I'm done with VR. Don't buy HP Reverb G2 for MSFS

There’s no focal depth in VR, the optics mean you’re effectively looking at images on a plane about 1.2m away.

I only wear regular glasses (for the time being at least) but would imagine bifocals may make it impossible to simply glance down at the instruments, you’d have to actually move your head so you’re looking through the distance part of the lens. Presumably that’s the case in real life though?

The vote option is not in this post but the post I linked earlier.

Look at the top left next to the tile of the post.

Got it - thank you!

Thanks,

These glasses have a distance prescription on the top, and an intermediate and close distance at the bottom. Easier seen than described. But it would depend on how far from the instrument panel I am; generally in my 414 the distance prescription fades to intermediate around the glareshield, and the intermediate prescription is what I need to see gauges, so there’s very little extra head movement to keep a scan going.

Sounds like I will need to find someone with a G2 and see what it’s like with one on.

What BeardyBrun said. Even though you are looking at stereo images that appear to have depth, they don’t. Your eyes are looking at virtual images about 5-6 feet away from you.

If you see well at 5-6 feet, you’re golden. If you need glasses to see well at 5-6 feet, then you may need some kind of optical correction in the headset. But since you mention bifocals, you definitely don’t use bifocals in VR. As far as focus goes, everything appears 5-6 feet out regardless if the stereo view makes it look miles out or inches away. Your eyes are focusing at 5-6 feet.

For example, I wear glasses to read but see well at 5-6 feet. Close things in dim light are blurry. If I was sitting in a real airplane cockpit as I do in my car, the dash is blurry without glasses. I was very pleasantly surprised that everything in VR was sharp. Near and far.

One last thing for glasses wearers in VR. There are companies that make lenses to snap into headsets. If you wear glasses in VR you have to be especially careful with the VR headset. The lenses are easily scratched and you never want to allow them to touch.

But VR is nuts. You see everything full size, you intuitively feel the distance, you feel the height. It’s really weird and your brain responds like what you see is real. Looking around is natural and just like real life. Look out the windows, at overhead panels, at the floor, It’s totally natural.

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I’m 75-years old, have presbyopia that normally requires a +2.5 OD correction for close reading, and after cataract surgery, I still require corrective lenses for “perfect” vision because of astigmatism (I chose “infinite” focus distance non-astigmatic corrective plastic lenses to replace my natural lenses). I found out what works great is to just use the far-distance part of one’s corrective lens prescription to get single distance vision glasses and wear those in my G2 headset. Apparently the focal distance for the virtual image produced in the G2 is beyond several meters so no presbyopia correction is needed and would be counterproductive for most people. PSA: Reverb G2 small sweet spots, observations and solutions - #179 by JALxml

Hi Can I ask what issues you had that prompted the use of a powered USB hub? I have just acquired a G2 having had variable success with the Quest 2. With the G2 I can not get the FS2020 VR image in the G2. I get a blank screen after the cliff house dissolves away after switching the sim to VR. The VR image appears on the PC screen or sometimes the sim does a CTD.

I think most of us don’t crash to desktop very often. I have not crashed to desktop but occasionally (a hand full of times) since the sim came out. I have a lesser machine than yours except I do have an Intel processor. I have the Reverb G2.
Hard to fix a problem that you can’t replicate.

Sorry your having problems.

I’ve got a pretty gnarly prescription (+5.5 in one eye, +2.75 on the other) and use pretty aggressive progressives with a slab-off/prism (kind of like a bi-focal on steroids). When I got my G2 for the first 4 months I just wore my glasses inside the headset - for me everything was completely blurry without them. But it worked fine and the displays looked great, and honestly it wasn’t that much of a hassle. Though, as someone mentioned, I’d sometimes have to shift my head around to get the sweet spot in the glasses for a sharp focus on the instruments or gauges (just like I’d have to do outside the headset).

And, after being in the headset a while, the glasses would tend to fog and shift and things like that. With MSFS it wasn’t a huge thing - I had to take of the headset and reposition/clean maybe every hour. But with things like Beat Saber, where I was moving around a lot, it was more frequent.

However, I recently got custom lens inserts to match my prescription as I think someone else mentioned. You don’t really need them, but now that I’ve used them I wish I had gotten them sooner. They work perfectly, with no fogging, no shifting, no itching, and no chance of scratching the headset lenses. Everything is crystal clear and sharp, and no more craning around to find a sweet spot. And when my wife wants to check out where I’m flying, they pop right out.

