I meant 8hz sound quality not 8Kbit! lol

Videos like these are priceless. Thank you

Just bought a Pico 4, Karl, and after about an hour of Googling and messing around I finally managed to run my Steam games wirelessly in 90hz . Got it mainly to run Euro Truck SImulator 2 , just had to change it to -openvr in properties instead of -oculus as I was using the Quest 2. I think the image is clearer than the Quest 2 but not massively so. F1 2022 plays pretty well and smoother than the Quest 2. As for the audio in the Pico 4, I set it to play headset only and got nothing, so changed it back to headset and pc and it worked in the headset. My pc audio selector did show the Pico audio but it wasn't streaming any audio until I changed it to headset and pc weirdly. I'm not sure if I'll keep the Pico 4 yet, the joy of buying from Amazon, got 30 days returns. Cheers pal, liked n subbed. Daz. PS...forgot to say, I'm wirelessly streaming using the streaming assistant, haven't tried VD yet, another fourteen quid, already got it on the pc and for the Oculus. Just feel like your shelling out all the time lol !!

Hi Karl, thank you very much as usual for your videos! Very informative and thorough! I decided to pull the trigger recently with the Pico 4, coming from a Rift S (which I still have). Despite the latest version of Streaming Assistant and third party utility to push the bitrate to 240Mbit/s (called Streaming ASsistant Extender), I totally see the limitation from a Display Port device which get a full uncompressed image. DEspite the more efficient HEVC in Pico 4, in Assetto Corsa Competizione I get a lot of compression artifacts, especially on items with low contrast and far away. Looking at the next turn in ACC is awful. This is also caused by my limited GPU power, as I use a RTX 2070 Max-P (115W on a laptop), which causes some details to be lost in the process, and then the compression does the rest. Although when I try to push to the limit the resolution (just to test the real resolution of the lcd panels in the Pico 4) I can see the definition is there, but I can't use it due to lack of GPU power. Also the compression I think it's affecting the colour depth of the rendered image. Colours are duller compared to Oculus Rift S, and this could depend on the video stream going through the Pico 4 is 8bit, probably 4:2:0 colour subsampling. The Oculus Rift having DP probably is capable of receiving still a 8 bit image, but it's uncompressed and probably 4:2:2 or 4:4:4. I really like the ergonomics of Pico 4, the display, a little bit less the comfort (I have the same problem as you, light gets into from the side of the foam interface) and also start to hurt my forehead after 1h. Standalone gaming is totally not for me, it looks like PS1 :D I think I will return my Pico 4 to Amazon, save money this year and probably sell the gaming laptop and build again a custom PC. And then will see what VR headset will come out! I could use Virtual desktop though on the Pico, although it's just on Wifi or using a usb ethernet cable. In case of WIFI, I really don't like having a device on my head emitting radio waves at 5ghz for prolonged period of time. Pancake lens are quite great with FOV and clarity, although I get some back reflection from anything high contrast on a dark background, which is a little bit annoying. Can't justify 350£ in my case, unfortunately.

I also had the distortion issue with streaming assistant, but it was due to some kind of conflict between the audio of the PC vs the Pico Audio. To avoid it, I either power down all external DACs connected to my PC and set the audio to PICO4 prior to power it on and connect it.

Karl, all that time I heard about how bad SA is and when I tried it myself I was also disappointed about the results. Your video has helped me tremendously. Not only the picture quality is now very good, but unlike VD I can see the Pico controllers and not the Quest controllers in VR. Some games run even better than with VD (Hubris). But there are some downsides as well: like you said, you can't play Rift games with SA, for that VD is a brilliant solution. I will using both now, seeing the results after tweaking Steam VR. Thanks for your video!!!

Thank you for this very helpful tip. I have been using Samsung HMD Odyssey+ for a while and been wondering if the resolution seemed low. Guess I can do the same in the SteamVR settings.

They shouldve just put like a UHD option and put a warning when turning it on

Excellent! Thank you for the tips!

