Vive Pro 2

[OG84]

For me there is also something wrong with the Pro 2. I have the feeling that the eyes in dcs are not correctly aligned. If I take off the headset, it feels like cross eyed for a short period of time. I hope this can be figured out with software updates.

Edit: I returned mine. Maybe it was just my unit, but something didnt feel right. Also performance was not acceptable with 3090.
Staying with the index for now

Edited June 7, 2021 by OG84

[dburne]

26 minutes ago, Headwarp said:

My Pro 2 is out for delivery.   Which.. A.) Sunday delivery? Wow.   B.) That was fast.  

 

Must be nice.

Congrats!

[Headwarp]

Just now, dburne said:

 

Must be nice.

Congrats!

 

Oh there's still time for something to go wrong!

[Rosebud47]

7 hours ago, imacken said:

Out of interest, how do you set WMR window to have no image or Cliff House?

 

At the bottom of the mixed reality portal window, there´s a button/symbol like "play/pause" at a Youtube video. Just klick it and the screen in the windows goes off. I´m not sure, because of my lousy memory, but I think there´s an option too in the SteamVR or SteamVR for wmr to untick for not starting in the cliff house, but I need to search and find it again by myself to be able to point to. Was some time ago, when I configured, but since then the screen in the WMR Portal Window stays off and only the mirrored screen of DCS appears on the desktop.

 

 

 

 

[Supmua]

No major issue with mine now, it’s all mostly sorted out.

 

Current favorite SteamVR general SS is 3420x3420 (1.4x native res), then per-app downsampling as needed.  Ultra mode, motion compensation in Vive console.  I find these settings yield optimal image quality, it can look even better with upsampling but my current hardware cant handle much more than this.  The sweetspot is small but once you find it everything is tact sharp with near edge to edge clarity.  Top to bottom clarity is even better than side to side.  Glance down to look at MFCD (F/A-18C) from forward looking position and it’s legible.  Lens can get fogged up for prolonged use (hours), but I find that for my facial profile, tilting the panel upward a bit to allow circulation prevented this.

 

It’s great with DCS, played a few missions from Rising Squall and really like the way it looks.  It’s even more breathtaking in MSFS especially around Innsbruck airport, you just can’t appreciate this superb ambient lighting, water reflection and shadow detail in lower res headsets.

Edited June 6, 2021 by Supmua

[dburne]

All sounding good making me even more hopeful this will be able to replace my Reverb G2 and Index nicely.

Received my Kiwi VR Face Pad Replacement Kit , now just waiting on HTC Grrrr!

 

[trigen]

I have changed my initial impression here but you really need to change the foam and get it super close to get an acceptable vertical fov  (The narrow vertical fov is still something we dont want) and sweet spot. Its quite narrow and you have to micro adjust at default foam distance. The picture is really nice, the motion smoothing excellent and the FOV quite good. 

 

Sadly the performance at the moment seems to be quite bad. It can barely keep 90 FPS in the menu with only 3000 SS on my 3090 with no AA and struggle to keep 45 I could run 3700 and larger fov on my 8kX and get better performance. Even with Kegetys mod it dont really gain much so i think there is some other issue here on the latest Nvidia drivers... Its a shame as running 120hz is simply fantastic and even at 30 fps if you can take a bit of stutter and artifacts its smooth. Not gonna run like that but i think i could keep 60 once the performance issues are sorted. There's also plenty of tracking bugs in other games and vertical alignment issues in DCS. This software is not release ready.  

All in all though I'd take this over the G2 any day and since i get a lot of eyestrain with the 8kX im almost and very close actually   to give it up for this one. Sound is pretty shit. 

Edited June 6, 2021 by trigen

[imacken]

It’s the sound I’m concerned about. It was the worst thing about the VP1 when I owned one. Absolutely no low end at all. 

[Headwarp]

I just used my Pro 2 for the first time.   I have family stuff to get back to so I had to cut it short.  But I'll spend some time with it and share my experience coming from the Samsung Odyssey. 

[dburne]

1 hour ago, imacken said:

It’s the sound I’m concerned about. It was the worst thing about the VP1 when I owned one. Absolutely no low end at all. 

 

I have yet to own a VR headset that I was happy with the speakers it had.

I always go back to using earbuds plugged into either the headset audio jack if equipped or my MB sound jack.

I plan on doing the same with the VP2.

