And that’s the deal breaker for me.
My head and IPD is enormous so that’s probably a major factor, but the lack of sweet spot has finished off any enthusiasm I had for the G2.
I’m so constantly conscious of it that it mangles any of its virtues. I dug out my Quest 1 for the hell of it and it is vastly better than the G2 for that.
Funny I dug out my Oculus Rift a short while back and that has almost edge-to-edge clarity although the clarity in the Rift is nowhere near the blurriness in the HP G2. Are you absolutely sure your G2 sweet spot is an issue in MSFS?
I’ll be honest here, moving from a Rift to the G2, the small sweet spot was the biggest shock - both in terms of the leeway movement in the headset and moving eyes off centre. But that’s because I was examining stuff too hard and not focusing on the experience in games. It’s easy to read panels in MSFS and not much of a gaming issue, unless I’m reading a wall of text filling my entire vision.
I also tell people to clean their lenses, this is needed more in the G2 than the Rift and makes a huge difference as well as usual wearing the headset correctly and setting in-game rendering as high as possible but for my 2080Ti I can get away with OpenXR at 70%, MSFS rendering 100% with projection and it’s butter smooth.
Thanks…after much debating, I finally decided to settle on the Rift S, mostly to save money and because of its reliability and ease of use for the system I have. I checked my IPD and I’m right smack in the middle of the range for this HMD, so I should be golden with very little IPD software adjustment, if at all.
Talking to a local guy who has one and we’re arranging a meet up on Sunday. I’m pleased I can at least visually inspect it and then test it at home to make sure it’s the real deal. (Then I have to disconnect it, and wrap it up as it’s my Christmas present from Santa…that’s what I told my kids and I gotta stick to the narrative, lol!).
Be aware that (i don’t know if there is the same problem in W11) the G2 was creating 4 monitors that erase all your resources and give bad frame.
With a simple fix they disappear and you can enjoy the g2 to his max.
Yes, the stamp-sized Clarity / Sweetspot in the G1 / G2 is a joke.
At that time I also returned from the G1 to the pentile pi8k. I preferred the SDE contaminated picture in the end
Do not install windows 11. I have rift s and it not works yet. Drives compatibity problems
Me having a G5 it works better on Win 11 than it did on 10. I am sorry for your negative experience… 
You bet.
No other head set has been so hopeless for me. The sweet spot is microscopic and basically renders it a look-straight-ahead simulator.
Having a massive head is probably a prime factor in this but even so it’s been fine for other systems and no adjustment has improved it.
I really should’ve gotten rid of it when they were still at a premium as I’ve no enthusiasm to use it.
the sweet spot is a game changer for me. I remember the shock from back in the beginning days of VR. I forgot about that in the rift-s. I run it all the time when racing but this flight sim is the best one I’ve seen for VFR. I can get crystal clear outside detail to see the airport way out there but it kills my fps. I have 9900k, 2080ti, 32g, W11 with all the junk turned off running on nvme drives. I figure thats my problem but I cant justify todays covid inflated prices.
Your friend saved you a lot of hassle. Not happy with G2. Broke quickly and still being repaired…
Update! Had originally bought a used Rift S from OfferUp but it had major scratches on the lens. Seller declined the refund/return but OfferUp fortunately sided with me. Ended up buying a Reverb G2.1 a week later when price dropped like a brick to $450 from Microsoft. (Only to see it fall to $400 by HP later!)
Checked it out to make sure it’s ok, and it is. Back in the box to wrap up. Have to do some tweaking and dialing in of settings, but overall I think I’m satisfied.
It’s true that the sweet spot on the G2 is initially disappointing, but it’s a learning problem that can be overcome. Everybody that uses modern multifocal glasses has to deal with the same thing and it takes about a week to develop the muscle memory to constantly apply the sweet spot to what you are looking at.
After cataract surgery, I no longer need glasses, after a lifetime of wearing them, but I do still use small half height multifocal reading glasses, which have an even worse sweet spot than my G2, which is so ironic.
Long story short, the sweet spot on the G2 is a non issue for me and, alongside it, neither is the small FOV. I hardly notice both after many, many hours of flying with it.
The clarity though is very good for the price point, until something better comes along that’s affordable, together with new CPUs and GPUs next year. All of which will probably not work following a sim “update”, lol.
[Wanted to write a new topic about exactly that (tested G2 but stick to Rift S) but noticed there was already one, so I’m just going to share my experience in a reply]
I have an Oculus Rift S since 2019. I decided to buy the HP Reverb G2.
Now, I knew right off the bat I wouldn’t be able to run full resolution, but I figured, until I upgrade my GPU, I would run it at whatever percentage lower so that the resolution would be equivalent to the Rift S, but I would be able to benefit from the said improvements which are :
So, after some testing, here are my personal conclusions :
The blacks : Well…blacks are way deeper than the Rift S’…but they are totally ruined by the god rays! I get much longer and intense god rays on the G2 than on the Rift S. On the Rift S, the god rays look spread out in a circle but fairly weak. In the G2, they are very narrow, like a beam of light, and intense. Worst of all, even when looking into the pitch-black night, I can still see some glare, I don’t know where it comes from. In the Rift S I don’t get that.
The colors : Surprisingly, I find that the colors look more washed out on the G2 than on the Rift S. The Rift S has very vivid colors, whereas the G2 colors are duller. Perhaps the G2 colors are a little bit more true to life, less sparky. However, I would certainly not say the Rift S colors are washed out. Plus, the G2 has kind of a yellow tint to it.