So in my experience the bottom line is don’t let wearing glasses stop you… you can use them inside the headset just fine, or get inserts, but you may even not even need to wear them at all.

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This is a bifocal (presbyopia) correction for close-up vision (inability to focus eye lens to see at short distances)? If it were for myopia (near-sightedness), the OD corrections should be negative. If you don’t mind me asking, where did you get your lens inserts made and how long did it take and cost?

It sounds like the lenses greatly improved (virtually eliminated?!) the sweet spot. Do you just mean that the sweet spot grew enough that it’s very easy to put your gaze into without thinking? I thought a sweet spot was inevitable given the nature of fresnel lenses?

Thanks all.

Was just driving home and the way it works for me is that my segment height is set at a point where the transition between closer and distance falls right on the top of my dash. So it’s clear looking straight ahead, and when I move my eye down it’s clear reading the dash. I don’t have to move my head to get a different view. From what someone said above, a single vision pair of glasses in distance prescription is probably the best (unless I get lens inserts)?

I got the inserts from VR Wave. It took about 2 weeks, and the cost was $131.50 incl S/H & tax (and also incl the optional blue light and anti-glare filters which I think were $30). There are other companies that also make them, but these seemed the best for what I was looking for, plus a number of the reviews mentioned having some relatively serious prescriptions (though no slab-offs).

I’ll admit that I had serious doubts as to how well they would work, but I am really impressed so far (I’ve had them about a week). With the inserts my entire FOV seems like it’s the “sweet spot” and all of it seems in focus. Sure, I still need to move my head close to read some of the really tiny stuff. But otherwise I just sit back and look at things, including a lot at the Garmin displays, and can see and read them easily.

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Sometimes, like in my case, I use powered USB HUBs not because I have issues, but to AVOID issues. I have so many USB peripherals that I don’t want to take a chance of overloading my USB port on my PC.

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I’m a long term flightsimmer - from the very beginning of FS2 on a C64. I’m also an A320 airline pilot who trains regularly on my airline’s full motion flight simulators and to me VR is the single biggest leap in flight simulation since its dawn.

I don’t have a top flight rig - in fact a 4 year old Alienware Aurora desktop running a GTX1080 (although I am in the queue for an RTX3080) so I’m not running everything on max at all on my Reverb G2. The original poster is quite correct that if you go into VR expecting the pinpoint clarity of the latest HD monitors you will be sorely disappointed. The clarity is OK - enough to read gauges and instruments and switch legends though and certainly good enough to enjoy scenery outside the window. Even on my original Oculus Rift the scenery and world views in FS2020 and XP11 are leagues better than the scenery on the airline training simulators I use at work

The huge gain however is in immersion. For the first time in domestic flightsim history you are finally inside a lifesize flightsim world, perspectives are entirely correct with life-size cockpits and objects passing the cockpit windows have lifelike scale. This makes landing for example much easier, it makes cornering on a race track much easier, it makes taxying easier and it makes dogfighting much easier. Even the simplest manoevers like flying a straightforward circuit accurately are virtually impossible on a flat screen monitor because you’re never quite sure how far from the runway you are on the downwind leg or when to turn base because you simply cannot see the runway easily and intuitively. VR makes this process as simple as it is in real life - a simple glance to the side coupled with the realistic 3d world offered by binocular vision in VR enables precise and rapid adjustment of the downwind leg and the base turn.

For maintaining my skills during a period of little real flying I have found the Toliss A319 on XP11 running Orbx True Earth GB photoreal scenery is so realistic that I have frequently found myself reaching for switches in the cockpit by hand or putting my hand out to rest it on a glareshield that isn’t actually there. It’s real enough to totally fool this 8000 hour airline pilot that I really am there - even on a very average rig! It is without question the second best thing to an airline full motion flight simulator.

