Reverb G2 to Quest 3 is a no go

[Strong05]

Picked up a Quest 3 a week ago and have been playing with all the settings to try and get the most out of the link.  Unfortunately the Quest 3 clarity in the sweet spot just doesn’t compare.  On top of that there is a pretty big performance hit.  The quest 3 lenses are much clearer edge to edge, but that’s the only thing going for it.  The headset was very uncomfortable for any extended play/flight time (this can be fixed with the pro head strap or one of many 3rd party offerings).  At the end of the day it’s down to your preference, edge to edge clarity(quest 3) or higher clarity (g2).  It’s just not enough of a difference to justify the cost for me and I will be returning it.  

If your a first time VR user then this is still a good choice, the only negative is it takes a lot of fiddling with settings to get decent clarity, otherwise your left with a shimmering (at distance) blurry (up close) image that doesn’t do the headset justice. 

Hope this helps anyone interested in upgrading, YMMV.

My rig: 5800x3d, 32 GB RAM, 4090.

Both headsets are running in OPENXR, with DCS running natively in OPENXR.

null

For the G2 WMR is set to:

Adjust level of detail in WMR home: Low

App window resolution: 720p

Experience options: Best visual quality

adjust display resolution: 4320x2160 (best quality)

frame rate: 60 Hz

null

Edited February 21, 2024 by Strong05
Added Settings

[Maddaawg]

Remember to not upgrade to Win11 24H2 and keep that cable safe, it's not replaceable. I may have to get my G2 back out to compare, but for now I am enjoying the Q3 for other things than just DCS - I know sacrilege!

[BAT-2I]

I As well got the q3 a week ago and have been testing. There is very little difference between the g2 and quest three I agree that the edge to edge and v high clarity.  Another factor is the headphones.  For DCS, G2 edges it barely but for every other VR experience the q3

[TEMPEST.114]

Couldn't disagree more. I don't know what settings you've got but this is 100% not my experience. 

I LOATHE Meta/Facebook and I never wanted to give them a single cookie, let alone money, but I used Amazon to 'try' it out and I was blown away.

Not only are the visuals sharper than the G2 (in fact so close to the Pimax Crystal that I also tried a month ago and returned because it was no where near worth the money) but there is literally no sweet spot. I don't have to move my head to read gauges one at a time, I can, like in real life, just move my eyes to see them and keep my head tracking the bandit.

Also, unlike the G2, when I look down by my hips to see the back parts of the side panels (like the refuelling switch in the F16) it's just as clear and sharp as looking straight ahead; in the G2 I had to physically tilt the visor down because everything was blurry when I looked at those panels. 

I don't know what settings these two have used, but out of the box it blows the G2 away. 

[AlpineGTA]

5 hours ago, Elphaba said:

Couldn't disagree more. I don't know what settings you've got but this is 100% not my experience. 

I LOATHE Meta/Facebook and I never wanted to give them a single cookie, let alone money, but I used Amazon to 'try' it out and I was blown away.

Not only are the visuals sharper than the G2 (in fact so close to the Pimax Crystal that I also tried a month ago and returned because it was no where near worth the money) but there is literally no sweet spot. I don't have to move my head to read gauges one at a time, I can, like in real life, just move my eyes to see them and keep my head tracking the bandit.

Also, unlike the G2, when I look down by my hips to see the back parts of the side panels (like the refuelling switch in the F16) it's just as clear and sharp as looking straight ahead; in the G2 I had to physically tilt the visor down because everything was blurry when I looked at those panels. 

I don't know what settings these two have used, but out of the box it blows the G2 away. 

I'm considering a Q3 as a replacement for my G2. I don't like ghosting or using any kind of motion reprojection so I run my G2 at 60Hz to keep it smooth. Realising that I'd have to run the Q3 at 72Hz minimum, would you say that, for the same settings, it is more taxing to run, less, or about the same as the G2?

[TEMPEST.114]

It beats the G2 in everything but audio and for the most part the audio is good enough. I'm running at 72Hz (recommended) and I have zero issues. Literally. 

