Am I Missing Something? Blank Screen In HP Reverb G2 When VR Is Activated

Fwiw - I recently started using my Reverb G2 again when I had to send my Vive Pro 2 off for warranty service. I found my headset blacking out shortly after starting a flight almost always. I was pulling my hair out.
Had a look in the power management setting in WMR - for turning off headset display it had defaulted to " Let Windows Decide". I changed that to “Never” and it has not happened since.

Probably not your issue, but may be of some use to someone.

Thanks @DensestSnail693 and @dburne458 I even uninstalled Steam and Oculus in case there were conflicts but it didn’t help. Not tried a totally clean install of FS and the laptop but reluctant. I went through all the various settings in WMR I thought. Maybe missed a combination. Glad you sorted your issue.

There are as far as I can see three possible reasons for failure:

  1. Power issues on the USB connection of the Reverb G2. (Does anyone know of a device to measure the power consumption of a USB device?). My experiments indicate this is the case.
  2. MSFS kills the Reverb audio driver occasionally.
  3. The USB controller driving the connection has issues supporting the Reverb G2.

I found 3. by Internet research. It is i reported that some USB controllers on motherboards have issues with the Reverb G2 (and other devices, they simply suck). My MB has an ASMedia USB controller to drive the USB 3.1 Gen2 connections (anything else is driven by the CPU). The Reverb won’t work on those connections at all or may drop from those connections any time.

One can figure out wether the USB audio device driver is killed by looking at what is displayed if the Reverb drops out of MSFS and goes dark: is it just dark or does it display the volume indicator (possibly flipping values)? If the latter is the case, the audio driver had been reloaded. In my experience the Reverb willl resume operation after some time in that case. MSFS is very picky about devices changing on the system while it is running. It may freeze for half a minute or so if some device is going out or in of control, even if not in VR.

The other case I witnessed is complete blackout. The Reverb won’t recover friom this on its own. One needs to drop out of VR in MSFS, restart the WMR portal, and reenter VR in MSFS then.

  1. can’t be excluded from the list. If the Reverb appears to work fine with other VR games (like Half Life Alyx or Star Wars Sqadron or …), that is a strong indicator that there is a SW problem in MSFS.
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@tallinn19000 Interesting points and conditions. I was starting to think it was an incompatibility with my system in some way but if that was the case would it not work with Steam? I do get the FS sound coming through to the Reverb G2 when the screen is black.

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@Nightman5027, apologies for what might sound silly, but is the DP port you are hooking the Reverb to connected directly to the GPU? The reason I am asking is that I also run something similar, on a ThinkPad workstation. On my ThinkPad, there are 3 TB3 ports, but only one is directly connected to the GPU. I had to confirm with Lenovo, and then hooked up my Reverb to that specific port using a TB3->DP adapter. Also check out your HAGS (Hardware accelerated GPU scheduling) and turn it off to disable the GPU baked into the processor and ONLY use your NVidia GPU.

@SashaSolitaire Thanks for that reply. That is an interesting point and I don’t know the answer at this point. There is only one mini DP and one USB-C 3.2 port plus a couple of USB-A 3.2 ports. I understand the USB-C port is not TB? I’m aware of problems of not connecting directly to the GPU from other threads but if I am not would that explain why I can at least get some display when going via Steam VR? HAGS is definitely off. I still haven’t got around to playing with the Reverb G2 setup again, other things going on and then mainly got involved with trying to make my Quest 2 look as good as it had been before all the disastrous FS updates and just wanting to fly! I must give it another go with the Reverb G2. Thanks for the input.

@Nightman5027 , USB-C “could” be Thunderbolt, but you need to confirm with Gigabyte. From my understanding, the Reverb uses a lot of GPU display bandwidth and that’s the reason for a minimum of DisplayPort 1.3. The other bottleneck could be the MiniDP to DP adapter. I had to go through a few for my TB3->DP adapter, before finally settling on the StarTech CDP2DP adapter. It was a little pricey, but has been working flawlessly for me. If you are using the one out of the box from HP, might be worth it to check another adapter. Specs wise, your laptop should be able to run MSFS in VR. Highly recommend connecting with Gigabyte and finding out which ports of your laptop are hooked directly to your NVidia GPU.

