Supmua

They should’ve done it like Vive, launch both SteamVR framework and its GUI instead of just framework in the background.

It’s got 720p resolution which isn’t great for flightsim. Battery life is probably 2 hours or likely less with DCS. But it will run.

I’ve been using the test version so hopefully it’s still the same. You typically switch slots from the dial below the trim hat on your RS grip. I’m not sure that the memory slot function is still supported with non-RS grips.

Been experimenting with various settings. Currently I'm running the headset at Highest on Varjo software, but in SteamVR SS is reduced to 60% which corresponds to 3,212 horizontal pixels (which is still higher than High Varjo setting with 3,140 horizontal pixels). The advantage I can see is that shimmering seems even more minimal with this, and blacks seem to look more black at this setting. Of course this could just be placebo so will have to keep playing more. On the Vive Pro 2 though, the clarity is definitely better by running the headset at the highest pixel count and reduce Steam SS as needed. EDIT: Found that Highest setting causes CPU frametime spikes with Revive titles (Lone Echo, etc.), so I stepped down to Higher setting and adjusted Steam SS to similar pixels and the problem disappears with minimal change in visual quality. Also, vertical synchronization on seems to help reduce juddering. You still get motion blur on the ground objects when flying by but the degree of juddering is more evenly paced and more natural. Tested this with F-16 Syria free flight, and other than the blacks which aren't OLED level and some pixelated clouds the image quality is roughly the same as my 4KTV. The cockpit truly looks pristine and the distance detail is excellent with Reshade Lumasharpen. The visual clarity is also dependent on your vision, unless your corrected eyesight is 20/20 you may not perceive the true capability of this headset. I did not realize how sharp this headset is until I started using it with the lens frame insert from VR lens lab, the frame's distance from your eye socket also determines the optimal sharpness (1 fingerbreadth for my face).

Now it’s possible to have each of your RS devices as single HID, which I consider a big QOL improvement. This is in the latest beta firmwares for the FSSB R3L base, and the F16 and 18 grips. In this mode not all switches will appears in windows controller since there’re too many, but it will work as intended in games and in RS app. You can probably request these from tech support, remember though that these are beta releases and there’ll be things that may need rebind in DCS settings especially switches that were used by the 2nd HID previously.

This strap works pretty well with the Aero also. Not bad for $5. I've been using this instead of the more expensive one which is now attached to my HiFiMan Ananda headphones. Amazon.com: KIWI design Headband Head Strap for Oculus Quest/Quest 2/Oculus Rift Virtual Reality VR Headset Accessories, Comfortable PU Leather and Reduce Head Pressure (Black) : Cell Phones & Accessories

For jets it’s hard to beat RS FSSB R3L, but I’m not sure about helos. I actually prefer a conventional gimbal base with long extension tube for helos but I’m mostly flying jets..

Yeah, a friend came over to check out my setup the other day and he was pretty much blown away saying he had no idea VR images could look as good as flatscreen like this (he’s using the Rift S).

My prescription lens from VR lens lab came in today, with their special VR frame glasses. My regular eyeglasses don't fit in well inside the Aero and my contact lens are multi-focal so I had no idea what I'd been missing until today. With the new VR lens lab stuff, vertical edge to edge clarity is 100% and horizontal edge to edge clarity is at least 90%. I'm glancing left and down inside the Harrier's cockpit and the bottom edge is crystal clear with completely legible texts on the left back panel. That is just crazy.

You can do a lot with Reshade. Exposure, Gamma, level, curve, saturation, tint, vibrancy, LUT, sharpening, antialiasing, etc. almost anything you can think of for video processing.

Mini-LED screens have dimming zones, either Varjo programmers aren’t proficient with non-VR tech (lack of BT control for the base station, for example) or the screens themselves don’t have good dimming. I find that using Reshade effects and DCS gamma setting for post processing can help with night flying but the darkest area is still a bit bright. It is not that bad unless I do direct head to head comparison against my OLED TV right before or after. The image quality out of those screens is very nice though as it goes through clear aspheric lens rather than fuzzy fresnels. It’s almost like images from using pro quality glass vs cheap lens with your digital camera. Ironically, pro glasses don’t have much distortion or chromatic aberration unlike Varjo lens.

To me, SteamVR SS is similar to how you set the display resolution of a monitor (VR headset in this case) in Window display setting with fixed resolution options besides percentage, except there're also per-app settings. DCS PD setting is the equivalent of in-game resolution factor, similar to NVIDIA's DSR setting. Both can get you from point A or point B. Now upscaling or downscaling performance (fps, frametime) and visual quality (aliasing, shimmering, etc.) of either approach may not be the exact same so use your own judgement and pick whatever suits you the best. I typically stick with SteamVR SS as it is more flexible in terms of resolution options.