There are more pixels so of course it's going to be more taxing. I'm getting over 70 in the air above the layers and a solid 36 in the weeds at  Mach 1 with all the gfx on HIGH on a 4070ti with an 8700k Cpu.

It's night and day in clarity over the G2. No sweet spot and I can really look around everywhere in the cockpit, even behind my hips and it's crystal clear. It's so very, very close to the Pimax Crystal but a much, much better headset overall. I wouldn't change to a crystal if you paid me. 

Edited February 20, 2024 by Elphaba

[Qcumber]

3 hours ago, AlpineGTA said:

Realising that I'd have to run the Q3 at 72Hz minimum, would you say that, for the same settings, it is more taxing to run, less, or about the same as the G2?

You could always lock the fps to 60 in DCS. 

[Phantom711]

vor 9 Minuten schrieb Qcumber:

You could always lock the fps to 60 in DCS. 

Uhmm…yeah, but this is not a native refresh rate of the Q3, so it will be a stuttery experience.

[Qcumber]

Just now, Phantom711 said:

Uhmm…yeah, but this is not a native refresh rate of the Q3, so it will be a stuttery experience.

Not necessarily. 

[Phantom711]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb Qcumber:

Not necessarily. 

Well…by locking the FPS, the stutter will be more evenly distributed. 
Anyways, I think it is generally understood, that your FPS should meet the refresh rate of the headset. This is obviously also the intent of @AlpineGTA. Otherwise he would go from smooth 60FPS in the G2 (apart from the known flickering) to not so smooth 60FPS in a Q3.

That being said, of course 72FPS will be more taxing than 60FPS.

[Qcumber]

1 hour ago, Phantom711 said:

Well…by locking the FPS, the stutter will be more evenly distributed. 
Anyways, I think it is generally understood, that your FPS should meet the refresh rate of the headset. This is obviously also the intent of @AlpineGTA. Otherwise he would go from smooth 60FPS in the G2 (apart from the known flickering) to not so smooth 60FPS in a Q3.

That being said, of course 72FPS will be more taxing than 60FPS.

Have you tried setting your headset to 90 and locking fps at 60? I can run my QP at 90 and if I lock it at 72fps I get the same experience as when I run at a native refresh of 72hz. 

[jurinko]

I just fiddled with my newly delivered Q3 until 2am after 3 years of using G2. I still wait for prescription lenses, but with q3 i just move eyeballs to look left and right, instead of moving the whole head to aim the sweetspot. And especially the vertical fov is much better. I run it with the cable - much lighter than the g2 monstrosity, air link and virtual desktop giving me awful performance - probably my wifi modem sucks. It does not fit my face as good as g2 did, i have the better strip and might try that better face foam or whatever it is called, but it feels lighter. Around nose there is a bit space, for ventilation? Ability to set 72-80-90 Hz helps fine tuning. 

One needs to spent his time reading and finding things out (where to switch cable link etc), but it is a step forward and I liked G2. Cheap 2nd hand G2 is excellent choice for vr beginners. 

[Phantom711]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Qcumber:

Have you tried setting your headset to 90 and locking fps at 60? I can run my QP at 90 and if I lock it at 72fps I get the same experience as when I run at a native refresh of 72hz. 

And you have ASW turned off?

[Qcumber]

20 minutes ago, Phantom711 said:

And you have ASW turned off?

Yes.

I have been experimenting with using 90 hz refresh and locking at 72 fps with OXRTK, then toggling ASW 45 locked on/off (with a keybind) when the frame rate drops too much. It seems to work quite well. 

[AlpineGTA]

11 hours ago, Elphaba said:

It beats the G2 in everything but audio and for the most part the audio is good enough. I'm running at 72Hz (recommended) and I have zero issues. Literally. 

There are more pixels so of course it's going to be more taxing. I'm getting over 70 in the air above the layers and a solid 36 in the weeds at  Mach 1 with all the gfx on HIGH on a 4070ti with an 8700k Cpu.

