I am pretty sure.
Also see: Which VIVE hardware is compatible with my base stations?
This uncertainty is what is delaying me ordering the Vive Pro 2 atm. Iāve an original Vive and therefore find that this looks to be a good upgrade for meā¦ifā¦ the original controllers will still work.
Gen 2 headsets and wands/controllers work with the Gen 1 and Gen 2 base stations. Gen 2 base stations do not work wth Gen 1 headsets and wands/controllers.
There was a change from two orthogonal laser sweeps in the Gen 1 Lighthouses to a single spiral sweep in Gen 2. The detectors and circuitry on Gen 2 headsets and wands can decode and use both types of Lighthouse signals but Gen 1 headsets and wands can only understand and use Gen 1 Lighthouses.
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Ok, sorry guys. I had to dig up the old v1 controller and test it. And it actually works with v1 base stations and Vive Pro headset. I think my memory slipped, cause for a while I connected the Pro to a v2 base station, and then the old controllers didnt work.
So, both the old base stations and the old controllers works fine with the Vive Pro, so also propably with the Pro 2.
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The Pro 2 will be backwards compatible just like all other Gen 2 headsets, wands, and controllers. The things that arenāt backwards compatible are the Lighthouse base stations. The way Gen 2 base stations work is a new scan technique that Gen 1 headsets, wands, and controllers canāt recognize or decode.
Personally Iād take a wider field of view over a little sharpness any day. Viewing the world as if through a scuba diving mask is the biggest immersion breaker for me with the Quest 2. Thats why Iāve got my eye on the Pro 2. Iāll be interested to see how things develop with it.
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Thanks for the detailed feedback. You seemed to mostly negative so I thought you were going to say you were returning but overall Iām glad you think itās decent. Iāve just heard from Box who I preordered from. They said their shipment hasnāt arrived and Iāll probably get it Wednesday, which is almost a week later so Iām ā ā ā ā ā ā .
My base stations and Index controllers have arrived two weeks ago and Iāve now had to put in an RMA for the base stations with Scan to buy me another 14 days before I have to return them.
I keep flip flopping on whether or not to just cancel the headset and send the base stations and controllers back,
MSFS is my major reason for upgrading, currently with the Quest 2, and I was hoping the Vive Pro 2 would be a big upgrade and maybe improve performance becuase its using a native display port connection.
Do you think its not good for MSFS currently then?
Iāve stopped trusting anything that includes the word enthusiast. Little brother of professional.
Well I have been using the VP2 fpr around 6 hours of flight time today. Overall, once you have the settings dialed in (this takes some doing initially as things are still a little buggy) then this is a pretty decent headset, albeit for that gawd awful glare. I think that is the only thing that lets it down. However, that said, Iāll be sticking with it over the G2. There are 3 main reasons;
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the Sweet spot isnāt as narrow in VP2, with slightly more uniformity across the field of vision - well, as much as you could possibly get when you have lenses focusing the oputer parts of the display towards the center.
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The FoV. Itās not Index like, but it is close, and I mean very close, to the point where you feel more present in the sim and not just a spectator with a pair of binoculas.
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The tracking. This is by far superior to inside out tracking of the G2, although this should come as no surprise.
As far as a visual upgrade goes, it is noticable, but you still have to dial down the rendering resolution, as you do with the G2 also. On a 5900X and RTX3090 this seems to be nice at 70% (aiming for a 2600x2600 ish resolution in-game) in both the G2 and the VP2 (set in the driver side, ie WMR Dev Tools / SteamVR) with the sim set to 100%. I believe Steve (aka VR Flight Sim Guy has emphasised this a lot, and he is spot on the money). So will there be a big noticeable visual upgrade? Yes; if you dial it up to maximum render resolution at 100% then the visual clarity is astounding, albeit a bit of a slide show that is unusable. So maybe once they optimise things with DX12 and the RTX 4090 drops, things will take a leap forward in quality with this headset (and the G2 also).
So to sumarise, yeah itās a ā ā ā ā fine headset for MSFS2020. But so is the G2, only the tracking is smoother and stuttering less harsh with the VP2 when motion compensation/projection is turned off, although still apparent.
If this is something you prefer, then it has to be the Vavle Index all the way. A 3090 can run that at 100% render scale, buttery smooth with the latest native compositor from Valve, which has proven itself to me to be the best out there at the time of writing; well at least up there with the Oculus effort anyway. I was hoping the VP2 would use the native valve compositor (as the VP1 and Vive did), but sadly no, there is a compositor layer by HTC themselves that is loaded alongside SteamVR, which means it doesnāt get the reprojection of SteamVR. Highly disapointing, but Valve may incorporate the VP2 at some point. Not holding my breath though.
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Thanks, youāre encouraging me that it will suit my needs. I expect (hope) that right now we are in the earliest, worse case, with HTCās software, and that it will be a much better experience within a few weeksā¦
I certainly hope so, they have a beta opt-in at the moment, so that is encouraging also.