Well it may be 2024 now, but as a new Pico 4 owner with a 3080, I still found this video really helpful!

Hi Karl! I have a 3080 too and was wondering wich resolution setting did you use, it wasn't clear in the video. Thanks

This is exactly what i was looking for. I just got into VR and was wondering, why for example Assetto Corsa, even though I selected the highest settings, still looked like trash. I thought the HD setting + 90hz would put everything on optimal settings, but I guess I was wrong about that.

The streaming assistant seems to have a lot of room for improvement, in the mext updates. I hope even the virtual desktop improves over time.

Another tip is to lower your monitor resolution. VD does this too with the optimal monitor resolution box ticked.

Excellent video, have just ordered a Pico4 to mess about with - do you have a setup video that covers install from a bare (non VR) system, its a Win11, i12900k, 3080ti setup with FS2020

Hm, thanks for info mate. About sound, maybe you found out but there are streaming settings influencing the sound, like the default sound settings on PC, any addons for sound and drivers :)

what about virtual desktop setting? what would you use for a mid range PC? i have a 3070 laptop. thanks

I think they need to figur out sounds ide, so we get that sound up running on Wifi deffently. Ihavnt tried it with cabel yet. Virtual Desktop runs so good and deffently is My prefered one, Even with a bit lower grafics.... Thumbs up to Pico 4 and there New lenses 💓

Is there a way to use openxr for msfs with those? Steamvr performance was shit on G2 last time i checked...

Those wipe stains are golden with non-shiny plastic. Dull plastic is more absorbent than shiny plastic.

is there any benefit in latency when using a cable ? I had a Valve Index years ago and struggling with VD and Pico 4 even i hit my 90fps and latency VD Graph shows 40-45ms. But still getting jiggy and noticing the Latency at all. Wondering if Latency is like Native PCVR or still choppy ?

I also have a 3080, you use 3160x3160 or you are using a higher resolution? thanks!!!! improved so much my pcvr

Others have said audio compression with Pico assistant, and fine with VD too

Good point! 👍 I also have a 3080 and a i7 so i cannot get that high sadly. 😭

This is gold, Just try to explain a bit why of the stuff you suggest

such a great video thanks for the explanation

Let's suppose i leave it "HD" in the pico software is it still better than the quest 2 resolution or not?

Just changed those setting and rly blowed my mind! Thats the propet resolution and the true power of Pico 4. In Half Life Alyx i can easily read the papers on tables walls etc etc. In each room i am just going arroung and searching for stuffs! So the difference in resolution between Pico 4 and Quest 2 its EXTREMLE MASSIVE. In pcvr Pico 4 its a apsolutly beast. Bear in mind that you need powerfull gaming pc.

So do you think it's better to play wired for good latency? And, is the image more clear and less "ugly" playing wired?

Hi I hope someone can help, when I go in to steam home everything is tiny its as if my head is huge its the same in skybox media player, I've been trying to find an answer for a couple of days now with no luck. When I use my quest 2 everything looks ok ,tia.

Karl, do you observe any tiny glitches in head tracking? In my quest 2, i noticed that both in quest home and games, the head tracking was rock solid, but whith pico 4, both in the home, and in when streaming, e.g. steam vr home, there was a slightly jitterness when making small head movements. I sent by pico back, but now wondering if i should try again if the head tracking issue was just that unit, or maybe will get patched out? Thanks!

I also have the same issue with the audio being broken and unusable. I tried different cables and even other ports but it didnt fix the audio. I also have the issue that sometimes the connection just randomly disconnects WHILE IM WIRED and choosing the option to connect wired via the stream assistance app from pico. New cable is being used and again tried other once as well but its a very hit or miss when it decides to stay connected. Im so confused.. When I chose wirless everything works fine and so does the audio. I really really hope they can fix it soon.

can you watch movies and explorer the internet besides games on the pico 4 headset like you can on the quest 2.and what other headsets will do that besides the quest 2.

