Gadgetory

never fought in VR before yes it's big it's crazy it's expensive it's painfully complicated but if you invest the time and effort it's also extraordinarily fun I'm talking about the HP omen X compact desktop which we're using for the most extreme form of virtual reality that's strapping a full gaming PC to your back attaching a headset and exploring the amazing worlds available in VR without being tethered to a computer sitting on a desk this entire rig which includes the computer the desktop dock and a backpack with batteries is $3,000 you've also gotta add your own VR headset and those are now three hundred to six hundred dollars if you have the floorspace to take advantage of it this is a very different experience than traditional PC VR where you're always moving around gingerly afraid of getting tangled up in the cables or even pulling the desktop or laptop off the desk yes you're lugging a 10-pound backpack around and the batteries only last an hour or so but the padded straps help it from feeling too heavy this is so much lighter than the laptop I slept in this morning which is a gaming laptop the weight is kind of distributed on my hips so doesn't bother me it's kind of like a hiking backpack of sorts it actually feels pretty light although I will say maybe it's because I'm not super experienced in VR that I still am hesitant to walk around and there's an extra set of batteries that you can keep on the charging dock and hot-swap as needed it's really great in both exploration games like the Talos principle as well as action games like Goran we used HP's own mixed reality headset but it also works with the HTC vive there's even a workaround to play steamvr games on the HB headset although it's not a hundred percent reliable yet the biggest issue we ran into is that the entire setup is just so complex and so early in its life cycle that is often some level of troubleshooting involved to get everything working right and even just going from the doc desktop mode to backpack requires an extra set of hands the better keep your friends around because you're basically gonna need one to act as your VR caddy