Ask HN: Working in a VR Headset?

I have a vive and a quest 2 and I tried working like that when travelling. The quest won&#x27;t work in a car as it uses gyros.<p>I tried for about 18 hours each device to work in VR. Many things are not there yet. My vive is attached to a 5 monitor dual GPU beast that drives a central 144hz 4k HDR 43&quot; and 5 2560x144 monitors. The vive couldn&#x27;t touch the physical setup for comfort or resolution or just non-fussiness. I constantly had to adjust virtual monitors. In real world I just scootch a quarter inch on my rolly cHair. It&#x27;s like the first time you setup a physical workspace every time you use it for me. Vive gets warm.<p>The quest 2 is too low resolution and too laggy. Battery too weak. It was a joy to take it off. Quest is more sweaty.<p>With the quest I worked from a RV for 3 days. It sucked.<p>What worked better was just 2 pelican cases with monitors and a discounted ups rate. In the RV I just shoved them in the corner and pulled them out when we parked. When I visit my mom or airbnb I just ship them to where I&#x27;m going. Was a massive relief. Maybe in a few years.<p>It&#x27;s not just pixel density, it&#x27;s software, weight, latency, fiddlelyness.

Some previous discussions:<p>&quot;I Spent Hundreds of Hours Working in VR&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29978036" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29978036</a><p>and<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28678041" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28678041</a><p>The latter discussing this classic &quot;Working from Orbit&quot; article (below) has been linked before, but it&#x27;s from a clear fan, which is not necessarily representative. But it demonstrates it works for some - and that&#x27;s with the Quest 2.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;immersedteam&#x2F;working-from-orbit-39bf95a6d385" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;immersedteam&#x2F;working-from-orbit-39bf95a6d...</a><p>I haven&#x27;t tried it myself extensively, but personally I think the tech and software is not quite there yet for full comfort and practicality (eg text legibility) - at least on a plug-and-play level - for the average interested user.

You can comfortably work in VR, but the trick is that you can&#x27;t use any of the headsets as is.<p>There are upgrades that you really need: A better head strap, ideally one with an adjustment knob at the back to easily loosen and tighten the headset. Also one with an extra battery that both gives you longer unplugged time but more importantly balances the headset front to back.<p>And a better headset&#x2F;face interface. You can get one that is much softer and thicker, which puts less pressure on the face and moves the screens a few extra mm away. They also have vented interfaces, which help cut down on the problem of getting hot face.<p>And lastly, you know how all the experts advise that when you&#x27;re working you stop and take a break to look away from your screens every 20 minutes or so? It&#x27;s more important in VR to heed that advice. All you have to do is slip off the headset (you got the easy to adjust one that just slides right off, right?), take ten seconds to look at something far away our out the window, and then put it back on and keep working.<p>If you do all that, there are a lot of great products out that that will give you great virtual monitors and keyboards.

I&#x27;m currently visiting family abroad and working remotely. I bought my work machine (A Mac M1) and a quest 2 with me. So far I&#x27;ve done one week of 9 hour days and on one of those days I used Immersed VR until I got a battery warning.<p>The experience was flawed but many things worked surprisingly well. I was getting fed up with just having one screen and having four low-resolution screens was really useful for some things. I could have slack on one screen, VSCode in the centre, my calendar or documentation on the left and my personal recreational browser and music Windows on my right (I eventually moved this to the top because otherwise it was covering the corridor where family members walked past and I preferred to see them using pass-through than being completely oblivious to the outside world).<p>Is it a very small screen for an IDE and is text blurry? Yes both. But text right in front of your head is quite clear. You have to scan your head to read lots, but most of the time a suggestion of the surrounding text is enough to get by. You also have to change your idea of &quot;sharp text&quot; it&#x27;s better to use something like cool-retro-term or zoomed in browser to get text that&#x27;s knowingly large and fuzzy.<p>I wear glasses but have VROptician lenses and a Bobovr headstrap. The batteries would have died before I became uncomfortable.<p>The most important observation is that I didn&#x27;t jump back in to VR once the batteries were charged or the next morning, but I&#x27;m glad to have a multi monitor option that fits in my cabin luggage, and cost a free hundred pounds, for when I&#x27;m doing a task that would be a total pain on one monitor.

