Not sure about that conclusion to be honest. VR Flight Sim Guy did a follow up video where he used the same resolution for both Varjo and the G2 to rule out any differences in image processing or distortion and the Varjo was STILL FASTER.
Mark from Simhanger suggested it might be to do with better memory management. Bascially I don’t know what Varjo have done but they’ve performed miracles here and have managed to produce a headset with much higher native resolution than the G2 with absolutely no cost in performance. AMAZING…
Another item that needs to be noted about the Aero, for now anyway and from what I’ve been able to gather (could be wrong), is motion smoothing / reprojection does not appear to be functional yet in the Varjo Base software. I’ve heard an update is coming though which will enable it.
I’ve been in touch with Varjo support about it (very nice people), but haven’t been able to get a clear answer from them so far. I’m assuming that it will be able to do 1:2 reprojection (45 fps to 90hz in the headset) but if it cannot do 1:3 (30 to 90) then I will have to pass on it. Maintaining 45 fps in VR is nearly impossible with reprojection right now, even with a 3090. The compromises required are just too much. Hitting 30 though is entirely doable with acceptable reductions in visual quality.
I’m one of those who cannot fly in VR without reprojection (there are a few of us!). It’s like being in a blender full of stew whenever I turn my head, a blurry and disorienting mess. Since the Reverb G2 and Oculus headsets can do 1:3, I sincerely hope Varjo can as well. I’ve asked them how the reprojection is processed as well, on CPU or GPU, and what the general performance hit is from using it. I’ll post back here with whatever I find out.
Regarding motion reprojection, I am surprise how good my Reverb G2 does with OpenXR Developer Tools and motion projection disabled with this sim. And no way I am hitting 90 fps.
It is really quite pleasant and a very nice image.
My frame rate is 32 fps fixed with motion reprojection disabled and its nice and smooth. I just followed Pie in the Sky Tours recommened settings. I don’t understand where the need for frames to match the Hz comes from as I’m experiencing completely smooth performance.
From the product description:
" Included in the box : Varjo Aero headset, a VR adapter, a power supply unit with 6 x power plugs (EURO, UK, US, AUS, KOR, CHN),
If this information posted earlier is accurate, this is what should really help to make this headset shine with MSFS 2020. Open XR. I know Reverb G2 does great with it using Open XR.
If you have a VR headset like the Pimax, Index, or G2 then go to Varjo.com website and it somehow triggers VR and SteamVR will start, WMR Portal will start and it’s annoying because they steal the desktop audio so I have to shut them down if I want to play a video on the desktop.
I wonder if there are VR apps tied to their website. What’s the reasoning for this?
Hmm can’t say I have seen that behavior and I have been on their website a few times. I have and use both Reverb G2 and Index.
Varjo headset does have an audio jack though, just not headphones. Which in my case is fine as I always use my extended earbuds plugged into my Creative sound port on the PC. I have done this with every headset I have owned just personal preference for me.
How about having a friend / family member pre-order it from their location ( maybe in the US or Europe) , and then have them ship to you . It will be a lot cheaper that way. (at least comparatively so) .
So I have some new info to share regarding the Varjo Aero, specifically concerning motion smoothing / motion reprojection… and it’s good news.
Up until now the motion smoothing has not been enabled in the Varjo Base software for the Aero apparently, so no one has been able to test it, but after a number of emails back and forth with Varjo support here is what I am told…
The Aero does in fact have a motion reprojection equivalent.
It can do the standard reprojection ratio of 1:2 of course (45 fps to 90hz in the headset), but it can also do 1:3 (30fps to 90) like WMR (this one is critical for MSFS) and several more ratios, all the way down to 1:18 (5 fps to 90!) if you really want to. The support rep said that while ratios this extreme are available, it would of course look pretty awful with such low source fps. I love that they’re leaving this up to the users. Bravo.
The reprojection workload runs entirely on the GPU (probably one of the reasons it officially only supports Nvidia cards right now)
The reprojection comes with off, auto, and always on modes, just like WMR.
Visual artifacts and performance hit are hard to quantify, so I wasn’t able to get much of a useful answer on that. They said there is a performance cost for leaving it in “always on” mode, but that the cost depends on the content being reprojected. My gut feeling is that it will probably be at least as good as WMR performance hit wise and with similar artifacts around propellers etc, but with Varjo’s attention to detail I would not be surprised if theirs turns out to be noticeably superior. We won’t really know until some of you here with pre-orders get your units and fill us in on these nitty gritty details.
I know reprojection is not everyone’s cup of tea, but there are quite a few of us here that won’t fly in VR without it, and I am definitely one one of those, so I hope this info is useful to you.
Oculus is just now coming out with a much improved ASW though as well, with much fewer interpolation artifacts and better performance, so it will be interesting to see how that stacks up against the Aero’s reprojection.
I can’t justify the money for the Varjo but I did note that a G2 comparison showed that the Varjo despite having quite a bit higher resolution was actually performing at a higher frame rate too.
Obviously, they’ve found a way to tweak performance just as HP did when they first released my Reverb G1.
I’m waiting for a wider FOV on a Reverb gen 3, I’ll buy that.
Awesome, thanks a lot for these updates! Especially the MR is important for me, and as it appears unlikely I’ll stay above 30FPS all-time, the 1:4 ratio would be very welcome.
This appears to be mainly due to the different rendering resolutions. The G2 has a native 2160x2160 while the Aero’s is specified as 2880x2720. While that would imply the G2 to perform better in terms of FPS and frame times, both headsets are using a different definition of 100% rendering resolution. While for the Varjo it appears to be somewhere around the native resolution, 100% with the G2 is usually around 3168x3092 at least for me, which is 25% more pixels than with the Aero.
AFAIK the higher rendering resolution of the G2 is at least partially attributed to correcting lens distortion. The Aero uses different lenses (aspherical instead of fresnel lenses) which in general suffer different types of distortion as well, but obviously Varjo did a decent job correcting them without significantly upping rendering resolution.
So yes - if the Aero does deliver great image quality without the need for excessive supersampling, then we may indeed see somewhat better performance in MSFS as well.
