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

 

[Juergen Lung]

@anton_Chez Yeah i had this litte remote on the rift and i missed it later on Rift S.
regarding Race end and going back to CM i've activated "back to Desktop" to go back to virtual Desktop after the race and see Content Manager.

I will do some more test in the next days, but my first impression with Virtual Desktop was much better.

 

[Jason Mullin]

G2 arrived yesterday and my initial impressions are very good.
I’ve had the Rift S and Oddessey + both of which were moved on quickly as I experienced sickness after a few laps.

I completed a 20 lap race last night and there have been no weird feelings at all, of which I can only assume it’s due to the headset looking so damn good within the settings available to my mid range PC.

My favorite sim, take a deep breath, is the original Project Cars. I can get it looking acceptable, but cannot get rid of the shimmering and there’s only so much room with a 2060 super.

I’m running fpsVR to monitor setting changes and taking notes with each incremental change. I have to maintain 90fps, tried 60hz and do not care for it.

AMS 2 is tough to run, same with PC2.
Assetto Corsa is looking good but oddly the winner so far is rF2. Lots of settings tweaked over 2 hours, WMR, NCP, in game and Steam VR.
I can hold 90fps while SS 150% with Steam VR. There’s much left to learn, and I believe I can get the Madness engine dialed in with enough trial and error.

It’s actually a bit fun doing testing sessions, adjusting settings and reading what’s working for others.
That said, there is some contradicting YouTube videos and bad information on Reddit. I firmly believe everyone needs to start in your NCP and work outwards from there. There are no blanket settings, I’m learning we all must fine tune our own machines.

I think for anyone that may have tried VR in the past and was turned off as I was, the resolution of the G2 is something to consider. The sweet spot is larger than what I’ve heard, the image is approaching monitor levels of quality it’s quite an impressive thing to experience.
I’m very happy so far and would spend $600 on it again tomorrow.

 

[Atak_Kat]

Hi all,
Just received the new G2, and curious if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I'm looking for a basic reference photo (maybe through the lens) of how much 'blur' at the edges or outside the sweetspot is normal (for the G2). Preferably something easy like a spot in the WMR cliff house or something that I can easily just compare what I see with what others see.

(The first G2 I received was defective, would not power up, replaced by my retailer in 2 days!!! This one works but honestly the amount of blur outside the sweetspot seems worse than my G1.... So I'm wondering if I still have a defective unit and am looking for some sort of reference to take a call whether or not to claim for another replacement.).

TIA for any suggestions.

 

[anton_Chez]

Don't bother. They are all the same and if you've had a G1 then you will definitely notice that the blur and perceived sweet spot is in fact smaller. Same thing happened to me. You need to adjust to it if you're keen on keeping the G2. For me, I ended up just keeping the G1.

I wouldn't bother going into the minute details of the millimeters of blur you can see based on a reference. Everyone's head and eyes are different and that will affect the results, too.

 

[Celestiale]

Hi all,
Just received the new G2, and curious if anyone can point me in the right direction.

I'm looking for a basic reference photo (maybe through the lens) of how much 'blur' at the edges or outside the sweetspot is normal (for the G2). Preferably something easy like a spot in the WMR cliff house or something that I can easily just compare what I see with what others see.

(The first G2 I received was defective, would not power up, replaced by my retailer in 2 days!!! This one works but honestly the amount of blur outside the sweetspot seems worse than my G1.... So I'm wondering if I still have a defective unit and am looking for some sort of reference to take a call whether or not to claim for another replacement.).

TIA for any suggestions.

Getting both eyes as close to perfectly centered as possible is very important in the G2 due to the small sweetspot. If you get both eyes centered within the lenses, there is no big problem regarding blur. I would highly suggest a custom 3D printed facegasket to get your eyes closer to the lense which also helps.

After implementing the custom facegasket, i'd suggest to close one eye and move the headset around until you feel you have a crystal clear picture in the open eye. Then close the eye and open the other one.
-> If you have to move the headset horizontally to get a clear picture, then your IPD is off and you have to adjust it accordingly (unless you are out of the range then there is nothing you can do).
-> If you have to move it vertically to get a clear picture, then you have some kind of vertical eye position offset (meaning one eye is higher then the other one on your head), which is less unusual then you would think. In this case the Reverb G2 is not for you unfortunately. Using it anyway can cause temporary eye problems, which you should absolutely avoid.

