Hi.
I have a Dell Visor WMR headset. I’m still pretty satisfied with it but considering buying a g2. Is there someone here who can suggest if upgrading to G2 makes sense or should I wait for the next generation of headsets?
Cheers
I just did just that - I now have a Dell Visor and got a Reverb G2 yesterday, specs here: nVidia RTX 2070S, i7-10700, 32GB, all stock and playing with most settings on ultra on a 2k 36" monitor, perfectly smooth w/Visor except some stutters in hugely populated areas or with the more complex planes.
The first thing you’ll notice with a G2 is that the screen door effect (that ‘net’ in front of your eyes) is completely gone, gauges are all readable and visually it’s a great improvement.
Huge downside at the moment, because I’m still trying to find the settings that will give me a smoother experience, is that it stutters like crazy even in the simpler planes, like the Cessna, something I didn’t experience this badly on the Dell and certainly not for the whole flight.
Trying other titles (other simulators and some other games) the experience was really smooth. I also tried installing the latest nVidia drivers today but MSFS didn’t like it and stopped starting so I’m reinstalling MSFS (oh joy…).
That aside: I find the Reverb G2 more comfortable, the strap on top of your head allows for better adjustment and a generally better fit, the built-in microphone and speaker are ok and the IPD adjustment slider is handy if somewhat sensible.
Stuff I’m not liking: it has an extra 45W power brick and the headset tends to get noticeably warm quite quickly where the (removable) cable is attached.
I’ll hopefully be able to get back to testing later today, but if I can’t find decent setting I’ll probably return the Reverb next week as MSFS is the title I play the most and like you I’m pretty happy with the Visor.
If you have a better videocard than mine I’d highly suggest you to go for it - maybe buy from somewhere where you can return it if the experience is not satisfactory. I’d like to upgrade my card, but I’ll not go for the current prices.
Happy flying!
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I have just bought a G2 yesterday after I’ve been using the Acer AH101 (1440*1440 per eye) for about three years now. I’m on a 5600X, 32GB and RTX3070.
First impression is the FOV is the same, as expected. I’ve never had an issue with noticeable screen door effect on the AH101, so that was only a slight improvement. Resolution on the G2 is sharp, but I would have imagined the difference to be bigger. Colours are pretty much the same, it’s still an LCD panel and black is still a bit grey, so if you do a lot of night flying or play horror games like Phasmophobia, I’d suggest to get something with an OLED screen instead.
In MSFS, the 3070 only allows for resolutions of about 1800*1800 per eye at medium settings due to its 8GB VRAM limitation, which is a little supersampled on the AH101 and a little below the native resolution of the G2. So with that resolution, sharpness is only a slight bit better on the G2, certainly not the game changer that I’ve hoped for.
What’s most disappointing for me is that the performance with the G2 is much worse at a similar resolution of about 1800*1800 per eye. That corresponds to OpenXR SS 75% and TAA 100% with the AH101 and OpenXR SS 60% and TAA 70% with the G2. As I already sad, the visual quality is not that different between both headsets at this resolution. But with the G2, it works smooth sometimes, other times it’s a stuttery mess. Even at the same airport, over the same city, it just sometimes works and sometimes (most of the time) its unusable. I’ve spend several hours trying to fix this using any hint I could find, but nothing has helped yet. Contrary, with the AH101, I could maintain a smooth 30 fps with motion reprojection on in the same area. I’m starting to believe that WMR has a bad reputation regarding performance because of the G2, not because of WMR itself, as I could even achieve reasonably smooth 20-30 fps with the AH101 on my old i7-3770/GTX 1060 at 50% render scale and low/medium settings in MSFS.
Another point that annoys me about the G2 is that it doesn’t have a headphone jack. I’ve always used my in ear headphones with the AH101, and on the G2 I’d have to connect those directly to the pc with a separate cable.
All in all, I really did expect much more from the 3 years and 400EUR price difference. I expected this to be a drop-in replacement with boosted image quality, but it was much more of a headache. I have not tried other games yet and I expect the visual difference to be much better in less demanding titles, but currently, I wouldn’t recommend the G2 for MSFS if you have anything equivalent or less powerful than the RTX 3070. Let’s hope the performance improvements for MSFS coming this summer make the G2 usable for me, but currently, I would not buy the G2 again.