Don&#x27;t only consider VR headsets; also check out AR glasses. The newest generation of AR glasses are surprisingly practical as portable displays e.g. Nreal Air.[1] However neither VR headsets nor AR glasses have reached the resolution sweet spot to compete with monitors in permanent workspaces<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vDekX4vrSsA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=vDekX4vrSsA</a>

I have an index. Doing text editing in vr just can&#x27;t compete with my 34&quot; 4k monitor under any circumstances. However, virtual chalkboards can activate a different part of the brain and can be quite nice if you like working that way normally. VR is also excelent for viewing cad models but the tooling still needs tons of work. Once there is proper vr support in autodesk products i will likely use it maybe 30% of the time.<p>One thing i didn&#x27;t anticipate is how hard it is to do the equivalent of alt+tabbing to a reference document or similar and then jumping back to the main program in use in VR. Context switching is important for productivity and probably can&#x27;t really be done right without remaking the whole desktop environment for vr. I would wait at least 5 years before expecting anything to be viable as a full monitor replacement.

&gt; Does anyone have any useful experience to share on working in a VR headset? Is it comfortable for longer periods of time? How is it on the eyes?<p>I bought the entry level Quest 2 to evaluate the feasibility of this about a year ago. These are some of my insights (that might not apply 100% to Quest Pro):<p>- The resolution was too poor to comfortably read anything on two displays arranged about the same way as two horizontal 27&quot; monitors side by side. This ultimately killed the whole effort.<p>- Without good passthrough, using a keyboard and mouse is a bit difficult.<p>- There is finger tracking, but I found the controllers to be more accurate. So I needed to keep the controllers on my desk.<p>- There is a bit of motion sickness that either goes away after a few days of use or reduces a bit. For me, I could never get over the motion sickness. But it wasn&#x27;t very bad after a couple days of use.<p>- The screen door effect was very noticeable for me on Quest 2.<p>- It was possible to up the resolution and refresh rate of Quest 2 using developer options on the PC with some third-party software. With that, the headset might become uncomfortably warm to wear.<p>- The WiFi 6 wireless VR was surprisingly much better than expected. But it will definitely not be a good experience with typical hotel Wifi - not even close.<p>I was pretty happy to spend about £300 on a Quest 2 to try it for work. I then sold it for about £250. £50 to try this work mode for a few weeks was worth it. I chose not to go with VR for work at the time. I would suggest trying it yourself in some way similar to this. Perhaps not buying it but borrowing someone&#x27;s VR headset for a bit, or going to one of the VR venues and just seeing how comfortable it is and what kind of resolution you might get?

There is a company called Simula that makes a headset specifically for work. I know about them because Meta subpoena&#x27;d them a month ago.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=x293SiEdv4M" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=x293SiEdv4M</a>

I worked for about a month using the Immersed app and an Oculus 2. I judged it workable for me, but probably near the borderline. The positives were that the software generally worked (modulus some bugs), and I could code, attend Teams meetings (as an avatar with a VR camera) and have multiple monitors. Interestingly, Teams meetings with the other participants on a virtual monitor about 2 metres away were very noticeably less psychologically stressful. (I suspect some evolutionary&#x2F;neurological thing about faces in a monitor 60cms away). The resolution was fine, but not great. I wear spectacles (slightly near-sighted, a bit too much to drive without) and the headset was comfortable enough. With the Oculus 2 the pass-thru was rubbish, so touch-typing and a tidy desk vital. The negatives were that a <i>good</i> wifi connection to the laptop was necessary; the battery-life on the headset meant I had to trail a wire across to keep it on for &gt;2 hours; it was slightly sweaty (I didn&#x27;t get the serious discomfort other people have experienced); the default headband wasn&#x27;t great; and in the end it wasn&#x27;t better than my physical multimonitor setup. I seem also to not suffer from VR-sickness (or motion sickness for that matter), but YMMV greatly.

