Aces High Bulletin Board
Help and Support Forums => All things VR => Topic started by: hazmatt on March 17, 2021, 08:25:10 PM
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I'm seeing prices for G2 for 599 and Rift S for 299. Is one G2 worth 2 Rift S?
Maybe there's better prices on the G2 that I'm not seeing?
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At the moment it's in the eye of the beholder. I picked a Lenovo Explorer VR headset up for one of my kids for us$60, and have been quite impressed at the display quality.
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Nice! Where might one find a deal like that?
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Just saw Quest 2 for $299 too....
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Nice! Where might one find a deal like that?
Other side of the world sorry, and they didn't last long (sold out very quick).
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If you don't mind having a facebook account and living by their "community rules", the Oculus Quest 2 is the best value right now. It is not quite as good as the Reverb G2, but you can't beat it for the price and it is outstanding in its stand alone mode.
But if you are like me and primarily want a PC VR headset for the best possible flight simulation experience, it is hard to beat the G2. Every headset has their pros and cons, but the G2 has the best image quality (at least at the center of the field of view) than most if not all VR headsets (I have no personal experience with Pimax).
But the Quest 2 is just a notch below the G2 in image quality and the Oculus software seems more stable with lower overhead than the Windows Mixed Reality/SteamVR combination that you have to run to use the G2 in flight sims. But even that is a tricky statement because WMR has some great features that Oculus doesn't match.
The Quest 2 has some hidden costs:
1) The cheap headstrap it comes with is uncomfortable. You will want a replacement.
2) You either need to buy a link cable or have a state of the art wireless router and buy the virtual desktop app to use the Quest 2 in a PC environment. For better or worse, the ability to connect wirelessly is a unique and potentially beneficial feature of the Quest 2.
3) The battery dies even when connected to a PC via the link cable, so you may need some sort of battery pack to extend its life. I don't have a battery, but I am sure it connects through the USB port, so it may not work well with a link cable, which would make the wireless router/virtual desktop connection the way to go for PC. Of course the wireless connection may have latency and dropout issues. I haven't tried the wireless option as my router is too old to have the bandwidth to make it work well, but I have a few friends that swear by it.
I am using my G2 as my primary headset, but when my first one failed after just 2 months of use, I used my Rift S and my son's Quest 2 as backups until the G2 was replaced under warranty. The image quality difference between a Rift S (which I had, used, and loved since they were first released) and a Quest 2 is tremendous. It hurts my eyes to go back to the lower resolution of the Rift S. I can't even imagine going back to my Rift CV1. But the jump in quality from the Quest 2 to the G2 is almost as big an improvement.
If you have the money, I would get a G2 for PC flight simulation and a Quest 2 for stand alone: the Quest 2 is that much fun! With all the extras you need to use a Quest 2 for PC flight simming, it is only marginally cheaper than the G2, so I would just get the G2 if you can afford it.
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3) The battery dies even when connected to a PC via the link cable, so you may need some sort of battery pack to extend its life. I don't have a battery, but I am sure it connects through the USB port, so it may not work well with a link cable, which would make the wireless router/virtual desktop connection the way to go for PC. Of course the wireless connection may have latency and dropout issues. I haven't tried the wireless option as my router is too old to have the bandwidth to make it work well, but I have a few friends that swear by it.
The battery dies even when connected with the USB cable? I thought that was how you charged it. Is there some external power plug? Seems I'm missing something here.
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The battery dies even when connected with the USB cable? I thought that was how you charged it. Is there some external power plug? Seems I'm missing something here.
The USB-C port on the headset is how you charge it. You can plug in the external charger's cable here, but this is where the PC-Link cable also plugs in. The charging rate while using the Link cable is less than the energy consumption rate while the unit is in use, so eventually the battery will drain. Hasn't been a problem for me yet, but my sessions are generally less than 2 hrs anyway.
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So you have to use an external power adapter of some sort to charge it or will it charge if you leave it plugged in to your PC?
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It will charge on the PC if it's just plugged in, but if you're using it, it drains slowly.
Wiley.
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So you have to use an external power adapter of some sort to charge it or will it charge if you leave it plugged in to your PC?
It comes with an external power adapter you can use to charge it. In order to play PC VR games (such as AH) you must purchase the Link cable ($79). It will also charge while plugged into your PC using this cable, but as Wiley says, if you're using the unit it will slowly discharge, since the energy consumption rate during use is higher than the recharge rate.