Since you’re also got the g2, can I ask if you did notice it getting pretty warm? I’m trying to figure out if it’s normal.
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Thank you for the detailed information. This coupled with tritonion2k13’s description has me more inclined to just stick with the Dell. I too am running a somewhat similar configuration (9700k, 32gb ram, rtx 2070 - non super but oc-ed) and even on the Visor i can only get it to run smooth using motion reprojection. Though i am able to run it smoothly at oxr SS 110% and 90% TAA. I do play other vr titles and apart from car sims which are a pain in the ■■■ in terms of performance I’m pretty sure they would run smoothy with reverb’s native resolution. WHen it comes down to flight simulator i was kinda already expecting that i’d have to run in half resolution mode and youtube reviews seem to suggest that it should look better compared to previous gen headsets even on half resolution mode (and supersampled ofcourse). However i have a very strong feeling i’d end up disappointed just like you, tritonion. Oh and as for the headset…I’m currently using wireless G935 headset and i really doubt the g2’s sound is as good as that so audiowise i have no need for an upgrade as is. It would seem i better wait until upgrading a gfx card is an option and only think about upgrading the headset after that. Again, thanks to both of you for the detailed replies, they certainly helped a lot. Cheers guys
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Just a small update, as the reinstall process took a while and I could only test the G2 this afternoon.
In general I got rid of most of the heavy stuttering by reinstalling MSFS on an nVme drive and bringing down the rendering to 70/70 (graphic options and openXR dev panel). NVidia control panel settings with latest driver all to default - will thinker later.
The game in VR is now enjoyable and I didn’t find the occasional delay disturbing, flying under a variety of weather conditions, lightning and areas: performance is stable and comparable among standard generated areas and photogrammetry. Also good performance flying from orbx Tacoma narrows to Paine Field over DD Seattle with photogrammetry on, in the DV20 at least.
Will try some more later, but while it is smooth now the image quality doesn’t really warrant an upgrade from my Dell Visor.
I fear that we’ll only see marked improvements a couple of gfx card generations from now.
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Amazing. I wasn’t expecting it to be that straightforward, I would still expect a headset 3 years newer to produce some significantly better result. I guess I’m kinda stuck for a while. I have determined the best course of action for me would be to wait for next gen headsets and rtx 4xxx series before upgrading. I am truly very thankful I posted the question here or I would already have ordered the g2. 
Would you be so kind to try some other game for a comparison with Dell. It’s not very easy to find someone who switched specifically from Visor to G2. Prefferably Half Life Alyx would probably be the best comparison since I can run that at 220% steam SS…which amounts to 2244 x 2244. It would be invaluable to hear what the comparison in visuals are running a 1st generation headset at 220% SS vs G2 native resolution. Thanks again bro
I have had a samsung odyssey plus for the last 2 years and I play DCS IL2 MSFS and Half life.
4690k@4.4 ,6800@2200 ,32gb ram at 1600.
I fly vfr in the bush avoiding towns where the framerate drops.
I usually lock the fps to 30 to keep the load off the GPU.
If I don’t lock the frame rate I get up to 50fps.
I recently bought a G2 and the improvement in clarity is very worthwhile.
A dramatic improvement over the odyssey .
I set the graphics very high ,open xr at 80 or 100 with TAA at 100.
Most settings at high.
The extras I generally turn off. bloom etc.
No atc no AI planes.
If you go flying in real life in the bush you very rarely see other planes so why put them in a simulator.
For me the gpu is the bottleneck even with my weak cpu.
I don’t think a G2 would be great with much less than my 6800.
My biggest frustration with msfs is the constant ctd.
It doesn’t seem to matter what settings I change it still crashes with dwm .exe or runtime.
Back to the question of is the reverb any good.
My vote would be definitely yes , much clearer, all gauges easily read.
But you have to be prepared to decide what settings you want to max out and which ones you can turn off.
