HP Reverb G2 with a 1080 Ti?

[[VR] Zakk]

I just got the offer to buy a HP Reverb G2 from a friend for a very reasonable price.

To be perfectly honest, I'd even pay the retail price, but I'm hesitant if my graphics card is enough to support it.

My PC:
AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.60 GHz
32 GB RAM (DDR4-3200)
MSI Mortar B550
1 TB NVMe SSD
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Turbo 11 GB

I currently have an Oculus Rift CV1, that has a native resolution of 1080x1200 px per eye.

The Reverb G2 has 2160x2160, so I'm a bit concerned if the 1080 Ti is enough to run games like Elite Dangerous or MS Flight Simulator on the Reverb. After all, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to invest in higher resolution, if I then have to turn down details.

Does anybody have first-hand experience with the combination of a Reverb G2 and a 1080 Ti?

 

[DeckerSolo]

To help with your decision, I'm getting 38 FPS tops in Starports (docking/departing) with HP Reverb G2 (Steam VR set to 100% resolution) and AMD Radeon RX 3900 XT GPU which has 16GB VRAM overclocked to 2650MHz in game, AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU overclocked to 4.5GHz, 16GB RAM (DDR4-4400), 2 TB NVMe SSD, Asus Rog Strix X570-F Gaming, all watercooled, with Odyssey set to max everything. Getting some FPS slowdown in starports for fractions of a second, but generally just about OK.

 

[Morbad]

Going to need to dial back on details a fair bit to drive the G2 at full resolution with a 1080 Ti. It has more than 3.5x the pixels of the CV1, after all.

 

[buzzx]

The key thing is using under sampling you can drop the resolution down to the same that your CV1 is handling right now. So worst case you know youll be able to run it at the same resolution with the advantage that you have the option to go higher if game performance improves or you get a better gpu. The only unknown is the performance difference there is between oculus native environment and wmr/steamvr when running ED.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

Going to need to dial back on details a fair bit to drive the G2 at full resolution with a 1080 Ti. It has more than 3.5x the pixels of the CV1, after all.

That's exactly my concern. Question is how bad it will be in practice, that's why I was hoping for first hand experience from people with a somewhat similar setup.

I'm sure I'll be able to get all my VR games to run on a G2. But if I have to downsample them to CV1 levels in order to do so, then I won't really win that much in the end.

 

[Loeko]

That's exactly my concern. Question is how bad it will be in practice, that's why I was hoping for first hand experience from people with a somewhat similar setup.

I'm sure I'll be able to get all my VR games to run on a G2. But if I have to downsample them to CV1 levels in order to do so, then I won't really win that much in the end.

I have a G2 running on an 1080ti. If you try to run VR Ultra settings you will see it slow down in stations and RES. VR medium seems to be just about right. It still looks amazing. I'm coming from a Vive then a Pimax 5k+. Much better visuals than both those headsets.

 

[Crank Larson]

That's exactly my concern. Question is how bad it will be in practice, that's why I was hoping for first hand experience from people with a somewhat similar setup.

I'm sure I'll be able to get all my VR games to run on a G2. But if I have to downsample them to CV1 levels in order to do so, then I won't really win that much in the end.

When I first got my G2 I had to run it on a 980Ti. It would only work at 60Hz as the 980Ti didn't have a fast enough HDMI port.

Even running at half resolution up-sampled, the resolution still blows the CV1 completely away. There is no screen door effect, which makes a huge difference.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate the feedback! Looks like I'll have to give it a shot.

 

[[VR] Zakk]

Bump!

I ended up not buying the Reverb G2 back in July. But now I finally pulled the trigger. €470 for brand new one, controllers included, was just too sweet a deal.

Still running the same system as above. And I even re-installed Elite, to get a comparison to the Oculus Rift CV1 I had used so far.

In short: amazing. Yes, I had to reduce a few details and downsample the resolution a bit. But not nearly as much as I was afraid I might have to. Overall, the visual quality is on an entirely different level. The clarity is amazing, leading to even more immersion. Not to mention that it's so much easier to read the controls and displays.

The only slight disadvantage is the diving goggle effect, because of the smaller field of view. I already got a custom face mask, that reduces the effect. But it's still notable. Still, I'll take the slight diving goggle effect over the very notable screen door effect of the Oculus any day.

