HP Reverb G2 - User Experiences & Owner Impressions

[Mr Latte]

Reports are it may be launching in September 2020 which is earlier than some expected.
I'm seriously considering one of these having had a CV1 in the past and enjoyed VR

Finally, though with this device, now we have image quality that is very good for simulations. Also offering easy setup, superb audio, and nice controllers but all at a good price.

Steam HP Reverb G2
UK Pre-Orders
Manual
Datasheet/Specs

 

[Deleted member 197115]

It's $599 in US, is it really €700 in EU?

 

[GuitarTech]

It's $599 in US, is it really €700 in EU?

It's $599 in US, is it really €700 in EU?

Oh you lucky people in the US of A. Here in Germany the G2 costs €695 with controllers, €605 for just the headset.
The Netherlands too, havn't checked any other countries I'll admit. GB is a no-go in two weeks anyway, Italy could be cheaper, havn't looked. The prices vary here in Europe from country to country. For example, I bought my TS-PC in France back then because it was over €100 cheaper that Germany at the time.
As far as the G2 is concerned, I'll wait and see how it all develops. If it continues to get such a bad rep., it's possible they'll become very much cheaper next year.

 

[ThugUK]

It's $599 in US, is it really €700 in EU?

Is $599 including taxes too?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Interesting how that works. Originally it was listed in EU for €583.90, and I am pretty sure retailers started taking preorders at that price, and then they raised it. Supply and demand, they have super hard time fulfilling preorders, so unless we have something better on the market, price going down any time soon is highly unlikely.
The resolution is out of this world jaw dropping though, as long time WMR user my experience was pretty much plug and play, but I've probably already learned few tricks on that platform already.

Rift S wasn't released in perfect shape either, took a while for FB to make tracking work, and it still has no physical IPD adjustment and audio solution leaves a lot to be desired.

 

[GuitarTech]

Interesting how that works. Originally it was listed in EU for €583.90, and I am pretty sure retailers started taking preorders at that price, and then they raised it. Supply and demand, they have super hard time fulfilling preorders, so unless we have something better on the market, price going down any time soon is highly unlikely.
The resolution is out of this world jaw dropping though, as long time WMR user my experience was pretty much plug and play, but I've probably already learned few tricks on that platform already.

Rift S wasn't released in perfect shape either, took a while for FB to make tracking work, and it still has no physical IPD adjustment and audio solution leaves a lot to be desired.

i'll give you that one, the sound is pretty awful the way it comes. It sounds like someone is playing a transistor radio on the beach a hundrted meters away.
Until a week ago, I had an after-market solution from Kabatec here in Germany. a well-thought out solution utilizing Sennheiser loudspeakers.
I've removed them again to be able to use a headset with a mic., as I've gone back to using Crew Chief, for which, of course, you need a mic.

 

[Des Pearce]

£639 with controllers in the UK, pre-order price was £525 and now they're giving us £50 back. I'm going to use it for the extended, 24hr turnaround warranty they're offering for £70.

 

[GuitarTech]

£639 with controllers in the UK, pre-order price was £525 and now they're giving us £50 back. I'm going to use it for the extended, 24hr turnaround warranty they're offering for £70.

Even if I wanted too buy one at the moment, GB is a no-go anyway. God knows what will happens with Customs duty and VAT etc, at the end of the year, it'll be complete chaos. It'll probably be cheaper to order it in the USA

 

[Des Pearce]

Even if I wanted too buy one at the moment, GB is a no-go anyway. God knows what will happens with Customs duty and VAT etc, at the end of the year, it'll be complete chaos. It'll probably be cheaper to order it in the USA

Can't say I blame you, wish I could make the UK a no go for myself and family.