The sound : Nothing to say, wonderful!
The SDE : Is gone, nice, however, I don’t know if I have a defective unit, but I feel like I can see random fixed stripes that follow my head movement. It’s very weird because I would say that SDE would look like a grid (like the Rift S), or regular lines. (After some research, I guess it’s just the imperfections in the LCD display, but I’m not sure)
And, not mentioned in the first list, the sweet spot : So, obviously, it’s minuscule (was expecting it) but I think it could be counter balanced by the insane resolution. I was able to test the full resolution (granted, I was at literally 1 FPS) and, okay, when at full resolution, I can accept the small sweet spot. However, at an equivalent resolution to that of the Rift S, it’s very annoying. The Rift S feels much better.
And, moreover, the G2 radiates so much heat that my eyes dry out and hurt quickly.
All in all, I, personally, think the upgrade from the Rift S to the G2 is worth it only for the better resolution. I thought the colors/blacks/experience would be better, but I was wrong, IMO they are better on the Rift S.
I also have to mention that I run the Rift S with ASW OFF+1.5 SS+DLSS QUALITY+DEPTH REPROJECTION in MSFS, and it gives me a very pleasing image and incredible smoothness (despite the SDE, blacks and (weaker than the G2’s) god rays).
So, I returned the G2, I’m staying with the Rift S, and saving until I can afford a Varjo Aero or a headset of that league : Edge to edge clarity, good blacks and no god rays.
Now that’s just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt. But I wanted to share it because many people say that the G2 throws the Rift S out of the water in every possible aspect. I wanted to put things into perspective. And I agree with OP.
I really think this “sweet spot” thing is subjective. To me, it has never been an issue.
Said this, it’s obvious that I would ever choose a G2 over a Rift (albeit I recognize the Index might be better, due to FOV).
For comfort: I can wear it forever without any issues (apart sweating like a pig in iRacing… but that’s another thing).
For settings and all the rest: VR is always 1,5/2 generations ahead of today’s hardware. So I took the hard decision - have this as my only hobby (at least only expensive hobby), and throw at it as much money I can to get the front-line hardware. It’s working - barely, but it is.
About Retroprojection: I NEVER used it, there always was some strange periodic stuttering ruining the whole thing. Two days ago I had the best flight of my life in RP, without a single issue. Now I’m almost scared to turn it on again, to see what’s waiting for me 
I don´t know why ancient technology oled panels are not the common in HMDs, less heat, less current consume, best blacks etc. etc. etc., and more in VR that you always are looking other places and not fixed images for the burnt screens. I never heard in the old oled Samsung Odyssey a problem with its oled panels, all the opposite. Maybe something escapes me more than the speculative market interests.
What resolution / refresh rate was you able to run the G2 at compared to the Rift?
So on the Rift S, was using 80 Hz, 1.5 SS. With the G2, was using 90 Hz, 0.6 SS (in OXRToolkit). Both clarity (in the sweet spot, for the G2) and GPU usage were the same. In terms of smoothness, I found the Rift S a little smoother, and the head tracking more accurate, but maybe it was down to me having set bad reprojection settings in OXRToolkit/MSFS.
So, resolution was (to me at least) the same. However, in the G2, I found the sweetspot so small, the god rays terrible, the WMR portal software terrible, and the colors not that much of an improvement, if at all. If I were able to run it at full res, I would have kept it because I think the outstanding clarity is worth the god rays etc… But right now, with equal resolution, I see it as a downgrade compared to the Rift S.
I understand your chain of thought and the testing process but as someone who came from Dell Visor (which is comparable to Rift S) and rtx 2070 to a G2 with rtx 2070 …and then upgrading to rtx 3080ti i can tell you that it’s unreasonable to compare a headset when you’re running it at …honestly even less than half its resolution. See, you have to take lens distortion into consideration when discussing the total resolution. So for example if we’re talking about SteamVR for example, you have to run the headset at 150% supersampling to actually see it perform at its full potential. OXR is different and 100% in msfs already has the lens distortion calculated in. So with rtx 2070 i couldn’t really get the full potential of G2, but now that i can see it at its full potential i have to say there’s just no contest between 1st gen VR (ala Rift S) and G2. Of course, we could discuss tracking which is superior on the Rift, but when we’re talking clairty and quality of the visuals, there’s just no discussion there.
But to provide support to your claims somewhat, i would agree if you don’t have the gpu power to run G2 at full potential it’s better to stick to 1st gen headsets if you can run those at full resolution.
Oh, also about the horizontal lines…yes, that unfortunatelly is normal. It’s the mura…it’s an unwelcome design flaw with these lenses, or better said the alignment of pixels. They bother me a bit as well.
As far as heat goes. This is strange, but when i first started using the G2 i was on win11. I was very unpleasantly surprised how hot the headset is getting, i was actually worried a bit about that. I don’t know how to explain it, but after i did a clean install of win10 (i went back because of some MSFS specific tracking issues with win11 - “shaking cockpit”), my headset is far less warm in win10.
Best regards.
Thanks for the info, I’m weighing up what headset to get and there are so many different opinions it’s hard to know what to believe. It does seem you were having to run the G2 way below it’s potential. I saw you mentioned getting a Varjo - would that not be the same situation? No LCD panel ever looks good below it’s native resolution, and with these I think the optics make that even more pronounced.
its no surprise that you found a G2 unimpressive if you aren’t running it at anywhere near its full capabilities. water is wet lol