So… I may have given into my desires and purchased a Meta 2 headset…

To be fair, I’ve been wanting one since it released and they reduced the price substantially (that suspiciously coincided with the launch of the Magic Leap) which was all the arm twisting I really needed.

Initial thoughts…

Very nice looking piece of kit. A lot of thought has gone into the design and it was a pleasure to un-box. The headset when on your head is light and secure and doesn’t feel intrusive when looking through it, which I think is very important. It also comes with a nice little baggie and desk stand which is a nice touch making it look like a display item than a piece of tech. However, when installing the headset I immediately ran into problems where the display wouldn’t work. Turns out I’m not the only one that has this problem and someone on the dev forums helpfully suggested to downgrade to an earlier SDK release and use screensharing. This worked a treat! Although, it would be nice to be using the latest SDK release, I understood before buying that the device and SDK are still very much in beta.

In practice…

I quickly figured out how to get to the home app, and my mind was blown. I have used the Hololens a few times and my first experience was instant disappointment by the stingy FOV, it is like looking through a keyhole. While the graphics were great, you just didn’t see enough of it and a very different experience to how all those Microsoft promotional videos gave off. Don’t get me wrong, the technology behind the Hololens is impressive to say the least, and is indeed an awesome device… as long as you know what to expect. But, it has made me cautious of believing what I see in a “Demo” video.

Now, with the Meta 2, I was expecting the Hololens, but I got way more FOV…like a LOT more. The graphics are super crisp and I found myself mesmerised, the detail in the models in the home app are phenomenal and the Meta 2 displays them well. One thing I found though is that the hand controls are not nearly as responsive/intuitive as the Leap Motion controller, while this is a little disappointing it’s not a deal breaker as I can just hack my rig to use my Leap Motion instead in Unity. This is great and I have seen quite a few users do this with ease and I have not-so-often Leap Motion currently stuck on my HTC Vive. The sound from the speakers isn’t great either, very tinny and cheap, but who buys something like this for the speakers, I have a very good pair of bluetooth headphones which I use instead. The other major issue is that, yes… it is tethered, and the cable isn’t that long either, which I think is actually the biggest issue I have. But, again, there are workarounds by using extension cables, so not that much of a big deal.

I have yet to create my first app in Unity, but I did give the demo projects a go which were great. It seems very easy to set up and I look forward to creating some cool stuff! All in all, this is a great headset (if you don’t mind the beta-ness), I hope way more developers create content for this device and pull it out of beta as it has great potential!

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