Varjo Aero

[metalnwood]

I think things changes in the G2 at some point. I replaced my index with it and immediately was concerned by the amount of movement it showed with my sfx100. It was really shocking.

I got one of the first G2's anywhere. At some point they made a change and now I never notice anything.. I hang mine on a post and recenter every time I put it on from habit, whether I need to or not which is not a problem, its on my wheel. What would be a problem is if I had to during a race, thankfully I dont.

When both are working well there really isnt much between them, in my case no difference for racing (other than lighthouse's propensity to be a PITA with servos around be that motion or for many people just a DD wheel base).

Being technically better doesnt always make something practically better and for something like the oculus, there are only a couple scenarios that people really complain about occlusion and even then you are going to need more than 2 lighthouses to fix that issue as well.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just saw another review of the Aero by someone who had some reservations about it.

He said it was definitely clearer than the G2 with no SDE at all. The colors are clear and vibrant, but the blacks are not black like OLED.

He said that the distortion issue is still a problem in iRacing, but it was OK in AMS2 and Half Life Alyx. Someone else mentioned that there is a fix for iRacing available.

However for his face he found it to be much less comfortable than the Index or G2. He also found it heavy and said it took a toll after a while.

"Now the real let down to me...Next to the Pimax 8KX this is the most uncomfortable headset I have EVER worn! I did finally after about an hour of fiddling with it get it to be acceptable. Maybe it's just my face but there is always too much pressure pushing into my face especially my cheeks just below my eyes. "

He didn't like using it for room scale because of the weight and discomfort and is only using it for sims.

He also noticed the drop in vertical FOV compared to the G2.

Given that HoiHman had to futz with the Index to make if comfortable for him and I consider the Index wonderfully comfortable out of the box, maybe the Aero will fit his face better.

 

[RCHeliguy]

They have a discord server for Varjo owners.

Discord - A New Way to Chat with Friends & Communities

Discord is the easiest way to communicate over voice, video, and text. Chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.

discord.gg

Another owner mentioned using creative VR strap completely changes the comfort aspect. You can also use a 8KX front pad to improve comfort.

He also mentioned that there was an iRacing section that explained how to make it pop in iRacing.

It was also mentioned that there was a headphone mod for it.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just got another overwhelmingly positive review.

No setup issues, no comfort issues. Absolute best for clarity, built in fans are great! Earbuds supplied are good, setup was a breeze, Varjo software fantastic and intuitive, integration with SteamVR convenient. Runs great on 3090 with Win 11. Worth the FOV loss, clarity rules all. Videos don't come close to doing it justice, will be running it on a 6 DOF rig with 3080Ti next also Win 11.

Edit: And suddenly that thread was taken down. Hmmm.

 

[Frank Denneman]

Ordered the Aero today after having a brief chat with @HoiHman. Ordered it with two lighthouses. Didn't order a controller as I'm only going to use it for Simracing. I have the reverb G2 and those controllers are left untouched as well. Let's see if I can set up the system without a controller. Don't want to order useless stuff. Maybe it's a mistake of not ordering a controller right away, but let's find out

 

[blekenbleu]

not ordering a controller

SteamVR can be configured to use e.g. a joystick or game controller

 

[vannib]

Ordered the Aero today after having a brief chat with @HoiHman. Ordered it with two lighthouses. Didn't order a controller as I'm only going to use it for Simracing. I have the reverb G2 and those controllers are left untouched as well. Let's see if I can set up the system without a controller. Don't want to order useless stuff. Maybe it's a mistake of not ordering a controller right away, but let's find out

one base station is enough for sims.

 

[RCHeliguy]

one base station is enough for sims.

It's enough to work, but two is better.

With one you get 2 axis good(up/down, left/right), but you lose in the 3rd axis (fore/aft) If you have motion, I would recommend 2 base stations especially if you have surge or a seat mover.

 

[metalnwood]

It's enough to work, but two is better.

With one you get 2 axis good(up/down, left/right), but you lose in the 3rd axis (fore/aft) If you have motion, I would recommend 2 base stations especially if you have surge or a seat mover.

I had one lighthouse, as I moved my rig position it livd in two different places over time. Both times they were essentially mounted at 2.2M high about 1.5M ahead and at the side of the cockpit pointing down at me

It worked fine with motion as well. I am not sure what you mean you lose the 3rd axis, all axis work with only one light house.

 

[RCHeliguy]

All 3 axis work, but they all drop a "bit" in resolution with one base station and the fore/aft axis drops more according to the official specifications.

I've accidentally forgotten to turn on my right rear base station before and I noticed a difference.

That said, I have my base stations set in the corners of the room for room scale, so if you have one set optimally for your rig you may see better performance that I do with a single base station.

 

[Frank Denneman]

I have a motion rig (5DOF) so I didn't want to create any "blind spots" . Now I need to figure out where to put them

 

[metalnwood]

All 3 axis work, but they all drop a "bit" in resolution with one base station and the fore/aft axis drops more according to the official specifications.

I've accidentally forgotten to turn on my right rear base station before and I noticed a difference.

That said, I have my base stations set in the corners of the room for room scale, so if you have one set optimally for your rig you may see better performance that I do with a single base station.

