HP Reverb G2 is here... (shipping in the U.S.)

Review from tomshardware is rather positive but …

I got the Rift and it was the heaviest game experience I ever had. 3D shooter.
Half an hour and I was done.
Sold it because of that.

2 Years later…but yeah I think I would get a new one.:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: nothing learned…

actually it´s ok to keep the beta closed but I think they should should release far more info. Everyone is buying Hardware right now. Videocards, VR Headsets. But No official Info in Terms of FS2020.

Will the Hardware demand for the G2 comparable to what you need if you want to render in native 4k? which cards would suffice for VR, all those questions are not answered while there are already tests are ongoing and I think VR and FS2020 will be big. To be honest I think it´s been way overlooked.

I myself have ordered a G2 and i have an i7 10700k 32GB and an RTX3070 but I still don´t know if this will be enough to power the G2 in FS2020, which honestly is kind of sad.

I’m pretty sure they can’t know in advance how the sim will perform after the last optimization phase and the release of the final VR version (probably after some weeks/months of patches).
But you can be sure your machine will handle it. It’s just a question of expectations about the sim options you’ll use.
I have the same machine but a GTX1080, and can drive in most games/apps my Oculus CV1 at 90fps at HIGH or ULTRA settings. I often SuperSample from 1.5 to 2.0 (200%) of my native resolution, without any problem, so 5.184.000 pixels (native 2.592.000x SS at 2.0) managed at 90fps.
The G2 have 9.331.200 pixels. It’s a 3,6 ratio vs my CV1. Your RTX 3070 is far superior versus my GTX1080. You’ll be more than fine, and if not (in case your settings are too high), you’ll be able to undersample a little without losing too much quality.

Yeah the GTX 1080 was quite a powerful card. which games are you talking about.

Maybe they find a way to improve performance by save something in the far distance where the headsets have lesser detail. whatever. would be nice to have a fair level of realism without spending money on cards like the 3090 or the 6900XT…which would be over the top money wise.

Interesting read, thanks for the link.

For MSFS I would think the controller tracking would be less of an issue, since I assume we’ll be using yokes/sticks/throttles instead. Still a mark against it if you plan to use it for other stuff than simulators.
Not sure how much the 90 degree FOV impact the experience.

Since they’re out of stock anyways, I have plenty of time to wait for reviews before I take the plunge.

Cannot prove it, but if old enough, long time ago, people used to put rubber strips and attach them to the metal parts of the car, so the rubber strips (had some metal core or pieces in them) contacted the ground all the time. This dissipates the static electricity the car builds up. Most of the time it’s not an issue, but some people middle ear are affected by too much of it and it makes them sick when passenger. GF if she drives down the mountain to the big town we go shopping in 80 miles away, she is fine, if I drive and don’t go slow over the mountain and around the hairpin turns she will get car sick and woozy. I don’t have the strips. It’s also a matter of “knowing” when the car (plane in sim) will turn so brain is ready, (driving vs riding). Even non VR rig years ago felt it, and it passed quickly.

Have had vr ever since Oculus CV1.

It’s the difference between looking AT your cockpit on a tv and sitting IN the cockpit.

Many people I’ve spoken to saying vr isn’t good, makes the sick, is too expensive etc have never tried it. Once you do, you won’t go back.

It’s the main reason I keep going back to Xplane. That and the Toliss A319.

My gripe with that G2 are limited IPD (like the quest 2) which can cause headache, FOV not better than my Oculus and tracking. In VR flight sims like Xplane, Aerofly, VTOL VR (my favorite), you typically use the controllers as your hands and don’t fiddle much with a joystick unless the plane is so simple that the hotas has enough buttons to map all the knobs/levers

You guys have any idea when the VR release is expected to go live?

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People say this in every forum as if it is fact (that once you try it you never go back). VR certainly has shortcomings, and I struggled with sickness using it for a long time. I’m better now, but I still happily go between VR and monitor all the time. There are pros and cons to each.

What are the shortcomings?
I see no one basing anything as facts as nothing in life works that way.
Also your sickness with VR is specific to your personal situation, so that’s not a universal shortcoming with VR.
What do you feel are the cons?

I have long been a VR user since the early Oculus Developer Kit - 1 was released.
I have over the time ended up owning a few HMD including Oculus DK-1, DK-2, Rift 1, and pre-ordered the G2.

Over the years my biggest shortcoming with VR are 2 folds.
1 - Getting into VR involves preparing. If you were glasses like I do it can get uncomfortable depending on the shape of the HMD and often I end up switching to contact lenses for the comfort factor.

Also if you don’t live in a spacious house, it requires having enough room around you to swing your arms and not hit objects around you.

2 - Since VR games are super immersive it also ends up draining a lot more energy compared to just playing on a monitor. This now is very specific to the VR experience your consuming. So a lot of FPS genres end up being so demanding that after a few hours of playing you do get exhausted. For a flight sim however I don’t think this would be the case.