I was thinking of getting one of these for PCVR use only Via cable. I'm casual so mainly use social programs like VRchat and Bigscreen. For the price seems like a no brainer compared to the quest 3. Just need something basic for my 4070TI

Would PCVR on my pico improve downloaded video quality by any chance? If so would you recommend virtual desktop??

Nice explanation thanks I have my Pico4 also running USB wired in , and I also have a sound problem - it’s simply too quiet . Sound quality is fine , but I can’t figure out how to fix the low volume problem , even with the headset on max. I already checked the manual settings in windows , everything is 100% , but it’s still too quiet . Any ideas ?

Thank you

Do pancake lenses need barrel correction to the same level as fresnel lenses then? I somehow wondered that it would be less?

Hi man. Is using virtual desktop with a usb wired connectiom ok?

Hi. How do you perceive compression over the cable? Is it better than terrible on Quest 2?

I still call 720P "HD", just use add "true" when referring to 1080p :>

On paper this headset seems amazing and I would only be playing PCVR but I do hear a lot of bad things about it. I am unable to have a wired internet connection so don't believe I can use virtual desktop and most people say don't bother with the Pico streaming assistant. My old headset was the Samsung Odyssey+ but the wire broke and it was basically impossible to get in contact with samsung. Do you think it's worth getting the Pico 4 to use with streaming assistant, since it is likely that it will get updated but not a guarantee? or should I just wait since there's a lot of big announcements that should be happening soonish? I have a 3080 and would prefer inside out tracking and also to not be spending over £400-500. Beatsaber and vrchat are my main games. Would really appreciate any advice

Is Virtual Desktop the PC Steam app run on PC or the one you buy from inside of Pico’s Store run on Pico 4? Thanks.

I've just built a pc for vr. And thinking of getting pico 4. Do you think my i7 13700, RTX 3090 would run pico at 3160 render resolution? I've seen some saying you need a 4090 for pico 4?

So I’m looking to buy a PC to pair and stream PCVR games with my recently ordered PICO4, and I’m wondering what the best graphics cards, chips, and amount of RAM I should look to get to pair for the highest quality PICO4 VR experience?

do anyone know how to fix this problem? i had problems with streaming assistant for awhile but know it suddenly seemed to work with steam. except that the headset itself just don´t get past the loading screen, have anyone else had this problem?

May I ask you how does the ASW (async spacewarp) option performs with the Pico software? Because in my opinion in the Quest software (debug tool) doesn't work very well (it still gives me a lot of stutter)...so maybe Pico has a better implementation? Thanks

Unfortunately for me, I lose the fps, but the image quality always stays poor when messing with the steam resolution slider, I'm surprised that I'm yet to receive a single update to the headset, despite getting one of the first lot shipped

I mostly use my pc for flight simulator. I’m very interested in buying the pico, but my wifi is clearly too bad. Do you have any experience with the pico in the fs2020? Would appreciate any information.

Thanks for the info! Do you think my 3070ti GPU is strong enough to handle the increase to 3160 x 3160?

Thanks

Maybe something to add Karl, is that I would assume the pico streaming assistant uses H264 for compression rather than HVEC of virtual desktop. That could make a huge difference to the overall picture quality. Guy Godin says 150mb HVEC is like 500mb H264.

I know it’s not relevant to the video Karl, but really looking forward to your review of the Logitech Pro. 😊

I am considering purchasing VR goggles and have one question. I ask because I see a racing sim with triple monitors. I heard that if I set up a triple 65" monitor 80cm away from my eyes and set the FOV to 80 degrees, I can see the same size as the real car. What do you think of the size of the image seen by Pico4? Does it look the same size as the actual car? Does it look like a scaled-down image like a 27-inch triple monitor?

i also have the weird audio problem, sounds like its constantly clipping and artifacting, it sounds really bad and almost makes me want to return the headset unless i can fix it

