steam has "oculus rift" as a tag to say if games are compatible with it, anyone know if this also means they'd be compatible with all other oculus products (e.g. quest 2)?

oculus quest is great but keep in mind it has three preset options for some eye adjustment thing, so it may or may not be comfortable to look through, but everything else about it is great and probably the most affordable thing on the market. oculus rift tagged games should include oculus quest as well or really any VR as far as i know. however you need to remember that you need a cable to connect the quest to your computer, and you want to buy a high speed cable that is long too. cables can basically bottleneck your VR sometimes. otherwise I don't have any accessories for mine but down the line you may want a strap for your head or cover for around the eyes to make it more comfy, but that's up to your experience. i only use it for vrchat and beat saber sometimes but comfort is really the thing i recommend most

the 2 headsets that are used by everyone are the Quest 2 ($300) and the Index ($1000), with the main arguments for the Quest 2 being the plug-and-play ability (Index has a bunch of sensors you need to set up on your walls, Quest 2 you can just hypothetically play it in any room with zero physical setup), the price obviously, and technically the Quest 2 has better resolution per eye. Arguments for the Index are better controllers, better build/strap design, better FOV, more memory, just a way beefier piece of hardware.

with the nerd shit out of the way, you really need to ask yourself if spending $300+ on this will result in you using it to justify that price. Consider you'll need to buy all the VR games you want etc. All VR games on the Steam store work with both devices, including the ones labelled 'oculus rift' or whatever. I haven't encountered a single game that doesn't work on my Quest 2, and if you get the Index 100% of Steam games will work on that thing. to be fully honest, it feels like game development for VR games has stagnated a little bit - there really isn't a lot of new stuff coming out for VR so hopefully this picks up soon, however there are a ton of games out there now and someone new to it will probably have a tooon of content to blow through.

best of luck.

Unless you are OK with being beholden to Facebook and all of their memes and shit stay away from Oculus. The systems they provide are good, but you have to be fully integrated into the FB/Meta landscape and have no choice. There is no way to just have an oculus account, it has to be tied into your FB account etc. If you are fine with that, then the Q2 is a good cheap option, but just know it does have that issue. As for games and such, 99% of shit works for all the platforms now. There is also a whole bunch of community compatibility mods and patches for systems that will allow them to talk to different game engines even if they were not specifically made to be used by X or Y platform.

As for should you get one? If you have money to spend and are ok with dropping up to 1k go for it, but the game choice isn't amazing right now. IMO VR really excels for rhythm games (beatsaber etc) so if you like those you will have a lot to choose from. But if you are more interested in FPS or "story" games, there is a lot less out there, and some of it can be really janky and not feel good at all.

technically the quest 2 can be used wirelessly with slight input lag for pc vr games or onboard using its own processing power with worse graphics for select games if you're into that. Anyway theoretically a valve index would be better however considering the giant price difference you'll have to decide yourself.

I'm guessing you're into shooters, in which case the two games I'd recommend are Population: One and Hyper dash. Population: One is a battle royale (I don't really like battle royales) but the movement and gunplay is some of the best in VR imo, and has led me to sink over a thousand hours into the game. The game has a pretty healthy player base size for a VR game, with a few hundred thousand active players and decently large competitive player base and decent prize pools, so if you ever got into the competitive side of it, it's not bad.

Hyper dash is also a good VR shooter that is team based with modes similar to what you find in tf2 like control points and payload. Movement is kinda janky but it's a fast paced game with guns that feel good to use, and has a healthy competitive player base too (by VR standards).

Both games run well on quest 2 standalone and index.

The HTC Vive is prolly better than the quest and it's slightly cheaper than the index

will add that im mostly interested in story games or otherwise "experiences" with cool settings/interactions. also interested in shooters but less so, and rhythm shit like beatsaber not really my thing tbh. so my main concern is that my interest in current game options might be limited. i thought alyx was an index exclusive though but I've just been told its not so thats cool at least, and there are probably a lot of games currently available to blow through like charis said but i just hope i don't run out of stuff if i get one. my other concern is that by the time the VR game market advances to the point where there's more of the stuff i'd like, the headset will be more outdated compared to the standard of that future-time, if anyone can hazzard a guess at if thats a likely concern to become reality that'd be nice but i understand its probably a difficult thing to predict.
thanks to everyone for your responses, i appreciate it!

never bought cables, any you (or anyone) recommends or any guide to checking this criteria (measurements, etc)?