 

[mrbungle83]

I'm still overall unhappy with the G2, I cant find a balance, if I'm running 90hz it's great, beautiful, but as soon as reprojection kicks in its horrible, the whole thing goes sensitive to movement to the extent that if picks up my heartbeat, if I lower to 60hz the frames drop massively and latency is horrible (it drops to around 30fps when 90 hz is enable it drops to 70ish, I truly cannot understand, it's a complete mess to the point 60hz just doesn't work for me. Reprojection off is great until you go 1 fps below 90fps then is absolutely stutters all over the place. I have done all the stuff in this thread and my main sim is ACC I just cant stand the steam or wmr reprojection soloutions and to run at 90fps with a 3080 and 5800x means lowering settings to a point but looks shite. For hotlapping G2 rules at 90hz 90fps for anything else the compromise is too much.

 

[GuitarTech]

Can't say I blame you, wish I could make the UK a no go for myself and family.

I'm kind of stuck in the middle, being a Brit that's been living in Germany since 1983 with my German wife, who I met here while I was on tour with a jazz band. ( Long story )
As insurance against any Brexit-related problems, in 2019 I applied for, and was granted, German citizenship. So now I'm British and German, but at the moment I can't visit my family in Yorkshire anyway due to Covid 19. And my family in Yorkshire is very divided, some of them were leavers and some were adamant remainers. Difficult times we're living in at the moment. hopefully 2021 will be better...

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I'm still overall unhappy with the G2, I cant find a balance, if I'm running 90hz it's great, beautiful, but as soon as reprojection kicks in its horrible, the whole thing goes sensitive to movement to the extent that if picks up my heartbeat, if I lower to 60hz the frames drop massively and latency is horrible (it drops to around 30fps when 90 hz is enable it drops to 70ish, I truly cannot understand, it's a complete mess to the point 60hz just doesn't work for me. Reprojection off is great until you go 1 fps below 90fps then is absolutely stutters all over the place. I have done all the stuff in this thread and my main sim is ACC I just cant stand the steam or wmr reprojection soloutions and to run at 90fps with a 3080 and 5800x means lowering settings to a point but looks shite. For hotlapping G2 rules at 90hz 90fps for anything else the compromise is too much.

Try do disable reprojection, you don't need it in 60hz mode, even 1080Ti drives 60fps effortlessly, but it does add significant performance overhead.

 

[mrbungle83]

Try do disable reprojection, you don't need it in 60hz mode, even 1080Ti drives 60fps effortlessly, but it does add significant performance overhead.

Tried it, it's a slideshow, i think 60fps is botched for me and many x570 users I have to run the headset through a PCI usb card or I get error 7-14 my mobo doesn't support the G2! waiting on bios update. strangely enough I had this issue on the rift cv1 with a gigabyte board that's why i got the fresco logic usb card, had to rummage around some old boxes to dig it out. I appreciate al your help by the way Andrew. btw what's your recommendation on motion smoothing?

 

[vannib]

Guys,
i am using per application video settings in Steam with "Motion Smoothing" and "Reprojection" turned off. I do this on the desktop, not in the VR environment as i have no controllers and still have not found a way to interact within the SteamVR world.

Still, when i run the game (ACC), FPSVR still shows a variable percentage of reprojection being applied (i guess).

Is this normal?

 

[cerebralvortex]

Guys,
i am using per application video settings in Steam with "Motion Smoothing" and "Reprojection" turned off. I do this on the desktop, not in the VR environment as i have no controllers and still have not found a way to interact within the SteamVR world.

Still, when i run the game (ACC), FPSVR still shows a variable percentage of reprojection being applied (i guess).

Is this normal?

Motion smoothing = Reprojection

 

[Bradderz_5]

I just received my G2. This is my first experience with VR, and after all the insane Youtube, etc., hype, the experience has been very disappointing.

Washed out colors, a very small sweet spot that I would never call "sweet" in the first place, dog-poor borders, cheap-feeling controllers, no eye-to-lens adjustment, and so on. (The headset at least felt decently made and light enough, with a decent fit.)

But the biggest disappointment by far is the software ... OMG, after three hours of cursing, fighting MS's garbage, trying to get Steam to play nice, I finally got one game to work. Others either failed to launch at all, or were stuck in an endless "up next" scenario (or even tried to play "flat" in a window in the headset). I'm probably doing a thing or two "wrong," but how can the most fundamental thing of all - getting something to work on your shiny new headset - be that hard?