It's night and day in clarity over the G2. No sweet spot and I can really look around everywhere in the cockpit, even behind my hips and it's crystal clear. It's so very, very close to the Pimax Crystal but a much, much better headset overall. I wouldn't change to a crystal if you paid me. 

 

Thanks, It sounds very good. But it sounds like I'd have to turn down a DCS setting or two, or upgrade my GPU.

6 hours ago, Qcumber said:

Have you tried setting your headset to 90 and locking fps at 60? I can run my QP at 90 and if I lock it at 72fps I get the same experience as when I run at a native refresh of 72hz. 

I have a Quest 2 and I've tried lots of different settings, but nothing works better than running at native 72Hz and maintaining 72fps without ASW. 

[Strong05]

23 hours ago, Elphaba said:

Couldn't disagree more. I don't know what settings you've got but this is 100% not my experience. 

I LOATHE Meta/Facebook and I never wanted to give them a single cookie, let alone money, but I used Amazon to 'try' it out and I was blown away.

Not only are the visuals sharper than the G2 (in fact so close to the Pimax Crystal that I also tried a month ago and returned because it was no where near worth the money) but there is literally no sweet spot. I don't have to move my head to read gauges one at a time, I can, like in real life, just move my eyes to see them and keep my head tracking the bandit.

Also, unlike the G2, when I look down by my hips to see the back parts of the side panels (like the refuelling switch in the F16) it's just as clear and sharp as looking straight ahead; in the G2 I had to physically tilt the visor down because everything was blurry when I looked at those panels. 

I don't know what settings these two have used, but out of the box it blows the G2 away. 

On edge to edge clarity we agree.  However, if you are in the sweet spot of the G2 it is significantly sharper and clearer then the Quest 3.  Is it possible you have an incorrect setting for the G2?  Are you using the G2 with steam (I recall this could look worse then the Q3) or with WMR and openxr?  Your settings in WMR can also ruin the image of the G2, so interested to know what exactly you have it set too to make it look worse then a Q3.  I'm not using out of the box settings for the Q3 either, I'm using the quest link with 940mbps in the oculus tool settings which is almost double the band width of the default settings and it's still not as clear as the sweet spot in the G2.  I also have super sampling turned all the way up in the oculus software, where as with the G2 I'm not running any super sampling.  LET ME BE CLEAR, changing those 2 settings greatly increased the clarity of the quest 3 over "out of the box" settings for the quest 3 and it's still not as clear as the G2.  You can see the video compression fuzziness in all of the writing in the cockpit and shimmering on other airplanes parked a spot or 2 away (with MSAA set to 2x for both headsets, also I haven't changed a single DCS setting between the 2 headsets).  So no, the quest 3 is absolutely not as sharp as the G2 in the sweet spot.  I need all the visual clarity I can get to V-ID in cold war and WWII servers.  If you can live with the reduced clarity in the sweet spot because the edge to edge clarity is far superior to the G2 I totally get that, but that's not worth $500 to me, especially now that the G2 is effectively worthless due to Microcrap.  Enjoy the quest, I will be returning mine.  Maybe valve will release a new headset that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

Edited February 20, 2024 by Strong05

[Strong05]

18 hours ago, Elphaba said:

It beats the G2 in everything but audio and for the most part the audio is good enough. I'm running at 72Hz (recommended) and I have zero issues. Literally. 

There are more pixels so of course it's going to be more taxing. I'm getting over 70 in the air above the layers and a solid 36 in the weeds at  Mach 1 with all the gfx on HIGH on a 4070ti with an 8700k Cpu.

It's night and day in clarity over the G2. No sweet spot and I can really look around everywhere in the cockpit, even behind my hips and it's crystal clear. It's so very, very close to the Pimax Crystal but a much, much better headset overall. I wouldn't change to a crystal if you paid me. 

 

Per Meta here is the Q3 resolution: https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-3/#specs

 - 2064x2208 pixels per eye

That come out to 4,557,312 pixels per eye

The G2's resolution is: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06938191

2160 x 2160 panel resolution per eye

Which comes out to 4,665,600 pixels per eye.

