PC VR Headset Bigscreen Beyond 2 Promises Big Boost to Field-of-view & Clarity, Launching Next Month

It'll boil down to individual preference/sensitivity. While some are bothered by a low FoV, frame rate or contrast, others can't stand latency or visual artifacts. Or, like you, really hate cables.

Besides the WiGig based HTC Vive Pro wireless adapter with limited resolution, but very low latency, all current wireless solutions rely on first rendering a frame, encoding it, sending it compressed over Wifi, and again decoding the image. On fast PCs/Wifi more time is now spend on image encoding/decoding than on rendering and transfer. At 90Hz/11ms this can add several frames of latency even under good conditions.

Fine if it doesn't bother you, but others trying to lower latency may be forced to reduce bitrates down to noticeable image degradation, with the only option to fully get rid of 22+ms latency being using a tether or sticking to the Vive Pro WiGig module. Even tethers have issues like DP 1.4 limiting Beyond to 72Hz at native 2560p, dropping to upscaled 1920p at 90Hz, or PSVR2 needing (latency free) stream compression for HDR. Everything requires some compromise, and one that works for you might be unacceptable for someone else.

I never used the wireless Vive Pro module, so I cannot compare it myself. You'd have to set you Pico wireless stream to the same resolution to properly compare latency, which should be the remaining WiGig benefit simply because the image doesn't have to run through the encode/decode.

The WiGig transfer speed won't make a lot of difference with modern WiFi, but neither will faster WiFi speeds. By now the transfer of the image only takes ~5ms, roughly 1/4th of the encode/decode stage, with a WiFi 7 connection idling most of the time. The main benefit of switching to WiFi 6e was that it added a 6GHz band in addition to the often very crowded 2.4GHz/5GHz bands, leading to less collisions and consequently lower latency. If you are using it in a cabin in the woods without hundreds of wireless devices in the vicinity, a WiFi 5 router will do fine with only marginal improvements to be gained from faster ones.

I'd agree with you general assessment for everything but latency, and as you don't seem to notice a difference where one has to exist for technical reasons, you are apparently one of the people not bothered by some minor latency. Keep that in mind before claiming that VR Enjoyer's personal experience couldn't possibly be valid, because yours is better even on slow WiFi. I of course don't know why s/he prefers the Vive Pro wireless solution over the no doubt visually better Quest 3 plus WiFi option, but there are in fact technical disadvantages, plus lots of other possible causes like abysmally crowded/bad WiFi or serious misconfigurations.

Okay, then I don't understand what exactly the wireless module does. I tried to look up technical details before, but only found the WiGig and low latency claims. WiGig was chosen for its vastly higher bandwidth than WiFi, so picking WiGig and still running it through h264/h265 would be pretty much pointless. Picking the faster, much more expensive technology only makes sense if it provides enough bandwidth to AVOID having to time-consumingly compress/decompress each frame.

It might make sense if they use something similar to DSC on PSVR2, where compression doesn't operate on a full frame by shifting pixel blocks and removing details not perceivable by humans like in h264/h265, but instead by mathematically reducing the color space on a per line base. This type of compression methods doesn't add latency, as the data is compressed while being send, instead of first having to wait for the whole frame to be fully rendered and then applying rather compute intense calculations. It's also much less efficient. DSC reaches only about a 1:3 compression ratio compared to the raw data this way, while h264/h265 reach much higher of typically 1:150/1:250, making the result small enough to be send via WiFi, while DSC still requires a vastly faster DisplayPort connection. So it would be important to know what type of compression is used on the HTC Vive Pro wireless module, as they explicitly advertised it as a low latency option.

The low latency mode of WiFi 7 isn't particularly relevant for VR streaming. As mentioned the whole WiFi transfer takes only 25% of the encode/decode time, with the connection idling most of the time. The decoder inside the XR2 is now the main breaking block, as it capabilites limits the max bandwidth of the video signal being send, which is much lower that what a WiFi router could transfer.

The WiFi 7 low latency mode will be mostly helpful for things like sending controller input back in small data packages, not for sending still rather large video frames. WiFi 7 tries to provide deterministic latency, so that each frame will come with comparable latency instead of some being late because some other data transfer delayed it, but this is more for consistency in crowded networks. If your WiFi 5 router already works fine, you are probably lucky if switching to Wifi 6 reduces latency by 2ms.

And noticing latency is very individual. I don't play any competitive shooters, use Geforce Now streaming a lot that adds 15-20ms latency, have played in 4K@30Hz instead of reducing resolution for higher frame rates, and run a lot of things at 40Hz on my Steam Deck. None of my displays show more than 60Hz, and I see no reason to ever buy a 120Hz monitor. But I'm aware that physically people can notice brightness changes at more than 100Hz, so for others investing into a 240Hz display for a 4ms frame duration/minimal latency may be worth it, and my setup would probably be deemed unplayable by some.

As any WiFi transfer with encode/decode will add at least 20ms total, you not noticing any latency hints that you aren't particularly sensitive to it. During the early VR days Oculus aimed for sub-20ms total latency, incl. rendering, as some people proved rather sensitive, in the end settling at 90Hz/11ms total frame time on CV1, and invested a lot into technology like ASW to keep it this low. Which was sort of wasted on anyone that didn't throw up on the 60Hz DK1 still lacking low persistence, or the people now playing MSFS on Quest 3 via WiFi at 50+ms.

As mentioned before, I do not doubt at all that the Pico 4 plus WiFi image will look way better than the by now ancient and already limited at launch HTC Vive Pro wireless option. And I don't know if the problem VR Explorer mentioned is even related to latency. I just doubt that your assessment that latency is the same for both is correct, both for technical reasons and you apparently not being sensitive to it.