PSA: Reverb G2 small sweet spots, observations and solutions

Virtual Reality (VR) General
#68

So if I understand the anti-CA IPD vs. the overall optical IPD, this might explain why some folks think the G2 is great and others can never get enough sharpness around the sweet spot. If the central optical IPD is 64 mm +/- 4 mm and the anti-CA IPD was designed to be at ~64 mm, perhaps if your IPD is right in the middle, you’ll think the G2 sharpness is great whereas if you’re off to one side, you won’t be so happy even with physical IPD adjustment if the anti-CA optimum is fixed right in the middle distance.

My best IPD measurement with the free iOS EyeMeasure app that requires a recent iPhone with RealDepth face recognition abilities is 63.7 mm and I set my physical IPD to 64.4, as the slight increase seems to help. And I now think, wearing my normal prescription glasses and ignoring the off-center progressive bifocal part, that central vision sharpness is great for a VR headset.

So it would be interesting to hear from folks who have IPD’s at the extreme what they think of G2 central vision sharpness. Maybe just as when folks talk about graphical performance in MSFS and give their rig specs, when folks remark on some VR headset sharpness, they should give their IPD, whether wearing glasses, contacts, reading glasses, or using unaided vision, etc. Otherwise, a declaration of good visuals or bad is like talking about poor FPS in MSFS without revealing the hardware behind it! :slightly_smiling_face:

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#69

For anyone who thinks a little +OD presbyopia correction might help improve VR headset sharpness, I found the following reading glasses on Amazon. They’re relatively inexpensive, only $8 a pair, and come in a variety of +OD corrections, including very low +OD values, increasing in 0.25 increments from a low value of +0.5, i.e., 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, etc. (curiously, the lowest values show up in the middle of the “size” dropdown). Also, these lenses do not have anti-blue light blocking, which for some El Cheapo reading glasses on Amazon makes the lenses yield yellow-tinted vision. Since I’m not sure that a little +OD correction won’t help, I ordered +0.5 and +1.0 OD lenses and currently got $1.20 off the price of each item for a total price with tax of about $14.75 and, with Amazon Prime, the glasses will be here Tuesday, 1/19, to help me test where things stand relative to completely unaided vision (+1.5 and +2.0 OD definitely don’t help me with a G2). These glasses have ~the same dimensions as my normal glasses (see product images) but the IPD(or PD) is not provided in Amazon product info. Normally, I require +2.5 OD to read at 40 cm and the +OD correction requires falls off with increasing viewing distance but the rationale for trying some +OD, if you need extreme presbyopia correction, is in the following table: PSA: Reverb G2 small sweet spots, observations and solutions - #20 by JALxml

Even if the optical quality of these inexpensive glasses is not the best, they should at least enable me to test in a crude way whether even minimal +OD correction is helpful when viewing a virtual image displayed at some unknown distance of a few meters in a VR headset.

Amazon.com: Eyekepper Classic Vintage Style Reading Glasses: Clothing

Edit_Update: Actually, the product specs have the following info on blue light blocking and in the same part of the blurb (unquoted) claim good anti-CA properties for the lenses used:

We are improving our products based on customers’ feedback. The color of the BB40 lenses is lighter than the previous yellow lenses, result in avoiding color distortion to a greater extent, with 40% blue light blocking for wavelength 395nm-500nm.

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#70

I can’t wait your feedback, thank you for helping contributing in this discussion!

Speaking of lens quality, the Paolo is a little bit less good than the Alden, the former having a little bit of faint ghost image for anything white on black but really faint, whereas the later is free of any. This might be also due to the +2 vs +1 correction though and the increased thickness.

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#71

As a matter of fact there are some questions about G2 vs Index from time to time and I believe I’m nailing some of the key differences still making the Index a better headset to me besides LH tracking:

  • I can measure close enough HFOV: ±98º for the G2 and ±105º for the Index, but the G2 still makes me feel like looking through binoculars. Yesterday I’ve realized in fact the Index outermost FOV edges are not surrounded by as thick a black edge as the G2. I attribute this to the canted displays allowing them to be displaying closer and reducing the surrounding, effectively giving the impression of a wider open view. WIth the added much higher VFOV of the Index where the top edge is nearly non-visible, it really gives a better immersion into the VR world views.

  • The more I think and analyze this, the more I believe the G2 lenses are calibrated for a shorter focal length and they had to make this compromise in order to support the different refraction indice of the Valve lens material with the same small sized panels as the G1. However this is very uncomfortable to me. The Index focal distance is more than 2m and I can see clearly without any reading glasses with it, with no discomfort nor eye strain after many hours.

