HP Reverb G2, first contact: Personal Review

HP Reverb G2, first contact

Contents hide

I was afraid, I admit. Although I already had some brief experience with Windows Mixed Reality headsets (I tried a Lenovo Explorer for a few days), getting out of the Oculus ecosystem in which I lived for more than three years scared me a bit. While I was unpacking the viewer, during the connections and the configuration (recorded, among other things, all live during yesterday’s live) I was ready to face problems after problems.

Actually, apart from the phantom error 7-14 (I have a card with B550 chipset) fortunately solved using a USB 3.1 GEN 2 port (in my motherboard, colored a little lighter blue), and the black screen at the end of setup (fixed by restarting Mixed Reality app) everything went very smoothly. And once I got my eyes inside the G2, I fell in love with virtual reality again, as if it were the first time.

The viewer

I take a step back first. This is not meant to be a review, I’m not going to analyze all the features of the viewer. There will be plenty of time to talk about FOV, Sweet Spot and company. I just want to give you a “hot” impression, throw out what I wanted to tell you after so many months of waiting. The viewer itself is exceptional: attention to detail, perfect in detail (here you can see Valve’s hand) and above all comfortable and light to wear.

Indeed I want to tell you more, it is by far the most comfortable headset I’ve ever worn, wiping out PSVR, Oculus Rift S and Oculus Rift CV1 in one fell swoop. And then there is the strong point, which is the lens-display combination, because you don’t do anything with a high-resolution display if the lens can’t capture all the details. And here I want to address the owners of Quest 2: enjoy your viewer which is equally exceptional (in other respects) and never put your eyes inside the G2.

Read This Now: How to use Instagram Multicapture? - Share Content on your Networks

Many of your beliefs could collapse miserably as you begin to notice hundreds of details of the game world that simply could not be seen before. And to achieve this visual fidelity the cable, unfortunately, is still needed. And maybe it is the biggest flaw of this viewer, that of still having to be tied to the PC with the umbilical cord. The cable is also quite bulky, so Kiwi pulleys become almost mandatory.

I controller

If with the viewer no expense has been spared (or almost) the same can not be done with the controllers. For those used to the previous Microsoft headsets, these new ones will be a significant leap forward. For those who come from the touches of the Rift S, or even before the CV1, the transition could be a bit more traumatic. As a partial excuse, I want to emphasize the fact that even the new Quest 2 touches are a decisive step back in terms of finishes and quality of materials, compared to the old Oculus models.

This is not to say that HP didn’t have to do better, on the contrary, just to state a fact. Ergonomics are still good, and the user experience is very similar to the one you have with touches. The differences that are most noticeable are the tracking ring, very large and which on some occasions could be annoying, and the battery matter, which I want to deal with in more detail in the review phase.

Read This Now: Android cloud backup: how to backup your phone to the cloud

The first user experience

In these lines I speak only of the first 2 hours of gaming with the G2, in which I experienced the initial phases in the Cliff House (the home of Windows viewers) and tried three games “feeling”: Boneworks, Zero Caliber e Star Wars: Squadrons. I have yet to fully understand the potential of the Cliff House, which welcomes us as soon as we finish configuring the viewer.

I guessed that it is a customizable environment, a sort of desktop in VR, but practically useless as it is set by default. I then immediately started SteamVR, set the recommended resolution (which with my Nvidia RTX 2060 SUPER is about 60% of the viewer’s render target) and launched Boneworks. At first I noticed that the controllers weren’t mapped correctly, but it was enough to select a binding kindly created by the Steam community to fix.

And the tracking, this damn tracking of the G2 that many content creators have wanted to take apart in every way? In my Boneworks test, I honestly had no problems. The only “annoyance” is the controller rings, which can easily collide when loading guns. Even with the Zero Caliber everything works pretty well. In some situations, when I kept my hand still for too long, the orientation of the weapon I was holding was offset a little: however, it was enough to move it to reset it immediately in the correct position. Anyhow I never felt that tracking could limit or ruin my gaming experience.

Obviously I don’t want to draw conclusions after so few tests, my first impression is still that of a solid tracking, with some burrs that can be easily solved via software. It is precisely at the software level in fact, that at the moment the tracking of Oculus viewers seems more mature. In games like Squadrons obviously any talk about the controllers loses its meaning, since you use the joystick: too bad that with my current video card I can’t push this game to the resolution it deserves.

Read This Now: How to CapCut a WhatsApp Audio to Edit a Video?

In the other two games tested, however, despite the not 100% render target, the difference in definition with a Full HD monitor is practically nil, and it is the first time that a viewer gives me this feeling. In principle, however, with the same resolution with the G2 it is seen much better than with the Quest 2, used both with the Link and with Virtual Desktop. And even more surprisingly, with the games I tested I had a lot more performance issues with the Quest 2 (which I often had to set to 72Hz) than with the G2 at 90Hz.

A step towards the review

The first contact with the G2 was definitely positive. It will take many more hours to grind with the new HP viewer to evaluate all its strengths and weaknesses, so judge this first report “cum gran salis”. In the meantime, stay tuned to VR Italia, because there will be other opportunities to see the G2 in action before the review.