Edited June 6, 2021 by dburne

[imacken]

I’ve been extremely happy with the sound on the G1, Index and G2. The last thing I want is more wires and devices!

[dburne]

13 minutes ago, imacken said:

I’ve been extremely happy with the sound on the G1, Index and G2. The last thing I want is more wires and devices!

 

It really does not bother me at all, and I much prefer the better sound experience.

Just a personal thing for me.

[Supmua]

2 hours ago, dburne said:

 

I have yet to own a VR headset that I was happy with the speakers it had.

I always go back to using earbuds plugged into either the headset audio jack if equipped or my MB sound jack.

I plan on doing the same with the VP2.

 

There’s no audio output jack on the Vive Pro 2, but the USB-C port in the hidden compartment can support pretty much anything including USB DAC. There are all kinds of tiny portable USB DACs ranging from simple ones to really nice ones like THX Onyx or Audioquest Dragonfly. 

[Headwarp]

Honestly, while the headphones don't have the output of say my set of Astro A50's,  they dont seem any better or worse than the speakers on my Odyssey.   The biggest factor on whether that sounds decent all for me was ensuring they were directly over my ears.    Otherwise I think I can live with the Pro 2 headphones.   I considered wearing my A50's over them because they're wireless but that's just too much bulk.  

 

So.. my headset only goes up to 70.5mm IPD.. but I guess the size of the face mask has an effect here.

 

The visual quality is a huge upgrade from my Odyssey even though I was running it at a resolution that runs the native resolution of the headset. 

 

SteamVR doesn't seem to want to make up its mind what the resolution is though, as it reported 100% was 2048x2048, then 2200x2200 but I'm pretty sure it's doing 2488x2488 with my settings as that's what DCS said after I closed it, until I restarted steamVR again. 

 

I'm noticing some weirdness with shadows that I've never experienced before.. wondering if it's because of motion compensation.  Hard to describe, like they moved with my screen. 

 

I still wish they would've just left the Pro 2's controls in the SteamVR environment.. and I can't speak about motion smoothing vs motion compensation.    It seems to have its pros and cons vs my experience with WMR's motion reprojection, I need more time with it but so far aircraft flying by don't appear to be flapping their wings like I've experienced at times.   I'm honestly used to running a 60hz refresh rate in the Odyssey and having a smooth 55-60fps experience with no reprojection.. which, was honestly pretty awesome, but, I can actually read the majority of any white characters on the F-16MFD's where they were previously a blur.  I still have to zoom in to see the numbers on aircraft the IFF has tagged as red/green and those numbers seem smaller anyway. 

 

 

Anyway.. I think I'm keeping it..hopefully HTC will have improvements in the future, and even if not.. I'm digging the almost non-existent SDE.  I catch glimpses of groups of pixels every now and then but find them harder to make out the more I look for them, and who knows what kind of performance increases the vulkan engine might bring towards the end of the year. 

 

I need to update my sig btw this is all on a waste of sand z590 11900k build which is what I could grab locally after a mishap with my z370 8700k build that Asus has declared end of life and doesn't seem to be releasing updates for anymore, even though MSI released a chipset driver in December and recently added Rebar to the z370 bios.. i.e. my new build doesn't feature an Asus board.   

 

For the understandable hatred the chip gets.. my minimum framerate improved and I think my old build had issues due to the lack of recent driver support.  Not to mention I was able to OC this chip higher than the 8700k, and I wasn't about to sit around waiting for a 5900x or 5950x to show up at retail prices nor drop 5 grand on a prebuilt rig even though I wouldn't mind a 3090.   If I ever find one at MSRP my build will still be still be significantly less expensive than the prebuilts I was looking at.  

 

But my 2080TI is handling the native resolution and maintaining the 45fps minimum.  I probably have a little room to turn my settings up afaict.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by Headwarp

[dburne]

15 minutes ago, Supmua said:

There’s no audio output jack on the Vive Pro 2, but the USB-C port in the hidden compartment can support pretty much anything including USB DAC. There are all kinds of tiny portable USB DACs ranging from simple ones to really nice ones like THX Onyx or Audioquest Dragonfly. 

 

Thanks for that, certainly is an interesting option I had not thought of. I will probably just continue using my earbuds plugged into the Creative sound on my motherboard as I am doing now, but may check that out here at some point.

[Headwarp]

So downloading a firmware update for the headset via steamVR seems to have fixed the resolution discrepency between Vive Console and SteamVR..  annd starting over because I thought I already updated everything prior to now. 