Yes, I imagine that it is because of the less than optimal placement you have - if your plan was to only use one which of course you don't.

The lighthouse wont care about surge, one persons forward/aft is another persons lateral movement when looked at from another angle. The lighthouse tracking has no concept of which axis is which on our motion platforms. I think what you are referring to as far as lighthouse tech is as you get out of range, going directly to and from the lighthouse is less accurate than moving to its sides.

 

[RCHeliguy]

going directly to and from the lighthouse is less accurate than moving to its sides.

Exactly, unless you have two lighthouses and they can triangulate to keep accuracy in all directions.

 

[J.F. Richard]

[...]
He said that the distortion issue is still a problem in iRacing, but it was OK in AMS2 and Half Life Alyx. Someone else mentioned that there is a fix for iRacing available.
[...]

Your tantalizing comment that there is a fix for iRacing available sent me on a very unproductive hour-long search through Google-land . Would you care to elaborate on what that fix might be, or where you read about it?

I just tried my Aero for the first time in iRacing, and the entire world appears to tilt whenever I look at my side mirrors, even with the experimental distortion correction mode on. In fact, that mode might be making things a little more tilty. That was pretty shocking after a perfectly stable experience in MSFS last night.

 

[RCHeliguy]

@J.F. Richard I found this on the Discord server.

From our very own HoiHman
"Editing the renderdx11.ini and changing FixGetProjectRawBug from 0 to 1 totally fixed the horrendous warping in iRacing"

"That did the trick, @Henk (HoiHman) ! From the description of that setting in the ini file, I would never would have guessed this would be it. I still need to dial in my settings, but the clarity is unreal! Can't wait to race this week end"

 

[J.F. Richard]

Thanks @RCHeliguy !

That was actually me asking on Discord, and then responding to @HoiHman. It's a small world!

And thanks again @HoiHman .

 

[J.F. Richard]

More comments after testing my Aero with iRacing a little more last night. I am having trouble finding a sweet spot with the game and headset settings to get a somewhat reliable 90 fps. Lowering the resolution to "medium" helps, but at that level, the PPD isn't that much better than on the Index, and the FOV compromise and lack of built-in audio makes the choice less obvious.

Will get back to it this afternoon, but I am starting to think the Aero might be more of a flight sim headset for me, and I might have to stick to the Index for racing. I might change my mind once I try on the Index again. Or maybe turning off track-side objects to gain FPS and keep the high-resolution rendering where it matters may be the best option.

BTW, I am pretty sure that my car's steering wheel and side mirrors seem noticeably larger with the Aero than with the Index (which is actually useful in the case of the mirrors, but also a little troubling). And come to think of it, the iRacing menu screen does seem wider in the Aero. But, that reminded me that I had the reverse impression back when I upgraded from my old Rift S to the Index, when I thought that the car cockpits had suddenly gotten more cramped, and then I just got used to it. So this might be more of an issue with the Index than with the Aero.

 

[RCHeliguy]

All I can say is thankyou to all the early adopters testing this stuff out.

 

[J.F. Richard]

After further testing (including going back to the Index for a bit), I have to say that I was already starting to forget how blurry iRacing on the Index was .

The "problem" with the Aero is that you obviously start at the highest possible resolution setting to see how good the picture could be, and then you start going down until you get an acceptable frame rate. It's unavoidable that at some point, you start thinking the image looks like crap compared to where you started... until you put on your old headset again and realize that "crap" is very relative. Even at the "Medium" setting, the Aero still blows the Index out of the water, even if things are not quite as sharp as you know they could be. I already can't wait until the next generation of RTX graphics cards.

Oh, and the horizontal FOV, while a bit smaller than in the Index, isn't shockingly different. Sitting in the Skippy in my Index, with the lenses squished to my face, I could *almost* see the entire side mirrors. In the Aero, I was missing the last... quarter, maybe third of the mirrors? So you lose a bit of peripheral vision, but not a whole lot, according to my very unscientific experiment.

Last thing I tried, and I wasn't really expecting that, was that using the Aero on Medium with 100% resolution scaling in Steam VR looks and performs pretty much the same as putting the Aero on Highest, and lowering the Steam VR scaling until you hit about the same resolution (at 44% or so). So controlling the resolution scaling from Steam VR (for those apps that use it, i.e. NOT MSFS) lets you tweak it up and down in finer increments than Varjo allows, without having to restart the Varjo headset, and allows you to look at your desktop in between races in the highest possible foveated resolution, which is pretty neat. You do have to exit the current race session and restart (not the iRacing UI), but it is still more convenient when fine-tuning.

 

[J.F. Richard]

While I'm geeking out on this, with identical iRacing settings and conditions (same car in the pits of the same track at the same time of day, in Test Drive mode), I set up the total number of pixels of both headsets to be roughly the same, and was surprised that in all cases, the Index performed about 8 to 10% better. Then it dawned on me that since the aspect ratios of the viewing areas of both headsets are very different (a 1.17 : 1 aspect ratio per eye on the Aero vs 0.9 : 1 for the Index), iRacing was pushing a lot more sky pixels to the Index, giving it better performance for a similar total number of pixels.

A better comparison would probably be to pick similar horizontal resolutions per eye rather than a total number of pixels. That's really what matters in a racing sim.