I had heard from reviews that the top strap was basically not needed. Then I tried it for myself. What it does is alleviate the pressure on your cheekbones as the headset no longer sags and allows you to loosen the horizontal strap a little, also lessening the overall pressure on your face.
It is not needed in the sense that the headset is wearable and has that “ski mask” look without it. I for one will never be taking it off.
Well shit, I had not thought of that. So basically it’s a choice between risking damaging the connector with physical movement or damaging the electronics inside with conductive dust. I do not expect there is much metal dust floating around in my home but I’ll keep that in mind.
I thought that title sounded better than “Here are all the thingies I bought to go along with the Frame” 😇
The ergo kit is indeed pricey but I doubt you can get that low. Somewhere in the 20-30 range would have been more reasonable. I am not sure I understand why they made the top strap optional at all. Plus coming from the Index, the controller straps feel more natural.
Looked it up and his video title is fairly self-explanatory : Steam Frame Lenses: AMVR Failed, But VR ROCK DELIVERS!.
I stuck with VR Optician because I was quite satisfied with the Valve Index inserts I bought from them a few years ago. Also they are based in Germany so basically a short hop away from me. And like last time, they bundled a small bag of gummy bears goldbären for whatever reason.
They are fairly transparent on their product and gave us a choice mid-production to switch to an alternate design. Their lenses are a bit more expensive than the others though.
It just so happens I very recently received vroptician comfort prescription lenses. I did some testing with both inserts, no inserts, and only one lens and forcing steamvr to track only one eye. As far as I can tell they do not hinder eye tracking. In my case I did not notice the foveation area flick to bottom when blinking you mentioned.
It’s a bit too soon to say for sure, I need to spend some more time with it. In any case, nothing egregious out of the box.
Update: I forgot to mention I still use the spacer because I could feel my eyebrows pressing on the top of the lenses when I removed it. Might be a factor or not at all.
It might be that you have very keen peripheral vision awareness. I did not notice it and was not even sure eye tracking worked until I tested it in some games supporting foveated rendering where the foveated area is configurable (MSFS 2024 PC, Dungeons of Eternity native).
Afterwards I found out there is an handy option to visualize eye tracking. I suggest you toggle it on to see if your eye tracking is lagging behind in some way.
This will show exactly where the headset thinks you’re looking, which I suppose is the relevant info for foveated streaming & rendering. On my setup, I do not perceive any latency there.
None of the headsets with inside-out tracking are as good as lighthouse-based tracking (Frame included), but they come close enough in most cases that the difference is irrelevant.
I set up 1.0 base stations once in 2016 when I got the OG HTC Vive and never took them down (except that one time when I had open it up to glue a lens back in). Now I shelved the Index and left them there for the time being.
Alright you have convinced me. I’m ditching the magnet connectors and taking my chances with regular angled cables.