I use quest 2 with virtual desktop to play any steam vr game. Its a nice and smooth experience. I played through all of HL Alyx that way. Although this requires you to have a good router with good wireless connection.

on the facebook integration, do you know what the implications are of it? i assume its not gonna display anything on my facebook profile or anything lmao. what are your actual concerns/what do you think are the risks, or is it just general caution towards giving the company personal data (which is fair i suppose)?

unless you're a hobbyist into simulators aka things like iracing, assetto corsa, il-2 sturmovik, dcs world where you already own a steering wheel kit or HOTAS and want a VR headset purely for deeper immersion, into multiplayer shooters like pavlov and outward where the main selling point is the physicality of handling weapons or into rhythm games which basically treat the platform as a more technologically advanced kinect then it's slim pickings

when it comes to linear singleplayer shooters you've got boneworks (which is also on the oculus store in case you don't wanna tether every time you wanna play), raw data and alyx for pcvr and, like, robo recall and zero caliber which are oculus store exclusive and both of those are more "replay the same levels doing dumb shit with different weapons" than actual linear campaigns

As far as I understand there is actually the ability to display your game activity on FB, but it's optional right now. The bigger issue is if your FB account somehow gets banned or locked or you want to delete it and get rid of it, you lose access to all of your VR games and accounts as well, so if you try to make an alt for just VR and that gets flagged you bricked your stuff. The other issue that effects me more than others, is that you have to make a FB account in the first place. I haven't had one for like 10 years so it's super frustrating having to go back and create one just to even be able to boot the VR system. I'm also just salty because when Oculus was originally sold to FB, they said there wouldn't be any FB integration required and Oculus would remain it's own thing, that changed in about a year.

Wouldn't hurt to look into used equipment as well.

I was able to get a like new og VIVE for $150 cad a couple years ago from some parents who bought it for their kid who never played it. You know know whats out there. A gently used Vive or Vive Pro would be worth it at good price.

I bought a used Oculus Rift S before Half-Life: Alyx released.
If you look at the used listings you can tell which were impulse buys that are barely touched (you want those) and which are being replaced by new hardware (maybe if the deal is really good, but used VR equipment is gross, buy a new faceplate or something and it might be OK). The headset was good for the price, the controllers really solid, resolution and FOV in the Rift S are fine if you can accept you just won't have that 'I'm really there' feeling VR fans and the industry seem to be chasing. In my opinion you just can't get that feeling with consumer hardware, but that doesn't mean VR is a gimmick either.
You need a pretty beefy PC, but the most important thing is a consistent framerate, not resolution. Dropped frames feel absolutely awful in VR in a way that's hard to describe.

Personally I get sick with continuous movement, so I can only play games with a teleport function (eg HL: Alyx) so games like Boneworks are off the cards for me. Maybe for that reason, or because Half-Life: Alyx is the only beefy, 'real' game that VR has that doesn't make me sick I have barely played anything else. Alyx is great, and I've played it a bunch of times and messed with a couple of mods too, but honestly nothing else is at the same level for me and I think that's worth considering before buying a headset. As others have noted you now have to have a facebook account with Oculus products - I think there are ways around that, but they're more of a use at your own risk sort of deal. Other headsets like the Index and Vive have issues that other people have noted here (physical set-up that takes time and is pretty clunky, huge cost for the Index in particular, massive, clunky controllers for the Vive). The unfortunate reality is that the facebook offerings are sold at or below cost and offer the best value per dollar as a result, I'd recommend looking at some VR gear reviews to see if the tradeoffs with facebook gear is worth it.

If you were considering the Rift S and / or Half-Life: Alyx in particular I made this video at the time that I think gives a fairly balanced look at what really works, and what doesn't, in VR with current hardware and a bit of an overall experience with Half-Life: Alyx. It's also sort of about the pandemic in a way I thought at the time would be dated by now, but sadly that's still quite relevant too. TL;DW - I don't think VR is worh the asking price at the moment, but HL: Alyx is pretty great despite that.

video is fantastic, very well made, clearly scripted with no time wasting, love it.
also while I'm not going to respond to everyone directly i thank you all for your input of course!

Cheers! Hope it was informative / helpful in some way :)

+1 for half life alyx with the index, shit is an amazing experience, the 1440p 120hz makes it feel super lifelike (only downside was the cord can get twisted sometimes if u walk around in it too much)
superhot is pretty fun too although not that many levels

there's also mods to make other games work in VR, my old roommate had GTA V in VR and that shit was super fun

i feel like the next generation of headsets will probably be cheaper/better, but idk if VR is really the future cuz i always got a headache/needed a break after like 30-45 mins, nice party trick to show your friends and mess around with occasionally tho