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Further- if I remember right, it discharges somewhat quickly on the link cable. I haven't thought about it in a while because it's been a while since I had a marathon VR session, but I think I was on pace to be getting ~5-6 hours with the link cable. However, if I was playing on virtual desktop and connected to the charger cable, I believe it appeared to only be losing about 10% per hour or so.
I haven't really checked battery life since I moved to the new motherboard, so I expect it might be different from the ancient one I was using before.
Wiley.
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Thanks for all the info. What about this scenario?
I take off and climb out using the monitor so usually I have 5 to 10 min before I use the VR. I usually manage to get myself killed or rtb within 20 minutes and then. I'm back to the take off/climb out thing again.
I have a really old motherboard so I'm sure it's going to be one of the slow charging ones, however I was curious as to how long you think I could go in this scenario if I started with a full charge.
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Don't know about that. What I can tell you is this thread got me curious, I just played for an hour and a half and my battery is at 80% from full. So theoretically probably 7-8 hours ish to kill the battery.
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Nice! Thanks for that info. I think at that rate the battery would outlast me!
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Further- if I remember right, it discharges somewhat quickly on the link cable. I haven't thought about it in a while because it's been a while since I had a marathon VR session, but I think I was on pace to be getting ~5-6 hours with the link cable. However, if I was playing on virtual desktop and connected to the charger cable, I believe it appeared to only be losing about 10% per hour or so.
I haven't really checked battery life since I moved to the new motherboard, so I expect it might be different from the ancient one I was using before.
Wiley.
Wiley, how has your experience with AH been going wireless with virtual desktop? Is your network Wifi 6?
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I took a crack at it but it didn't work, either in Oculus mode or the second mode it asks you about if you say no to Oculus. Not sure why, I didn't look at it terribly hard at the time. I tried the Steam client as well, but it didn't work so I'm not sure why.
I'd be VERY interested in trying it if someone has it working and could tell me how. It works very well with Skyrim VR, I'm curious to know what it would do here. Also, if I could run it wirelessly I could hook up the charger to the usb cable and get better battery life, is my main thought process.
My USB link tests out at 2.1Gbps, but I'm slightly underwhelmed with my FR in AH. It hovers between 60 and 80, which is good enough for me, but I was hoping for/ sort of expecting it to peg at 90. I haven't taken my settings down super-low to test, but it seems to top out in the mid 80s and dips to the 60s if there's pretty much anything going on on screen. The one thing I'm happy about is, no noticeable stutter going over giant fields (haven't done it much though) and I haven't seen it go below 50 and change no matter what's going on.
Not sure what exactly my WiFi is. It's a pretty new router (year or two) from my ISP Shaw, and it's 5GHz. Like I say, it runs Skyrim very well with moderate modding. Couldn't tell you if it's WiFi 6 though.
Wiley.
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Although my FPS using the Reverb G1 went as high as 90 IIRC, my FR with the Quest 2 is steady at 71. I have the update to the Quest that allows 90Hz and I have it set on that, but I can't get above 71 in AH.
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Just a quick simple question about your Quest 2, did you go into the settings in the Oculus software to enable the 90 fps mode? I've seen mine hit 89 when the game is loading, then settle in. It gets into the mid 80s when it's just looking at sky.
Wiley.
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Just a quick simple question about your Quest 2, did you go into the settings in the Oculus software to enable the 90 fps mode? I've seen mine hit 89 when the game is loading, then settle in. It gets into the mid 80s when it's just looking at sky.
Wiley.
Yep, 90Hz is enabled in the Oculus software settings. I'll have to check it looking at open sky, but is very similar to the behavior I get with Vsync on (which is usual for me). On my old 60Hz monitor, I got a steady 59fps. On my new 144Hz monitor, AH reports a steady 143 fps. And in VR with the Quest 2, I get a fairly steady 71 fps. Performance drops around a field under attack, but otherwise its fairly steady - except it does seem to behave like its limited somewhere to the 72Hz mode.
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Just double checked, my Quest 2's refresh is set to 90Hz in Oculus software. I went into AH and flew an A6M5 in CraterMA offline, took it up to 5000ft or so and looked straight up. AH reports I'm getting a solid 71 fps. In fact nothing I did, no direction I looked, budged it from 71 fps. When I bailed out, it preifly dipped to 68 but recovered to 71 within moments.