HP Reverb G2

I could never get on with 60 Hz either, as could see a very distinct strobe/flicker, so I think it is very much eyes dependent. One thing worth saying is that if you try it in WMR Home then it tends to look the worse, as that has lots of white background colors and tends to emphasize everything wrong - sometimes in-game in IL-2 and DCS the 60 Hz sort of looks bearable.

OpenXR has added an additional reprojection mode for sit-down sims, in that you only need to get to 30 fps for it to reproject up to 90 Hz native. So it sort of goes 30 / 45 / 90 as the ratios of what algorithm to use, if any. It’s not perfect but it really helps slow frame games, so hopefully DCS, XP and IL-2 will make that API switch as other new titles come online and use it.

Also, one thing I missed in previous post - this provides a nice explanation of where the settings have gone for WMR for SteamVR - they are effectively use the SteamVR app as the UI for their driver. WMR is doing the reprojection and leaving SteamVR to be the ‘resolution selector’ and on/off settings store per app.

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Hmm, i think i am having this with LCD panels. Previously I thought it was only 30Hz panels doing me no good but found out, to my surprise, that my tablet is 60Hz and i usually get eye strain after like one hour of use.
The same with my 60Hz TV. Now it seems that i have only two options left - VR with 90Hz panels or TV with 120Hz panel…

Or i need new eyes :face_with_monocle:

…either that or get really disciplined on when to blink rapidly. :slight_smile:

Floaty bird floating
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lol, that was even better than videos of helicopters with not moving rotor

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Where do I find the setting for that?

So, unfortunately (I can see I set up for disappointment here, but didn’t mean to…) the only sim that uses OpenXR for its VR API is MSFS 2020, and that’s being updated for all to play in VR on Dec 22nd with an update. It works really nicely, and you can see why they needed a 30 fps mode (lol!)

The OpenXR option is here:

Eventually it’ll be part of Windows, but so far is a Store download here:

SteamVR will move over to OpenXR as an option too, allowing you to pick which runtime you like.

It’s not a huge job to move from native Oculus SDK / OpenVR, so hopefully all of our sims get on with that. Being cross-platform, I can probably picture X-Plane doing it quite soon. It basically levels the playing field on ‘which VR API to pick’ so should become common for anything new.

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Thanks for the info Fearless. I’m getting quite optimistic about VR performance with MSFS2020.

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Hopefully it’ll be a brighter future. It was always sort of broken that Valve tried to do SteamVR as an ‘open effort’ which then led to OpenVR. Microsoft as the way in third place part (phones?) recognized that they need to work with OpenVR well to get any games support, which is how ‘WMR for SteamVR’ came about. Oculus just sort of ignored it, as they needed people to buy games on their store and not Steam.

Before Facebook/Oculus left the PC market to hopefully happier mobile shores (with a locked down shop they can control) then it was no real big secret that they at best they offered no info or help for getting OpenVR to work as a standard on the Rift. At worst, they actively changed things in their stack their side to make OpenVR perform poorly, as a way to encourage developers to use the Oculus SDK only API as ‘it is faster’. :man_shrugging:

The Kronhos group owned OpenXR standard is essentially a stripped down OpenVR API, with more responsibility in the underlying driver. It allows Facebook to implement something better without losing face and ‘helping Valve/Steam’. If they were staying in the PC market they probably wouldn’t of joined in, but hopefully it’s look like a single unified VR API will win out and this ‘bridge to bridge API’ comedy will finally be over.

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Day 2 with G2.
I must confess that this thing is growing on me…
I’m now running at 30% resolution.
Yes, 30%.
It’s still a little bit higher resolution than the Rift S. The performance is on par with what I had in the Rift S but with a better view. Better audio. An IPD that fits and ever so slightly better FoV. Comfort is also better. The G2 facial interface curves around my face like an Alien Facehugger. There is zero external light coming in and the pressure is evenly distributed across my face. The Rift S Halo put more pressure on the forhead and less on the face. I like the G2 better.

