Reverb G2 vs Quest 3

[Baldrick33]

I am a long term G1/G2 user. I recently bought a Quest 3 along with a Kiwi H4 headstrap and Kiwi link charging cable.

In spite of several weeks of fairly extensive tweaking I never got the Q3 to perform as well at the G2 and found the image quality, whilst excellent close up to be inferior when looking out of the cockpit.

Also I had repeated occurrences of the dreaded water/debris in charging cable error which filled the screen and required fumbling for a controller to remove - typically at the most inopportune times whilst flying or racing!

As an alternative I tried Virtual Desktop using a dedicated access point that runs at around 830Mbps which I though seems decent but some research show proper gaming routers are well in excess of.

As the return window got closer I ended up returning it, the Oasis driver was released and the G2 is running nicely with Windows 11 24H2, so all good.

However, reading reviews where people describe the Q3 as an upgrade I can't help feeling I missed a trick somewhere. Virtual Desktop was very poor compared to the link cable, so presumably a router/access point upgrade is necessary. What recommendation are there?

Compared to the G2 the Q3 link cable wasn't as smooth. That said I find SteamVR motion reprojection smoother than the Microsoft one so always ran OpenXR with SteamVR as the runtime (maybe unusual?)

Visually as mentioned I found the Q3's pancake lenses brilliant at displaying gauges and edge to edge clarity but the distance stuff seemed more blurry than the G2. A prime example is taking off, the runway looks detailed close up but halfway down suddenly turns into a blurry mess. Maybe it is because the image is so clear the LOD changes look more apparent. Again am I missing some settings in DCS, nVidia control panel or something else to make this less apparent? It is also especially noticeable in sim arcing where the track is great in front of the car but terrible in the distance.

Is any of this fixable or am I limited by the compressed image over USB compared to DisplayPort?

I appreciate VR can be quite subjective and maybe the G2 suits me more than the Q3 but was interested to hear from those who have had both specifically relating to DCS.

[kablamoman]

They have a list of recommended WiFi hardware on the virtual desktop discord. It might be worthwhile to check in there and see what your options are. If I recall correctly, you want something capable of WiFi 6E or WiFi 7, as well as 2.5 gigabit ethernet ports connecting your PC to your router, with the router broadcasting as closely as possible, ideally with line of sight to your headset.

Assuming you don't have any interference or other issues, you should be able to achieve a really smooth and low latency wireless experience. It's never going to be quite as responsive as something with a dedicated DP connection, but you should be able to achieve or surpass the responsiveness you get by connecting via the USB link cable.

With regards to the visual quality, it's hard to say without knowing more about your hardware. In virtual desktop you get the best image quality by super-sampling (eg. selecting "God Like" resolution). If your GPU can push the resolution while maintaining at least 72hz, I think that would be the ideal scenario, and you won't have to worry about SSW, but it will also depend on your CPU and your in-game graphical settings. For more clarity you're also not going to want any DLSS or DLAA in DCS itself, but again, depending on your set up this might be hard to push while maintaining your desired frame times.

Sadly, even with an ideal setup, you will always suffer a bit from compression with the Q3 and PC VR. You can try out AV1 10 bit encoding, if your GPU hardware encoder allows, and you will see some smoother color gradients, but the processing overhead is a bit more than H264+, and as such, you won't be able to push the bitrates up as high, so might see more compression artifacts close to the  ground with lots of motion. H264+ will probably do a bit better with lots of motion but suffers a bit more with color banding.

Hope some of this helps. The optics on the headset are stellar, and it's just such a shame that it's kind of hamstrung for PC VR by the lack of DP connection.

 

Edited September 12 by kablamoman

[Aapje]

A dedicated access point in line of sight with Wifi 6E or 7 is generally strongly advised. So basically, you make a separate Wifi network on the 6 GHz band and use that only for the Quest.

[Cytarabine]

5 hours ago, Aapje said:

A dedicated access point in line of sight with Wifi 6E or 7 is generally strongly advised. So basically, you make a separate Wifi network on the 6 GHz band and use that only for the Quest.

On my Quest Pro I have a dedicated router in the same room as my PC and headset and run  virtual desktop with 10 bit HEVC at the maximum bitrate the Quest Pro supports and use adaptive quantisation and 2-pass encoding in the host side options. With that setup it runs well and the colour banding is minimal.

There are still some compromises compared to a direct DP connection, though the only headset with a similar feature set and price (PSVR2) has a different set of compromises to make. I end up moving between the two depending on my mood… until I eventually decide to spring for a Pimax Crystal Super. 

[Baldrick33]

Thanks for the replies. In the end curiosity got the better of me!

We have a family Quest 2, so having reviewed the Virtual Desktop recommendations I plumped for a Puppis S1 as a relatively easy to configure option. This gave me a four fold increase in bandwidth at 2.4Gbps and instantly solved my issues using the Q2. I thought that an ac router might be enough but it seems that wasn't the case.

Spurred on, I ordered another Quest 3 and after some testing with various codecs and resolution settings ended up with something I am happy with running DCS and sim racing/rallying titles and most definitely an improvement over the G2 which is what I was aiming for.

I think the Quest 3 is a great device for ease of use but when it comes to PCVR things quickly get quite involved.

It has been a bit of a journey but my conclusion like many is that Virtual Desktop is a better solution to the Meta link option be that wired or wireless but you do need a decent WiFi solution. That said the Puppis S1 is a cheaper option than the official Meta cable and connects direct to your PC.

My only deviation from the norm from my research is I still find SteamVR OpenXR a smoother option than either Oculus or VDXR.