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What ist your quality setting in the windows mixed reality options within the windows settings? Is it set to “best quality” or “best performance” or “let Windows decide”? What’s your resolution setting in the windows settings, is that set to best quality?
Because OXR100 AND TAA100 seem to be crazy on even the most over the top hardware, and I suspected that at least some of those reporting 100/100 works good for them have the windows setting turned to “best performance” or “let windows decide”, which will automatically reduce the resolution scale to achieve usable performance.
@ExeRay I’d like to assist but aside from simulators and the occasional pinball game I don’t really run much - maybe other forum members will chime in.
In general the image clarity is better in the G2 and I find the sweet spot somewhat bigger than in the Dell. Just like you I was expecting a bigger improvement switching to the newer one but in all honesty I’m not sure I can blame the Reverb G2 here, especially after more varied testing.
I can offer the following after yet more hours: Elite Dangerous looks way clearer in the G2 and I have absolutely no FPS issue, also tried Assetto Corsa, no problem there as well. X-Plane is also good with some adjustment here and there and the expected FPS drops in some areas - runs like on the Dell FPS-wise but looks much better, IL-2 in VR is way better with the G2, smooth and clear, as is the pinball game I was mentioning above. I also noticed that at least for my head the Reverb G2 is way more comfy and sits better.
I’m getting the feeling that MSFS does so much (weather, clouds, data streaming, simulation, etc.) that aside from the obvious VRam limit on my card (8Gb) I will have to wait a bit more to have those sliders all the way up, but while we wait the title could use some optimization.
Recap (all the following strictly imho):
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if new to VR and owner of a decent gfx card: the G2 is worth it, but consider the competition.
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if switching from a first gen WMR headset your mileage will vary. Specifically for MSFS I’d say the upgrade is not worth it at the current prices… but if you use it for other games (both sims and other genres) and media consumption, after testing for most of the last 48 hours I feel that if you can find a good deal on it it’s worth it, as the better resolution/clarity at 90Hz will offset the fact that you’ll have to reduce the rendering slider a bit.
I got mine for less than an Oculus Quest 2, it’s the version w/o the controllers. It took a while and a painfully slow MSFS reinstall to actually enjoy it and all considered I decided I’ll be keeping it, as outside MSFS and X-Plane (where it is ok) it offers a clear improvement for the rest of my usage cases.
If it was strictly for MSFS this would have been a return.
Let’s hope it will be as reliable as my old Dell and will still be working when the next gen graphic cards hits the market with realistic prices: it can only get better.
My advice from earlier in this thread (“Make sure you can return it if you’re not happy”) is probably the only universally valid tip when it comes to VR at the moment: everywhere I look there are different hardware specs and different opinions and this is, when you think of it, perfectly normal. Our heads, IPDs, ages and sight are all different in one way or the other so there can be no better judge than ourselves.
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Hi
wmr setting is best quality visuals.
As I said I stay away from cities because the frame rate will drop to 20 or less there.
I used to set the odyssey to oxr 150 and taa 100.
I try to lock the fps to 30 using the radeon software although that doesn’t always hold it down.
The GPU sits in the 90s for utilization and the cpu 50 to 70.
Thanks again, great input. I have another big favour to ask you. You might already know this since you say you bought the headset without the controllers. My question is do Dell’s controllers work with g2? 
I can get headset alone at cca 500 euros, and i’m considering it.
They should work and I’d think the tracking should be better thanks to the 2 additional cameras on the sides of the G2. Also, G2 controllers look exactly like the Dell’s to me: HP Reverb G2 Controller Pair NA LA (22J70AA)
And HP says they’re compatible with every WMR headset.
I can’t physically confirm because I sold the ones that came with my Visor - with sims I found them immersion-breaking (I use Hotas/Joystick with a ton of buttons).
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thanks. The g2’s controllers definitely don’t look the same as 1st gen but I do believe they should work. Cause I use 1st gen HP WMR’s controllers on my Dell and they work just the same.
You’re right about the looks, sorry for the imprecision. In any case, since HP sells replacements for the G2 and advertises them all compatible with every WMR headset I guess it’s gonna be smooth sailing on that front.
I really hope the G2 will work out for you.
Happy flying!
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