HP Reverb G2 for Sim Racing – First Impressions

It’s been a little over a week since we received this new virtual reality viewer. We were lucky enough to acquire it in a temporary offer from HP and Amazon which it was 100 euros below its usual price, and after the comments that people expert were offering us, we decided to go for this new viewer of the Windows Mixed Reality universe.

I speak in plural because we have been two users who have made the acquisition. Myself, who went from an Oculus CV1 to this model, and another friend who comes from an Oculus Rift S.

The packaging is to be admired, and is among the most well organized and flirtatious packages I have received in recent times. It’s worth mentioning. The construction of the VR glasses uses a distinctive type of plastic different from that used by Oculus for example, which while appearing solid, then in daily handling offers continuous sounds of effort and manipulation, possibly from the interaction between its removable or moving elements, which offers a strange feeling of possible flimsiness.

Connection to the PC is via a single USB Type-C, although they have a regular type converter so that anyone without a USB C can use them. They also need a plug nearby, since unlike Oculus, they do not collect power through USB, but through their own power supply. The cable that goes to the glasses is a Display Port type of six meters of a significant thickness, so it is not as manageable as the cables of other viewers and you have to accommodate it behind the neck (where we have a small detachable clip) so that it does not bother. We can say that the viewfinder as a whole is quite comfortable, with a contained weight and with a facial, which even being large, does not result in a noticeable loss of horizontal FOV. We have pending to test both home solutions and VR Cover to see if it is possible to improve this issue. And another important detail, they have an adjustable physical IPD.

On the subject of tracking, the weakest thing as we are told for purposes other than simRacing, has four cameras located in the viewfinder. We also have two controllers that with their small vibration motors are responsible for eating batteries at full speed. The tracking in simRacing is precise and instantaneous. The little I have done with the controllers has been a little torture, so it is possible that critics about this are right, and in the end since they are not necessary, they have returned to their box.

The lenses at first glance do not seem to have a great evolution over the already amazing HP Reverb G1, but as we will see in other benchmarks in the coming days if there is a difference in performance because although its characteristics show that only have 2160 pixels per eye, when rendering, Steam VR tells us that to completely fill the lens properly we must go to almost 4K resolution. This means a big demand on the equipment we have, so my partner changed his completely acquiring several important pieces among which stand out a Ryzen 5800x and a RTX 3090. Me, waiting for better times I have stayed with an Intel 8600K and a GTX 1080.

For us the biggest change so far has been the loss of the Oculus environment, where the ease and compatibility with other programs has been lost by relying exclusively on Windows Mixed Reality for the glasses to be recognized. You need to have WMR running at all times to interact with the audio or microphone, forcing you to launch multiple programs to use Discord alone, for example. Windows Mixed Reality can be installed through the Windows Store without logging in and is the program that will recognize the glasses and allow them to work. You also need SteamVR and the plugin to connect both services; Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR that you can find for free at the following link: Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR.

Once the installation process is finished, we are ready to test with our simulators. We have specifically done it with iRacing, where both  my resolution in SteamVR (50%) and my partner’s (100%) have worked without problems maintaining the 90 FPS according to our graphic configuration. My graphic configuration is quite modest, so being demanding, the card can still generate all the FPS enough to offer 20 multiclass cars without lowering the smoothness. My friend has a much higher demand, both by preference and by possibility to exploit the 5800x and 3090 combo. With all mirrors and everything on high, and most effects enabled, he’s able to stay at 90 FPS stably. As far as we know so far, not even the 3090 is capable of running iRacing at full speed, because as soon as shadows are activated with several mirrors, the voracity of the whole thing becomes exponential and no current hardware can support it.

The image quality in our respective teams and always maintaining the framerate is excellent, at least in the central midpoint, which is where the view is fixed in simRacing continuously. The curvature and the material of the fresnel lenses cause aberrations on the sides, being even difficult to read the blackboxes or warnings on the track, a problem that we did not have in any of the Oculus versions. The distance of vision we have now is incredible, being able to clearly see the brakemarkers and other elements on the track. The light and colors are also more natural and knowing how to set the brightness and gamma within the application, have a range more than enough to suit any user.

Entering a sunset or sunrise session with this new VR Headset is a fabulous experience, hardly imaginable before, in which we can enjoy every detail of the circuit as if we were there, feeling for the first time the sensation that this generation of VR is more what we expected four years ago, with the necessary sharpness so that the monitors do not even appear as a doubt in our thoughts. It is a great leap forward that with a few small corrections and adjustments can lead to continue offering better VR solutions in the future. We will continue to test and report on our adventures with this new generation of HMDs.

See you on the track!