If it turns out the G2 focal length is shorter than other headsets (given the number of people complaining about the “sweet spot” there must be something there) I believe this is even more important because it can have further implications with the vergence/accommodation problem: Vergence-Accommodation Conflict

Yesterday I’ve tried pushing the Index even further on the same hardware, thanks to the new SteamVR 1.16.1 beta, and I must say running the Index at SS250 or SS300 (thus using TAA around 60/70 max) was giving me so nice a visual it was seriously competing with the G2 (even more so when you factor in the quality of the Index and the larger FOV). I know it sounds weird but despite the lower panel resolution, when pushing the Index at this level it was not much different in the end that my G2 in practice, because I can’t run the G2 at 100+100 (which is 3K x 3K). And the best of all, it felt natural for my vision to look around both far and close, and after a couple hours I was not feeling any strain either, despite pushing the Index to 160% luminosity sometimes (gorgeous when flying over Dubaii at noon!)

My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestion (Reverb G2 - WMR)
#72

Out of curiosity: what resolution are you running your G2 at?

#73

It depends!

See Balancing Performance and Visuals:
My 2070 SUPER VR settings and suggestion (Reverb G2 - WMR)

#74

Ah, 2070S. I had an Index at the time I had a 2070S and sold it off as I couldn’t properly drive it (and needed the money). I regret that now.

#75

Some further testing: With 300% supersampling and in the WMR treehouse I get vertical clarity from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock but horizontal clarity stays as poor as it used to be. The same text that’s clear down low 6 o’clock is unreadable if I rotate my head so that the text is at the 9 o’clock position.

I’d take that vertical clarity over as a horizontal clarity any day than vice versa.

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#76

You know, I complain a lot about immature people on this forum constantly whining and moaning about insignificant problems, and there is way too much of that.

However, then I run across threads like this (and @CptLucky8’s VR setting threads) that are full of so many people that are so smart, that I feel like a completely retarded moron in comparison. So, a grand thank you to those who meet that description.

What I’m taking from this thread is that I should probably get my eyes checked (which I haven’t done since I got LASIK in the early 2000’s), to see if I need corrective lenses, which I’ll probably order from here, and even if I don’t need corrective lenses, I may get the script-free version just to protect my lenses. My other conclusion is that I need some mod to the face gasket like this, which I’ll probably order and/or make as well.

But I’m not big on DIY stuff, so if I can order it with a single SKU from a single source at a reasonable price, that is absolutely what I’ll do.

So thanks for the information that is over my head, and also for restoring my faith that this forum isn’t just full of teenage crybabies. I’m fairly certain that those two optical solutions I plan to implement, plus @CptLucky8’s VR settings, will put me in as good a position as is humanly possible to get the max I can out of the VR experience in MSFS until software fixes and optimizations improve things that are out of all of our control, and of course, ultimately CPU and GPU upgrades just increase the horsepower of my machine on a HW level.

With a 10600K overclocked to all-core 4.8GHz, and a 2070 Super overclocked by a +175/+1000 bump, I don’t foresee much HW help in the short term. Maybe in a year or so when the 3080ti and/or Super models hit general availability, or even the 40-series, and maybe Intel’s 12th Gen (though I’m going to give their 11th Gen a good hard look) or perhaps Zen 4 from AMD, then it will be enough of a bump to make the upgrades worthwhile. We’ll see.

Sorry for writing a novel and going off topic, but I do that. A lot.

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#77

For those of us ( mostly all ) that need to protect the lenses of our precious HMDs, I always recommend the protective film from KlearKare.com (44mm circular version cut to proper shape) that sell for $8USD. It definitely seems like a “scary” process - spray soapy water on your fingers and apply the film to your lenses and squeegee the water out while hoping that you don’t trap many air bubbles or any lint. I have done this with moderate caution on my Odyssey+, my G1, my G2, and my Quest2 without it ever creating a real problem, although the extremely clear result might not show up for a weak even though I actually could use the HMD within hours even with a little smudging. The nanoparticles “heal” over time and it’s nice to be able to relax about possibly scratching those all important lenses and/or your own glasses. Check out their website although their demo video is for a flat surface (a cellphone) instead of our complex curved lenses. Make sure you order the 44mm which seems to be just larger than my HMD lenses. SKU:KK-WATCH-44MM

BTW, I tested my G2 for a couple weeks and decided that for my face size and eye prescription, that I liked my G1 image better like several others on forums so I sold my G2 on ebay.

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#78

Does anybody know where I can find the registry entry to disable the CA-filter?