[DucS2r]

I really appreciate all the reviews. I had a Vive Pro 2 head set on order from Dell until they delayed shipping to the Fall. I recently upgraded my computer with a faster processor and a 3090, and am ready to upgrade from my current Rift S to whichever is better for flight sims: the G2 ot the Pro 2. Your advice and reviews are priceless. 

[Supmua]

There’s no current hardware setup that can really drive the VP2 to its full potential right now, and I think VR is already awesome at this pixel density so this headset should last at least a few years without needing to upgrade unless you really want something with wider FOV, or less glare, or OLED/mini-LED panel.  Index 2 could be a better headset for general public, but nobody knows when it is going to happen since Valve is focusing on developing brain interface rather than VR tech right now.  Besides HP, nobody else cares about making WMR headsets these days.  Facebook is actively pushing VR, but in mobile/portable area.

 

I actually don’t mind the audio now with rubberbands mod compressing the earphones against my ears to create a seal and produce decent sounds, I can actually hear small background detail or ambient noises better than open speakers without cranking the volume way up.  The hum hopefully can be corrected via software update.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Supmua

[dburne]

Start of a new week. I wonder if my VP2 order will change from waiting for fulfillment to actually shipped today? Or any day this week?

Not too bad though in the meantime I enjoy reading up on others that have already gotten theirs and working with them, so am learning some good stuff. Sure would like to see it for myself though.
 

[GunSlingerAUS]

12 hours ago, Headwarp said:

Honestly, while the headphones don't have the output of say my set of Astro A50's,  they dont seem any better or worse than the speakers on my Odyssey.   The biggest factor on whether that sounds decent all for me was ensuring they were directly over my ears.    Otherwise I think I can live with the Pro 2 headphones.   I considered wearing my A50's over them because they're wireless but that's just too much bulk.  

 

So.. my headset only goes up to 70.5mm IPD.. but I guess the size of the face mask has an effect here.

 

The visual quality is a huge upgrade from my Odyssey even though I was running it at a resolution that runs the native resolution of the headset. 

 

SteamVR doesn't seem to want to make up its mind what the resolution is though, as it reported 100% was 2048x2048, then 2200x2200 but I'm pretty sure it's doing 2488x2488 with my settings as that's what DCS said after I closed it, until I restarted steamVR again. 

 

I'm noticing some weirdness with shadows that I've never experienced before.. wondering if it's because of motion compensation.  Hard to describe, like they moved with my screen. 

 

I still wish they would've just left the Pro 2's controls in the SteamVR environment.. and I can't speak about motion smoothing vs motion compensation.    It seems to have its pros and cons vs my experience with WMR's motion reprojection, I need more time with it but so far aircraft flying by don't appear to be flapping their wings like I've experienced at times.   I'm honestly used to running a 60hz refresh rate in the Odyssey and having a smooth 55-60fps experience with no reprojection.. which, was honestly pretty awesome, but, I can actually read the majority of any white characters on the F-16MFD's where they were previously a blur.  I still have to zoom in to see the numbers on aircraft the IFF has tagged as red/green and those numbers seem smaller anyway. 

 

 

Anyway.. I think I'm keeping it..hopefully HTC will have improvements in the future, and even if not.. I'm digging the almost non-existent SDE.  I catch glimpses of groups of pixels every now and then but find them harder to make out the more I look for them, and who knows what kind of performance increases the vulkan engine might bring towards the end of the year. 

 

I need to update my sig btw this is all on a waste of sand z590 11900k build which is what I could grab locally after a mishap with my z370 8700k build that Asus has declared end of life and doesn't seem to be releasing updates for anymore, even though MSI released a chipset driver in December and recently added Rebar to the z370 bios.. i.e. my new build doesn't feature an Asus board.   

 

For the understandable hatred the chip gets.. my minimum framerate improved and I think my old build had issues due to the lack of recent driver support.  Not to mention I was able to OC this chip higher than the 8700k, and I wasn't about to sit around waiting for a 5900x or 5950x to show up at retail prices nor drop 5 grand on a prebuilt rig even though I wouldn't mind a 3090.   If I ever find one at MSRP my build will still be still be significantly less expensive than the prebuilts I was looking at.  