So in fact no the G2 has a higher resolution.  However the more telling metric for what the clarity should look like is PPD (pixels per degree).

Which based on Meta's website it should have the edge: 25 PPD and the G2 is only 22.08 PPD.

https://vrlowdown.com/reverb-g2-vs-quest-2/

So the lack of a display port or HDMI port is really hurting the clarity of the Quest 3 as it should have the better image quality full stop. 

Edited February 20, 2024 by Strong05

[blkspade]

36FPS is unacceptable to me. I felt the drop from 90/45 to 80/40 from the Rift to the Rift-S.

[TEMPEST.114]

5 hours ago, Strong05 said:

Per Meta here is the Q3 resolution: https://www.meta.com/quest/quest-3/#specs

 - 2064x2208 pixels per eye

That come out to 4,557,312 pixels per eye

The G2's resolution is: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06938191

2160 x 2160 panel resolution per eye

Which comes out to 4,665,600 pixels per eye.

So in fact no the G2 has a higher resolution.  However the more telling metric for what the clarity should look like is PPD (pixels per degree).

Which based on Meta's website it should have the edge: 25 PPD and the G2 is only 22.08 PPD.

https://vrlowdown.com/reverb-g2-vs-quest-2/

So the lack of a display port or HDMI port is really hurting the clarity of the Quest 3 as it should have the better image quality full stop. 

 

FFS are you really trying to argue with someone who has the G2, Quest 3 and tried the crystal for a month when you've done none of that?!

I'm using a cable to drive the Quest 3 - not wifi. The quality of the resolution has **** all to do with PC or anything else other than the panels. 

Go do what you like, I couldn't give a flying fig, but some asked and I replied with my personal experience from having ALL THREE HEADSETS. 

4 hours ago, blkspade said:

36FPS is unacceptable to me. I felt the drop from 90/45 to 80/40 from the Rift to the Rift-S.

You must be unable to watch any movie or tv show then. /facepalm.

[SharpeXB]

10 minutes ago, Elphaba said:

You must be unable to watch any movie or tv show then.

I think it’s well understood that the standard frame rates for film and video are quite inadequate for fast action first person games. In VR or 2D. 

[Phantom711]

vor 6 Stunden schrieb Elphaba:

You must be unable to watch any movie or tv show then. /facepalm

Well…that comparison is flawed. There are reasons why we perceive the 24FPS of a movie as smooth. A frame of a movie is basically a photo of a moving object and already contains motion blur whereas a frame of a game is basically a standstill of all objects.

You want to know more?

https://paulbakaus.com/the-illusion-of-motion/
 

It is actually a very entertaining article. Even though not directly aimed at VR, it explaines a lot about the relation of refresh rates, FPS and stutter.

[kksnowbear]

9 hours ago, Phantom711 said:

Well…that comparison is flawed. There are reasons why we perceive the 24FPS of a movie as smooth. A frame of a movie is basically a photo of a moving object and already contains motion blur whereas a frame of a game is basically a standstill of all objects.

You want to know more?

https://paulbakaus.com/the-illusion-of-motion/
 

It is actually a very entertaining article. Even though not directly aimed at VR, it explaines a lot about the relation of refresh rates, FPS and stutter.

Finally...Hopefully this is absorbed and retained by all the decades of idiots I've dealt with who assume and insist that higher frame rates automatically 'fix' stutter.  Best part of the entire article is where it's stated plain as day:

"This might shock you, but an animation that is capped at 30 fps looks much, much better than the same animation varying between 40 fps and 50 fps."

I've maintained for years - because I actually understand how it works - that I'd take a lower, stable frame rate (within reason) over even 100 frames bouncing around all over the place.  It's not the lower frame rate that is distracting; it's constant changing between rates in real time.  In fact, there's a simple way to show that that no one can really tell the difference in lower and higher frame rates anyway; they simply assume a higher rate will automatically be smoother (not true).