I question if any of these other commenters have actually tried the Quest Pro yet and specifically with 1) Horizon Workrooms and 2) a mac and 3) a supported tracked keyboard from apple or Logitech.<p>I was a complete Meta disbeliever and long time Quest owner, having put a few dozen hours into working in Immersed last year before putting it down and accepting it wasn’t good enough.<p>Fast forward to last weekend, give it a try with the setup described above instead. Proceeded to do a 9hr shift fully in VR. Went out, got the Pro, and now I am all in. We are there. Give it a shot, you can always return it right?<p>Also +1 to everything jedberg said in their comment, great advice.

&gt; I am comfortable with at least two 27&quot; monitors.<p>I embraced a single-monitor workflow early in my career after experimenting and finding that having multiple monitors often makes me less productive than just switching workspaces with ⌘+tab. Now it&#x27;s extended to a single-laptop workflow that&#x27;s given me incredible flexibility to travel and move around the office.<p>When do people really need multiple monitors? My only guesses are if they&#x27;re using Windows, or have a really short feedback loop workflow between two apps that are too big&#x2F;awkward to share a screen? Which, I guess OP could be in both boats.

I get upset when my workplaces don&#x27;t provide me with a high DPI monitor. I feel every screen should be a &quot;retina display&quot; by now and we should accept no less. Needless to say I feel that working in VR is currently a sad joke. VR headsets simply don&#x27;t have adequate PPI and optics yet. Text is barely legible unless it&#x27;s blown up to ridiculous sizes.

I like it.<p>I setup a login just for working in VR. I get MUCH more done as I&#x27;m totally distraction-free, and it&#x27;s much better for my neck, as I&#x27;m looking at the screens in front of me, instead of down at my laptop. Looking down at my laptop for years has become a source of chronic pain, and working in VR removes it.<p>Setup is a Macbook Air M1, Quest 2, elite strap, and over-the ear headphones. I use Immersed, which is free, and put up a big screen in the middle to work on, with two narrow screens on either side for reference material.

Commenting because this somehow hasn&#x27;t come up, but Quest Pro is not the headset that you&#x27;re potentially looking for. (And not just because the Quest Pro only gets ~2hrs battery life.)<p>What you&#x27;re really looking for is the Varjo Aero: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;varjo.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;aero&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;varjo.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;aero&#x2F;</a><p>The Aero has 35PPD, automatic IPD adjustment and incredibly good eye tracking. It is on an entirely different level than the Quest Pro.<p>It&#x27;s also significantly more expensive, but it is the only VR headset that I&#x27;ve ever been able to work comfortably in (coding) for long periods. You can use it with a laptop that has a sufficient GPU.<p>The Quest Pro confuses me because I don&#x27;t think the perfect customer exists. Anyone who needs it and can afford it is going to be 10x happier with an Aero.<p>The only thing more expensive [at this part of the market] than an Aero is buying a Quest Pro first.

Have experience with Quest 2, too low res and poor comfort. I assume Quest Pro will be vastly better and will probably work for work if you use it with the Immersed app.<p>It&#x27;s going to depend 100% on the specific device. General experience is useless. Especially if it&#x27;s not from a new model.<p>If you really just care about 2d monitor simulation then check out Nreal.

I’ve been thinking about this lately (as are many people, I’d imagine, with all the Metaverse hoopla) and I think the adoption line for VR is text resolution. Once a headset is in play that can match out of headset text resolution, rapid adoption, tooling, etc. will follow.<p>Something I’ve been thinking about is tooling, though. Like if I had a browser and file storage in an environment with infinitely scalable windows&#x2F;resolution I could do a lot of my work.<p>It’s hard to wrap my head around. Like an OS running in an OS. The answer can’t be just a horrific amount of manual labor porting a bunch of open source utilities over to some new VR based OS, right? I need to be able to connect my headset to my computer and use my existing tools in a VR environment. It’s almost like emulation. Unless Microsoft and Apple make VR compatible OS’s?<p>Step 1: Headset tech that doesn’t require horrific vendor lock-in (looking at you, metabook)<p>Step 2: Highly interactive, scalable browser (too many apps are Electron for it to be anything else)<p>I think with those two things I could migrate a lot of my work. Then you’d need to start fleshing it out. Creating your own little space, figuring out the tech to use your other tools in VR, creating VR focused Linux distro’s, self-hosting instances of your little corner of this new universe, giant statues of Neal Stephenson reciting passages from Snow Crash like scripture…