So yes in a nutshell the preparation involved in playing comfortably (for a lot of people), the amount of exhaustion you experience in VR games are the 2 short comings I see.

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I have to agree as someone whos been around since DK1 also.
Sometimes I find myself just wanting to get in really quickly to briefly check something in sim and get out.
Simply jumping in to a VR session especially the nature of flight sims can be exhausting.
Seating position, hardware position with seating. Launching a sim in VR after making sure all your other programs ducks are in a row.

For example I mod GTAV and FSX a ton for VR. Which requires frequent little minor adjustments to meta code values in the games file system and of course ini/cfg config values for FSX. Alot of times I find myself too lazy to throw the headset on just to check on results from such tweaking and would rather just fire the game on the 2d monitor.
That is also the issue that turned alot of folks off from VR, the process of finally sitting inside of a session after the involving launch of the specific game/sim and tracking position you are in physically. My FSX VR launching process alone would def appear too complex or time consuming for some users.

Get my simming seating and hardware(yoke/rudder setup) in front of me.
Make sure all yoke/throttle controls are set in to proper position.
Launch Rex
Launch Active Sky
Launch FSX Shade
Launch Flyinside click through those que windows.
Create a flight inside of the hmd.
Load flight(endure flight loading time)can take 1-2 minutes depending on the scenery or aircraft systems complexity.
Finally load into flight and enjoy VR.

Depending on my sim load time this can easily be a 5-7 minute process every time I wanna hop into a VR flight session.

Lets hope the new sim is a little quicker and less complex to finally hop in VR, but then again that’s just the nature of flight simming and also using a ton of external addon component software like Rex,Active Sky, etc etc.

Honestly as of right now one can easily find themselves impatient and annoyed sitting in front of the loading screen of MSFS on a 2D monitor. Just to briefly test something minor like a tweak or new addon out in sim.

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Dude, I’m waiting on the exact same hardware lol. I cannot wait to get both. It would sure be nice to have the ability to order an RTX 3090 but I guess that’s asking a lot.

There are a few, and some are applicable to some types of games and not others (seated vs full-room, etc)

  • The amount of time to set up, and technical issues, like you mentioned. For example, the Reverb G2 that I just received simply would not be recognized by WMR or SteamVR until literally the 5th USB port I tried. And it’s not just me - there’s a whole reddit thread on the subject. Also I had someone taller than me try HL Alyx and it was almost unplayable because the height wouldn’t set up correctly until we completely cleared my room settings in WMR and completed the setup again. Even seated, at times I will start a flight sim and my head will be in the completely wrong position. And I have to remember if that particular sim has a quick-center keybind or if I have to exit and set it up again in WMR. Sometimes pairing the controllers wouldn’t work until we removed them in the device manager and added them again. And there are so many layers, especially with WMR. There’s WMR, Steam VR for WMR, etc.
    Those are just recent technical issues that I’ve had that I can think of at the moment. And I’m not exactly a noob when it comes to these things - I’ve built many PCs over many years and have a bachelor’s in Computer Science.

  • The cable. Sitting on my chair, the cable gets caught sometimes and it’s impossible to move my head to one side or the other. And in standing applications, sometimes people trip over it or get it wrapped in their legs, since they can’t see it. I haven’t solved the chair issue completely yet, and hanging from the ceiling like some people isn’t an option for my location.

  • The weight of the headset, and the heat and sweating. Though the Reverb G2 is much better than my previous headset, Samsung Odyssey.

  • It is much more hardware intensive. People who aren’t experienced in this will receive a shock when they see their frame rates in VR in MSFS. I have two sets of settings in DCS and in IL-2 GB that I have to use depending on whether I’m in VR or monitor. And neither of those apps make it easy to have two easily-accessible settings. I have to use a 3rd-party utility for DCS, and change a config file’s name in IL-2. With the Odyssey, seeing the instruments or identifying other planes was difficult to near-impossible, but that is much better with the Reverb G2.

  • The aforementioned motion sickness. Even my wife, who doesn’t experience motion sickness in any other area of her life, sometimes feels it in VR. I’ve gotten much better since ‘training’ myself over time. And it’s not necessarily a frame-rate issue on my part. I can destroy HL Alyx performance-wise, but had to train myself to use the normal locomotion (vs teleport) little-by-little. Similarly, Aerofly FS2, which runs like a dream in VR, at the beginning I would get sickly-feeling simply while rolling a C152 a few degrees. It can be overcome, as I’ve proven, but it is a daunting barrier nonetheless for those who are afraid of being nauseated.

  • Being cut off from your environment. This may be a plus for some :rofl: But I like to hear my surroundings (wife, kid, phone, etc), not to mention that not being able to see your own hands, for flight sim and seated purposes, limits what you can do. That means each and every anticipated key must be mapped to something you can get to easily. And you can’t eat or drink while playing. The headphones in the G2 and Index are great, in my book, in part because I can hear my phone ringing, or my kid calling my name, or my wife telling me that I’m about to run into the wall.