I have now, per the recommendations of @fearlessfrog, changed to WMR and SteamVR betas… Still struggling with understanding how this works.
WMR has reprojection, and SteamVR has motion smoothing…? And they both kick in when FPS is below the 90Hz of the G2? Do I actually have to have WMR running, when using SteamVR?
Still lots to learn…

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This is what I’ve been curious about. My O+ still works but, man, it’s basically only good for viewing (comfort = bad, sound = bad/non-functional). So, if I got a G2 could I scale it down and keep the same performance, such as it is.

Loved that movie.

Seems like it yes. There’s WMR for Steam version though. I do not use the SteamVR overlay, at all.

  • I plug the headset in. WMR starts up automatically
  • Double-click SteamVR Beta (which runs steam :frowning: ). NOTE: DCS will start this on it’s own, just an old habit
  • Run all the other various bits to support DCS (Simshaker, VoiceAttack, etc),
  • Then run DCS.

I turn on the “smoother-whatchamacallit” via the text file. I know, horrors! And I use my headset without a boundary too. I’m outta control…

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Great Troll. I haven’t had the problems that most have reported here with the clip. Perhaps I’m not flying enough BFM :smiley:, but I think that I will add your solution as a little insurance anyway.

Per my lack of understanding how the driver worked, I was running mine set at 50% for the first few days of G2 ownership. My impression of the G2 for that time was that it wasn’t that much better than the G1, and I was having a bit of buyers remorse. Then I installed fpsVR, and in the first report read on the Render resolution line the entry: (HMD driver recommended: 3176x3099). So, I moved my slider to closely match that as possible, 3176x3099, or 100%, and the image improved enough that felt much better about my purchase. Note that Auto sets the resolution a bit higher, requiring you to manually use the slider to get the 100% resolution. I’m running a 2080ti, so maybe others don’t have this luxury until they upgrade their GPU to a 3xxx series. I’ll try some lower resolutions to see if the performance:image quality ratio is worth the reduction.

BTW, I really appreciate your insight fearless, especially on the direction of the VR API. You seem to understand this much better than the rest of us in this thread. :+1:

You may have seen this already, but per the info that @fearlessfrog linked for the WMR 4 SVR 1.2.406, Note: as of this release, you should no longer modify any default.vrsettings files to change settings as that file will be overwritten every time Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR is updated. Our documentation has been updated to reflect this.

Edit: I should voice my complaint here that since I don’t often use the hand controllers (G2 controllers remain unpaired), that editing the file is actually preferable.

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Totally doable.

Classic!

I don’t even know what that means… Overlay?

As do I.
One thing that I disliked with the Oculus was that ever so often I had to reset the boundary. A boundary that I then turned off, because I didn’t use it.
I had a big smile on my face when the WMR setup let me chose between a roaming or sitting/standing setup. Why on earth should I be bothered with a boundary when I sit down in VR? Thank you, Microsoft!

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To be honest, my only ”problem” with it was that it looks like an afterthought.
And I could really see how people break the clip, when removing it to thread the cable.

:+1:

I’m surprised that that got passed the GC’s office.

It is very confusing, more so because things have changed over time, so googling back 6 months will give bad info for today. Here’s how it is now:

  • The ‘WMR for SteamVR’ app is used to ‘fake’ a SteamVR device (technically the standard is called OpenVR, but let’s not confuse things more). This is a good idea for Microsoft because they are a late entrant in VR gaming and people like DCS or IL-2 don’t want to write in a third VR run-time platform (SteamVR and Oculus SDK being the main two). No developer was interested in writing to the straight WMR platform API, so being made to fake ‘OpenVR’ pretty much saved WMR for gaming.

  • Reprojection is handled by something called the ‘compositor’, and that’s within the run-time platform driver side of things, so anything we used to do in terms of ‘turning on Motion Smoothing in SteamVR’ was all ignored by WMR. WMR had it’s own funny ‘edit this file’ way of setting that up until very recently.