Look into(sic) the Nreal Air AR glasses. They&#x27;re 1080p micro-OLED displays and are sharper than the Quest 2.<p>They&#x27;re lightweight, look like Sunglasses , and I&#x27;ve used them for productivity and watching vids for hours daily without eye strain.<p>In fact I&#x27;ve been using them for gaming on my Steam Deck too and its relieved my neck strain from not having to look down while playing.<p>With something like Samsung DeX on an S-series Samsung phone you can have a desktop environment, but they also just screen mirror USB-C DP Alt Mode compatible devices including some laptops and tablets, or you can use their AR Space for 3 floating (or pinned) windows.<p>They also work with M1 Apple laptops directly, and iPhones and HDMI devices in general via an adaptor.<p>Just note their AR Space feature doesn&#x27;t work with many Exynos based phones, butnit does with some like the s10e and s21.<p>Example screenshots I took from Samsung DeX while using my Nreal Air&#x27;s<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;nrx3WLg8&#x2F;Screenshot-20221025-094752-Pocket-Editor.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;nrx3WLg8&#x2F;Screenshot-20221025-094752-Poc...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;pV0WZcGk&#x2F;Screenshot-20221021-153844-HBO-MAX.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;pV0WZcGk&#x2F;Screenshot-20221021-153844-HBO...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;pr4cZt84&#x2F;Ffn0ud-ZX0-BMz-Nv-P.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.postimg.cc&#x2F;pr4cZt84&#x2F;Ffn0ud-ZX0-BMz-Nv-P.jpg</a>

Depends on software, was messing around with SimulaVR. It&#x27;s cool though needs work. I was using the Index it could be better on resolution&#x2F;text focusing.<p>I would not use it for productivity because it&#x27;s a new environment&#x2F;more distracting than useful. Also turning your head a lot to look at things.<p>I like my curved ultra wide monitor.<p>When the physical SimulaOne comes out I&#x27;ll try it out again that one is not tethered&#x2F;better quality eye display.

&gt; Does anyone have any useful experience to share on working in a VR headset?<p>Tried it, returned it.<p>&gt; Is it comfortable for longer periods of time?<p>No.<p>&gt; How is it on the eyes?<p>Strain.<p>Any extra screen real estate VR gives you if is vastly outweighed by the negatives. It&#x27;s a sweaty glowing device right in your face that causes significantly more strain than a laptop monitor. It&#x27;s cool to think about but I think you already know the answer to this. Try it yourself if you&#x27;d like.

It&#x27;s not quite as nice as a full desktop setup, but you can get portable 4K monitors in the 12 to 17 inch range.<p>Also you can build some small but high powered machines. I&#x27;ve got a mini ATX build with a 12900 ks, and a 3090. Fits in a carry-on, way faster than any laptop.<p>Also if you&#x27;re spending that long in each location, it might be viable to just buy monitors at your location, especially if you think of it as the cost for enhanced productivity.<p>I&#x27;m in a similar situation so I&#x27;ve tried to build as capable of the travel setup as possible.<p>You can also throw desktop monitors in a checked bag, I&#x27;m usually only bringing one, but you can fit two to three.<p>It really depends on how frequently you travel, if you&#x27;re going to the same locations, if you can store stuff there, and how much additional cost are you willing to pay for a better set up.<p>The luggage shipping services out there can be fairly reasonable, if you don&#x27;t want to lug that much gear back and forth with you. Do you have a home base that you go back to, or are you jumping between locations? I used to be fully nomadic, I spent a lot of time optimizing.

My main issue is using a keyboard while in vr. Feels like a keyboard that senses when fingers are near would be useful, so you know what key you are about to press. Most of the time i can tell particularly if i am used to that keyboard but sometimes its trial and error. That or accessible hand gloves. I suppose brain impulse reading is still far off as that would solve most input issues with vr.

