I know shipping might start very soon, but hear me out.
An integrated windjammer would be quite a nice thing to have.
They’re pretty straightforward. They block wind, or in this case breathing.
They sell those. I got some and they work great on the Vive. From my experience, they block out pretty much all annoying breathing that’s usually picked up by the mic. I’d imagine it’d be very easy to size them down and integrate them directly into the headset’s microphone hole. Not to mention, it’d probably cost almost nothing.
I’m sure the most expensive part of integrating this would be automating it. Little things like this can really improve how you sound to other people. This would also require no testing from the testers, as breathing is usually only quiet, normal, or heavy.
As I understand it, the reason wind noise is so prevalent in an internal microphone like on the Vive is mainly the aperture. The turbulence is caused by the wind hitting the edges of the hole. As such, applying the wind jammer externally is the effective option. Phones are likely to use arrays for compensation but still have trouble with actual wind, even with half cover from the head and phone. It’s a similar story with pop guards; they dissipate the shock wave by causing turbulence that doesn’t reach the microphone. Another thing to experiment with is just placing a bit of tape on the microphone hole; it will muffle quite a bit, but it moves the edges away.
So the wind jammers are an effective counter to wind noise because they’re on the outside. This is why professional microphones are covered in foam, fur and such for windy conditions; it doesn’t do the trick if there’s too much hard shell around it. The other option is trying to avoid the wind path, e.g. placing the microphones out to the sides, but as there will be motion there will be wind everywhere.
