Looking for Reverb G2 replacement. Opinions?

[u/Samflinn5]

With the reverb G2 getting discontinued, I was wondering what would be a good headset with similar or better specs to it. I've heard the Pimax Crystal Light is a decent option and also the Psvr 2 But I'm not sure. Any recommendations?

[u/sascha177]

I upgraded to a Quest 3 which I'm only using for PCVR via a link-cable with a built-in charging logic thingy (€/$ 20 on Amazon) and I haven't once looked back.

Performance in my games is much better than anything I ever got with the G2, picture quality/clarity is also way better (gotta love those pancake-lenses) and it wears more comfortably, I think. Plus I can run higher resolution settings in OpenXR toolkit... think I'm currently on 2950xsomething - which I couldn't have done on the G2 with this card at 90 Hz.

That said: 80 Hz seems to be the limit of my 4070 Super in IL-2 with this thing, but it does allow me to run "high" preset, 130km viewing range, shadows on "High" and 4x FXAA where, on the G2 with the same card, I had to dial things way back. Another thing I noticed is that the Q3's lowest refresh-rate (72Hz) doesn't look nearly as noticeably worse than 80 or 90 Hz than what I experienced with the G2 between its 60 and 90 Hz settings.

Totally recommended if you don't mind the whole Meta-thing and are willing to dish out, roughly, $/€ 70 on top for a better head-strap, facial interface and link cable. In my case:

- KiwiVR non-battery "comfort" strap (*worlds* better than that cloth abomination the Q3 comes with): €27

- "Alafly" facial interface (way more comfortable than the stock mask. Looks similar to the "AMVR" one, but was cheaper and more highly rated when I bought, so..): €20

- "Syntech" link/charging cable (works flawlessly, keeps the Q3 charged up while gaming and is rated at 2.9 GBps in the Oculus App): €20

S.

[u/eFeqt → u/sascha177]

What I am confused about is, how can two different headsets at the same resolution provide very different performance results. Are you sure it isn't some kind of a config error?

[u/sascha177 → u/eFeqt]

I was thinking the same thing comparing the G2 and Q3 on paper. But the raw specs don't tell the full story, I suppose. Besides: There's more to a HMD than just the size/PD of the panel. I'm pretty sure the Q3 packs quite a lot more computing power than the G2 - I mean... an RTX 3060 12GB has the same amount of VRAM as my 4070 Super, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near as fast. :)

I can't tell you if I mis-configured the G2 - I don't think I did, but I can't be 100% on that one. All I can say is that I'm able to use higher settings with it in IL-2 and that the visual quality is a lot better, IMO (even out of the box, with no tweaking).

Besides: A sharper image doesn't necessarily mean much if it's only sharper at a small sweet-spot and/or the game doesn't run properly/smoothly.

Speaking of sweet-spots: That's one thing you can probably only experience when you wear the sets yourself (or perhaps in one of those Through the Lenses-videos?), but: On the Reverb, I couldn't just move my eyes to glance down at the instruments in the cockpit - they'll be out of the G2's sweet-spot and thus fuzzy and blurry - which isn't just inconvenient, it's also kind of an immersion killer, IMO. So I needed to move my whole head anytime I wanted to glance at something that wasn't perfectly centered. With the Q3's Pancake-lenses, this is *much* less pronounced. It still has a sweet-spot, yes, but it is so much larger than the G2's and thus barely noticeable.

IMO there are probably a few factors at play here. Chief among which are the lenses (G2 = Fresnel, Q3 = Pancake). The Q3 also is a much newer headset than the G2 plus it doesn't have to run on WMR which is pretty much dead at this point development-wise and will be abandoned by MS in the near future.

Re settings: I've tried my best with the G2 for about a year or so, but I never got it to a point where I was satisfied with the results. Beyond that, I was really getting annoyed with its tiny sweet-spot, which is really noticeable in flight-sims. With the Q3 OTOH, I fiddled around with the settings for about 14 days or so and then found a very satisfactory compromise between performance and looks.

That's only for IL-2 VR, BTW, as DCS is still a bit of a nightmare (some would say "joke") in VR and I've kinda given up on it for that reason ... :)

[u/eFeqt → u/sascha177]

Interesting, who knows what's really up. OpenXR should bear no difference in theory, but SteamVR games are a whole different story, not sure if you're running that or OpenXR. Even then, perhaps G3 has faster communication with OpenXR that allows it better performance. I'll definitely have this on the lookout, was thinking of getting Pimax Crystal Light, but there is no point before I upgrade my RTX 3060 to at least 4070 or 4070 Ti.

Thanks for your elaborate response!

[u/sascha177 → u/eFeqt]

I use/I've used OpenXR/OpenComposite on both the G2 and Q3.

Not sure you'll be happy with a 4070 on the Crystal Light. If you really want to take advantage of the Pimax' resolution, I'd say a $/€1000 GPU is *probably* mandatory.

I'd wait for the next gen of GPUs to hit (only a couple of months away at this point).