In just one bit of utter software stupidity, for example, it seems many games insist on projecting your game to both the headset and your flat screen simultaneously, apparently with no obvious way of alternating or choosing. Steam even warns you about the performance penalty of this, but there's no offer of a fix. I've seen some comments on how a line could be inserted in some file somewhere to prevent that, but holy heck, what an obvious thing to build in as a simple choice. Where is it!? Oh, right, that's not an important lead to greater engagement with M.S., which of course that damnable cliff-house, etc., is all about. By "Mixed Reality," M.S. apparently means "we don't really know what this is for yet."

So running that one game that ran (Dirt Rally 2) was ... interesting. Horrible frame rates (on a 2080ti), but I assume that was largely because the game insisted on projecting to my flat screen too.

Yes, it was more "immersive," if you can ignore the visual shortcomings. But would I actually play it like that for more than a few minutes as a demo? Thus far, I think not, and even
"demos" are an aggravating waste of time until the software experience (like getting a game to actually run!) is improved. I expect my 55" OLED screen will see far, far more use. A screen that size is already quite "immersive," it's beautifully sharp and colorful, the frame rates are great at 4k and maxed-out quality, and best of all, the games actually work on it!

OK, so this is a rant. Maybe I'm all wet, I'll get past the software issues, and it will turn out to be a wonderful experience. Maybe. But so far, sadly, absolutely not.

I can only speak for me, my experience with the Rift S has been flawless, at least with rF2, AMS2, and R3E, which are the games I mainly play. PC2 and DR2 also work constantly well.
I've seen some people here have had a plug-and-play experience, but the vast majority have been having problems to some extent, sometimes a minor annoyance, and sometimes game- breaking.
VR is still a very young technology it's true, but I'm not prepared to drop nearly €700 to be allowed to operate as an unpaid beta tester for HP and WMR.
My last VR headset before the Rift S was an Acer WMR headset, and it was very buggy too. I think maybe the problem is with WMR and Steam VR not playing very well together, but why should that be my problem for nearly €700?
They should not have released the G2 in its present state, and that's a hard fact. It has cock-all to do with the current state of VR technology, it's just sloppy work, or as we say where I come from, taking the piss.
It should have been capable of running more or less out of the box on all systems that fulfill the hardware requirements stated by HP and WMR without having to tweak this and that, and modifying the visor so you can see acceptably etc etc.
For €700 it's a joke, how glad I am that they put the release date back a month here in Germany, so I had enough time to follow this thread for the past few weeks, otherwise I would've bought one for sure, and probably also be tearing my hair out like most people here.

I came from a Rift S and the switch was a learning curve, different software to get used to. After the initial adjusting all the settings to get the best resolution (50% no 100%) its so much better than the blocky Rift S. My eyes are thanking me for it.

 

[vannib]

Motion smoothing = Reprojection

understood but why am I seeing reprojection % in FPS vr even if I launch the game with both motion smoothing and reprojection turned off?

 

[mrbungle83]

Does anyone know why latency is 2x higher in 60fps mode also when reprojection is off why does 90fps look great and 87 and below look juddery?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

btw what's your recommendation on motion smoothing?

My personal preference is not to use one, but if you must, ACC settings readme covers recommended approach with reprojection.

 

[Chrhun]

VR is still a very young technology it's true, but I'm not prepared to drop nearly €700 to be allowed to operate as an unpaid beta tester for HP and WMR.

I think being a beta tester is like a given if you are in for VR...

 

[mechsicko]

understood but why am I seeing reprojection % in FPS vr even if I launch the game with both motion smoothing and reprojection turned off?

Even with it disabled if you can't maintain at least 1/2 the fps it kicks into reprojection/motion smoothing mode. Disabling it merely changes the threshold it kicks in at, it does not fully disable it.