Vive pro 2 – “Almost” the “Valve Index 2” I have been looking for

User Support Hub Virtual Reality (VR)
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Folks, I thought I had to share my two cents on the new Vive pro 2.

A heads-up: You’d need a “beefy” computer!

Obviously, flying airliners in VR mode in and out of complex airports in the middle of large photogrammetry cities with ATC running in the background puts a lot of strain on both CPU and GPU. But that’s exactly what many of us want to do…!

In an ideal world when flying in VR, we demand all these features combined:

  • Judder-free Smooth motion
  • Reasonable sweet spot at the center with hi resolution
  • Vivid true-to-life colors with high brightness levels
  • Ultra clouds
  • Air traffic
  • Airport life

I believe for true immersion in VR mode, the first 4 are the most crucial even at the expense of losing the latter 2 and that is exactly what I have achieved:

My PC Hardware:

  • Intel 11700k @ 5 GHz
  • eVGA RTX 3090 Ultra FTW3 (slightly overclocked to 80 C max)
  • G.Skill Trident Z Royal DDR4 @ 4 GHz CL 14-15-15-35
  • SAMSUNG 970EVO Plus
  • Vive pro 2 Headset with V.2 lighthouses

My Test Software:

  • MSFS 2020 (MS Store install, graphics set to medium except clouds at ultra, LOD sliders @50%)
  • Steam VR (@ 100% SS)
  • fpsVR
  • Vive Console (Motion Smoothing active @Ultra 4896x2448 overall x90 Hz)

Test Scenario:

  • FlyByWire A320neo on runway 7L at KLAX
  • Daytime with default scattered clouds
  • All traffic and airport life disabled
  • Pilot2ATC addon running in the background with TTS active

To upgrade my Rift S, I have tried a wide range of headsets with the above scenario and found flaws in every one of them as listed here:

  • Reverb G2: the sharp portion at the center way too small, rest of display blurry edge-to-edge with/without prescription glasses. Poor/no image smoothing.
  • Index: Large FOV comes at the cost of reduced resolution down to Rift S level. Pale colors. Low brightness.
  • Pimax 8kX: Extremely difficult to set up. Blurry everywhere. Pale colors. Low brightness. No image smoothing.
  • Vive Cosmos Elite: Blurry everywhere. Pale colors. Low brightness. No image smoothing.
  • Quest 2: Blurry everywhere. Pale colors. Low brightness. No image smoothing.

During my test and thanks to Vive Console “Motion Smoothing” feature, the Vive pro 2 provided a consistent FPS depending on the processor loads: On the ground and while taking off or on the glide slop flying close to the ground, I had 18 FPS while at higher altitudes it was 22.5 FPS. Vive’s motion smoothing compositor does indeed an excellent job in reprojecting low FPS into butter-smooth 90 Hz compared to many other headsets (not as good as Valve Index though).

When flying at low altitude over photogrammetry cities, the very high resolution combined with true-to-life colors and most importantly the smooth motion, raise the level of immersion to the heights I have never seen before… astonishing!

This headset is also imperfect:

Vive pro 2 cons:

  • Glares all around light sources in the dark
  • Blurry and distorted image all around the edges

Vive pro 2 pros:

  • Very high resolution, sharp image at a relatively large sweet spot center
  • True-to-life colors
  • High brightness and reasonable blacks
  • Very descent sounds
  • Tracking is spot-on
  • Robust construction
  • Very easy to start up and turn off the whole system (with lighthouses)

Few important hints on Vive pro 2:

  • If you use prescription glasses, you must wear it
  • Adjust the headset so the cushion grabs all around your eyes firmly (especially the bottom side)
  • You may need to reposition the headset slightly to get the best possible image
  • Tune the correct IPD on your headset

Although I have almost all in-sim settings at medium/low presets, these scenarios still take some tolls on my FPS, introducing transient judders (FPS diving to 14 at times):

  • City/Airport night lights
  • Flying through fogs

As you can see, I haven’t mentioned anything about Vive pro 2 hot topic of FOV. Especially with a performance-hungry title like MSFS 2020, the FOV topic at this point in time would be irrelevant. In fact, I would rather lower FOV’s to get sharper images at the center.

Hope this helps.

2 Likes
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I thought other lcd hmd’s < vp2 < reverb g2 < index@170% < other oled hmd’s regarding brightness?

Do you still have the reverb g2 or other hmd’s and perhaps make some measurements of brightness compared to vp2? I can guide you how to do it with a regular smartphone.

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Thanks
How does the reduced vertical FOV stack up?