It would be great if people posting opinions in this thread could share which headsets they are basing their opinion on.<p>Many seem to be discounting it entirely without qualifying their comments with the headset and tech setup used…

It&#x27;s not ready.<p>It doesn&#x27;t really matter which headset you use or what specs they have, they are all way to heavy and uncomfortable to use for work. And I say that as someone who enjoys gaming on them quite a lot.<p>John Carmack mentioned the concept of VR for work specifically in his latest presentation on the pro2... something he&#x27;s clearly interested in and believes will eventually happen but in his words were something along the lines of &quot;this is going to need a lot of painful dogfooding before it&#x27;s useful&quot;. Once they are down to the weight of some very chunky sunglasses - then we can start to be a bit more serious about it. It will happen, in the not too distant future, but if you force it right now I believe you will be in for a lot of discomfort and ultimately bail.

I have done it while developing some VR apps. Only for quick code changes though via Virtual Desktop. It is definitely cool, and I could see it becoming a &quot;thing&quot; some day. But currently I have to say that the comfort and resolution is not quite there yet.

The Simula One (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simulavr.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simulavr.com</a>) was designed specifically for this use case (disclaimer: I&#x27;m a cofounder of the project). TLDR: it&#x27;s a 100% office dedicated headset with bleeding edge pixel density that runs Linux Desktop natively. Everything from the hardware to the software rendering is optimized for VR Desktop and the clear display of text. We really pushed hard to make the Simula One specs as premium&#x2F;bleeding edge as humanly possible. For example, our headset has more than 50% higher pixel density than the Quest Pro (35.5 PPD vs. 22.69 PPD), and our compute specs are comparable to a premium office laptop (Intel 12th Gen i7-1265U Processor, up to 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage).<p>For more discussion, here&#x27;s a list of HN threads on the Simula One: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?q=simulavr.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?q=simulavr.com</a>. The most recent one discusses a comparison between the Simula One and the Quest Pro (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33318956" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=33318956</a>).<p>Pros of the Simula One: it offers native VR computing (i.e. you put on the headset, turn it on, and get see an uncapped number of your Linux Desktop apps running in front of you). Compare this to the Questo Pro, which for VR Desktop provides WiFi streamed screens from your laptop (placing latency and bandwidth constraints on what you can do, and capping the number of screens you can use to 5).<p>Cons of the Simula One: it&#x27;s still in preorder phase, and has a target ship date of ~Q2 2023. Our small scale makes the cost of the headset pretty high (though to be fair we&#x27;re putting very premium specs into it).

Can&#x27;t comment on what it&#x27;s like with a modern headset, but I have used an old Oculus Go with great success, despite its low resolution. It&#x27;s definitely uncomfortable and hard on the eyes for long periods of time, but the focus it affords makes it worthwhile for short bursts.<p>I set everything up to interface with my computer using a web browser on the headset, which might not match your use case.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jstrieb.github.io&#x2F;posts&#x2F;vr-programming&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;jstrieb.github.io&#x2F;posts&#x2F;vr-programming&#x2F;</a>

Everyone wants to use VR to program on a few giant screens<p>but what if we changed the nature of programming and could represent it as something we could walk around and change things. Get back to working with our hands.

I tried with the Quest Pro. It’s cool to see the giant screens and set things up, but the pixel density and resolution is really not there yet. It’s like working off of a 65 inch 480p TV.

I would rather become a brick mason or plumber before I have to work with a VR headset on.<p>Zero doubts.<p>If this becomes any kind of norm for tech work I&#x27;m throwing my computer out the window.

The technology isn&#x27;t there yet. The resolution needs to be probably 6x what it currently is to be good for reading and productivity purposes. The strain on the eyes and weight on the head&#x2F;neck from having VR headset on for extended periods is also significantly higher than the strain from just a viewing a monitor and that problem is not going away anytime soon.

VR Headset? Hard nope for me.<p>Lightweight AR headset? I would definitely give this a try.<p>To specify what I am talking about: If the device is much bigger|bulkier|heavier than thick eyeglasses, I won&#x27;t use it. If the device relies on controllers (aka. something I have to hold), I won&#x27;t use it (gloves would be okay as long as they don&#x27;t prevent me from typing or using a pen and paper).