I found it somewhere a few days ago but forgot to bookmark it…

#79

Really weird. @CptLucky8 and I have gone completely in opposite directions on the possible need for +OD help for presbyopia. Initially based on fooling around with a smartphone VR headset and a kiddie Google Cardboard VR education science kit lab, I thought I’d need plenty of +OD correction - +2 OD seemed to help with the smartphone VR headset vs. no glasses. My normal prescription for reading at 40 cm is a +2.5 OD correction.

Now that I actually have a HP Reverb G2 headset, my conclusion is that no additional +OD correction helps my native unaided vision, the +0.5 OD reading glasses ordered from Amazon are worse, and +1 OD worse still. And trying unaided vs. my normal prescription lenses with graduated progressive bifocals again, the unaided vision is better because the increasingly progressive bifocals mess up the lower part of the visual field. My left unaided eye is definitely worse than the right so I think ultimately prescription inserts to correct both eyes individually, both for myopia/hyperopia and astigmatism, will work best.

Although I downloaded both the Steam free version of TestHMD and the paid version bought on the TestHMD itch.io website, since one has to run those under SteamVR, I decided standing out on the terrace of the Windows Mixed-Reality Portal Cliff House and looking back inside toward a display of Windows Store offerings was the best and easiest test for static visual acuity, as shown by the picture below. I moved the Store object to the distance shown and looked at the finest text on the popped-up Store offerings. For me, unaided viewing plus the physical IPD distance displayed in the Settings, Mixed Reality, Headset Display slider box gave the clearest view of the finest text on the Store pop-ups. I use the white roof support and the white background of the Windows Store logo as a test of chromatic aberration and didn’t notice any (maybe I’m visually “tone deaf?!”). Looking at the individual blades of grass on the green terrace lawn and also to the right and up into the sky to see the stars (or whatever they are) helped confirm that my viewing conditions were pretty good.

BTW, if anyone knows how to save a VR screen capture efficiently, I’d love to know. After calling up the Windows VR “Start” screen with the Windows button on the controller, taking a picture, getting a floating screen capture window, the only way I could figure out how to save the picture was from the title bar middle right sharing icon to share the picture to Snip & Sketch! Then save the pix from there.

CptLucky8 recommends in his settings advice to use low-resolution and 720p as the settings for the Windows Mixed-Reality Portal screen to have more resources for MSFS. For the purposes of such an eye test, if you otherwise use CptLucky8’s settings, remember to be sure you have your Settings, Mixed-Headset Display, Quality of My Home settings set to High for level of detail and quality of effect and 1080p for window resolution for the purpose of using the Cliff House as a visual acuity chart.

20210119 Cliff House Screen Capture01
20210119 Cliff House Screen Capture011920×1080 149 KB

P.S. The sharpness of the image in the G2 headset is quite a bit better than captured here in the picture and saved as a .JPG and then site-processed after upload.

#80

This is really really interesting a report, thank you for your time with this. I’ll certainly try the same vantage point and confront what I do see with my G2 and I’ll not any single problematic detail to compare.

There could be another explanation as well: my G2 might be defective (calibration, lenses wrongly adjusted and sealed, etc…)

Can you tolerate the headset without any eye strain after 1h or 1h30 too?

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#81

I haven’t flown that long and I’m afraid my newbie enthusiasm overwhelms every other consideration. I definitely have a lot of other stuff that I should be doing IRL so that kinda limits flying time and I’ve saved a lot of flight spawning points so I’m constantly removing the headgear to load a new location I’ve flown in 2D to see comparatively what the 3D experience is like. Perhaps those brief, frequent interludes have spared me any eye strain.

Totally off-topic here but when I tried the paid TestHMD 12/2020 version under SteamVR just a little while ago, my G2 controller turned into a black-gloved hand! (which I was clueless to touching things with!). It would be great if a black-gloved “touch” controller was now some part of SteamVR - it might even be worth getting the Steam version of MSFS if one could have a touch controller for MSFS. Anyone know anything more about the black-gloved hand my G2 controller turned into?!

#82

@JALxml, can you help me out? I purchased/downloaded that “app” myself, but I feel like a complete moron because all I can do is stand there at the control desk and look around. I can’t figure out how to move to the various tests, and I figure once I finally either do by sheer accident, or by someone helping me, I’ll probably feel stupid because of how easy it turns out to be! (Note that one thing I know isn’t helping me is the fact that I’m disabled, and confined to bed, so I can’t turn around to see what’s behind me, or physically move in any direction IRL.)

I have the exact same problem with an app I downloaded that’s supposed to let you go for a ride on “20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”, which is a very old (and I’m assuming long since retired) ride at Disney, but again, all I can do is stand there and look around like some kind of retard lol…

Neither of them offers the kind of turn around and move that I get in the cliffhouse with my Reverb G2 controller thumb sticks. At least that I’ve managed to find or activate at any rate.