 

But my 2080TI is handling the native resolution and maintaining the 45fps minimum.  I probably have a little room to turn my settings up afaict.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 11900K is currently the best CPU on the market for DCS thanks to its 5.3GHz single core boost speed and IPC improvements. It's also got better "lowest fps" performance compared to AMD, meaning games hit higher minimum fps on Intel compared to the 5900/5950. Obviously AMD destroys Intel at multithreaded software, but the vast majority of games don't use more than four cores, let alone eight. So I'd be happy with what you've got, as currently there isn't anything better, for DCS at least

Edited June 7, 2021 by GunSlingerAUS

[Gryzor]

1 hour ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

The 11900K is currently the best CPU on the market for DCS thanks to its 5.3GHz single core boost speed and IPC improvements. It's also got better "lowest fps" performance compared to AMD, meaning games hit higher minimum fps on Intel compared to the 5900/5950. Obviously AMD destroys Intel at multithreaded software, but the vast majority of games don't use more than four cores, let alone eight. So I'd be happy with what you've got, as currently there isn't anything better, for DCS at least

 

 

You´re wrong, that situation where in comparison with 3900X. With 5900x I get CPU z single score of 690 (in stock). With 11900K , single score is 716. Do you consider much better score in single core? not really now. And now, many games are multithreaded (in DCS you have 2 threads, game and sound, appart of other tasks done by CPU with windows, drivers, VR devices, other peripherals, etc... that "eats" CPU cycles also)

 

And most games (single core included) performs better in 5900x/5950x CPU, there are many charts in the web, so its not so clear now.

 

Besites that CPU operations are limited by FPS gsynced/vsynced by your Graphic Card (60 fps are limited by graphic card, so then the CPU are "drawing" operations at its full potential, not more).

Edited June 7, 2021 by Gryzor

[Headwarp]

3 hours ago, GunSlingerAUS said:

 

The 11900K is currently the best CPU on the market for DCS thanks to its 5.3GHz single core boost speed and IPC improvements. It's also got better "lowest fps" performance compared to AMD, meaning games hit higher minimum fps on Intel compared to the 5900/5950. Obviously AMD destroys Intel at multithreaded software, but the vast majority of games don't use more than four cores, let alone eight. So I'd be happy with what you've got, as currently there isn't anything better, for DCS at least

 

 

The 11900K is honestly garbage.  It reaches 5.3ghz on two cores by boosting to like 1.5vcore and 1.5v system agent voltage.   I had to manually set my voltages and find my stable clock frequencies just to get the chip to stop hitting TJ Max during stress testing.   When testing AVX even at 4.7ghz the chip is drawing like 350watts.  non-AVX loads it will draw like 200-250w.   I have a single core sitting about 10 degrees hotter which makes total sense after pulling the IHS off my 8700K and seeing a shiny bare piece of silicon with the TIM only on the surface of the IHS.  I've had to settle for 5.1ghz all core and 5.2 ghz for 4 cores or less with an avx offset of -5, @ 1.35vcore and 1.2v SA voltage though no games I'm playing in 2021 trigger the avx offset.   In dx12 titles that would have my 8700k maxed out my 11900k is barely working at all and I'm gpu limited, but there's a reason the 5900x and 5950x are sold out unless you want to pay scalper prices and most big reviewers are recommending the 10900k over the 11900k.     Like I say.. the only reason I went with this build was because I needed a new PC immediately and this was what was available to me. 

 

It does perform better than my previous build but marginally and AMD's architecture is allowing the new ryzen chips to compete with intel using lower clockspeeds, less power draw, less heat, and way more cores.   

 

 

Back on topic however -  I'm really really not enjoying motion compensation..it's about as bad as legacy async reprojection.  Like.. HEy.. HTC.. you're a smartphone company whose last phone I bought was still popping numbers up at me when I'd dial that I'd completely deleted from my phone.   You guys have questionable design choices.    Why are you trying to compete with Microsoft and Valve?  They TOWER over you in software development.  Your speciality is devices that run on android, WIndows, and Steam.    Completing with Occulus made sense when they were starting up.. but reinventing the wheel and making your proprietary tech is only going to hurt you in the long run.   Your headset requires SteamVR to function, let's put steamvr back in control. Hint - Vive Pro probably didn't sell well because of it's pricetag with no real improvement over competing designs.   Now you give us what we wanted from the Vive Pro, but you replace existing useful features with your own tech that doesn't seem to work quite as well.   I don't trust you to put the work in that MS and Valve have put into the technology.    Who was really asking for the Vive Cosmos anyway?  I want to like the Pro 2.. but Motion Compensation seems like early asynchronous reprojection methods.  I suddenly am seeing an aircraft I'm in a dog fight with in double vision.   WMR Reprojection had it's issues but the last time I used it wasn't this bad.  I can't speak for Valve's motion smoothing but it has to be better than this.  