Have you ever used VR and tried to read small text? Feels like we&#x27;re still far from from minimum viable resolution for that to me.

However good the software gets at providing a desktop &#x2F; working environment, I simply couldn&#x27;t handle shutting myself off like that, just wouldn&#x27;t find it comfortable.<p>Unless you somehow know that wouldn&#x27;t bother you, I&#x27;d recommend trying it first (or sufficiently within return window) before getting too set on the idea.

I have used pretty much every VR and AR headset there is, and have many hundreds of hours in them dating back to the Oculus DK1. Even the Index and the new Quest Pro lack the resolution needed for extended work with text on virtual screens, not to mention that the weight and heat of the headset become increasingly uncomfortable after a few hours. I also suspect that extended use of a headset wasn&#x27;t good for the health of my eyes. Certainly if you wear glasses it would be pretty uncomfortable, but I generally felt a lot more eyestrain in VR than I would after extended use of a monitor.<p>I think we are still quite a few years away from VR being a slam dunk for a virtual workstation, and it&#x27;s going to require continued investments in optics, material science and display technology. There&#x27;s a reason Meta is spending billions on this, it&#x27;s an exceptionally difficult problem.

I have a friend who has been working (coding) using a Quest Pro for about a week and likes it.<p>I&#x27;m not a VR fan at all but I tried it for a few minutes and was impressed. The headset is comfortable and light and the tracking is flawless.<p>It was the first time I&#x27;ve thought VR might have significant applications outside gaming.

I&#x27;ve experimented with the Meta Quest 2 for work and for gaming. Despite continual adjustments and trying with or without glasses&#x2F;contact lenses and using the glasses spacer, I was unable to comfortably use this device for any use case without experiencing headaches at approximately 30 minutes per session.<p>I&#x27;ve never figured out whether this was a user issue or if this hardware is simply crap. In the end, it makes sense that OSHA guidelines suggest that your monitor should be at least half a meter away from your eyes.<p>Because of this experience, I&#x27;m quite pessimistic about VR as a whole, and the Quest 2 is sitting in its box on my bookshelf. I&#x27;d like to sell it or give it away, but that would require me putting it back on and de-linking my Facebook account, and I can&#x27;t be bothered to do that.

Has anyone tried doing this with a Varjo headset? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;varjo.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;varjo.com</a><p>I would love to try this, they have some of the highest resolutions that I&#x27;ve seen but a little $$$

I easily fit two 27&quot; monitors in 1&#x2F;2 of my normal sized suitcase. At first I was super careful how I packed them. But they&#x27;ve lasted so long I just throw some clothes around them for the past few years.<p>Full size mechanical keyboard too, and lots of cables and a power strip. I almost always have extra space and end up adding clothes I don&#x27;t need just to keep stuff in its place.<p>Weight is the real consideration you might have to manage. One time I had to remove some items and put them in carry-on to meet a weight restriction. After which I bought a very cheap luggage scale.

I have tried it. Working in VR is much better than I expected it would be, with the right equipment. Still, I quit after a while mainly because of the quality of text rendering. It is so much better than it used to be, but still not good enough, at least not for me.<p>I also found it surprisingly frustrating that I couldn’t see the keyboard. Every time I took my hands off it I had to do this blind search for it and get my fingers back to the right starting position. Symbols I don’t know how to touch type because they are rarely used was also more frustrating than I would have thought.

This is way far away from your specific question, but I&#x27;ve had a similar situation to yours (travelling constantly between cities).<p>What has worked for me (staying a couple of months within citiies) is to &quot;buy&quot; good used monitors in local pawn shops and re-pawn (sorry dont know the exact English term) them once I&#x27;ve finished using them. I end up paying around $50 usd or equivalent to &quot;rent&quot; a monitor for a couple of months.<p>I tried asking local internet cafes to rent me screens, but it is becoming less and less common.

With the Quest Pro I could actually see the feasibility. Just good enough to code in comfortably.<p>The color passthrough means you can actually have coffee at your desk among a million small things it adds.