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Unfortunately I don’t.
I was very happy with the brightness my Rift S was offering and compared every one of the hmd’s listed above against it. Only G2 and VP2 offered brightness levels as high as Rift S. I dare say, the VP2’s brightness is even slightly higher.
In my opinion, gaging “brightness” should go hand-in-hand with gaging the “blacks” or “darkness”. Flying at dusk, I see remarkable contrast while the shades of colors are well maintained by VP2.
With headsets with poor brightness, I would get this “gloomy” effect everywhere even in daylight with scattered clouds… well not the case with VP2!

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Tough question as I have been disregarding FOV’s for the reason described in my last paragraph above.
I can only say with VP2, the level of image distortion and blurriness is far less on the upper and lower edges of lenses compared to the left and right edges. At ultra resolution, I don’t need to tilt my head down to read the panels like I did with G2. I can face forward and just glance down and read my panels with ease.

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Nice summary, really happy the Pro 2 is working out for you. I’ll save my money for now still very happy with the HP G2 - the blurriness has never been that bad for me unless I’m reading a wall of text - the FoV might be an issue for some but improved with VRCovers thinner padding.

It’s exciting actually that it looks like the industry is about to move back to OLED panels…

GDI who delivers panels for phones and VR headsets has shifted over to OLED and will be producing OLED panels for the new PSVR 2 which is very exciting news for the industry, I personally can’t wait for an Valve Index 2 or HP G3 to be produced with OLED panels!

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Glad you liked my post.
Has there been any improvement in the motion smoothing and FPS stabilization with Reverb G2? Do you get stutters all the time?

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Thanks for your review and is what I am seeing that I need a stronger computer to run this headset. I am currently running a i7 9700K @4.6 and a RTX 2080 Ti and when I try to improve the visuals my FPS tanks.

I find it interesting you are using the Vive motion smoothing as when I tried the visual artifacts seemed to much for me but you are running a much better machine and might be the reason.

For now I will stay with my HP Reverb G2 for MSFS and use my Vive Pro 2 on X-Plane until I can find a RTX 3090 to build a better computer around.

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You are correct. There are few artifacts and the stutters are present at times when the FPS rises to 22.5.
So the trickiest part is to put just enough load on GPU to lock up the FPS at 18. I say GPU as for the time being, the CPU main thread seems to be the bottleneck and therefore, we don’t want to restrain FPS by loading the CPU.

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Big thanks for posts

Awaiting my vive pro 2
Currently using a quest2 at 120hz with great results

Fingers crossed the pro2 will be a step up, its only increased FOV & not wanting a battery in a headset was my motivating factor

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I’ve been using my VP2 for almost 2 weeks now. This is a headset you may not get instant gratification with (I almost threw it back in the box after the first day), but after several “ah-hah” moments, I’ve retired my Index to the second VR room and am starting to really enjoy, with some amazement, what this HMD brings to the table. The three critical things I learned are (1) don’t run with auto settings. You need to ensure you are running on Ultra (or Extreme) or you might as well not bother (unless the compromise is for wireless); (2) start any game testing at SS 100 (2448 resolution) in Steam VR–the default SS is 150, which is ridiculously high and will steal massive performance with hardly any benefit in most games; (3) disable brightness control in default.vrsettings to largely alleviate the dimmer than average display; (4) don’t jump to a thin face pad immediately because you’ve read in a post that this will increase your FOV. It very well might for some, but for me it destroyed the sweet-spot and made it impossible to focus both eyes simultaneous. I even wrote a “bad” review initially because of this. Going back to the stock face pad, however, fixed all this, while still giving me clearly wider FOV than my Index; (5) glare bothered me on that first day, until I actually started playing games normally and realized that I don’t see it 90% of the time unless it is white on black text and look at it from an angle; (6) The VP2 has a different optimization space than the Index. Anyone buying it to play Beat Saber or other titles optimized for lowest common denominator headsets would be making a foolish choice (although Beat Saber works perfectly fine–just a little hot); but for sims like MSFS, XP, DCS, VTOL, and Assetto Corsa; and any modern titles in which resolution, FOV, and improved color/contrast matter like Alyx and Subnautica, there’s no going back for me. And of course, with Valve/lighthouse tracking, HMD and control responsiveness is pretty much perfect. Yes, I still have my Index, but it is now relegated for use with games like Beat Saber, or for coop play usage.

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Good points… and I would top it up with the need to activate Vive’s “Motion Compensation” (Smoothing) and make SS adjustments in order to fixate FPS at either 18 or 22.5 in fpsVR.

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Big thanks for that info

Should get mine in about 2 weeks ,
I’m not good at waiting

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