[glenneroo]

Having tested Visual Studio and IntelliJ IDEA in 1080p (HD), 1440p (QHD) and 2160p (4K) desktops with a Vive Pro, I would it say it really depends on your monitor and HMD resolution. With the new Vive Pro, 1080p is totally acceptable, albeit strenuous (for my eyes/brain), then again I am easily fatigued by anything in VR lasting more than 30 minutes. It also assumes you don't mind coding in HD, which I do, so I have only tried a couple times before giving up.

[mostlyjason]

Is the 4K resolution less strenuous for you than HD? I tried looking at text in VR a while ago on an older Vive and the text was too blurry for me to easily read.

[glenneroo]

Yes and no. I just tested again... 4K is considerably crisper than HD, even when resizing down ~25% and up to ~60% of original size. The main problem is actually the size... 4K is just too large of a screen area to be viewed without having to pick up the controllers to move the virtual screen around. Anything past the bottom or right half is more or less off-limits, meaning you have to move those windows (e.g. builds)... or just resize the editor to the upper-left corner.

The best setup I could manage was to put the bottom of the virtual screen a bit in the floor, then you are looking straight on so that you can see the upper-left corner and still get to the menus and see at least the first ~25 lines of code (Consolas size 10).

I should note I'm using the built-in Desktop which you can insert via Steam VR Home. I just dropped it into the default home and moved it around/resized until I found it workable. There may be better tools for running virtual desktops in VR, I haven't explored this space at all since reading anything in any VR app for more than a few minutes makes me dizzy... speaking of which, no more VR for today! ;)