me wrong, the technology is impressive and the ambition is both evident and breath-taking in its scope. Since this is work-related, I obviously can’t go into specifics, but I really haven’t seen much in the way of use for my Oculus Quest 2 beyond those keynote events. There has not really been much of a wider roll-out, no schedule for that, or even any indication as to how this tool would be used. 

I feel like the VR meeting/event solution we’re using may be part of the issue here. While the technology is certainly impressive, the software seems somewhat limited and aiming for a realism that standalone VR just isn’t ready for yet. While Oculus’ own Horizons suite of solutions, which have their own freight train’s worth of issues, appear to go for a slightly more cartoony look, this solution aims for realism, but ends up diving headlong into the uncanny valley from a high-flying aircraft, without a parachute. The Quest 2 just doesn’t have the computing power to render realistic human avatars and even needs to resort to reducing the participants of any meeting to just a floating torso and head with some hands flying in close formation, once the number of participants goes beyond ten. 

While all of this is understandable, it does not appear as if this particular solution is able to interface directly with our work laptops to share presentations to an existing meeting. Any such presentation needs to be uploaded to the meeting solution’s website first. As  currently don’t know whether this is hosted on-prem or on the provider’s infrastructure, this seems to me like a major security risk, especially when it comes to sharing internal information. I’ll reserve final judgement until there have been some VR sessions in my particular team, but so far it appears to me as if the metaverse is more of a meh-taverse.

Conclusion

Honestly, I’m torn. The hardware is impressive, and most of the applications I’ve tried in a personal capacity are similarly impressive. The Sci-Fi fan in me is more than a little giddy about this. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation and Voyager, and the Oculus Quest 2 is likely the closest I’ll get to a holodeck in my life time. However, the technology feels like it’s not quite there yet.

The software is easy to use on an operating-system level, however it is still limited by the computing power you can cram into a stand-alone headset, as well as the battery life that is possible. Don’t get me wrong, the Quest 2 is able to pull of some impressive feats within these limitations, but once you look beyond the Oculus system and some of the better apps, a lot of the non-Oculus VR applications seem hopelessly outdated at this point. The same goes for using the Quest 2 as a work device, though I’m not sure how much of that is due to the device and how much is due to the aforementioned platform. 

On the flip side to that is the fact that the hardware built into the Quest 2 certainly seems solid enough to handle quite a few software updates, so I guess time will tell just how this whole system will mature over the next couple of years. Facebook, or Meta or whatever they call themselves these days certainly seem hell-bent on making the metaverse work, so it’ll be interesting to see what comes down the line.