Thanks for the video. Things are much clearer now. Makes sense. I have a poor Vega8 iGPU which is nowhere near the SteamVR-ready category (tho it has 4GB dedicated VRAM), but rest of my system is decent enough (Ryzen9, 8core/16threads, 32GB RAM). So I wanted to ask if that setup is ok for streaming movies and my windows desktop environment, either in Virtual Desktop or Streaming assistant, or both? I currently run ultra-wide 3440x1440 resolution @144Hz, so my iGPU seems to be able to push those pixels at a high rate. But then again, I'm aware all these must first be compressed and then sent over the network (I prefer wireless transfer), so I'm wondering if there could be some issues? On the network side, I have a dedicated 5Ghz 802.11ac router, and my PC is on 1Gbit LAN, so this should also be good. I'm just wondering if my setup could handle this scenario, or whether I should upgrade my system/GFX first? I wouldn't want to purchase Pico 4 and VD and set this all up only to see that the end result is trash..

Is the pick 4 coming to the US because when I look it up it saids that there is no plans to release the pick 4 to the US?

doesn't STEAM VR only do supersampling if the resolution is set to a higher value than 100% ? So the render resolution of the game will be higher, but then being downscaled by STEAM VR to 2160 x 2160, since the Pico Streaming Assistant reports this resolution to STEAM VR. The headset will then only get a 2160 x 2160 image,which still should look not as sharp as with the mamimum quality in Virtual Desktop. You will see the difference due to supersampling, but there is also additional GPU time and memory needed, because of the additional scaling. Especially on GPUs with 8GB of VRAM this becomes an issue if you try to play at a decent quality.

they really need to bump the bitrate up to be on par with the q2 link at a few more hundred mbps. The artifacting at 100mbps or VD's 150 even, is somewhat driving me nuts comparing it to my old q2 running at 300 mbps.

4:27 yooo kitti

I've watched your barrel correction video and this video, but I still don't see how it makes sense to render at 3160x3160 per eye given that the Pico 4 displays only have 2160x2160 per eye. How do you think the Pico 4 uses those extra pixels?

Have you actually seen a clarity increase when setting the steamvr resolution to 3100x3100? For me it still doesn't come close to the clarity of Virtual Desktop when setting to a similar resolution

Question, have they fixed this issue yet 6 months on?

the problem with your audio is to do with the audio channel you choice on your pc. as I had the same issue and how i fixed it was, I changed the audio channel to my headphones then my audio on the pico headset would be much clearer and not distorted at all, you can change it to the pico headset also in your audio channel opinations also at bottom right of your task bar on your pc this will also make clearer but don't have it coming out any speaker or anything like that as if you do this will make the audio 50x worse

I turn off Pico sound and use PC speakers to get extra Video quality then the streaming is much better too.

Would you consider VD a better option over Pico connect?

I have the same audio issue with streaming assistent so it’'s not just you

Would prescription lenses fit over the two screens....?

This doesn't seem to change the resolution of the headset. It stays at 2160x2160. You can clearly see that by checking desktop texts; they stay as blurry no matter what resolution you put in steamvr and boot. Are you sure it's working for you?

The problem of Pico Streaming Assistant is not the resolution, it's bitrate. As far as I know, it's max bitrate is less than 100Mbps. So no matter how more resolution you set it never gets the best quality of Pico 4. Also it's not certain what kind of codec the streaming assistant use to compress and decompress the images. For now the only way to max out pico4 is Virtual Desktop. You should see the pictures with max settings (1200Mbps wifi connection, Godlike rendering with RTX4090, 150Mbps bitrate, 100% sharpness, HEVC codec), it's just mind blowing.

pico 4 not as smooth as quest 2? Still less smooth or any update

i have that same audio distortion too with streaming assistant, totally unusable. When i start same app (deovr) from virtual desktop no distortion. [rtx 3080, ryzen 5900x, 32gb ram]

i have an rtx 2060, is it good enough to play with higher graphics then normal ????