  • Checking your six (especially in combat sims). Easy with TrackIR. Difficult in VR. And it’s like wearing a scuba mask, which exacerbates the issue, where your fov is quite limited unless you have Pimax or whatever it’s called.

  • Glasses. I have to put contacts in when I play because my glasses are horribly uncomfortable under the headset. I do anticipate buying prescription lenses for the G2 when they are available.

Those are the cons I can think of at the moment. There are pros of course, which is why I venture into VR in the first place, but this is for all those who constantly say “when you go VR you never go back” which I see all the time on the various forums. I’m not the only one who loves my TrackIR + ultrawide monitor as well as delving into VR occasionally. And as I mentioned some of these items are being improved over time with new hardware.

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You are spot on with every point.
Especially the annoying cord (I wrap it around my gaming chair)
Checking your six depending on your seating position can also lead to uncomfortable strain especially being tethered to the cord.
As for Track IR… I’ve always felt its like panning around looking through a window of a candy store from outside.
I’ve found my old Track IR piece and tried it with the new sim…its just not convincing anymore without some sort of depth. As I to mainly used it for FSX with Nvidia 3D Vision injection.
As when panning around I’m still confronted with the sad reality and limitations of seeing the edge of my monitor screen and monitor position distance seems to not help or have any effect for me when improving immersion.

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Nothing in there that people familiar with VR wouldn’t already know.

I imagine you changed the default render sampling in Steam so you are not pushing twice as many pixels (3000x3000) - it’s not picking up the resolution correctly, try 50% or 60%, it’s a better option than going to half res in the headset or 60Hz - both of which should be avoided.

Yeah, that would be asking for the Trifecta.

Jim-Sim

I probably should have put this in my original post, because I was really just announcing that the G2 is actually shipping to customers now, but this thread is taking on a life of its own, so let me clarify something…

My intent for VR is mostly what I’ll call “Virtual Touring.” When I started on this project with the build back in February, I was dabbling with flight simulation (X-Plane) and saw the previews of what MSFS2020 was to become. So I built my system with that goal in mind. X-plane was just a placeholder, if you will. I built a system by choosing components just below the top-of-the-line stuff (2070 Super instead of 2080TI for example). My days of being an early adopter and spending ridiculous amounts of money just to get the latest and greatest before everyone else, are over (okay, maybe the G2 is an exception, but I got in line up front and only paid list price :slight_smile:). I feel however, like I have a very good system for the money spent.

After the system was built, and we (my son and I) were waiting for the Launch of MSFS, I started looking into VR. Not so much for the thrill-ride effect in flying, but with my “Virtual Touring” in mind… I want to be able to visit, in 360 Video, Cities, Parks, Museums, Etc… but to do so, I will “fly” myself to these locations. Then I can step out of the plane, as it were, and tour the areas wonders in VR, only to get back into the plane and move on to the next place of interest. I’m not terribly concerned with motion sickness, and don’t intend to be doing stunt maneuvers in my aircraft of choice.

So, that said, I did get a chance to hook up the G2 last night and try a few things out in VR for the first time. Unboxing and installation was pretty straight forward, with the exception of trying to figure out how to get the blasted batteries into the controllers… there was no documentation on how to open them, and I didn’t want to pry on something and break it. I spent quite some time on the internet and out of sheer frustration, I just started pushing and pulling, without actually prying, and bingo. Apparently the smaller portion of the handle on each controller simply slides downward away from the buttons and knobs. You would think they would put an arrow in the casting of the plastic, or a thumb indent, or something to show the direction that each piece slides to open (think Roku remote here - perfect design). Ugh.

Once I got it all together, I went into Microsoft Mixed Reality Portal and followed the instructions for setup. Getting my “Working Boundary” established took a couple tries, and I’m still not happy with it, but since I was doing everything last night in a seated position, it worked okay. I’m getting used to the hand-held controllers, but I can now see the upcoming difficulty in trying to access local physical objects, including my yoke, while in the VR headset. Hopefully the upcoming VR release of MSFS will address this somehow.

Tonight I’m going to install some new software to allow the immersive viewing of 360 YouTube videos, which plays into my original goal of Virtual Touring. The demos I saw in the Mixed Reality Portal last night were terrible… poor resolution, high speed movements, and so short that by the time I located the actual person/place/thing being highlighted in the 360 environment… the clip moved on to another subject altogether. I know that the current 360 videos being posted to YouTube are up to 8k in resolution and of much more interesting content.

So far, the only time I was a bit queasy, was a brief moment when I teleported myself to the edge of a balcony and there was no floor forward beneath me for half of the image. I got that falling feeling for a split second, until my brain reminded me that I was still in a chair.

Didn’t mean to ramble on so long, but there were a few people asking for first impressions from a newbie. I’ll update again after I’ve got some more “time in the hood” :slight_smile:

Jim-Sim

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