@SashaSolitaire Many thanks for that insight and thought. So far, only just reading around, reviews say that the USB-C supports display port 1.4, would that be sufficient? I will investigate further as to what may be connected directly to the Nvidia GPU. Yes I was using the HP supplied mini DP / DP adapter so you have given me some thought to that area and adapters. There is an HDMI output too, is that of use, I assumed not?
Thanks again.

I’ve experienced these exact problems and have similar reasoning as you’ve described. Actually, I was going bananas and thought I was the only one. So I was pleased to read your post.

In my Gigabyte B450 S2H, it supposed to have 4 USB3.0 in the back plate, and one plug for front case access (which has a long shielded wire from a connect at bottom edge of MBoard. None of the back plate USB3 works consistently with G2. The G2 only works with the USB3 front case.

Then I tried a powered hub 3.0 for the back plate connection and G2 connected to the powered hub USB3.0, it STILL did not work. This tells me it’s not about getting enough current (juice) to G2.

The 4 USB3.0 back plate DOES WORK with devices OTHER THAN the G2.

I think data transfer to G2 may need seriously TIGHT specs to be up to speed. So there’s no guarantee that any USB3.0 connection would work, until you try it out.

You just need to experiment with your system to know.

@Nightman5027, per my understanding HDMI does not have the same bandwidth as DP. So it would not work. I would repeat what I said before: 1) Talk with Gigabyte to see where each of the ports you see are connected to internally AND 2) once you have the “hopefully right” answer, review the Mini-DP to DP adapter.

@SashaSolitaire Yes, thanks. I didn’t really expect HDMI to be of use.

@Nightman5027 I was reviewing the specs of the Gigabyte 7KB laptop and there is a mention of a full-fledged DisplayPort 1.4 (see screenshot below). Did you try using that one?

Looks like the USB-C port in the back is DP 1.4. If that is indeed the case, you can try the same Startech adapter I mentioned above and see if that helps.

@SashaSolitaire Yes, thanks, that review I saw suggested that and I saw those specs yesterday too. As you suggest, plus curiosity not being able to wait, I got an adapter for the USB-C port and… I finally have FS inside the G2. Not played with fine tuning but I did a stable test flight in and out of EGLL. I also got another StarTech Mini DP to DP to replace the HP one but as yet no joy with that although I didn’t play with settings. Thank you so much for pointing me in this direction, it is much appreciated. I had lost interest in the G2 and it had become an expensive box but your posts regenerated that. The adapter I got was CDP2DP14UCPB. That’s what I could get quickly.

@Nightman5027 , glad that everything worked out. If you can, return the Mini DP to DP converter. I found the connection from the StarTech adapter to be stable, and the quality of the VR video is great. If you have not done so already, recommend that you visit the “OpenXR and NIS” thread by @mbucchia, download the software and tweak around. I am getting a high quality VR experience using this (LOD 150 and Ultra settings on most).

@SashaSolitaire Thanks. Yes, I will have a look that NIS thread with the G2. I experimented with it on the Quest 2 but couldn’t really get an improvement except maybe some more smoothness.

Slightly confused with the USB-C adapter. The specs from StarTech and from the seller suggest DP1.4 HBR3 8K 60 Hz, 4K 120Hz but the packet (also shown on the StarTech site) has DP1.4 HBR3 8K 30Hz. Not an issue here?

@Nightman5027 mine says 4K 60Hz/8K 30Hz and I have no problems so far. Yours is similar in specs though there IS a difference in what your seller stated and what you actually received. Your G2 will work with what you have.

@SashaSolitaire Yes, good, I figured that. I may contact the seller in the interests of correctness. Maybe older version?
I am having a few tries at initially connecting at 90Hz but I am reading that can be an issue with the G2?

@Nightman5027 Yes, I would definitely contact the seller, especially if you are having problems. The adapter I got is CDP2DP X0031WKIB1 similar to CDP2DP14B. As far as the G2 goes, I have no problems refreshing @ 90Hz. Here are my settings in Windows.

I’m having the exact scenario you describe. G2 works in Mixed Reality Portal, and Steam VR portal, but when switching to VR mode in the games MS store version MSFS or Steam version, or other steam games, screens transition to black and I still hear game sounds through the headset. Did you solve it? I’ve asked everyone and can’t figure it out. I was able to get Quest2 to work though. Thanks!

Just bought everything new and setting all up for sim:
Microsoft store version MSFS2020
Reverb G2.
Corsair VENGEANCE I7300 GAMING PC, I7-12700K, RTX 3080, 2TB M.2, 32GB DDR5-4800