Base station 2.0 are now in stock on Steam store, had been out of stock forever. Now is a good time to buy, $50 cheaper than Vive store. Note that version 2 is not compatible with version 1 and can’t be used together.

The beta firmware treats the device as single HID, rather than dual HID for ease of bindings. The catch is that you won't see all the button inputs in windows controller panel since there are too many, but it works perfectly in any games. You can request this from tech support. It's still in testing but I can't see why they won't let you try it. Another cool thing is the fact that the real F-16 stick axis rotates 12 degree clockwise even though it's physically aligned with normal X and Y axis, this is near impossible for typical joystick bases to emulate. The FSSB R3L can do this easily in software setting if you want to emulate the real thing.

Varjo Aero Review (after 2 wk use) This is my 7th VR headset so I have a few insights to share. I also had access to two different Aeros for a brief period of time (one is a replacement headset). I decided to wait until I’m familiar with the headset before this writeup to avoid giving out premature impression or honeymoon phase bias. Hopefully this will help some of you who are thinking about this VR headset. I’m not going to tell you to buy or not to buy since it costs a lot of money and what we’re looking for in a VR HMD may be different. Techonogy: This is a high-end VR HMD device with high resolution miniLED screen 2880 x 2720 pixels which is known for brightness (150 nits) and color reproduction. The HMD frequency is fixed at 90 Hz (not sure if other refresh rates will be supported). Max resolution of 39 PPD can be achieved with foveated rendering. It has eye tracking tech using 200 Hz speed for the purpose of foveated rendering, as well as auto IPD adjustment. And most importantly it uses aspherical lens which eliminate glare and god rays. None of these techs are perfect and have some flaws such as blooming associated with miniLED which will not be discussed here. Because of the high resolution/bandwidth, the video transmission relies on NVIDIA’s DSC compression technology and currently AMD GPUs are not supported. The Aero has native supports for OpenVR and OpenXR, these can be toggle on/off in the software. There is no power on/off button, which may not be good for long term durability. Fit and finish: It looks and feels like a typical VR headset, I can’t say that it looks more premium than other VR HMD or feel that way. It is definitely well built, no creaking noise or loosened part when you manipulate it. The provided USB-C cable goes in at 45 degree diagonally to attach to the port on the left side of the headset. There is no other port except for audio/mic jack. The audio/mic jack is CTIA type, which means you will need an adapter if your headphones are OMTP type (otherwise the sound will work but no mic input) Comfort: Every VR headset I came across is front heavy and this HMD is no different. There are two dials controlling front and back paddings which helps a bit with comfort. The inner compartment is similar to the Valve Index, not very comfortable if you wear wide-frame eyeglasses. The sweetspot which I define as the HMD position that allows you to see or achieve maximum clarity, is not easy to achieve. After fudging around, I find that you can improve comfort and sweetspot issue significantly with use of 3rd party VR headstraps. Image Quality: The visuals you can get out of this headset is extremely good approaching 4KTV. I can see little details in games that I didn’t notice before. Tiny texts inside the cockpit are all legible even at 80% sampling. There are a few flaws though. At present the brightness cannot be manually adjusted and most games will look too bright especially in the black scenes such as night flying. Another minus in image quality would be pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration in the edge of the visual field, this is quite noticeable if you are actively looking for it however your brain can adjust and compensate somewhat. Now, after prolonged use when I stared at a perfect rectangular object in 2D screen I would end up seeing barrel distortion for a while, just the way of my brain overcompensating for what I see. The visuals in general though are so good that you can appreciate subtle color shift (or tint) inside the cockpit in DCS when looking through the canopy glass in the front vs side. The red canopy glass tint affecting the world is easily appreciated when looking through the Hornet’s front canopy, this is not easily seen in other headsets that I’ve tried. The vertical field of view is also not as good, and probably the lowest among VR headsets. This is apparent when you bring up SteamVR’s built in GPU frametime graph, you will not be able to see the bottom of the graph with this headset in normal position. Performance: Because of the superior clarity at the default 100% SS setting or even at 80%, the HMD gives better overall performance as well as clarity than my previous favorite Vive Pro 2. Native OpenXR support is also a plus on games that support this reducing SteamVR overhead cost. Software: The software side at present is still immature. SteamVR integration is suboptimal, the Steam control panel seems to have a mind of its own and SteamVR overlay often doesn’t come up when system button is pressed. Varjo’s virtual desktop (Workspace) also doesn’t seem to be color calibrated for the Aero. It displays blown out white and black level crush, evident by just bringing up a Web browser and look at the detail, or go to any monitor calibration website and check BW levels from 1-10 and 244-254. This does not happen with Steam Virtual desktop or Bigscreen or Virtual Desktop apps. I had emailed tech support about this issue and they didn’t seem to see it (this is seen in both headsets that I have access to). Motion smoothing is also not ready currently. This is the feature I use a lot with flightsims even though it costs a few fps. Some of the settings are also buried in the Analytic windows which isn’t easy to find. Practical Usage: Despite having listed all these little quirks and flaws, this is actually the best VR headset that I’ve owned by far. The visual quality is simply unmatched and I feel that this is the most important aspect of VR because it can give such a huge impact in terms of immersiveness and the feeling of being in another world or metaverse if you will. This is also the first headset that I could really use as a monitor replacement or movie watching (regular or VR or 3D). Misc: There is some early quality control issue. For example, dead pixels or lens debris (which I found on my first headset). My replacement headset seems to have louder fan noise, but the lenses are perfect so I will keep it. Tips: -use 3rd party headstraps for much better comfort and fitment -use your own headphones or earbuds for superior audio experience. The provided earbuds are ok but sound a bit thin especially with percussions. -use smart plug to turn the device on/off. -make sure the USB-C connections are secure on both ends if you have spotty connection issue. -for typical use, default mode is great (27 PPD without foveated, 35 PPD with). -Varjo software doesn't have bluetooth control for base stations power management. There's an app on Apple Store called BS Companion that can be used to for this (there should be an Android equivalent as well). On the PC side there is also GitHub - ShayBox/Lighthouse: VR Lighthouse power state management in Rust for management of base station power.