TIA for any help!

Back more on topic, I tried my readers on inside my G2s, but that experiment lasted for about 0.5 seconds. It was so bad there was ZERO chance it would help with anything, except to make things way worse. I think they’re a +1.5, but I need my readers to read what it says on the earpiece of my readers lol!

#83

Hi, @KevyKevTPA

In the within SteamVR ROV Test FOV app, my G2 joysticks will rotate me with left or right presses and pressing forward teleports me. So I can move around the Steam Home or the ROV environment much as for the Windows M-R Cliff House.

In the 12/2020 TestHMD app, which when launched from Windows will run within the SteamVR app, by trial-and-error, I found the answer to moving. It involves hand gestures while holding down buttons. If your setup is like mine for that version of the app, the controllers will appear as two black gloved hands in VR.

Holding down the B key on the right controller and waving the controller to the left or right rotates your virtual view. Be careful how vigorous you are. You can really work up some disorienting rotational speed!

The Y button on the left controller moves you towards or away something. Think of it as grabbing or pushing away space. There is a first “no button press” load up movement, then a “button press” movement action.

To move forward, do the following:

  1. Without pressing Y, from a raised forearm position, extend your left forearm and hand forward swinging out and down from the elbow.
  2. Now, grab some space by pressing and holding the Y button, and swing your forearm up and back (the reverse of the previous movement), “pulling” yourself forward. Repeat motions 1 and 2 as necessary.

To move backwards, do the following:

  1. Without pressing Y, with your forearm extended, bring your controller up and back by bending your arm at the elbow.
  2. Now, start pressing against some space by pressing and holding the Y button, and swing your forearm down and forward to push yourself back (the reverse of motion #1 but done with a Y button press). Repeat motions 1 and 2 as necessary.

I haven’t figured out how to touch and grab anything yet with my G2 controllers in the standalone 12/2020 TestHMD app run in SteamVR. I have to get back to IRL for a good while so if you figure out how to do that with the gloved hands, I’d love to know how. Since some of the visual acuity tests can be interactive, presumably one has to be able to set things in motion with the hands, too, if one wants to do the interactive versions of the tests.

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#84

@JALxml, no idea if this is going to help or not (I literally just saw the post and haven’t yet had the opportunity to test it), but I saved it, printed it, and once I rest my eyes a bit (just finished an hour long flight in VR), I’m gonna give 'er a shot.

Either way, thank you, I’ve been asking this question all over the Interweb, and you’re the first to even try answering me! YouTube proved especially fruitless, even the maker of the app (that I PAID for!!) didn’t respond to me. At least by last night when I last checked.

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#85

I’ve sold off my G2 and awaiting delivery on a new one tomorrow. I don’t think it will change anything, but I wanted to get rid of that possibility in my head. I’ll report back if I see any difference at all compared to the first unit. I also exported all debug info from the old one to compare panel alignments settings…

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#86

By the time I’ve written this and the story develops, I’ve passed the 30 days window limit… and I can’t hope an RMA until at least March by now (see the reddit sub… :face_vomiting: )

What kind of “debug info” did you save?

#87

Just the SteamVR dump:

SteamVR Runtime Version: 1.15.19
vrcmd Version: 1.15.19

Device 0 - holographic.WindowsHolographic - HP Reverb Virtual Reality Headset G20 by WindowsMR - HMD - generic_hmd
D3DAdapterIndex: 0
RecommendedRenderTargetSize: width=4488, height=4384
Left Projection: left=-1.165493, right=0.993331, top=-1.056018, bottom=1.058884
Right Projection: left=-0.991899, right=1.172687, top=-1.051831, bottom=1.059687
Lens Center: (0.000000, 0.000000), (0.000000, 0.000000)
Eye To Head Left
0.999997 -0.001406 0.001092 -0.031249
0.001411 0.999990 -0.003686 -0.000188
-0.001088 0.003687 0.999990 0.000329
Eye To Head Right
0.999997 0.001413 -0.001089 0.031249
-0.001408 0.999990 0.003685 0.000187
0.001094 -0.003684 0.999991 -0.000329
Tracking universe: 223809965155400
Driver VirtualDesktop : 0 displays
Driver holographic : 0 displays
Driver htc : 0 displays
Driver indexcontroller : 0 displays
Driver indexhmd : 0 displays
Driver lighthouse : 0 displays
Driver oculus : 0 displays
Driver oculus_legacy : 0 displays
Driver gamepad : 0 displays
Driver ivry : 0 displays
Driver null : 0 displays
Dashboard pointer device: 0

Panel alignment looked really good on that one numbers wise though…

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