 

I'm debating sending my Pro 2 back honestly, might instead get an index because I am enjoying the lighthouse tracking. 

Edited June 7, 2021 by Headwarp

[A2597]

Still waiting for my headset to ship. What I *thought* was the headset shipment was just the Vive Trackers. They sent two tracking numbers for one box with two trackers in it.

*sigh*

 

 

[Supmua]

I find Vive’s motion compensation to be fine for 1:2 fill in, meaning 45 fps for 90 Hz setting.  However anything below that, say 1:3, doesn’t work as well as Steam’s motion smoothing creating bands of visual artifacts.  So unless you have top end CPU and GPU, you will likely not enjoy the experience unless the rendering resolution is reduced below native to keep fps above 45–and this means keeping frametime below 22.2ms in tracking software.  I currently use Steam’s built in frametime monitor because I’m not sure how reliable fpsVR is with this new headset.  In less demanding games, I just aim for frametime below 11.1ms for smooth operation (pretty doable in Star Wars Squadrons).

 

 I haven’t even tried 120 Hz mode, don’t think 60 fps is doable at the visual settings that I want.

[dburne]

3 hours ago, Headwarp said:

 

The 11900K is honestly garbage.  It reaches 5.3ghz on two cores by boosting to like 1.5vcore and 1.5v system agent voltage.   I had to manually set my voltages and find my stable clock frequencies just to get the chip to stop hitting TJ Max during stress testing.   When testing AVX even at 4.7ghz the chip is drawing like 350watts.  non-AVX loads it will draw like 200-250w.   I have a single core sitting about 10 degrees hotter which makes total sense after pulling the IHS off my 8700K and seeing a shiny bare piece of silicon with the TIM only on the surface of the IHS.  I've had to settle for 5.1ghz all core and 5.2 ghz for 4 cores or less with an avx offset of -5, @ 1.35vcore and 1.2v SA voltage though no games I'm playing in 2021 trigger the avx offset.   In dx12 titles that would have my 8700k maxed out my 11900k is barely working at all and I'm gpu limited, but there's a reason the 5900x and 5950x are sold out unless you want to pay scalper prices and most big reviewers are recommending the 10900k over the 11900k.     Like I say.. the only reason I went with this build was because I needed a new PC immediately and this was what was available to me. 

 

It does perform better than my previous build but marginally and AMD's architecture is allowing the new ryzen chips to compete with intel using lower clockspeeds, less power draw, less heat, and way more cores.   

 

 

Back on topic however -  I'm really really not enjoying motion compensation..it's about as bad as legacy async reprojection.  Like.. HEy.. HTC.. you're a smartphone company whose last phone I bought was still popping numbers up at me when I'd dial that I'd completely deleted from my phone.   You guys have questionable design choices.    Why are you trying to compete with Microsoft and Valve?  They TOWER over you in software development.  Your speciality is devices that run on android, WIndows, and Steam.    Completing with Occulus made sense when they were starting up.. but reinventing the wheel and making your proprietary tech is only going to hurt you in the long run.   Your headset requires SteamVR to function, let's put steamvr back in control. Hint - Vive Pro probably didn't sell well because of it's pricetag with no real improvement over competing designs.   Now you give us what we wanted from the Vive Pro, but you replace existing useful features with your own tech that doesn't seem to work quite as well.   I don't trust you to put the work in that MS and Valve have put into the technology.    Who was really asking for the Vive Cosmos anyway?  I want to like the Pro 2.. but Motion Compensation seems like early asynchronous reprojection methods.  I suddenly am seeing an aircraft I'm in a dog fight with in double vision.   WMR Reprojection had it's issues but the last time I used it wasn't this bad.  I can't speak for Valve's motion smoothing but it has to be better than this.  

 

I'm debating sending my Pro 2 back honestly, might instead get an index because I am enjoying the lighthouse tracking. 

 

 

Steam VR Motion Smoothing is quite good.

I run DCS at high graphics with Motion Smoothing on and forced to 45 fps.

It does great for me.

 

HTC unless theirs is as good and sounds like maybe it is not, needs to let Steam VR handle it.