Pico 4 face gasket
First Impression
"For many, VR and the Quest are synonymous. But before Meta was Oculus, and The Quest was the Rift, there were, and still are, other headset manufacturers. I don’t spend as much time talking about PC VR headsets like the Valve Index, PIMAX, or HP Reverb, mainly due to the dominance the Quest has achieved. But unlike those other headsets, a more direct competitor appeared some years back - the Pico. A product free of Meta’s privacy issues. This is amazing! Right? This is your chance to do mobile VR without all of the privacy concerns! No more targeted ads or onerous terms of service!
This is your opportunity to shed the chains of your privacy oppressors. Well, I’m afraid I have bad news: As of August 2021, Pico is now owned by ByteDance , the owner of TikTok. Yes, that TikTok (show young girl dancing in TikTok video). This TikTok (show someone getting hurt on a TikTok video or cats). And this TikTok (show news story of the US government wanting to ban TikTok). Well, like so many things over the past couple years, let’s sweep it all under the rug and pretend like everything is… fine. It’s… just fine.
First Impression
So the biggest Pico news in recent months is the release of their latest headset, the Pico 4. Unlike many new tech items, the Pico 4 was not released in the US on launch day. In fact, it’s still not. It’s only available in Europe and East Asia. Okay, but ‘you’re an American, Greg,’ ‘You live in the US, Greg,’ and ‘You reference yourself in second person singular pronouns, Greg,’ (show me with a microphone in front of sound tiles) How did YOU get a Pico 4? Oh, that’s easy, by the power of AliExpress! Yes, AliExpress. It’s like Amazon, but in China… and not for those from China, but everyone else. I think I got that right.
I placed my order in October of last year and it arrived the same day as my Meta Pro, so I may have been distracted. I setup the PICO, a story for a whole other video, and immediately discovered the face gasket was so stiff and uncomfortable that, for me, the PICO was practically a non-starter. I installed some games, tried it out, and honestly, I was so dissatisfied in so many areas that I just put it down. And THEN I got a 3D printer. Out of curiosity I checked to see if anyone made a replacement face gasket for the PICO 4 and lo-and-behold, they had! And this is just another example of how a 3D printer is practically a VR accessory since the VR landscape is changing so quickly. So, what do you need if you want to make your own?
First and foremost, you need A 3D printer, or find someone with one PLA to print the face gasket in your chose of color, I chose a dark grey A foam replacement pad for the Quest 2 by VR Cover Superglue 6 x 3 mm Refrigerator Magnets and Velcro with the sticky back.
Here’s what you do: Print the gasket, for which I chose supports, and once finished and cleaned up, simply shape and apply the hook side of the Velcro to the face… facing.. face… of the gasket. On the side that attaches to the PICO, figure out which way each magnet must face in order to attract the magnets in the PICO itself, place a small amount of super glue in each hole where you’ll insert the magnets, then insert the magnets. Finally, attach the VR Cover foam replacement pad to the inside of the gasket… and that’s it. If you wish, you can print these small pins which help to better align the gasket with the PICO, but I found the magnets did the job just fine.
So after all this work, how does it feel? It’s honestly night and day. This new gasket and pad are immensely more comfortable, and I found it keeps out more light than the standard gasket.
So if you have a PICO and access to a 3D printer, and I suspect that Vin diagram overlaps a good bit, then I highly suggest printing this replacement gasket. It made all the difference for me, to the point that I now actually use the PICO. Now, if I can just use my 3D printer to fix the PICO interface…
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