I abandoned VR eventually :)

[dogmanbird 269]

I've had to do firmware updates on almost every device in the kit, 

What I'm seeing in the headset so far is disappointing. There's a lot of glare / god rays with anything bright, you can really see the outer fresnel lens rings which glow with anything bright on the screen. I haven't yet been able to get anything perfectly in focus unlike with the g2 centre. It's like a hybrid of Quest 1 lenses and G2 resolution.

The overlap of the eyes is strange. I'll draw a pic to explain what I see. It's not overly distracting but I haven't experienced it with any other headset.

The vive 2 can move the face mask in and out, which affects the FOV. With it right up close to the eyes for max FOV, it's not significantly different to the g2 with custom face mask mod. 

I thought the Vive 2 had a 72 max IPD, but it only goes to about 70 according to it's OSD when adjusting it, which is fine for me. Somewhere between 66 and 70 seems to be fine and my eyes adjust. 

I bought a new vive port with it and it hums quite loudly. I have others at my work and I don't think I've ever heard them whine like this one.

The back adjustable band arrangement is easy to use and fairly heavy, so it offsets the weight fairly well. It's pretty well balanced for me. Overall I find it's comfortable. 

I have a fairly average sized or smaller head, and there's a bit of light leaking in from the sides. The padding on the mask is velcro'd on and I've slipped some padding between to stop the leak.

I can slightly peek out at the real world through the nose hole, like my other headsets, which is something I like.

Anyway I'll persist and see if things improve a bit

Edited June 28, 2021 by dogmanbird

[dogmanbird 269]

Just spent an hour flying in MSFS. Need to use steam openXR so the FPS is not as good straight off. It is notably worse FPS than G2 with steam's openxr. I also tried motion smoothing but couldn't get it to work smoothly. Steam drivers might fix these things somewhat in the future I guess as it's early days.

If I push the headset hard against my face, I can gain more FOV and still can't see the left and right edges, so potentially one could mod it and gain more FOV. You always see the top and bottom hard edge like a letterbox view, regardless of the face mask setting.

I think it may actually have a slightly larger sweet spot, but it's never razor sharp, unlike the G2, and the god rays are masking it's clarity somewhat. Clarity drops off pretty quickly beyond the sweet spot, like the G2

It gets hot like the G2 and warms up the eyeballs.

I haven't checked head/hand tracking much.

I haven't tested the mic

I've got the wireless adaptor (and face tracker) for it but haven't yet tested it.

The speakers sound tinny unless flipped onto the ears, but sound good and comfy when on the ears

As others pointed out, the headset would certainly suit a larger person well. For me, the face plate on G2 was too small and VIve 2 is too big.

So far, IMHO;

If you've got a G2 and have modded it, Vive 2 's a step down in almost every way but for a ever so slightly larger left-right FOV, and very slightly larger sweet spot (spoiled by the glare), and a quick adjustable head band

If G2 is the sharpest headset, the Vive 2 sits between Quest 2 and G2, but the god rays are worse than the Quest 2 and G2. It's surprisingly quite bad for a new release when you consider the other two.

I guess if you're already kitted-out with steam or vive 1 accessories, it's probably the logical choice if you want more dial/gauge reading clarity and a bit more FOV, and can live with the god rays which were in the vive 1 / quest 1, glowing fresnel rings and strange screen overlap.

Hope this is useful  🙂

Edited June 28, 2021 by dogmanbird

[Ianrivaldosmith 5,317]

Thank you! Will swerve that one then and consider the Pimax 8kX for larger FOV, I will wait and see if DX12 brings any new improvements to VR first of all.

 

[dogmanbird 269]

Just to add;

The cable is just slightly thinner than the G2 cable and about the same flexibility. It's still rubberised but not quite as grippy as the G2's, however, it's grippy enough that it still grabs on seat headrest / furniture / clothing etc.

 

Edited June 29, 2021 by dogmanbird

[HarryVoyager 21]

On 6/28/2021 at 4:48 AM, dogmanbird said:

Hi Harry - if you happen to be online, is there any protective cover, other than the white cardboard, that needs to be peeled off the lenses? It doesn't appear to be anything on them from factory.

I didn't see anything on mine. The cameras have blue film disks on them, but that's all I recall. 

The sweet spot is a bit weird to locate though. For the first couple of days I was seeing huge rings, but after a few days and adjusting things in various directions they went away for me. Reducing the eye relief distance does help. I think their image plane is very close to the lens surfaces. 

I do have a different face pad set on order, mostly because the default one seems to block the view and sometimes the nose flaps get caught on my glasses. I'm probably going to see if I can remove them without damaging things. I like to be able to see the world through the slot. 

[dogmanbird 269]

Thanks Harry.   

Are you using the Vive Port base stations? If you are, is the whine from your quite loud? Do you find it tolerable?

[HarryVoyager 21]

On 7/2/2021 at 12:21 AM, dogmanbird said:

Thanks Harry.   

Are you using the Vive Port base stations? If you are, is the whine from your quite loud? Do you find it tolerable?

I'm using the Base Station 2.0 stations. I don't actually notice the whine myself. However, I'm usually either in VR when they are on, or using closed cup headphones that have enough noise dampening that I don't notice a GTX 1080 TI fan at 100%, so your mileage may vary. 

I do have them set up to go into the full sleep mode when I'm not using them. They do take a little while to turn on from that, but it takes me a bit to get things into sim mode as well, so it's not a huge deal. 

[clayton4115 56]

Everytime I look outside and into the sky from my kitchen window and see those clouds I feel like taking off in my CJ4 for a short hop in VR, this game is so amazing in VR.