I&#x27;ve got a Quest 2 but used it for about a week barely used it since due to eye strain off it had the worst head ache ever after 1&#x2F;2 a day on it, found it had some cool ideas certainly not ready for productivity but certainly on the way to it. Quest Pro sounds like it could be a game changer but whats it like on eye strain&#x2F; head aches? The continuous IPD adjustment sounds like a real improvement but I don&#x27;t want to gamble on one at 1500.

It&#x27;s hard to wear a VR headset for long periods. I use one(Quest 2) for gaming quite a bit, and the bulk gives you a bit of strain after a couple of hours of constant use.

If you want to work in VR, I recommend getting the highest resolution possible. I love my Quest 2 for everything other than reading text. It was nausea inducing.<p>The Valve Index is better but the resolution still isn’t there<p>With HP’s reverb G2, it’s definitely possible since it has a higher resolution at a good price point. You can get used headsets for less than $300. It’s not great for games that require moving around since tracking is horrible, but it’s really great for work and sim games

I’ve tried the quest 2. I truly wanted it to work and was hoping I could find fixes when I hit roadblocks. I even invested in the most highly rated head strap and foam.<p>For me it’s a no go. The software is kinda ok, the headset are also kinda ok but heavy. Overall the experience was mediocre at best. I lost velocity for the two weeks I tried using it, it was clunky and often not working and needed just too many hacks.

Dude, get two AOC USB monitors... I have FOUR of them.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;AOC-I1659FWUX-USB-Powered-Portable-1920x1080&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B07LCS4HHR&#x2F;ref=sr_1_5?crid=3HTCV9VEORIVV&amp;keywords=aoc+usb+monitors&amp;qid=1667688932&amp;sprefix=aoc+usb+monitors%2Caps%2C160&amp;sr=8-5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;AOC-I1659FWUX-USB-Powered-Portable-19...</a>

With the quest 2, no. With the pro, I&#x27;m inclined to say yes. I have the Q2 at home but I&#x27;ve only used the Quest pro for about an hour.

Not 100% on topic, but I got myselt a little wearable display (Vufine VUF-110) that straps on to my glasses, but it&#x27;s not too bad as a second monitor. Of course, it&#x27;s only 720p and could really only fit 80 characters wide on the screen, but that just keeps my line lengths short...

Had the same idea, tried Valve Index, resolution too low, not good for eyes. However I wonder if you could build a traveling case that includes two monitors like this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;x2XDYms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ibb.co&#x2F;x2XDYms</a>

What I will say is that it seems quite unsexy.<p>I would be quite hesitant to use it in public, especially in the office.

I use the Epson Moverio (1280x720 stereo):<p>comfortable reading is around the dozen lines of text.<p>Surely this tells you that you would go in the opposite direction of the desired one. They are excellent for other applications - as a memex-while-moving, for example. They do not replace a station.

I use an oculus quest 2 with the battery headstrap to play online shooters when the beamer is used by my gf. It works surprisingly well with vrdesktop. I still prefer playing on the beamer, but without the space i would consider it a quite good solution.

One complaint about it is you need a fast router and ideally a wired connection to it from your computer. Otherwise it can be too laggy to use.<p>But virtual desktops are cool. The Quest Pro makes it nice because the pass through camera is quite good.

The ability to work comfortably in AR and take several large screens wherever you go is alleged to be a major selling point for the Magic Leap 2. We&#x27;ll see, the company isn&#x27;t known for delivering on its promises.

Physically it doesn’t work:<p>The headset is too clunky and heavy still, after a few hours you get a sore neck and I have trouble with lack of airflow on my skin (where it contacts my face gets sweaty and irritated after long periods)<p>More importantly: the resolution is too small. Using an IDE to edit text inside VR technically works, but the font size has to be so huge because the resolution inside is so poor, coding becomes an exercise in scrolling and navigation rather than an exercise in problem solving.<p>I’m the same as you, I like being portable, and when I was a travelling tech nomad for 2 years it meant hauling two monitors in the car everywhere.<p>One other option that actually worked well was getting a good quality 1080p projector and mounting it on a camera stand, I used this for a bit instead of monitors at the hotels&#x2F;Airbnbs and it worked well, although that’s just a single 1080p monitor

Not too much on the usability, but here is a Common Lisp REPL in VR:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invidious.dhusch.de&#x2F;watch?v=eMsMm_q-akI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;invidious.dhusch.de&#x2F;watch?v=eMsMm_q-akI</a>

VR is not yet and may never be at the place where you want to spend a full workday in it. It’s good in a pinch for traveling etc. but honestly it’s just not what it’s best at.

