Taking the Virtual Dive: My First Impressions of VR · 3:20am Dec 16th, 2021

Hey everyone, I figured I’d share with you all my first few days of experience with VR (virtual reality, for those unfamiliar with the acronym), and let you all know what I think, and what my recommendations are.

So recently, I purchased an HP Reverb G2 (at a beautiful discount price!) from the official Hewlett-Packard shop. It wasn’t supposed to ship until a few days from today, but to my surprise, it ended up shipping and arriving much faster than I anticipated. And good timing, too, given that I’ve wrapped up my semester, and had a few days off in a row to mess around with it.

Upon connecting the device to my gaming rig and a power source, I followed the instructions provided to setup Windows Mixed Reality (configured for sitting, as I don’t have the space for moving around a whole lot). From there, I was off to the WMR Home, which is a scenic ocean cliffside house, that you can customize with app widgets and decorative items.

Immediately, I was taken aback at what I saw when I put the headset on. Of course, there was still the matter of pairing the controllers, which took me way longer than necessary (mainly because I was being a bit of an idiot), but now I know how to pair them. To move in WMR and Steam VR, you have to press forward on one of the two analog thumbsticks, where a marker will appear in an arc, to which you can teleport. Apparently, this type of movement is intended to prevent VR sickness (it’s not motion sickness; from what I’ve heard, it’s “VR sickness,” so it’s distinct).

The headset itself is quite comfortable, with a foam faceplate, and it’s not too heavy. The faceplate does not allow any air in, though, so the inside of the headset can get a little moist at times. I think I’ll purchase an aftermarket faceplate with ventilation holes to fix that problem. The cable connecting it to the PC and power source is also a bit bulky and can snag behind you at times; I might get a ceiling pulley for cable management. But those are really the only two issues I’ve had so far.

The visuals of the Reverb G2 were quite impressive! A few years ago, I tried out a first-gen HTC Vive, and it was super blurry, with a screendoor effect, which made it difficult for me to make out what I was doing (at the time, I didn’t think about adjusting the focus ). There is absolutely no screendoor effect on the Reverb G2, that I can assure you; 4K resolution, so it’s crystal-clear! You can adjust lens width via a slide adjuster on the bottom of the headset, but there’s no manual focus option. No big deal though, as the “sweet spot” is already within one or two millimeters of first putting on the headset.

The viewing angle is quite wide, and while I hear many recommend adjusting the width of the lenses to create a singular circle, I find that partially widening them gives better FoV, and the image still looks breathtaking. That being said, the Reverb G2 does have some “motion-style” blurring around the edges of the image, where it is “pulled” in the direction of the edge it’s closest to. But this mostly happens at the edge, and is not very noticeable if you are focusing mainly in the middle.

The audio is also quite nice. It uses the same off-ear speakers as the ones found on the Valve Index. Apparently the Reverb G2 was also developed by Valve, in conjunction with HP and Microsoft, in the hope of getting more people into VR by offering a more affordable headset. This makes sense, given that the Index is quite an expensive setup, particularly with its Knuckles controllers (arguably the best on the market). Yeah, so the Index was way outside my price range, so I figured I’d settle for something more affordable.

The controllers respond well, but they can drift a bit if they go outside view of the cameras on the headset. The Reverb G2 does not have base-station support like the Index, and instead uses inside-out tracking via four cameras on the headset itself. Because of this, if a controller moves outside the range of the camera, the controller will enter “gyroscope mode” and do some complicated calculations to track movement until it’s back in view; sort of a “best guess” when blind. And aside from the tracking rings being a little large and cumbersome, the controllers work alright (but I’ve ended up hitting a few things in my room, forcing me to sit in a spot where my arms can swing freely).

So, there is a bit of controller drift, but it’s not so bad. I imagine it’s even worse on the HTC Vive Cosmos, which uses the same style of inside-out tracking, but a lot of people have reported abysmal tracking for that headset.

As for games, I’ve tried out a few free pieces of software on Steam VR. The Lab is one I heard everyone recommends starting out with, and I played through every mini-game, which was fun. I also tried out the SuperHot demo, and that was pretty cool, especially how I could control the flow of time through how much I move. Aircar seemed to run okay on my PC, but there are some controller binding problems I’m facing, where I can only accelerate the flying car forward and backward; no pitch, roll, yaw, or altitude controls. Like I said, it might be an issue with keybindings, so I’ll dig into the Steam VR settings to see what’s going on there.

Other than that, I’ve just been exploring VR environments, like the Valve office, and Half-Life: Alyx (Russell’s Lab), which has still been quite enjoyable and immersive.

So far, I haven’t experienced any VR sickness, but I did almost fall from disorientation (thankfully, I caught myself). I’m really hoping to try out some of the big titles, like Half-Life: Alyx, Boneworks, Gorn, Beatsaber, Elite: Dangerous, and so on. I probably won’t be able to safely play games like SuperHot or Blade and Sorcery, since my bedroom’s not very large. Maybe I'll stick with some more basic games, like flight and racing sims.

How I feel overall… VR is definitely worth getting into, if you’ve been wondering about doing it yourself. Granted, it took me some time to consider taking the virtual dive, but I actually regret not doing it sooner! If you want to start with something that won’t break your bank, I’d say get the Reverb G2! It's about $600 on the official HP shop site.

When it came to VR, I had initially considered getting an HTC Vive as a starting point, but then I did some more research to see what else was on the market. I knew the Valve Index would be much too expensive for me, and the Oculus Quest 2, while being the cheapest premium option, required logging into a Facebook account, which was a dealbreaker for me in terms of privacy.

So yeah, I feel that I’ve gotten over the initial hump of VR at this point, and just share my first impressions. If you’re looking for some immersive, next-level gaming, I’d say save up for a headset and take the dive! VR is totally worth it! If, however, you get sick from just images moving around, and are more comfortable without needing to use motion-controls, you may want to hold off. Even without games, Window Mixed Reality still has a number of ways you can make good use of your headset. In any case, I’m happy with my purchase! Even without the discount I got, it would still be totally worth it!