Interestingly, there has always been a correlation between those who insist on this, and those having money to throw at top-end hardware, claiming they can see the difference in 45 and 60 FPS (for example, or even between 60 and 100).  We all know the post: "I have no stutters because I'm getting 60 FPS rock solid"  Someone figures out at least a couple times a year that you can completely eliminate stutters if you throw enough money at hardware

Typically, what's taking place is someone wanted 'bragging rights' for the latest, most expensive hardware, but didn't want to admit that's really what they were after.  So, the way to justify throwing money at bragging rights is "I can see the difference in 45 and 60 FPS".

No, you can't, and it's actually easy enough to prove you can't see the difference between even 1 and 100 FPS.  What you notice is variance in the perceived rate of movement, which in reality has nothing at all to do directly with frame rate.  (As an aside, the same guy could be expected to be proclaiming a year later - when the next newest GPU came out - that he now has "NO STUTTERS" because he's getting 100 FPS with the new $2000 GPU he just "pulled the trigger on"...lol HINT: It's the same guy who just a year prior said he had no stutters because he got 60FPS.  So how do you eliminate stutters that you claim you didn't have a year ago?)

Smoother does not necessarily come from higher frame rate, and higher frame rate does not necessarily guarantee smoother.

(EDIT: I fully expect to be attacked for having stepped on toes concerning frame rates and expensive, latest-gen hardware.  Comes with the territory; been dealing with that for the same aforementioned decades)

Edited February 21, 2024 by kksnowbear

[SharpeXB]

47 minutes ago, kksnowbear said:

No, you can't, and it's actually easy enough to prove you can't see the difference between even 1 and 100 FPS. 

Huh?

This discussion is all veering off topic but I assure you the difference between 1 and 100 FPS is noticeable

[Strong05]

11 hours ago, Elphaba said:

FFS are you really trying to argue with someone who has the G2, Quest 3 and tried the crystal for a month when you've done none of that?!

I'm using a cable to drive the Quest 3 - not wifi. The quality of the resolution has **** all to do with PC or anything else other than the panels. 

Go do what you like, I couldn't give a flying fig, but some asked and I replied with my personal experience from having ALL THREE HEADSETS. 

You must be unable to watch any movie or tv show then. /facepalm.

What?  I have not talked nor compared anything about the Pimax crystal once, in my original post nor does it have anything to do with my response.  I have both the Quest 3 and G2 in my possession, for which my comparison is solely focused on.  

And yes the quality of the imagine of the Q3 does greatly depend on the link settings you have.  The image is not generated via a native video connection.  Please read my reply that was a direct response to you.

It's also possible the way you are streaming the game to your headset is superior to what I'm doing.  You mentioned you are using USB to connect what USB data transfer speeds were you able to achieve?  

I am also interested in your settings for the G2.  It seems to me that something is off for our experiences with these two headsets to be so different.  But as I said in the OG post YMMV.

Let's try to keep this thread on topic and constructive, so that others that may want to move from the G2 to the Q3 can learn something from it.    

Edited February 21, 2024 by Strong05

[kksnowbear]

28 minutes ago, SharpeXB said:

Huh?

This discussion is all veering off topic but I assure you the difference between 1 and 100 FPS is noticeable

It is a bit off topic, I agree - but I was simply commenting on something that someone else brought up.

It's not difficult to describe a way to conclusively demonstrate that you couldn't tell the difference in a very low frame rate and a very high one.

You're making the same mistake that (some? most?) people have been making forever: Confusing frame rate with the perception of motion, thus assuming high frame rates will automatically guarantee smooth video.  It's just not true.  The concept is touched upon by the article linked above.  There is nothing, at all, to guarantee that even at 100 FPS you will not have stutters, pauses, hitches (or whatever we're calling it now).

And as I mentioned above, it's not worth getting into the argument to convince people who refuse to "think outside the box".  (Come to think of it, maybe the problem is really with people who aren't thinking "Inside the box" lol)

Edited February 21, 2024 by kksnowbear