[dogmanbird 269]

7 hours ago, HarryVoyager said:

I'm using the Base Station 2.0 stations. I don't actually notice the whine myself. However, I'm usually either in VR when they are on, or using closed cup headphones that have enough noise dampening that I don't notice a GTX 1080 TI fan at 100%, so your mileage may vary. 

I do have them set up to go into the full sleep mode when I'm not using them. They do take a little while to turn on from that, but it takes me a bit to get things into sim mode as well, so it's not a huge deal. 

Yes it's the v2 base stations I've got here. I haven't yet managed to get them to sleep. Thanks for the heads up on that.

[Rucki 10]

I can not go back to flatscreen 2D, I just tried it recently again after a long time. Yes the graphics are much better on flatscreen, especially everything further away, although with perfect settings I can see only little difference on f.e. house directly under me and in a range of something like 2-3 Km.

But the most important thing for me is that I can actually look around with my head. What does the nice graphics on flatscreen give me if I can not look at the things that I want. In Vr that´s no problem, looking at house directly under you ? Just turn your head accordingly (well, and flying high wing planes helps in that case). Of course we can use the 3rd person outside view on flatscreen and look around with the mouse, but then I could also just use google earth, for what do I need the plane from outside view then, just my personal opinion.

the overall feeling for the plane is also just so much better in VR, you can feel exactly what the plane is doing, if I want to know from where wind comes, I just turn my head down for second, flying over hills/mointains is so much fun, just for the wind effects you get.

I bet that most people who tried VR, abandoned it too fast. Unfortunatly you must find your perfect settings for your individual system, there are no guides online for that, because its really individual. Finding good VR settings means a lot of work and just trying things out. You want the very best graphical settings, as longs as you get no stutter and everything is smooth, you need to find the perfect spot on the border of both worlds. Especially in MSFS2020 there´s also the fact that Airliners, big Glasscockpits and very fast Planes with take much more performance from you than smaller planes. I would advice to try to find the best settings on a Cessna 152 or one of the ultra light planes. That doesnt mean that you cant fly airliners or turboprops, but flying low with is a bit stuttery. after 3000 to 4000 feets it gets better.

With my current settings I can fly low in small planes like C152 over New York, without any stutter, absolute smooth and amazing graphics (many options are on high) and I really mean low, like 100 feet to 1000 feet, sometimes directly over roads, nearly touching the street in the mid of New York. I just hope that the Performance for bigger planes will be better on the next sim update.

I5 8600K
1070 TI
16 Gb Ram

Oculus Rift
I recommend putting ASW off through "Oculus Tray Tool"  for the moment, makes the game much smoother in VR, at least on my system.

 

[Flyfox 114]

1 hour ago, Rucki said:

I can not go back to flatscreen 2D, I just tried it recently again after a long time. Yes the graphics are much better on flatscreen, especially everything further away, although with perfect settings I can see only little difference on f.e. house directly under me and in a range of something like 2-3 Km.

But the most important thing for me is that I can actually look around with my head. What does the nice graphics on flatscreen give me if I can not look at the things that I want. In Vr that´s no problem, looking at house directly under you ? Just turn your head accordingly (well, and flying high wing planes helps in that case). Of course we can use the 3rd person outside view on flatscreen and look around with the mouse, but then I could also just use google earth, for what do I need the plane from outside view then, just my personal opinion.

the overall feeling for the plane is also just so much better in VR, you can feel exactly what the plane is doing, if I want to know from where wind comes, I just turn my head down for second, flying over hills/mointains is so much fun, just for the wind effects you get.I bet that most people who tried VR, abandoned it too fast. Unfortunatly you must find your perfect settings for your individual system, there are no guides online for that, because its really individual. Finding good VR settings means a lot of work and just trying things out. You want the very best graphical settings, as longs as you get no stutter and everything is smooth, you need to find the perfect spot on the border of both worlds.

I fully share your experience. There is definitely no way back for me. As RW pilot with many flying hours in single engine piston aircraft I can only say: This is the absolute closest experience to the real world flying I ever had in any sim. Don‘t give up to quickly and compromise regarding your graphic sertings!

[Rucki 10]

I made a small video on how smooth and beautiful VR looks for me. A short flight in Seattle (how amazing that city looks, never seen it before).
Im sorry for the watermark, I just literally wrote "free video editor" into google and used the first entry and that software didnt tell me about the watermark until I exported the video already. Unfortunately I had to cut out the right side of the video as MSFS2020 records both sides of the VR Headset view separately and that looks weird.

The graphics looks really comparable to what I can exactly see in the Headset, especially everything what is near. It starts to get a little bit blurry somewhere at the buldings behind the river or the hills/mountains on the other side of the city, although thats not absolutely sharp on the record as well. I never feeled it in VR anyways, I just got reminded after watching the record,  that things so far away look indeed better on flatscreen, although Im unsure if thats realistic, can you see in real life so far away and still everything looks perfect from 2000 - 3000 feet above ?

Its also funny how steep my approach on the runway looks, when I was flying in VR it looked much flatter.

 

 

[robsled 0]

I've got a Quest 2 and am loving it with a 3080 laptop! Not sure about 5g router sitting next to me beaming the airlink to my head.. but it works and its nice to be able to move and look around. This new iteration of MSFS is da bombardier! Though if I turn the quality settings up it tends to struggle around big cities. I just gotta remember with VR to stay on the sweet spot in the lens, and move my head around to gaze rather than move my eyes around like done with a monitor. I find myself using the mouse focus or just leaning in a lot to read the instrumentation. Good neck muscle workout ✈️

[dongdongliushui 49]

I returned my Reverb G2 and turned to Oculus Quest 2. What a world of difference.

The comfort and the wireless freedom are a dream coming true. It's slightly blurrier than G2, but the huge advantage makes up for it completely.

Highly recommend Oculus Quest 2 with wireless streaming.