I am currenty trying to figure out, what different substances does to us, and I just have to ask, do you drink coffee?

arent they pushing the already proper distorted view to the hmd, so the hmd would not even need to distort it so 2160x2160 is the max.

I wish Virtual Desktop supported link cable

You can edit an .ini ti improve bitrate. I am playing at 212mb.

Karl, a question not related to the Pico but rather to the 3 displays you have in the background: how can you blend those into a single display? They are different size. I have also different size 3 Monitors and I can't get Nvidia surround to work, nor other solutions.

I’ve got a 7600xt and every time I change the quality setting in the pico streaming app on the pc to something other than SD, every game I run freaks out and stutters and crashes. I realise the 7600xt is no 4090 but it should certainly be able to box above SD quality. Any ideas anyone?

One tiny detail you forgot to mention: it doesn't seem possible to run virtual desktop over the USB connection. USB seems to only work with PICO's streaming assistant which has terrible image quality.

Hi karl! A question. I have I5 9600K and AMD 5600xt. It is worth it to go for Pico 4 or my system can not handle it at all? Thanks.

i tried the streaming assistant but nevwer got it to work, dont really understand how people are even able to make them work tbh so i had to buy the virtual desktop app

If only Sony had made the PSVR2 PC compatible, they may have owned the market with it!!

I bought Pico 4 to upgrade my PCVR from Rift S, but when I tested it yesterday with Streaming assistant and took screenshots. Must say I was dissapointed because there were no difference to Rift S screenshots at all (both were bit over 1500x1500 resolution). I think it is because of that SteamVR resolution. I tried to change it during gameplay, but it didn't make any difference. Also tried Virtual desktop, but there you see the latency immediately if you play games like Zaccaria Pinball etc. where every ms counts. btw.. great videos Karl.

Pico just needs to get the Virtual Desktop guy to write the software natively.

Streaming Assistant bitrate absolutely sucks both on wireless and wired.

So the PICO is steam limited on PC then ?? Looks like I will be sending it back then when it arrives later, gutted.

Hows the color compare to Quest 2? I heard pico 4 color is dull compare to it

10 minutes to say something that anybody with steamVR already knew...

this sound like an incresing in latency by a far !! is that the case ?

HD is still 720P, FHD is 1080P :)

Whether using SA or VD, whether wired or wireless, the image quality stays piss poor for me. It looks alright on the desktop in VR if I use VD, but as soon as SteamVR opens up it looks like everything's been greased in vasoline. Doesn't matter what I change the render resolution in SteamVR to; nothing seems to change whatsoever. I'm at wit's end.

Virtual desktop is the best way to Play wireless on both pico 4 and quest

"I couldn't get that resolution even with my 3080" Me with 3060: Well, I guess it's smooth for me

man I have 3080 and runing 1 *144hz 4k and 2*120hz4k at the same time with no lag all HDR

I have to say: All my PCVR titles are running buttersmooth in 4160 x 4160. And I dont have an rtx 4090. I have to say I havent played half life alyx on it. And the graphicscard I am using is an Rx 6600. Thats a mid range Amd GPU I bought for 350€ one or two years ago. But Amd has always had better VR performance. But dont get me wrong! When doing rendering or artistic stuff Nvidia is lots better BUT: I have some weard artifacts around the screen where the image gets weard

Looks like you're gonna have to get a 4090

Yeah, you've a lot of great information but it is given at speed so, I recommend you break down info into basic terms accompanied with screenshots to aid when giving instructional presentations otherwise, it's in danger of being a tsunami of data that's hard to visualise and act on.

PICO 4 was a huge let down for me because of the Streaming Assistant. Iam about to test Virtual Desktop, hoping it will save this awesome hardware. Then I will decide, if I sell my Quest 2, or return/sell my PICO 4.

I've got a pico 4, and it's the worst quality i've ever touched, PCVR games just sucks ass, it lag as hell while my quest 2 runs perfect quality