Mind you, if Valve brought out the Index 2, with only the panels of the VP2 and the lenses of the G2 (with reduced glare) I would have been all for that instead. But I guess this is a case of you just canāt have everything where technology is concerned, despite being of the understanding that everything actually exists, just not in a single package (yet 
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Yes me too! Iām hoping Valve will bring an Index 2 out over the next few months and that it will be backwards compatible with the current base stations and controllers so I can just sell the Vive Pro 2 headset on and swap over.
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience!
Is there any chance youād try it in XP11 as well?
Iāve cancelled my order based on all the bad reviews with MSFS. I have the G2 so its a first-world problem. Ill see what they come out with next!
I think if you already have a G2 and your main VR usage is MSFS thereās no reason to upgrade. Not used the G2 but if its more comfortable, better audio and greater clarity it sounds like the better choice for you.
Youāre welcome. However, after spending a bit more time with the VP2, I have drawn some new conclusions. Itās the little things that donāt go noticed at first due to trying to tweak the multitude of things to get it going.
As of now Iām considering returning the VP2. After going back to the G2 for comparison, the VP2 just seems blurred compared to the G2, and that is with the higher res panels (this was set in itās control panel also), and a higher render resolution in MSFS. Itās those god rays/glare, they just have a tendancy to blur everything around them; and itās distracting. Popping the G2 back on was like going from a 760p monitor to a 1440p monitor, the difference in clarity was that noticable. And talking of resolution, even though I had the highest res set in the HTC control panel, that resolution would shift in SteamVR, and ultimately in MSFS. One run it would read 3244x3244, then on another run it was shift to 3088x3088, with no settings actually changed, ultimately resulting in a lower render resolution in MSFS when I checked this also.
Another couple of things Iām not keen on, the head strap is just too cumbersome and bulky, I would go as far to say that itās not comfotable for any extended periods of time; you either clamp it tight and have a numb and painful forehead to gain that little bit of clarity and FoV above the G2, or your slacken it and it goes even more blurry.
The audio. There is a slight buzzing in the speakers that was distracting, and highly irritating after a while. Also the mic is rubbish ~ we know this, but it is to the extent that it doesnāt even work with VoiceAttack. I thought my computer was just not able to understand me anymore, so did the voice recognition training on it again, but no, it was just a no go at all. This in itself is a bit of a deal breaker considering how much I use that program for other titles like Elite and DCS. Popped the G2 back on, and viola, voice rocognition once more!
All of these things combined are contributing to what is IMHO a poorly executed headset, it was the sense that putting the G2 back on immediately had me feeling that the G2 was an audio/visual upgrade over the VP2. It wasnāt even close, it was apparent.
Then there is the software. Where to begin. Yeah 30fps is juttery in whatever headset you use w/o reprojection, but it is again, a noticable jittery mess in MSFS compared to the G2, which just feels more fluid even at an almost identical render resolution. And combine that with the HTC motion smoothing is just completely unusable as it just artifacts relentlessly (weāre talking huge black patches spalshed across your eyeballs, not just a little wobble in the propreller).
Overall, if it wasnāt for what Iāve been lead to believe from reading the specs, I would ultimately say this is a downgrade in experience from even the Vavle Index, and definately a notable downgrade from a G2. I wanted to believe the HTC hype train on the spec sheet, but my senses were screaming at me otherwise, and that is something I donāt feel as though I can push to the back of my mind on a longer term basis.
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This would happen if your set SteamVR global scaling to AUTO. In this case, it is evaluating your GPU perf upfront, and averages out the last 10 runs to decide an āidealā global render scale. This is why I prefer setting mine to 100% globally, and only adjust per-title. Other than this, it could be a bug in the HTC/SteamVR link maybe?
Next headset in line should be the Decagear or an unannounced Samsung maybe. Iām hoping for an Index2 which would be an instant purchase for me though!
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I certainly hear where youāre coming from. Auto in SteamVR sets mine to 150% at something like 4200x4200. So yeah, I always set it manually also to 100%, then I can scale anything else individually from there. This resolution shifting happened between runs at 100% globally. So you see my point about the HTC softwareā¦
Index 2 ā¦ with lenses similar to those they helped produce for the G2 which have almost eliminated glare, and high res panels ā¦ yes please.
I am kinda saddened about the VP2, and even more so at myself buying into the hype. Not that itās a particularly bad headset, itās just not for me and certainly doesnāt achieve what was advertised.
I donāt really have any major issue with my Vive Pro 2 other than the aux panel (Nav, weather, etc.) not being rendered stereoscopically. Coming from the Index, the HFOV, clarity, and color rendition is much better. Its software is a bit buggy but that happens with any new product. For me it is a keeper, and I play mostly DCS and MSFS.
Have you tried going to the little cog wheel on the right of the ribbon and āreset panelsā. I had to do this each time I loaded into the sim and it restored their functionality.
It may well be I just have a duff unit, thats also possible with the speaker buzz and everything just seems out of focus slightly with far more exagerated glare than the Index even. I dunno, maybe my lenses took a wollap during transport.