Looking for Varjo Aero Users feedback?

[Dangerzone]

Hi,

Another HP refugee here. Not wanting to make the same mistake again I thought I'd reach out to the Varjo community to see what experience they have had and get some feedback.

In particular I'm interested in people that have had to deal with Varjo for any replacement parts (to Varjo support their own product), have you had good customer experience, and has the use in DCS being a good experience, or have you had to deal with problems after problems.

The price of a Varjo compared to a HP Reverb hurts however if the company is a reputable company and supports their users - then maybe the extra $'s would be worth it over HP's experience if I'm able to raise enough finance. The main concern I have is spending such $'s on a product with only 12 months warranty so I'm really keen to know what sort of experience Varjo users have had, but I'm not seeing many alternatives out there. I don't have FB and won't sign up to their T&C so Meta is out, I've been burnt by HP and their non-environmentally friendly throw out good hardware because we won't supply a replacement cable policy, and other options appear as though I'd be going backwards in quality (unless there's something new that's been released recently I'm unaware of). 

My sole requirement for VR is DCS, so the feedback I'm looking for is your experience with DCS + Varjo's support.

Thanks

DZ

[dburne]

I absolutely love my Aero and have been running it solid since Jan 2022. Have had to deal with support on an apparent dead Link Box, they had a replacement Link Box and Cable to me in 2 days ( shipped from the US support site) and have been rocking along ever since without any hiccups and that was several months ago.

Granted I am techically out of warranty period now so no idea how out of warranty support might be. I can tell you to be safe going forward I ordered another new Link Box and Cable to have as a spare. I am retired and use it every day so I don't like down time lol.

About all I do with this is DCS as well. You will need to do some tweaking to get performance acceptable but man when you do it is gorgeous.

Downside is audio and needing to get Steam Trackers. I use the Index trackers that came wtih my Index kit, and earbuds I have plugged into my Creative DAC.

Edited February 28, 2023 by dburne

[motoadve]

Have had mine since May, was running great until I left it ON a whole night and got a burned image stuck in it.

Varjo replied to me the same day, sent me a shipping label, I shipped it to Finland and they sent me a new one as soon as they got mine. I would rate  their support first class.

Had the HP Reverb G1 then the G2 , hated the tiny sweet spot (not at issue in the Varjo at all)

DCS with the Varjo Aero looks amazing, and with a 4090 performance is pretty good, highly recommend it.

[Dangerzone]

1 hour ago, dburne said:

I absolutely love my Aero and have been running it solid since Jan 2022. Have had to deal with support on an apparent dead Link Box, they had a replacement Link Box and Cable to me in 2 days ( shipped from the US support site) and have been rocking along ever since without any hiccups and that was several months ago.

Granted I am techically out of warranty period now so no idea how out of warranty support might be. I can tell you to be safe going forward I ordered another new Link Box and Cable to have as a spare. I am retired and use it every day so I don't like down time lol.

About all I do with this is DCS as well. You will need to do some tweaking to get performance acceptable but man when you do it is gorgeous.

Downside is audio and needing to get Steam Trackers. I use the Index trackers that came wtih my Index kit, and earbuds I have plugged into my Creative DAC.

 

Thanks DBurne. Just wondering what system you run (especially GPU) in order to run this. I have a 2080Super, so not sure if it's going to have the grunt or not?

 

50 minutes ago, motoadve said:

Have had mine since May, was running great until I left it ON a whole night and got a burned image stuck in it.

Varjo replied to me the same day, sent me a shipping label, I shipped it to Finland and they sent me a new one as soon as they got mine. I would rate  their support first class.

Had the HP Reverb G1 then the G2 , hated the tiny sweet spot (not at issue in the Varjo at all)

DCS with the Varjo Aero looks amazing, and with a 4090 performance is pretty good, highly recommend it.

Thanks for the feedback. It does sound great. The price already hurts, having to upgrade to a 4090 might put me over the edge, so I'm hoping that I could get away with less. Was your support during warranty? Do you have an option to extend warranty out to 3 or 5 years? (My primary concern besides if I can afford it, is knowing if I commit the money - it's definitely going to serve me for the next 3 or more years), otherwise I'd probably be happy to just replace my HP reverb with another - except I know once I'm out of warranty if that poorly made cable goes, I'm a goner again.

[motoadve]

Mine was under warranty.

Have not heard of an extended warranty though.

[AlexCaboose]

Have had my Aero since early Jan 2022. Absolutely love it. I upgraded from the HP Reverb G2 (most recently), and it was a massive upgrade! 

[Dangerzone]

2 hours ago, AlexCaboose said:

Have had my Aero since early Jan 2022. Absolutely love it. I upgraded from the HP Reverb G2 (most recently), and it was a massive upgrade! 

What GPU are you running with it please?

 

2 hours ago, motoadve said:

Mine was under warranty.

Have not heard of an extended warranty though.

Thanks Motoadve. I'm pretty gunshy at the moment that I could have the same occur as HP but worse for 3x the price. That's why I'm really keen on out of warranty support feedback from users at the moment. Seems as though they will sell replacement cables though, so that's a plus. 

