I just sold my Reverb G2 and I don't plan any other VR purchase anytime soon.

You may think "why would we care" and that's fine, I just want to give advice to potential buyers.

I bought the thing on Amazon and I had 15 days to try it. I wish I had sent it back in March but I missed this opportunity and lost about 150 € selling it used. I was already uncertain at the time, after only 10 days, and that was a big red flag.

Don't make the same mistake, try it a decent number of hours and if you have any doubt, send it back for a refund.

For me, it was not the G2. It's the intrinsic nature of the thing.

The G2 is one of the lightest (maybe the lightest) HMD on the market but after 15-20 min I couldn't wait to take it off me. 

The G2 has the highest resolution on the (consumer/VG) market, yet every time I missed the sharpness and comfort of my monitor.

IMO VR in its current status leaves much to be desired in terms of ergonomics. That thing on your head, that pressure on your cheekbones, that cable dangling and always getting caught in the armrest of the chair, the necessity to turn your head instead of naturally moving the pupil to scan your field of view... 

Maybe it was just not for me.

So, if you're into it, try it but ponder well... beyond the "WOW" effect that it certainly can have on you 🙂

Getting rid of the thing really has been a relief.

Cheers

1 hour ago, MrFuzzy said:

I just sold my Reverb G2 and I don't plan any other VR purchase anytime soon.

You may think "why would we care" and that's fine, I just want to give advice to potential buyers.

I bought the thing on Amazon and I had 15 days to try it. I wish I had sent it back in March but I missed this opportunity and lost about 150 € selling it used. I was already uncertain at the time, after only 10 days, and that was a big red flag.

Don't make the same mistake, try it a decent number of hours and if you have any doubt, send it back for a refund.

For me, it was not the G2. It's the intrinsic nature of the thing.

The G2 is one of the lightest (maybe the lightest) HMD on the market but after 15-20 min I couldn't wait to take it off me. 

The G2 has the highest resolution on the (consumer/VG) market, yet every time I missed the sharpness and comfort of my monitor.

IMO VR in its current status leaves much to be desired in terms of ergonomics. That thing on your head, that pressure on your cheekbones, that cable dangling and always getting caught in the armrest of the chair, the necessity to turn your head instead of naturally moving the pupil to scan your field of view... 

Maybe it was just not for me.

So, if you're into it, try it but ponder well... beyond the "WOW" effect that it certainly can have on you 🙂

Getting rid of the thing really has been a relief.

Cheers

Yup, hence why I am stuck in a flightsim limbo. I can't quote go back to flat screen, but I can't quite manage VR..... It is a horrible (first world) problem to have. 

2 hours ago, MrFuzzy said:

IMO VR in its current status leaves much to be desired in terms of ergonomics. That thing on your head, that pressure on your cheekbones, that cable dangling and always getting caught in the armrest of the chair, the necessity to turn your head instead of naturally moving the pupil to scan your field of view... 

You're not alone, these same reasons applied to me, and that's why I'm not currently flying in VR. I purchased the Oculus Rift 4 years ago and I think I've used it a dozen of times, maybe less, for flights shorter than 30 minutes. Apart of what you're saying, the fact that is more difficult to get to your flight control hardware when flying in VR makes this experience unnatural, even if we consider that the looks are great in VR.

That also could explain why in the annual survey (Navigraph & others) about flight simulation, the VR user base is below 20%.

 

 

2 minutes ago, edpatino said:

That also could explain why in the annual survey (Navigraph & others) about flight simulation, the VR user base is below 20%.

And flight simulation is still humanly bearable. 

First person games such as Half Life Alyx, if played like they are "naturally" meant to be played (continuous movement & view changes) make me sick after 2 minutes 😞 Motion sickness added up to all the other causes of discomfort.

It's a shame because otherwise they would be a fantastic experience I was always eager to have. But it just doesn't work (for me at least).

The only way to tolerate HL Alyx for me was to use teleport and 45 degrees snap rotations, which of course felt very unnatural. In fact I requested a refund from Steam after less than 60 minutes of gaming.

