I ended up buying direct from samsung with my NZ card. Funny thing is their support told me they wouldn’t accept international cards
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first read this ( from IL2 Sturmovik forum - user "moosya” wrote review)
my extremely SUBJECTIVE Odyssey+ review:
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I have a VivePro with GearVR lense mod. Decided to give the Odyssey+ a try.
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picked it up at a microsoft store near where I live.
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Going with Odyssey+ I really wanted to like it. I really wanted to be wowed, and if not wowed then at least get an on par experience with my VivePro(gvr).
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Ergonomics are strange. With the non-powered headset on my head it seems the light leakage will be from everywhere. However, once running it didn’t leak in from anywhere except from the bottom. The bottom gap is the largest out of all headsets I’ve tried. Technically, the gap is useful if you need to use the keyboard often, i.e. for Il2, however for non flight sim games it’s an immersion breaker I suppose.
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MS WMR ecosystem proved to be a biatch. If you modified your Win10 by removing Defender, adding registry settings to remove telemetry and blow up a bunch of bloatware apps - the WMR simply won’t start. I had to re-install the 1809 update twice to get the stupid thing to work. <— this alone is a shit show, so if you’re not drinking a Microcoft coolaid sprinkled with their UWP app and ‘user experience/system monitoring’ garbage the WMR is a deal breaker to me. MS really needs to separate WMR from the store/UWP via a stand-alone installer or more or less tech cognizant people would ignore VR in WMR. It’s that intrusive. But I digress.
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Optics are Fresnel. Sweet spot is … well… it’s there… somewhere. I wonder if you can replace them with GearVR lenses. It’ll be a world of difference. I bet 100% on Red here.
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The display brightness is 15-20% lower than VivePro. Or at least it seemed like it. And that makes the blurry picture even blurrier. Frankly, my eyes aren’t what they used to be, but again, keep in mind I’m comparing it against VivePro. Because of the dimmed display the whole experience is like flying in some gray fog. And because of it the “lack of SDE” effect is very hard to judge. The instrument panel does look smoother than in vivepro, or anything pretty much that’s up close is smooth. But the distance is just mud.
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I had to crank it up to around 180% SS in SteamVR to get a similar resolution that I’m running in Vivepro, or ~2000x2000 per eye, which is 100% for vivepro. (It goes with trapper’s comments that he’s running it at such high SS, I can see why, since I had to do it as well). I don’t quite understand why it’s such a dramatic difference, however I suspect SteamVR overestimates the performance for HTC headsets. Performance seemed OK in Berloga, but I wasn’t after performance, I just wanted to experience the promised bliss. The dimmed display paired with the fresnel lense mess and a strange approach to the ergonomics made it look like I’m watching a ‘stereo’ movie in a dirty 3D cinema. It didn’t feel like I was inside the cockpit, I was pretty disconnected from the plane.
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Tracking is worse than vivepro. I wasn’t expecting miracles. It works…then it doesn’t. then it works again. I guess the lighting in the room can be adjusted, whatever. Let’s leave it at that.
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Headphones. If you think VivePro headphones are bad then Odyssey+'s phones are five times worse. Again, immersion killer. Can’t easily remove them, need to cut the wires. But it’s a $300 unit so who cares.
I’m surprised with Samsung’s approach to VR here. Their GearVR headset is ten times better for ergonomics and screen brightness (yes, phone based). I guess, in the ever lasting pursuit of appeasing 100% of the masses the VR methods are turning to a basic 3D cinema experience. Sigh.
I wanted to tweak this unit, hopefully get it to a somewhat running condition with GearVR lenses, may be increase brightness somehow, etc. But WRM eco system is a showstopper to me, I can’t stand what MS is doing on their OS and I’m not going to support the bastardization of user experience by playing their game.
Resume: if you have VivePro then stick with it. This HMD doesn’t come close. Not by a mile. Or if you want good VR experience than VivePro is x20 better. Yes, it’s pricey. But you get what you pay for. Really.
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I have it here and yes those panels are great I can confirm, but the headset in itself is underwhelming. More on that in a few days I must rebuild my PC with windows 10
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Can you just cut the main housing and use a head strap?
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Yes SDE is still there but it’s more like saying you can see the texture of the paper sheet when reading a book. In that the zoomed picture of VoodooDE is reflecting the reality heu virtual reality
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No not really, this headset is like a cheaper PSVR with the attachment band been on the central part of the headset ( no side attachments ). But dam the displays are good no black lines SDE. I’m looking at the blue lines in this forum web page an absolute solid light blue line! On the white background I can see ultra ultra ultra fine diagonal lines if a look directly in the center of the lens. But I can also see some pattern on the paint of my blue Pepsi can just beside me on my desk.
Guys black lines SDE is dead!
