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Varjo's Aero VR headset is crystal clear and a sim lover's dream

by: John -
More On: Aero

Varjo makes really, really high end VR headsets. I mean, REALLY high end. They have a ton of great technologies in there that I wish a lot of my other headsets have. Until now, there isn't a really affordable prosumer headset as Varjo announced the Varjo Aero which is made for home use.

Varjo had a launch event detailing the HMD, which you can view on Youtube. The hour video goes over a lot of the technology and what makes the Aero a top of the line VR headset.

When I say affordable, I guess I should have said more affordable. Coming in at $1999, it's double some of the more high end VR packages and this is just for the HMD, no controllers or lighthouses.

Let's start with the resolution. It blows everything out there away at 7762x3475. Compared to say the Valve Index at 3200x1440, you can see what a big difference it is. How about the HP Reverb G2? That headset displays at 4320x2160, which is still way below what the Aero can do.

Instead of LCD or OLED, Varjo went with the next generation display tech in mini-LED, two of them to be precise. I've seen mini-LEDs up close at various CES conventions and they are pretty fantastic. They are bright, sharp, and deliver an impressively high end image quality. 150 nits in an HMD will make every other headset seem dim. It's freaking bright. The 90Hz refresh rate might disappoint some people who are used up to 144Hz of the Valve Index with the Oculus Quest 2 going up to 120Hz as well. This might be the limit of the mini-LED panels for now, but 90Hz should still deliver a solid experience. My next TV will probably be a mini-LED one to replace my OLED and seeing it being used in a VR headset is really incredible.

The panels are great but so are the lenses. Varjo is using custom made aspheric lenses to deliver really clear images. Fresnel lenses used in most VR headsets today have some limitations such as god rays and artifacting but the aspheric lenses in the Aero suffer from none of this.

Field of view is stated to be 115 degrees, which is one area I really want companies to improve upon. I've tried higher FOV headsets like the Pimax and they are really immersive. Doing away with any of your vision being obstructed is a big step to increasing immersion, but unfortunately the Aero doesn't improve much in this area.

Each Aero headset will have eye tracking, which is pretty slick and they're using it in a really cool way. Most headsets have manual IPD adjustment so the lenses can be placed in that sweet spot to allow for clear visuals. Varjo takes it a step further using the eye tracking to automatically adjust the lens spacing for you. That means if you share your headsets with multiple people in your household, they just need to put it on and the software automatically adjusts to their optimal viewing settings. That's cool. But, if you're the only one using the headset, then this feature will be lost on you as you just set it once and you're done. I would've liked to have seen Varjo offer up one without the auto-adjustment to maybe cut down a little on the price, but I still think the technology is pretty cool.

The eye tracking will also allow foveated rendering to be applied meaning it will know where on the screen you are looking at and render that area sharper while saving GPU processing power to render the peripheral vision areas at lower quality. In theory, this should make it so you won't need as powerful of a computer to run the Aero. The eye tracking runs at 200Hz to quickly track you're looking.

Unlike Varjo's other professional headsets, the Aero will come with built in audio. I know some folks prefer using their own cans, but this is nice for people who just want to put on a headset and just go without having to put on a separate audio headset.

You can buy one now from their website and yes, as mentioned earlier, it's $1990.00. Again, you'll need to pick up controllers and lighthouses if you don't own some already so that'll add a lot more to the final cost. It seems like a HMD that would really take sims to the next level as well as other games and if I had that money, I'd definitely would be picking one up right now to add to my collection.