VR Headset for Sim Racing

Soldato
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30 Sep 2005
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Well my Reverb G2 arrived this morning. What an awful, awful headset. Absolutely crap, so it's being returned.

Spent 2hrs messing about with mixed reality and steamvr getting nowhere. Just can't see the desktop, nor play any games. Hell, can't even move around in steamvr lol When the headsets on, my monitors switch off haha No idea what the controls are, but they aren't keyboard/mouse, xbox controller or the HP controllers. Telepathy?

Watched no end of youtube videos, says it's easy just go into settings....where?

I can see why Meta aren't interested in PC VR. Just nowhere near good enough.

anyway, regards to the headset itself. The FOV is smaller than Quest2, the quality of the displays are maybe a tiny bit better, but nothing to write home about. Velcro everywhere, so it's a pain to get it on and off.
 
Soldato
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Well my Reverb G2 arrived this morning. What an awful, awful headset. Absolutely crap, so it's being returned.

Spent 2hrs messing about with mixed reality and steamvr getting nowhere. Just can't see the desktop, nor play any games. Hell, can't even move around in steamvr lol When the headsets on, my monitors switch off haha No idea what the controls are, but they aren't keyboard/mouse, xbox controller or the HP controllers. Telepathy?

Watched no end of youtube videos, says it's easy just go into settings....where?

I can see why Meta aren't interested in PC VR. Just nowhere near good enough.

anyway, regards to the headset itself. The FOV is smaller than Quest2, the quality of the displays are maybe a tiny bit better, but nothing to write home about. Velcro everywhere, so it's a pain to get it on and off.


There is a part (or parts) of the puzzle you are missing somewhere. I have built multiple VR rigs over the past 18 months using the G1 and G2 headsets with both AMD and Nvidia cards.

The G2's had USB connection issues early on, but the new G2's use a new cable and the one I built in December of last year was rock solid stable.

The Reverbs (1 and 2) work well for seated VR. Maybe yours is just deffective?
 
Soldato
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There is a part (or parts) of the puzzle you are missing somewhere. I have built multiple VR rigs over the past 18 months using the G1 and G2 headsets with both AMD and Nvidia cards.

The G2's had USB connection issues early on, but the new G2's use a new cable and the one I built in December of last year was rock solid stable.

The Reverbs (1 and 2) work well for seated VR. Maybe yours is just deffective?

Mines the V2. The headset is found, but when I load iracing the only options I get are monitor, oculus, openvr (no steamvr)
 
Soldato
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Have you tried the openvr option?

Yeah, I got a bit further now. I deleted app.ini from iracing and now it loads. What a pain this has been!

Sweetspot is a bit crap, but going to give it a bit of time before deciding. It's not as good as I'd hoped.

:edit: Nah, not worth £550. It's going back.
Gluten for punishment. I'll persevere a bit longer.
 
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Associate
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Apparently the Pixels Per Inch of the G2 isn't really any better than the Quest 2. Biggest advantage is the uncompressed DP connection.
pixels per degree matters most to clarity of display, iirc the G2 is about 24, the Quest 2 is about 20, so not a world of difference no, but noticeable (to me). not knocking the Q2, for the price it has a great display, binocular overlap is fantastic, its 1 of the most easy on the eyes displays ive come across.
 
Soldato
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I've submitted a return. I'm going to leave PC VR for now until a much improved headset is released.

The main thing for me with the G2 is the small sweetspot and the awful software. No point in using all that GPU horsepower only to see a blured screen.

Didn't think much to the velcro straps either, but I could have lived with that if the quality was better.

Shame as I loved racing in VR. Typically this was really comfortable to wear and seemed to fit my face really well.

20min 45sec sums it up well

 
Soldato
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I recently reinstalled iRacing and was reminded of the alignment issues in the reverb. (G1) Without tweaking a couple settings in open vr file, it creates something like double vision but worse because your brain can compensate for it but the experience is agitating the whole time.

Once the alignment is fixed, and you don't have to mentality strain, it's actually enjoyable. I don't know if that is what you experienced and this seems to be an iracing issue as none of the other titles I use have this problem.
 
Soldato
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12,019
I've submitted a return. I'm going to leave PC VR for now until a much improved headset is released.

The main thing for me with the G2 is the small sweetspot and the awful software. No point in using all that GPU horsepower only to see a blured screen.

Didn't think much to the velcro straps either, but I could have lived with that if the quality was better.

Shame as I loved racing in VR. Typically this was really comfortable to wear and seemed to fit my face really well.

20min 45sec sums it up well



Did you try using the headset without the face gasket? If not, you should give it a go. There is a custom face gasket out that improves the FOV by bringing your eyes closer to the lenses. As a side effect of this you also get a larger, or at least an easier to find, sweet spot. You can see if this will work for you simply by using your current headset without the gasket and see does it improve things. It won't be comfortable, but, if it works, you can decide if you want to keep the G2 and buy a custom face gasket.
 
Soldato
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I have been debating this for sometime now....

I keep looking at that Vario but then the price makes me look away.....but it's so damn good.

Anyone using a G2 with specs?

