I finally did it. I built a PC for VR. I went about as middle of the road as I could and stayed under 1200 dollars on this build with a lot of help from my friends. Shout out to my brother in law for hand holding me through this mine field because I have never built a PC before, you know being a mac boy for almost 2 decades and all so I had a lot to learn. With all that said here are the deets. 

For the mobo (yeah that's a term I had to google) I went with a micro atx board because I wanted a smaller form factor so we landed on the MSI B660m Mortar with Wifi which came in at $160 dollars.

That LGA 1700 motherboard was also chosen because we went with the 12th gen intel i5-12400 Alder lake cpu that was just shy of 200 bucks and we decided to go with the integrated graphics option so I could at least set things up while I waited so freakin patiently on a GPU, more on that in a moment.

For ram we slotted in 16 gigabytes of Crucial ballistix ddr4 memory for 85 dollars and I saved a little on this geek squad refurbished terabyte of M.2 NVMe ssd which landed at $80 dollars

Looking for about 700 watts of Power led us to the corsair rm750x fully modular PSU which was $130 bucks and to house all this budget to mid range joy is the SAMA IM01 Black Steel Micro ATX Case, for 70 bills.

With a lot of research and some help from you all in the community poll I was stuck trying to decide if I should go with a RTX 3070 or a 3060ti. In the end I was persuaded by a discord bot notifying me of a deal under msrp that I could not pass up. Shout out to GPU drops for all the help and speaking of discord I’m putting one together for the community here so stay tuned for that.

So yes I ended up scoring a zotac twin edge 3060ti for 375 dollars. The 3060ti just hit a sweet spot for price and performance and at the time before this great GPU fall it felt like I hit the lottery when I clicked the link and saw it was still available on amazon. For me and my link connected quest it has been working great especially in boneworks and half lyfe alex, which if I’m honest that's mainly why I built this thing and all the crazy vr mods out there for PCVR.

All in all my PC build took one thousand and 90 dollars from my account But I’m sure as you may have noticed I needed an upgrade sadly due to the stock cooler that came with my CPU kind of sucking and with its plastic push through pins it just would not secure to the mobo properly. This naturally caused my cpu to overheat and crash games before even getting to the start screen. 

I decided to go a little bougie and bought the noctua NH-U9S cooler and fan for $60 pushing my final total to 1150 or in real monies after tax 12 hundred and 55 smackers.

So go ahead and roast my build in the comments and share your specs so next time I can do better. I really enjoyed this process and I’m just glad I’m now able to play steam vr games without bootcamp on my macbook pro (because well it was terrible). I went ahead and linked all the parts below and again shout out to my PC boys Joseph, Taylor and Canaan for answering a thousand texts of my confusion. Thanks again for watching and I’ll catch you in the next quickie!

The Build:

CASE: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811197012?Item=N82E16811197012

MOBO: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813144522?Item=N82E16813144522

CPU: https://amzn.to/3MLUYCM

RAM: https://amzn.to/3tzoYLk

SSD: https://amzn.to/3xN5xkE

GPU: https://amzn.to/3tzp1H0

PSU: https://amzn.to/39p5Toc

COOLER: https://amzn.to/3tvLlkU

MONITOR: https://amzn.to/3Qjtuax

After the leaks from last week Zuck confirmed on his facebook page today that horizon homes is launching with the next quest update version 41 sometime next week.

Horizon home in Marks words will bring social presence into your virtual home as soon as you put on your headset. Invite friends to hang out, watch videos together, or jump into apps right from your virtual home. He also stated that more options to customize your home space are currently in development. 

Zuck showed off the new quest feature with free climber Alex Honnold whose film free solo showcased his death defying climbs without any harness or safety back up. They watched part of his 360 film the soloist VR together using the new horizon home share feature to give us an idea how it would look to bring our friends into an experience together virtually.

I’m interested in how this is going to work “as soon as you put on your headset” but I will say I am all for new features and updates to the quest as long as we can still use everything else properly.

Do you plan on using this feature? Let me know down below and of course I’ll catch you in the next quickie.

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

One of my favorite games What the golf is coming to VR! Well kinda Announced today with a trailer at the upload vr gaming showcase we got to see a new incarnation of the physics based and comical puzzler that now replaces your hands with baseball bats and asks you to complete over 100 off the wall tasks to progress through the story.

