So I’ve had the G2 for over a week at this point.
Let’s start with the tracking.
It seems fine? All I heard before receiving mine was that the tracking was just atrocious. I rarely have a problem with it. I’m sure the Index’s system has better tracking, but from my experience it has always been the least of my concern. Granted I haven’t tried any of those super fast sword combat style games.
The real problem is the software. Windows, GPU Driver, Windows Mixed Reality, Steam, Origin, Game, SteamVR, Headset. This is the Gauntlet of Hell every byte of VR data for, say, Star Wars Squadrons has to run before actually reaching your eyes. It is an absolute house of cards that collapses about as often as not.
Be prepared to put your headset on to try to launch the game from WMR, only to find that you can’t add Origin titles for some reason, so you take off your headset to launch it from Windows, then put it back on, only to remember that the game doesn’t start in VR, so take the headset off to try to get the game toggled into VR in the options menu, put your headset back on, wonder why controls aren’t registering, take headset back off to find the game minimized for some reason, hit Windows + Y to accept keyboard commands on the desktop, and then alt-tab it back into focus, put your headset back on, and hope it actually works without your headset displaying a solid black or blue screen for no reason whatsoever which means restarting everything and trying again from scratch.
And if it does work, make sure you crank the graphics settings all the way up to whatever the lowest possible options are, and hope your reprojection rate isn’t still 45% even though you have an i9-9900K / 2080 Ti (overclocked). [Spoiler Alert: It might be!]
Or how about the in-game camera? Several cockpit games I tried appeared to default to the room boundary center, so the game menus, or even the in game camera, was centered 6 feet away from my computer chair. Back to Google. I still haven’t figured out how to fix the IL-2 camera, which has me sitting on the floor of the airplane instead of in the chair. None of the re-center buttons fix it. You can go back to non-VR mode and move the default view, but that only made things worse in VR mode. Back to Google.
And this is to say nothing for the initial set-up, which was a bit of a pain in the ass that led to the requisite moment of quiet reflection in which I wondered to myself if my headset was actually dead on arrival (which, judging by forums, is actually Step 2 in the Reverb G2 set-up manual that’s also not included).
The hardware itself is fine, I guess. Having never used another VR system I have nothing to compare it to. The FOV and “sweet spot” both feel small, and do legitimately seem to be better without the OEM face plate, so I’m sure a thinner face plate would be an improvement, which is sad considering how much these things cost.
When everything is working properly (read: when you’re playing Half-Life Alyx), it’s a really great experience. It would be better if it were wireless, but I bought a tether system that ought to help keep the cord out of the way, so we’ll see how that goes.
It’s great technology. The hardware could use another revision. The software is awful. The fact that I’m running into issues in 2021 that, when Googled, come up in forum threads dating back nearly half a decade tells me everything I need to know about what I have in store for me with this platform.
Performance for the most part is poor, and to be honest with you I literally can’t tell if it’s supposed to be or not. I’ve read reviews for the 2080 Ti that had VR benchmarks where people were running these games maxed out and averaging 120 FPS with no reprojection, whereas I’ll get 40 FPS with low or medium settings with 45% reprojection. Is there something wrong there? Is there a setting buried somewhere in the house of cards that I have messed up? Is there a single obscure Windows process that’s throwing a monkey wrench into the works and decimating performance? Maybe! Have fun spending the rest of your night searching web forums and trying to figure that out.
I’ve been gaming on PC since 1989 and building my own systems for over 20 years, so to say I’m used to PC gaming jank would be a bit of an understatement. I specifically avoided getting into VR until now because I wanted to wait until the technology matured enough to not be a total shit show. After a week with the G2, it feels like I should have waited another five years. I will stay with it and try to get everything working smoothly, but it would be cruel to recommend this to someone who wasn’t ridiculously patient and an expert on diagnosing PC gaming issues.