I have a G2 and wear glasses, iirc the G2 now comes with a 2 piece face gasket that allows either 9mm or 15mm. Wearing glasses I had to use the default thicker face plate, but trying it with thinner face gaskets or even just foam stuck directly on the shell gave me a better result so I got VR lenses, and the result is awesome
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Nov 2011
Posts
11,370
I've submitted a return. I'm going to leave PC VR for now until a much improved headset is released.

The main thing for me with the G2 is the small sweetspot and the awful software. No point in using all that GPU horsepower only to see a blured screen.

Didn't think much to the velcro straps either, but I could have lived with that if the quality was better.

Shame as I loved racing in VR. Typically this was really comfortable to wear and seemed to fit my face really well.

20min 45sec sums it up well


As he said, the closer you can get your eyes to the lenses, the bigger the sweet spot will be - you can easily check by removing the default face gasket and use something to pad the edges and then look for a gasket or foam pad to replicate your best distance

The G2 is so much nicer image quality than the quest 2 it really is worth it
 
Soldato
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Thanks @melmac and @andybird123

I did indeed try the face cover without the spacer. In fact, I think I tried it literally 10mins after unboxing.

It does ever so slightly increase the fov and sweetspot, but it's still far too blurry for my liking. The other issue though, is that I could then see the edges of the lenses, which gave a squared off image. I actually preferred it with the spacer.

Considering it's £550, I personally think the quest2 is the allround best headset at the minute, although that has it's own set of issues.

Thing is, the G2 in the sweetspot is really good. There were other things I didn't like about it, but parcelforce are collecting it today anyway so it's definately going back.

Hopefully something will come out over the next 12 months and I'll try again......unless in a moment of madness I give the pimax 5k OLED a go???

I'm concentrating on my triple screen rig now.
 
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Soldato
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12,019
Thanks @melmac and @andybird123

I did indeed try the face cover without the spacer. In fact, I think I tried it literally 10mins after unboxing.

It does ever so slightly increase the fov and sweetspot, but it's still far too blurry for my liking. The other issue though, is that I could then see the edges of the lenses, which gave a squared off image. I actually preferred it with the spacer.

That's just bad luck. I think you need a very customizable head strap for whatever headset you get in the future. MVH studios did a great head strap with so many ways to set it up that it would suit any type of head/face shape. Pity he stopped making them. It's the one I am using. Took me forever to get it right, but, now it's perfect.

I don't remember, but, did I ever ask you what your IPD is? With any headset, if your IPD is outside the range that a headset supports, it's luck of the draw if it will work for you or not.

Hopefully something will come out over the next 12 months and I'll try again......unless in a moment of madness I give the pimax 5k OLED a go???
No, don't do that. If you didn't get on with either the Quest 2 or the Reverb G2, then you really don't want the pain and hassle that comes with owning a Pimax headset. You didn't like the software side of the Reverb G2. The software side of the Pimax is even worse. If you don't like tricking with things, stay away from any Pimax headset.

I'm concentrating on my triple screen rig now.

It's a shame that you didn't get on with either the of the headsets. I am not a sim racer, but, I did have a triple screen setup for work at one stage and tried some racing games on both those and in VR. I wouldn't be able to get back to racing car games on a monitor. Despite how well the games look across three monitors, I never actually get the same feeling of been in a car like I do in VR. Same with Elite Dangerous, I haven't played it much at all, but, after playing it for a short time in VR, I can't go back to playing it on flat screen.

Hope the next round of VR headsets are more suitable for you :)
 
Soldato
Joined
30 Nov 2011
Posts
11,370
Thanks @melmac and @andybird123

I did indeed try the face cover without the spacer. In fact, I think I tried it literally 10mins after unboxing.

It does ever so slightly increase the fov and sweetspot, but it's still far too blurry for my liking. The other issue though, is that I could then see the edges of the lenses, which gave a squared off image. I actually preferred it with the spacer.

Considering it's £550, I personally think the quest2 is the allround best headset at the minute, although that has it's own set of issues.

Thing is, the G2 in the sweetspot is really good. There were other things I didn't like about it, but parcelforce are collecting it today anyway so it's definately going back.

Hopefully something will come out over the next 12 months and I'll try again......unless in a moment of madness I give the pimax 5k OLED a go???

I'm concentrating on my triple screen rig now.

Please for the love of God don't ever buy a pimax headset - if you had issues with the G2 sweet spot, the pimax headsets are in a whole different league when it comes to having to mess about with them to even find a sweet spot in the first place. And their "support" method is to basically not offer any support and if you are lucky they might give you a $50 voucher. The oled one is the worst of the bunch as it's ppd is somewhere around the same as an OG Vive.
I could literally write you a 3 page essay on all the problems I had with pimax (both the hardware and them as a company). The only saving grace for me was that as an early 8KX backer on Kickstarter I managed to get my money back by selling it on (to someone active on their forum so they knew what they were getting in to).

Quest 2 is a decent headset as far as plug and play goes, particularly with airlink now directly via the oculus software, just not up to the visual or audio quality of the G2
 
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