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I suppose it’s just basic physics , no more light particles are produced and some have been diffused so it cannot have the same real clarity but can appear to be clearer if the brain can fill in the gaps
Subjective experience
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Every edge is blurred and diffraction limited at some point 
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I can’t really try the Headset in VR now because my PC is on windows 8.1 and the headset refuse to start in SteamVR. But I second your comment on the ergonomic of this headset.
The PSVR headset is the most comfortable I have, the OD+ is the worst. I also have the HTC vive with the deluxe strap, it’s more comfortable than the OD+ but bulky
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Are you talking about the tracking of the headset or the controllers?
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Well at least they fixed the SDE problem without needing more GPU power. Hopefully samsung make a headset with their new native 1200ppi screens
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if you increase this with a 2.5k screen OLED screen it would be a good compromise.
But FOV is the real problem here and the OD+ don’t address it. And with the quality required to do this I don’t see Samsung doing it next year ;-(
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Read first sentence of my post (review)
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Just wanted to throw in my thoughts.
The OD+ is my first VR headset. Like some others have been saying, the headset hurts… It doesn’t fit my head well, and I can only play for like an hour, which technically is a good thing because too much gaming is bad, right…? After an hour, it hurts too much to continue.
I’ve added a velcro strap from headphone to headphone to distribute the weight differently. It seemed to help. I also wear a beanie. Now, I can play for an hour, rest 5 mins, play for another 45 mins, rest 5 mins, then play for another 30 mins before my head and body really gets tired. At least that’s how it has been working for me with Skyrim and FO4.
About the blurriness, up close things look good in Skyrim and FO4. But everything in the background looks blurry or dirty. I’ve tried fiddling with all the settings, but I guess that’s just how it is? Again, this is my first headset, so I have no idea what to expect. Oh, Skyrim does look better than FO4, though. It runs faster, too. It loads games way faster than FO4.
I have a 1080Ti, 32gb ram and a 7700k. Steamvr SS default/recommended is 200%, I thought I would have a blast in FO4, but the headset fitting and dirty background objects ruined the fun. Currently, I have like 7 hours in FO4. Picked up the OD+ first week of release. I turned off TAA in FO, which made the background clearer, but then it caused this mad shimmering thing on other objects. So, in the end, I preferred the blurriness over the shimmering. There’s a compromise setting, but I absolutely hate the shimmering, even in small amounts.
I was super excited to play in VR. I bought like 10 games on steam on the first day, and my wishlist has about 20 more. I think my favorite so far is Accounting+. Everything looks great in the that game and it’s more of a casual game, so you can play it in little chunks at a time.
Anyway, I’m kinda disappointed in how things turned out. I’m not using the headset very much. Partially due to FO76 being out, though, I guess. At the end of the day, I’m still excited for VR. I can’t wait until vr games look as good as monitor games. Hopefully with the 8kx, though we probably won’t be able to drive that headset until like four generations of graphics cards later. I mean, we barely broken into smooth 4k gaming.
I still think about preordering the 5k+, simply because I think the visuals will be more clear. I watched the one review of the 5k+ in french. In the inside the lens comparison part, the 5k+ does look clearer. Maybe like 10% better. Not sure that’s worth $700 at this point. I don’t even care about FOV right now. For me, the deal breaker is visual clarity, otherwise I feel like I’m playing with Playstation 2-3 graphics (Skyrim and FO).
By the way, I think I’ve been spoiled with 4k gaming, so maybe that’s why I’m so picky about visual clarity. If I had been playing Playstation 2 games all my life and only PS2, then stepping up to this OD+ would be AMAZING.
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Lol I don’t think that’s the case or else literally no one would be playing vr games…ever since I got my vive two years ago I never played flat games again. And the vive is much more inferior resolution and screen quality wise than the odyssey+
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Sorry didn’t found the reference even on your original post in the other forum I suppose your taking about tracking of the headset only because your review is about a plane sim. Do you play right in front of your screen? This could be problematic giving less perspective to Resolve the 3D space and causing direct anomaly because of the images moving on the computer screen…
Would try to turn off your computer screen if this is indeed the case
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Then do not get the Pimax. THE big advantage is the FoV. If you don’t even care about that, really, you won’t be happy. To me personally the FoV is a huge advantage of the Pimax 5k+ but in other aspects the HMD just really lacks. Maybe 2019 will bring some HMD’s with less compromises … At least wide FoV HMD’s are entering the world, Samsung showed us that SDE can be a thing of the past already and higher res panels are coming up soon too. We do need Foveated rendering to become a common thing though, and/or VR SLI, or AMD really stepping up their game.
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To make it clearest for you - its not my review , read again my first sentence, just pasted here revivew of user Moosya form Il 2 Sturmovik forum so please dont ask me 
About using the vive controllers with the samsung oddessey plus,do you need the headset or are the vive base stations and controllers enough?
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Better to just post the link to the other forum, especially, if the review is not yours.
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