  • WMR has a few reprojection modes. The default one is called ‘Motion Vector’ that if it detects a framerate given of less than 45 hz and it uses a simple ‘horizontal reprojection’ (predict the next frame based on 1 axis). This can’t be turned off, and is what Oculus people would recognize as the old ‘Async Timewarp’ (ATW). It is pretty juddery and ugly, but it as at least giving you something to look at at 90 hz. The next mode is something that is not on by default and needs to be enabled. Called ‘Motion Reprojection’ it is essentially the same algorithm as the Oculus ‘Async Space Warp’ (ASW). It’s quite nice, and has been getting better and better (it used to be a CPU hog but they are improving things release by release).

  • What has recently changed in the WMR for SteamVR beta is that the user interface for turning that WMR mode on or off has now been delegated to the SteamVR settings. So what’s happening is that it’s enabling the WMR modes on and off and using the SteamVR front end on if to do it or not. When you see this sort of dialog:

…then what’s happening is the SteamVR front end is being used to tell WMR to use a resolution of ‘2604x2552’ and then to enable or disable the WMR Motion Reprojection opt-in algorithm. Once an app is running there is very little overhead of this ‘bridge’, so it’s more a set-up thing.

So in summary, this is confusing as these settings used to be ignored for a WMR device in SteamVR and that spelunking around WMR files used to be the only way, but now it is actually using them (if you have the beta versions). It’s a bit crazy as for the longest time people would fiddle with those settings and WMR would ignore them and they would think ‘SteamVR reprojection’ was being used (wrong stack) as sort of a placebo. Such is life. :slight_smile:

I’m not sure if I made it better or worse explaining this, so please anyone ask questions or make corrections. :slight_smile:

It just writes config files out underneath in SteamVR, I’ll dig out the info and post back later. I’m thinking you could just do it that way and the controllers could stay in the box.

An Overlay is a layer in the compositor for showing stuff over the top of the running app. So when you press the Windows key in WMR you get a mini menu, sort of like a VR ‘Start’ thing - it allows you to put a desktop or window in view as an extra layer, hence ‘overlay’. SteamVR (and Oculus as well with Home) has one. Because ‘WMR for SteamVR’ is acting as a fake OpenVR device, you can actually open the SteamVR Overlay with a WMR controller right stick ‘click down’. It’ll show a similar thing to the WMR and Oculus one, somewhere to launch other apps or mount virtual windows over the top of the running app.

Here’s the SteamVR overlay in action, with that new ‘WMR for SteamVR’ bunch of settings stuffed within it…

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Well, explaining is one thing, understanding is another :wink:
I think I got it… Need to tinker a bit.

Right now I’m happy with the fact that lowering the resolution to Rift S levels gives me 90 FPS. That’s a good baseline.
Now I need to learn how to use WMR and SteamVR and get the most out of my hardware.
In the meantime I will be looking at new CPUs, GPUs, Mobos and RAM…
I think my VISA card is trying to hide, in my wallet. :wink:

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Had a quick peek, and the settings are just stored in a plain text file. Mine are here:

X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\config\steamvr.vrsettings

In that file you’ll find a ‘per SteamApp Id’ or apps that have been added to SteamVR but aren’t steam titles. Examples:

Half Life Alyx’s settings:

   "steam.app.546560" : {
      "motionSmoothingOverride" : 0,
      "resolutionScale" : 100
   },

So a valid question is ‘how to I find the SteamApp Id’ and the answer is ‘Google’ :slight_smile:. A search on ‘IL-2 app id’ give back as first result ‘307960’ so they seem easy to find.

For DCS, which is not the Steam version but still uses SteamVR for its settings, it looks like this:

   "system.generated.dcs.exe" : {
      "motionSmoothingOverride" : 1,
      "resolutionScale" : 100
   },

So if you don’t have controllers hooked up, then it’s ok to shutdown SteamVR and then just add these entries in that text file - it’ll work the same as if you had waved your arms around in cyberspace.

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Just saw this FOV increase mod over at MRTV

In case anyone still has the O+ VR Cover thingy, you can try it out (@BeachAV8R? :slightly_smiling_face:). I suppose that just for a test, removal of the face interface would suffice.

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I could certainly give it a whirl…but probably not until tomorrow night as it looks like I’m going to time out in Florida…

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