TL;DR: as my main concern was if the 1080 Ti is enough to power the Reverb G2: yes, it is. Not on max details, but still good enough to make the G2 a big upgrade over lower-res VR goggles.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I have a RTX 3070 and the Reverb G2. Also a Ryzen 3950x, 64 GB ram and a fast M.2 SSD. I can't run the game at full resolution either, not even with todays update. My GPU is at ~60-100% (mostly 60%) and my CPU is at 10-15%, so it's not only hardware.

The G2 is an excellent HMD, and the lack of screen door effect is well worth its price.

In Elite you can use different approaches for your own "optimization". I've experimented a lot, and I think the best results have been disabling AA and supersampling in the game (basically running res at 1:1). Next I find the settings I want. Max on the textures, FX, landscapes, but shadows and ambient occlusion dialed down (in my case). Then in SteamVR I lower the resolution (per application) until I get a decent frame rate. That seems to give the sharpest image, but alias.

This video is old (EDH), but still useful:

Source: https://youtu.be/G7efYzpquIs

If you want higher resolution and AA, turn all the settings to low, and see if you can get a decent frame rate (that should be possible with the 1080 Ti), but go easy on SS, and honestly avoid FSR. Then start upping the settings until things turn bad, and dial them down slightly.

I don't play on foot (because pancake doesn't rock my boat), so I can't say much about the shooter part of EDO, but if you adjust your settings, be aware that flying around in empty space at 90+ fps, won't necessarily give the same fps in a station or flying low over a planet (stating the obvious). Things have improved considerably though, and seem more "balanced" performance wise, even though the poor devs still have "some" optimization to do.

Most of all: Congrats on your new HMD You do have a Hotas, right?

 

[[VR] Zakk]

You do have a Hotas, right?

Absolutely. Been playing in VR for years. Got myself a Warthog when Flight Simulator was released, but still prefer the trusted old Thrustmaster T-Flight for Elite.

But I didn't buy EDO and stopped playing Elite shortly after it was released. Just came back for a brief stint now, to test the new HMD. Elite still is my most played VR game. In fact, I bought the Oculus Rift CV1 back then just for Elite. So I fired up Horizons again, after over 6 months of inactivity, as it was the best way to get a direct comparison between the Rift CV1 and the Reverb G2.

I had hoped that the fascination would come back. But so far, it hasn't. In summer, I had logged out hovering above Mt. Neverest on Nervi 3A, and now found myself in the middle of a spectacular sunrise when I logged back in. And it just pains me to know that, at some point in the more or less near future, it will be gone.

I'm not salty, I just don't feel like the path Frontier decided to take matches my personal preferences around a space sim. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't. Either way, there's no stuphz to be had.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Absolutely. Been playing in VR for years. Got myself a Warthog when Flight Simulator was released, but still prefer the trusted old Thrustmaster T-Flight for Elite.

But I didn't buy EDO and stopped playing Elite shortly after it was released. Just came back for a brief stint now, to test the new HMD. Elite still is my most played VR game. In fact, I bought the Oculus Rift CV1 back then just for Elite. So I fired up Horizons again, after over 6 months of inactivity, as it was the best way to get a direct comparison between the Rift CV1 and the Reverb G2.

I had hoped that the fascination would come back. But so far, it hasn't. In summer, I had logged out hovering above Mt. Neverest on Nervi 3A, and now found myself in the middle of a spectacular sunrise when I logged back in. And it just pains me to know that, at some point in the more or less near future, it will be gone.

I'm not salty, I just don't feel like the path Frontier decided to take matches my personal preferences around a space sim. But maybe that's just me. Maybe I'll be back, maybe I won't. Either way, there's no stuphz to be had.

It's not just you. My story is similar to yours. I bought a CV1 to play EVE:Valkyrie, and then I bought EDH and a X52 Hotas. I have several thousand hours in ED now, but I only play in VR, and honestly, that seems to be a matter of time in ED. It's been a great experience so far, and I played ED yesterday, so it's not over yet.

If Fdev decides to ditch either VR or even ED, I'm pretty sure that someone else will want the niche. Time will tell.