It&#x27;s not good enough yet. The strain on the eyes is apparently really bad in VR. My husband needs glasses again due to doing VR 1-2hr a day.

Just a warning that I can see all kinds of people relating very personal takes on it, esp based on last-gen hardware like the Quest 2.<p>The key thing is that effectively, there has never really been a VR device released with this as its primary purpose until the Quest Pro. So all the complaints of clunky software, lack of comfort, visual clarity, etc are all in part side effects of people repurposing tools that were simply not meant for the job.<p>I&#x27;ve always been interested in this space and my conclusion with Quest Pro, which I&#x27;ve had for a week or so now, is that its borderline usable for specific tasks. However it&#x27;s still not <i>quite</i> there for me as a primary working mode. I think about 50% of the issues are software addressable and it will be a big test of Meta to see if they managed to actually address them or not.<p>The main issues for me are display resolution and refresh rate I think. When looking at black text on white background, it still has a &quot;shimmering&quot; type effect. It&#x27;s very subtle and not something obvious at first but if I try to work hours in there (like I did yesterday), it eventually affects me. This seems addressable to me but I&#x27;m not 100% sure if the approach being taken (compressing the video feed) can solve it completely - we really need something more like RDP where it draws windowing primitives natively in the headset so that there&#x27;s no &quot;refresh&quot; at all. The resolution would be &quot;ok&quot; if everything else was perfect but literally any other problem makes it an issue.<p>However, my biggest suggestion here is that this is <i>very personal</i> - both to your own visual &#x2F; perceptive &#x2F; comfort context AND what you exactly do. Even within a specific application, &quot;how&quot; you do it matters. Which is all to say, you just need to try this out. I&#x27;d guess that prior to Quest Pro something like 5% of people would have found working in VR viable. Quest Pro probably brings it to 20% or so - a huge improvement but nothing like mainstream. The next gen should bring that way up to 50% or so I think - and we&#x27;ll have line of sight on this, if not actual devices within 6 months - rumors are there will be an announcement from Apple in Jan&#x2F;Feb (but likely not shipping until June) and then Simula is working hard on their device. If you are in the Apple ecosystem it&#x27;d be pretty crazy not to wait until their announcement (I deplore the closed ecosystem that is going to result from this but there&#x27;s no chance it won&#x27;t be awesome).<p>Finally, you&#x27;d definitely want to consider the light weight options like Nreal Air [0] if truly all you want is a giant floating monitor or two.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nreal.ai&#x2F;air&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nreal.ai&#x2F;air&#x2F;</a>

I’ve seen people use the Nreal Air AR Glasses Currently sold out. But I’d be interested to hear how these work for programming.

I am surprised how intuitive the Quest Pro MR Workstation stuff is. So far everything else is not worth the $1.5k price.

Can&#x27;t you rent displays when you move? More practical than carrying them around or being restricted to using cars.

Have you tried a VPN connection to your powerful workstation? What didn&#x27;t work?

something I&#x27;ve wondered, how does any of this work with glasses&#x2F;vision correction?

&gt; Is it comfortable for longer periods of time?<p>Absolutely no<p>&gt; How is it on the eyes?<p>Like staring at a tv from 4cm away for extend periods of time

It&#x27;s a horrible experience. The weight of the headset, the vertigo, the motion sickness.<p>Personally, I am waiting for eyeball implants.<p>I heard that Elon Musk is working on something like this, so I might give that a go when it&#x27;s ready. I look forward to paying hundreds of dollars to restore my vision every time he has a tantrum and shuts off the service on a whim.