Some of the bat shenanigans featured in the trailer as you see here are getting a corn dog to fall out of a snack machine, making your breakfast, petting a dog, and hitting a soccer ball pitched by an elephant. 

As I shared before What the golf is one of my favorite mobile games I’ve ever played and I actually streamed a ton of it back in the day on this channel, so when I saw this trailer I was very excited. The art style I think is perfectly suited for VR and especially for the quest 2 standalone.

The Denmark based Developers Triband stated the game will offer over four hours of content and After years of failing to understand the rules of golf we are pursuing a new passion: failing to understand baseball,” “This game is all curveballs and we expect to hit it out of the park later this year.

I will be honest 4 hours of playtime isn’t a lot but maybe this can be seen as a proof of concept for the future to possibly bring a full VR version of what the golf to the platform.

So prepare to get your bat hands ready for this to drop later this year on the quest 2 and steam vr. Was this trailer intriguing to you like it was to me? Let me know in the comments and I’ll catch you in the next quickie!

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

It’s another week and so another accidental or maybe purposeful leak comes out from a quest 2 user. Redditor imlife1102 was given access to what seems to be the horizon home feature that was teased back in october of 2021 where your quest friends can join you in your home as their avatar. The reddit user was able to invite a friend into their home and they were able to move around in their space. I found it interesting that we could see their dashboard when they popped in. Nice animation by the way on the pop in. Im life did share that they were not on the public test channel so it was baked into the version 40 update that they recieved. We actually saw a hint of this feature back in the PTC for version 37 called co presence so this seems to be nearly ready for its release. 

To add to this VR code sleuth Samulia also found new strings of code in the recently released PTC for version 41 that looks to hint at creating new horizon profiles attached to your quest accounts. WIth one prompt in the code saying your horizon profile is how you appear and connect with others in VR. We’ll guide you through the steps to get setup. So it seems we might have a new profile process coming soon.

Maybe this is the answer to removing the need for a facebook account to use a quest headset but honestly I’m really not sure but the one positive is that it looks like you’ll be able to more easily change the name that you want to be called in VR according to this string of code here.

What other leaks are coming? Is this just marketing?

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

Meta's CTO Andrew Bosworth ran another AMA to answer some more of our project cambria questions, thoughts on VR field of view, working what its like working with Zuckerberg and more.

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8

Today marks the release of the world beyond, a mixed reality demo from Meta for the quest 2 and the future project cambria headset.

To get started you will need to use the room setup feature found inside the settings tab under guardian. Once you are done setting up your room for mixed reality you can now search for the world beyond in the app store and you’ll find it under app lab or use this link here: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/4873390506111025

When you jump in it’s a little confusing at first but soon a device comes up from the ground below you that turns your controller into a device when you grab it. 

You soon begin to hear some interesting noises and when you look in the correct spot you’ll see our new little mixed reality tomagatchi friend Oppy. 

Use the newly acquired controller device by clicking the trigger to turn it into a flashlight to search out the randomly placed energy balls throughout your room. 

Once you Pokémon catch ‘em all you can then shoot them from your gun and watch them bounce off your walls and around your room and then our little friend will eat them up and ask you to use voice commands to have opp jump, say hi, or come closer. And yes you can pet ole oppy. !

Once all your energy balls are shot here is where the true magic is revealed. The gun device turns into wall portal shooter where you can then turn your walls into the whimsical forest setting we saw in the project cambria highlight. You can reveal the full scene on all four of your walls and ceiling. No luck with the floor though. 

Next you’ll need to find a couple more energy balls for little oppy and then I’ll let you experience the ending. 

This is a fun demo and I’m excited where devs are going to take this new presence platform feature next. How beyond was your world after trying this demo? Let me know and I’ll catch you in the next quickie. 

Getting a new quest? Get $30 free store credit on me by using my oculus quest coupon code: https://www.oculus.com/referrals/link/QuestQuickie/

My Favorite Oculus Quest 2 Accessories:

Quest 2: https://amzn.to/3PfvOi7

BOBO Battery Headstrap: https://amzn.to/3FvYVcw

Kiwi Pro Grip Covers: https://amzn.to/3l09346

VR Cover Facial Interface: https://amzn.to/3L1prf8