[dburne]

11 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Thanks DBurne. Just wondering what system you run (especially GPU) in order to run this. I have a 2080Super, so not sure if it's going to have the grunt or not?

 

Specs in sig.

Basically 4090 GPU, Intel i9 9900k at 5.1 GHz., 32 GB 3200 MHz cl14 ram. I saw a nice increase going from 3090 to 4090 GPU.

[Timmy51]

11 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Thanks for the feedback. It does sound great. The price already hurts, having to upgrade to a 4090 might put me over the edge, so I'm hoping that I could get away with less. Was your support during warranty? Do you have an option to extend warranty out to 3 or 5 years? (My primary concern besides if I can afford it, is knowing if I commit the money - it's definitely going to serve me for the next 3 or more years), otherwise I'd probably be happy to just replace my HP reverb with another - except I know once I'm out of warranty if that poorly made cable goes, I'm a goner again.

If you don't have the budget for both 4090 and Aero, I'd suggest going with 4090 + Pico 4

[Dangerzone]

9 hours ago, dburne said:

Specs in sig.

Basically 4090 GPU, Intel i9 9900k at 5.1 GHz., 32 GB 3200 MHz cl14 ram. I saw a nice increase going from 3090 to 4090 GPU.

Thanks dburne. Looks like another bug in darkmode - signature's aren't showing up for me. Thanks for advising. Looks like I'd need to find $4,000USD lying around just to be able to upgrade as I'd have to do the Varjo + the GPU (which would mean + the PSU, and probably + a few other things meaning a whole new computer system). 

9 hours ago, Timmy51 said:

If you don't have the budget for both 4090 and Aero, I'd suggest going with 4090 + Pico 4

Thanks for the suggestion on the Pico. I'll have to check it out. I don't mind staying with the same qality I've had in a pinch (would be nice to get a little more) but definitely don't want to go backwards. Any reason you skipped over the pimax?

Edited February 28, 2023 by Dangerzone

[Timmy51]

16 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Thanks for the suggestion on the Pico. I'll have to check it out. I don't mind staying with the same qality I've had in a pinch (would be nice to get a little more) but definitely don't want to go backwards. Any reason you skipped over the pimax?

Pico 4 has pancake lenses with a much larger sweet spot but there is a latency due to the WiFi connection. I'm not sure about Pimax, I've heard that the software side is not good.

[AlexCaboose]

5950X and 4090 for CPU/GPU

[Dangerzone]

7 hours ago, Timmy51 said:

Pico 4 has pancake lenses with a much larger sweet spot but there is a latency due to the WiFi connection. I'm not sure about Pimax, I've heard that the software side is not good.

Thanks for the clarification. Considering I love flying in close form (very close form) I might skip wireless stuff because latency could end up being an issue with the small corrections required. Pity about the software side of the Pimax. I can't believe I'm reconsidering buying another HP Reverb G2 as the best option - even knowing that it's a degradable solution and I'll be needing to replace it in 2-3 years time again (if I'm lucky), but the other solutions look like I'm going to be worse off, or have to spend levels I haven't got the budget for at the moment, or to just put DCS on the shelf for a while and hope something new comes out in the first half of 2023.  

[Timmy51]

2 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

I can't believe I'm reconsidering buying another HP Reverb G2 as the best option

Yes, PCVR is dying, my only hope is Valve with their Deckard headset but I'm not sure when it will be released, it is not even announced yet. The other small PCVR companies can't really compete in terms of the software stack, it's quite expensive to support it when having cash flow only from niche customer hardware sales. Valve can at least get money from PCVR games sales.

[Willie Nelson]

Can anyone tell me if the Varjo Aero needs an upsampling at all with its aspheric lenses?. I ask because I am under the impression that it does not need upsampling to compensate for the barrel distortion in the same way that the Fresnel lenses on the HP reverb do. This alone could be a massive game changer

I am still considering the Pimax Crystal for the same reason. By my calculations, you could potentially be pushing 18% less pixels on the Pimax Crystal than you are on the Reverb, if it does not need upsampling that it. ……… 

[Supmua]

3 hours ago, Willie Nelson said:

Can anyone tell me if the Varjo Aero needs an upsampling at all with its aspheric lenses?. I ask because I am under the impression that it does not need upsampling to compensate for the barrel distortion in the same way that the Fresnel lenses on the HP reverb do. This alone could be a massive game changer

I am still considering the Pimax Crystal for the same reason. By my calculations, you could potentially be pushing 18% less pixels on the Pimax Crystal than you are on the Reverb, if it does not need upsampling that it. ……… 

For the purpose of correcting barrel distortion (I'd call it Pincushion for the Aero because the screen curve goes inward not outward) no because everything is already done internally by Varjo--no idea how Pimax does it though.  For the purpose of getting better image quality yes, upsampling is a great way to improve image quality in VR if your setup can handle it.  Massive game changer? doubt it, haven't seen it personally.