Currently the headset manufactures build the VR headset for people that have a perfectly symetrical head. In reality, no one has a perfectly symetrical head. Some have smaller deviations, some have bigger ones. If you add the small sweetspot from the G2, only certain people can use this device.

VR manufacturers should start to implement vertical adjustment independently for each VR lense to cater to a wider audience. Unfortunately, most seem to have no knowledge about anatomy what so ever.

 

[Jason Mullin]

I must have won the IPD lottery with the G2 as any blur I perceive is on the extreme outer edges. Even when turning my eyes horizontally the image remains clear almost to the edge.
Another oddity is at 44 years old, I’m starting to have far sighted issues, specifically with this iPhone I’m typing on.
I’m curious now about possible production variances with the G2.

 

[blekenbleu]

I’m curious now about possible production variances with the G2.

Evidently variances are rarely significant:

 

[Jason Mullin]

Great video, thanks for sharing.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Another oddity is at 44 years old, I’m starting to have far sighted issues, specifically with this iPhone I’m typing on.

It's not as focal point is somewhere from few meters to infinity.

 

[Jason Mullin]

It's not as focal point is somewhere from few meters to infinity.

Sorry Andrew I don’t understand?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Sorry Andrew I don’t understand?

Far sightness is not a problem as focal point is father away.

 

[Jason Mullin]

I have an off topic question, exhausted google and specific forum searches.

I'm running American Truck Simulator quite well on the G2 with one issue... The menu screen and in cabin cockpit driving camera are way below me. I'm sitting about 50 feet above the truck.
I've reset my seated play area (WMR) and mapped a hotkey for cockpit view. All other sims working fine, all other camera positions in ATS are working fine. Any ideas?

 

[Michael Stead]

Any ideas?

Unfortunately not. I have the same problem with ATS, ETS2 and AMS2. At this point I just have a centre headset button mapped to my wheel that I hit when I first start the games.

 

[EsxPaul]

I just read some comments from a WMR dev where they are hoping to bring a future update that could significantly reduce the amount of GPU memory used when running SteamVR. It'll be great if they can pull it off.

Edit: Also, AMD are going to put some more time into looking at the 500 chipset usb issues

 

[randy66]

I have an off topic question, exhausted google and specific forum searches.

I'm running American Truck Simulator quite well on the G2 with one issue... The menu screen and in cabin cockpit driving camera are way below me. I'm sitting about 50 feet above the truck.
I've reset my seated play area (WMR) and mapped a hotkey for cockpit view. All other sims working fine, all other camera positions in ATS are working fine. Any ideas?

When this happens to me I open the desktop with the reverb controller menu. then use the the controller to open the menu on steam vr box . The drop-down box has reset seat position . Use the controller to reset while looking forward.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

I have an off topic question, exhausted google and specific forum searches.

I'm running American Truck Simulator quite well on the G2 with one issue... The menu screen and in cabin cockpit driving camera are way below me. I'm sitting about 50 feet above the truck.
I've reset my seated play area (WMR) and mapped a hotkey for cockpit view. All other sims working fine, all other camera positions in ATS are working fine. Any ideas?

Don't play ATS myself but ACC has similar problem from time to time, the secret is to hit recenter button the moment it loads in VR, I just have VoiceAttack command mapped to that so no need to scramble for keyboard. Another thing from the past, some height issues were correctable by calibrating floor level in WMR portal. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-floor-height-windows-mixed-reality

 

[Jason Mullin]

Don't play ATS myself but ACC has similar problem from time to time, the secret is to hit recenter button the moment it loads in VR, I just have VoiceAttack command mapped to that so no need to scramble for keyboard. Another thing from the past, some height issues were correctable by calibrating floor level in WMR portal. https://www.windowscentral.com/how-fix-floor-height-windows-mixed-reality

Agreed I’ve seen it happen in ACC as well a few times.

 

[James77]

So I got my HP Reverb G2 last weekend.

