Expedition Ares by WispyWoo and artsy glitch
Aaand another one of those posts where I write about my thoughts from the past few days.
April Fools & Easter
Nothing too interesting this year from what I’ve seen at least… I was looking forward to Landfall Day to see what game they’d release this year. Unfortunately, they did not manage to release a game this year which was a bit disappointing after the stream was hyped up. Buuut hey, it happens, I’m curious what their next projects will be in the future.
Easter was also rather uneventful for me, but I don’t really have much interest in it regardless.
Artemis II
I’ve had the Artemis stream on in the background today
Interesting that we can watch all this happening live. I somehow missed that the launch of this mission was even happening but I’m trying to somewhat keep up with it.
Quartz v5 attempts
This notes website is made using Quartz. As of writing this, it is on Quartz v4, but Quartz v5 has been in development for some time now.
I’ve spent today and a bit of yesterday trying to migrate this site over to the new version. I got it mostly working, but v5 is still technically in beta. I’ve noticed some bugs / issues here and there, and also ran into some problems with the migration process. I also have to port Quartz Bluesky Comments to v5 before this site is truly ready to be moved over.
v5 has some cool new features. The graph view behaves a little nicer I think. But the main thing I like is support for Obsidian Bases. This will let me make dynamic pages, for instance listing all my games / projects with thumbnails and stuffff.
VRChat exploration
Apart from that, I’m still enjoying spending more time in VRChat. I think I’m a bit burned out / bored of playing regular games at the moment. I had an 8 hour session over the weekend, it’s been a loong time since I spent this long in VRC. Mainly just in hangout group events and some world hopping with people here and there.
I’ve also binge watched all of The Edge of Sleep in VRC. Short show, but I enjoyed it.
Bigscreen Beyond Thoughts
My current VR headset is the Bigscreen Beyond 2e VRChat Edition. I’ve had it for a month or two by now. I had some initial issues with the custom face cushion being off-centre which was uncomfortable, but Bigscreen support got me another face scan and sent me a new one for free which is nice. The newer one is more comfortable now so it was certainly an issue with the original scan.
I also got the audio strap with it but I recently realised that it’s not really that comfortable. I’ve used the stock strap for a bit when I first got the headset but had comfort issues due to the face cushion at the time. Then, when my audio strap arrived, I only used that one for some time.
Recently, I decided to try the stock soft strap again to see how it compares and annoyingly, it’s quite a bit more comfortable than the audio strap…
I feel like the audio strap has a couple flaws:
- No top strap (not a huge deal since you can attach one)
- There’s no spring. Comparing this to the Valve Index strap for instance, that one had a spring in the arms. This meant that there’s a bit of give, and you can pull on it to take it on/off without using the adjustment wheel. The Beyond audio strap does not have this, which makes it feel weirdly rigid to put on / take off my head. And it’s just generally less comfortable.
- The back part has an uncomfortable design. This is down to having long hair, but there’s a gap in the back… here:
- This part digs into my hair and gets stuck, which is very uncomfortable.
I just used the soft strap with my regular bluetooth headphones for some time which was nice. But I got some new wired clip-on earphones to use specifically with this setup. In my opinion, those types of earphones are perfect for VR use as they’re similarly light to earbuds but provide a much more open sound profile. When I’m in VR, I want to be able to hear the outside world so I know what’s going on around me, so I don’t like isolating earbuds. They also feel unnatural to wear when speaking.
I used these Koss ones before for my Quest Pro:
I ended up having two pairs which both eventually broke. These are a bit difficult to get where I live, so I got these generic “Geekria” ones from Amazon this time:
The audio quality is not amazing, but it sounds fine. For VRChat it’s perfectly good enough. And if I ever do anything that requires really good audio, I can just use my normal headphones… These should also be comfortable whenever I try sleeping in VR again.
Closing thoughts
Wasn’t expecting the section about the Bigscreen to be this long but here we are lmao.
As stated in other recent posts, it’s been nice to just note down my thoughts here. The fact that this goes up on my website gives it a bit more purpose, and encourages me to write. I think I wouldn’t write this much if this were just a private notebook. Of course, I have to be mindful of what I put up, but it is what it is.
I’ve talked to someone in VRChat about this the other day too. Taking half an hour or so at the end of a day just to organise my thoughts has been nice.
This post has taken me longer to write than I expected though, so it’s time for me to go to sleep.
Goodnight reader, until the next one.
