My thoughts about HP Reverb G2
In short, its not what I expected.
There are however some positive tings to say, its a relatively light headset compared to my previous HTC vive headset, it sits more comfortable and the image quality is noticeably better (but still bad). Also the attached speakers are ok, not supper like some say but just ok. Those are the most apparent pros apart from some severe shortages I will try describe in the following.
Upon first try right off the bat I experienced some strange (probably latency?) issues, which few seem to report (don't know why, maybe most find it acceptable?). Maybe I’m just spoiled by the vive lighthouse tracking system? (which is sub-millimeter accurate and rock-solid)
What I can tell is that vive (steam VR) lighthouse tracking (for me) is undoubtedly way better. With the G2 inside-out tracking things are ok-ish in smooth large movement, but if you try stand still relax and watch the horizon then things get shaky (the horizon even seems to go up and down at the rhythm of my heartbeat). Its like looking at a very large screen hanging loose on my head.
My impression is that reverb G2 is unable to track small sub-millimeter movements (the body always generates uncontrollably).
The inability to track those small movements results in making the VR world shaky like its not properly nailed down to the ground your standing on in the real world. Its always sliding and shaking, I find it extremely annoying to the point I was convinced it needed some setting tweaking to get better image stabilization or tracking precision. I tried finding info about that but there seem to be no settings to tweak the tracking or image stabilization.
Anyways, it seems most people find it acceptable but for me it breaks immersion completely and it kind of make me dizzy.
What I know now is that my next headset needs to have steam lighthouse tracking again, the windows mixed reality inside-out tracking is just not for me for multiple reasons. For example, the tracking volume in front of the headset is also much smaller then expected, I lose my controllers all the time, its very annoying.
Another thing that I don't understand about the headset design is the form of the lenses, the space right above the nose is so wide it severely compromises the viewing angle, which is already not that wide. They could have made those lenses more oval to narrow that gap, but sadly they didn't.
All things considered, my conclusion is there are still no good VR headsets out there, you basically need to select the least bad one if you want to get into VR or produce art using VR tools. You basically need to ask questions like, which one has least blurry vision, least lens artifacts/distortions, least narrow view angle, bulkiness factor and tracking issues.
On least blurry vision Reverb G2 probably delivers best results but plenty of other issues make it far from ideal like all the rest out there. I wish they had implemented lighthouse tracking and better viewing angels, then it would have clearly stand out from all the rest.
If you can afford the valve index you should probably go for that one, even if its more bulky and blurry.