It was a bit of a gamble for me to go VR again because I used to own a Playstation VR headset which I used a couple of times for GT sport and it made me feel nauseous. But despite that, I always liked the overwhelming feeling of immersion VR can bring so decided to try it again with better hardware.
I recently built a new pc with a 5950x and a 3080 RTX. So enough power for some VR fun.

I was deciding between the Valve Index and the G2. I decided to go for the G2 as it has inside out tracking (I really dont want seperate motion sensors), higher resolution and according to the reviews it's great for sim racing.

Here are my first impressions:

The set up is not as easy and straight forward as I thought. I had trouble getting the G2 working on my pc. Non of my usb ports recognized the headset. After some research I found out this has to do with my motherboard (x570). Luckily I have a usb hub and it works through that. After setting it all up through WMR and having Steam VR installed I was good to go.

The headset fits on my head comfortably without any light bleed or fogging of the lenses. I can keep this headset on for hours, no problem. It feels light and comfy. It will take some fiddeling with the straps but once you have it right you probably wont need to change it again. Also the padding is made out of a super soft fabric which feels nice against the skin. You can also set the IPD (the distance between your pupils) for a sharper image. I wished though that it could be adjusted separately per eye because my left eye keeps a bit of a blur. Also the lenses are a bit far from your face. I understood there are custom face paddings that could help. However I didn't experience any heat or sweating which I remember I did have with the PS VR. The mask does get a bit warm on the outside but somehow that heat didnt radiate to my face just yet.

For racing I tried it on automobilista 2, AC, ACC and dirt rally 2.0 so far.

It's absolutely amazing in Automobilista 2. Exactly how I hoped it would be, crisp image, great fps, super immersive and no signs of nausia at all.

ACC looks good too, although the first few sessions I started on the roof of my car. Which reminded me to set a re-center key in the bindings menu which solved it. This should be done for every game. But ACC did crash a few times on me while using VR, not sure what caused it.

I didnt get vr to work in the original Assetto Corsa yet but I have many issues with that game after installing the SOL mod so I need to figure that out still.

Dirt Rally 2.0 looks nice too but it gave me a slight nausia so I didnt play that for too long. I think Automobilista 2 will be my main VR sim for now as I can play that for hours in a row and looks absolutely stunning.

I also tried Half Life Alyx and Beat Saber, both amazing.

There's one other thing that bothers me a bit and that is the sound. When I have it set to the built-in headphones (which sound pretty good btw) the sound often switches back and forth between my headphones and my desk speakers. Not sure why it does that, maybe another usb problem. Does anybody else experience this?

All in all it's a great VR headset but you might need some patience to set it up correctly and it does have some issues. Hopefully HP will provide future firmware updates to tackle some of them.

Pro's:

• Comfort
• High resolution (2160 x2160)
• Price (compared to valve index)
• Inside out tracking (both a pro as a con)
• Sound (when it works)

Cons:

• Set up can be not as straight forward as you'd hope
• Cables (there's a bunch and the main cable attached to the headset is a heavy one)
• Tracking can have issues in non-racing games when using controllers
• Field of view, lenses are quite far from your eyes which limits fov, might need a custom face pad
• You'll need a powerful pc to make maximum use of it's potential.
• Sound issues.

More cons than pro's so far, but I think every current vr headset comes with issues. But once you have it working well in a game you like then it's really a next level experience and you'll forget all the pain ;-)

 

[Celestiale]

Hey @James77 , sounds you have been a bit unlucky, because i can't mirror many of the cons.
- Setup was just plug and play in my case
- Field of View is getting really good (almost Index like) with custom facegasket. I would highly recommend it. Really transforms the headset
- no sound issues

Sounds it was really a MB issue in your case, with my MB I didn't encounter any problems in that regards.
Regarding Dirt Rally 2.0 there is a setting to lock the Horizon, this is absolutely needed. Activating it, you won't get nausea again.

 

[James77]

Hi @Celestiale . Yeah, for some reason it's not fully compatible with my motherboard. It works fine through my usb hub though the sound issue keeps popping up repeatedly. I read that in my case a seperately powered usb hub works best. So I think I'll try that.

Which custom facegasket do you use?

Thanks for the Dirt Rally tip, I'll give it a try!