Been using this since day 1 (pulled from my Vive Pro 2), must have if you care about comfort. The sweetspot on the Varjo is not easy to get to in my case, but the strap helps immensely.

Did some mic testing in MP with my friend today. I’m currently using Linsoul ks sz10 pro IEM with in-line mic, which sounds awesome but the mic doesn’t work right out of the box. Now typical headsets or IEM from China and some SONY ones use OMTP type jack which is different from CTIA format which is prevalent in the US and is also used by Varjo (the difference being the mic and ground positions are switched on the prong). This can be corrected by a CTIA-OMTP adapter (I use a cheap $5 Sony Ericsson angled adapter found on eBay), which will swap these two positions around allowing you to use in-line mic from either system with the opposite type. The mic sounds pretty good provided that the mic level is set at 100% in windows setting. Of course there is no noise cancellation if you are into that, but the in line mic is extremely portable since it’s already attached to the earbuds. The provided earbuds don’t sound great if directly plugged into the Aero (the clarity and instrument separation are very good though), the sound becomes much less thin and fuller with expensive amp/DAC setup but not really practical that way. The sound quality from the Linsoul, on the other hand is quite a step up from any built-in VR headphones approaching audiophile territory.

Moded vs non-modded Aeros

I've seen as high as (GPU usage) up to 18.1 GB with the Tomcat, which btw has the best VR cockpit especially on the Aero. All those faded little texts in the cockpit, you can read every single one of them.

Use Reshade.me, that's the main page. There're so many effects plug-ins that you can play with including 2D to 3D conversion, in VR.

About the same as the Valve Index but not as good as the Vive Pro/2. I wear wide frame glasses and had to squeeze them in, so I'm mostly wearing my contact lens for now until I can get a hold of some lens inserts. The potential issue is that the lens seem easy to scratch, so have to be careful and gentle with the device if you wear glasses.

Good review, Don. I agree with your findings and will be off loading my Vive Pro 2 to a good friend. The only thing I don’t like is lack of motion smoothing. But this is exactly like the VP2 when it first came out and we know that this feature will be in. Let’s just say that I most likely won’t touch my other headsets again except for the Quest 2 (only for exclusive Oculus VR titles or wireless VR)

Reshade 5 uses separate runtimes for VR and 2D. So VR effects will ONLY work from VR interface within Steam Overlay. Whatever you did with 2D interface in the previous version will only applies to nonVR in the newest version. Think of it as something similar to MSFS2000. To change the VR graphic settings you will have to use its VR mode. I think it is better this way because whenever I’m in nonVR mode I may want to use only some of the VR settings or a completely different set of filters.

Apparently my replacement Aero is now waiting for me at home. Somehow they shipped overnight from Arlington, VA. Wow didn’t expect it until next week, but I’ll take it. I’m definitely going to inspect the lens very carefully this time.

Just got notification from FedEx that my replacement Aero is on the way (found a tiny debris embedded in the right lens which results in ~0.8 cm of blurriness in the visual field, only noticeable in bright scenes). So, I will have access to 2 Aeros briefly which means a chance to do some quick hardware analysis via direct comparison between two different headsets.