Frankly I switch between FS2020 and XP11 (and Star Wars Squadrons) depending on what I am tryingt to achieve. FS2020 is absolutely great for exploring the world, poodling around in an interesting assortment of aircraft, hooning over the Lake District in an F15 or mooching about my local area of England in a Piper Super Cub. The XP11/Toliss Airbus is a study level combination that 95% reproduces accurately the systems and procedures of the day job and Star Wars Squadrons is the best way I know of indulging my 8 year old boyhood dreams of being an X-Wing pilot! IL2 gives me a fix of Spitfire WW2 air combat which in VR is alarmingly realistic and also tells me that with my particular skillset I am better off as an airline pilot than I ever would have been as a fighter pilot! Finally there’s Elite which in VR is a simply jaw dropping experience - majestic, humbling, awe inspiring. Elite in 2D doesn’t even come close to the Kubrik-esque magnificence of VR. It’s hard as hell to learn, like doing a real world type rating and I struggle to find the time to master its plethora of controls and options so I just dabble around admiring the views. I switch between these games and have rarely had any issues with the HP Reverb G2, Oculus Rift or Quest 2 at all.

So in short yes VR is extremely demanding of your hardware, it can be slightly fiddly to get optimised and the resolution looks like playing on a 1024x768 monitor right now. However if you want to feel like you are there, if you want to get as close as is possible to being a real pilot then it’s the technology that offers the largest available quantum leap in really putting you there.

Birdseed007

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It’s a known problem in that the power draw through the USB C connection can be too much for some boards. I have a ROG Strix 570F and that was struggling. The powered USB hub sorted it all out for £20. Given the cost of the headset and the ability to tidy up my USB cables, it was a good buy.

I only write here because the OP titeled “I’m done with VR” and llike Birdseed007 I would encourage everyone to give it a brief try.
OK, needing the VR-mouse to flip switches took me some flights, it’s intuitive now and I will throw a party when Asobo integrates controller interaction. The Instruments are still a little bit blurry, but I can deal with a right-click from time to time.
But every other aspect is such a unbelivable gamechanger. Doing narrow turns with looking out of the windows, perfect feeling for slip and pitch, perfect feeling for hight, speed and orientation during the last feet at approach, and so on. Not to mention the incredible, natural view during VFR flights. I’m doing a trip through Germany at the moment, visiting cities an nice landscapes with short legs from airstrip to airstrip. Breathtaking!
I never will go back to MSFS without VR. The next step to more immersion must be the UL- or PPL-license.
And to mention: I hadn’t any stability problems (however I don’t use a G2, my main headset is the Valve Index. When I had a CTD it was because I messed around with selfmade mods and sceneries.)
I gave all the “improve your performance” videos a try, installed WMR, OpenXR, what the heck. Killed a lot of time, got instabilities with VR, sometimes perhaps the one or other frame more, but i discarded everything, SteamVR works perfect for me. The OP mentioned WMR Problems, maybe a reason?
Instead I gave my setup a brief lookup with benchmark tools, optimized my BIOS and quenched some FPS out of my rig (RTX3090, Ryzen5900X, 64GB DDR4-2600 RAM, Gen4 m.2 SSD).
And: I never, ever, ever try to overclock my system anymore. When I encountered instabilties in any game or software it was because of overclocking, even if I benchmarked me my ■■■ off and everything was fine: after 30 minutes in MSFS (or Cyberpunk, or whatever) it often crashed.
I’m definitely not done with VR, best acquisition for years!

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The G2 also has a power adapter supplied with it. For those without USB-C, all you do is use the power adapter and plug it into the USD/Display Port splitter. I used the included USB-C to USB-A adapter to plug into a USB 2.0 motherboard port.

It works great on my system and no powered hub needed. Actually, with the G2 pumping data from 4 cameras back down to the computer, hubs can cause problems. In fact, any other USB devices with high data rates should possibly be plugged into ports on a different USB motherboard chip to keep from interfering with tracking or other headset comms.

I can say the same for me.

Thanks LordLapsian. Yes, I’m learning this about a hub so will give it a go. Useful to have as well.
Regarding the subject of this thread, I don’t want to go back to 2D. Having enjoyed, and been frustrated, by Microsoft FS since earlier versions, the immersion and “reality” aspect of VR has got me. To be able to armchair fly and look down at known places and the rest of the world even with current performance limitations is captivating. Hoping there will be performance improvements in time.

Yes, I had an older pair of glasses which fit ok into the headset, and I used them even though the prescription was not current (close enough) - my everyday glasses would not fit.

I just got the prescription inserts for my G2 and I don’t need glasses at all now. I have no complaints about the visual quality or the reliability of VR right now. I can fly as long as I want without a crash, and to me at least, the visual quality is excellent.

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