At least I can learn from mistakes 😉

 

Nothing will ever beat the sharpness of a monitor or the convenience of looking at directly at your keyboard and joysticks. But the comfort of the vr headset can easily be corrected with a headstrap from https://www.studioformcreative.com/ 

These take the bulk of the weight away from your pressure points and make the headset more like wearing a hat. If heat is a problem you can also invest in a new face cover from https://vrcover.com/

I felt the same when i first bought a vr headset. Combined with a computer that was at minimum specs for vr I kept dropping framerates which induced  motion sickness as well. Instead of throwing in the towel, I searched the web for improvements and now combined with those comfort mods and upgraded sytem specs  I can sim with my headset for hours and really enjoy what vr has to offer.

You may not be able to beat the sharpness of a monitor, but absolutely nothing beats the immersion of a VR headset!

5 minutes ago, Garys said:

But the comfort of the vr headset can easily be corrected with a headstrap from https://www.studioformcreative.com/ These take the bulk of the weight away from your pressure points and make the headset more like wearing a hat. If heat is a problem you can also invest in a new face cover from https://vrcover.com/

I can sim with my headset for hours and really enjoy what vr has to offer. You may not be able to beat the sharpness of a monitor, but absolutely nothing beats the immersion of a VR headset!

Same here, I also bought the Pro Balance strap and together with my new PC I can't fly without VR. 👍

Any recommendation for a strap for the G2?

I bought the one for the valve index and just positioned the straps around the speakers like normal. Fits great.  I see they have straps specifically for the G2 now as well including the balance weights. I cant comment on the weights but they have good reviews.

 

Edited May 17, 20215 yr by Garys

1 hour ago, Ianrivaldosmith said:

Any recommendation for a strap for the G2?

https://www.studioformcreative.com/product-page/reverb-g2-apache-strap

1 hour ago, ZLA Steve said:

https://www.studioformcreative.com/product-page/reverb-g2-apache-strap

Will give it a try

I've wrapped 4 long fishing sinkers like this  ==  in duct tape. It's about 100 grams. That's then wrapped in a bit of soft foam and velcro'd around the lower rear band. It's perfectly front-back balanced and very comfy for me. $10 in bits 

Yeah, I was a pretty hardcore VR simmer a couple years ago. The convenience and sharpness of my 4K OLED and the fact that I cannot be completely disconnected from the real world most of the time has also led me to sell my Reverb G2. Hope things improve (a lot) in near future both on the hardware and software front...

Its quite amazing really I have seen many posts over the years by Fuzzy and Braun in enthusiastic support of VR and they have now also seemed to have got to the same point I reached a while back.

I have been with VR since the early days of the Oculus dev kits, it showed so much promise. Unfortunately it has really stalled. The hardware is not really changing and each new headset only brings a tiny improvement. To make matters worse the PC hardware is the same, each release of a CPU / GPU only brings a few percent improvement over the last. At this rate it will take years to get the 50%+ performance improvement VR really needs. To make matters worse mainstream VR has lost sight of the word "Reality" in the phrase "Virtual Reality" instead they are concentrating on playstation type games.

 I think the days of Assestto Corsa and P3D were the sweetspot for VR. Then as games have become better graphically the power needed for VR has become to much of a gap. Sure you can cock around with endless settings and drivers but really the problem is there really isn't enough umph to get satisfactory fidelity. Yeah you can turn down settings but whats the point have having the latest game graphics if you are dialing things down. When Assetto Corsa competizone was release I was excited that it was given VR but it became clear after the 1st few patches that VR performance was never going to be addressed. Its the same story with MSFS2020. I don't think the software vr performance will change much from this point forward and you can't even buy yourself out of it because even a top CPU/GPU combo doesn't cut the mustard.

Its sad but i just cannot see any major improvements comming in VR performance in the short or medium future.

I'm still enjoying my Rift S with very smooth performance with a mix of medium, high and ultra settings on ole faithful 457.30 driver still.

Crazy we are witnessing so many turned off Reverb G2 owners lately across several forums and Reddit.

I could never go back to 2D pancake simming (even if its an 8K monitor) after experiencing the in presence feeling of FOV and stereoscopic 3D in VR.

When MS/Asobo gives us some better color/brightness/VR Pointer options in a VR update and I'm all set.

 

Edited May 20, 20215 yr by blueshark747

Had a lot of fun with my original Rift, and expanded further into VR with my Rift S. Now I'm having more fun than ever with my Oculus Quest!