The VR experience seems to be gaining more interest, and with me. I would like to get another VR headset after upgrading my GPU to a RTX 3080. My original Oculus Rift is really showing its age in terms of technology and the display is rubbish compared to the latest VRs. I was seriously thinking of the HP Reverb G2, but now with the Oculus Quest 2 soon to appear, I am having second thoughts. OK, the Quest 2 is not as high res as the 2160x2160 Reverb G2, but the Quest 2 1832x1920 res is very close. At that close would you even notice the difference? OK, maybe you would, but only just. Several plus's for the Quest 2 is that it is standalone, no PC required, but you can connect it to a PC, for PC based VR games and sims. The Reverb G2 has to be tethered to a PC, so not standalone. Now this is a huge plus for the Quest 2, the price, only £299! The Reverb G2 will be about £599! Is the Reverb G2 really worth paying £300 more for it!? Another small plus with the Quest 2 is that you can order through Curry's PCW, and pick up from your local store. Important to me, as I hate waiting in for parcel deliveries. Thoughts please.
So as someone who just recently sold their quest, is considering a Quest 2 (here on referred to as Q2) and also has a G2 on pre-order these are my thoughts. Obviously bear in mind that neither has released so pinch of salt required... this is all based on other peoples opinions in previews except where I mention personal experience. It will start with the positives of the G2 over the Q2 and then move on to the reverse so don't think I'm being overly negative on one over the other:
In favour of G2:
- 2160x2160 vs 1832x1920 is actually 30% more total pixels, so not insignificant. There is also more to the visual experience than pure resolution - you have pixel fill, colour reproduction, brightness, contrast, unwanted effects such as mura or chromatic aberration from the lenses etc... We need to have more direct comparisons of the screens and lenses than just looking at resolution alone. Given the cost targets I would guess G2 to be using higher quality displays and lesnes but that's pure conjecture at this point and money is no guarantee of quality at the end of the day! We also don't know how much facebook is eating on each one sold.
- The Q2 from typical reviews has much the same audio quality as Quest 1... in my opinion it was generally usable and convenient but utter trash compared to my experience with the CV1. The G2 has the same drivers as the index that are better even than the CV1 so the built in audio solutions are incomparable. Mods or separate headphones will be required to get up to the G2 level.
- The Q2 from typical reviews is not particularly comfortable with the standard strap. Once you add the Elite strap which most reviews seem to say is a must have, then the comfort seems to exceed the original Quest, but still from the impressions I've seen feel comparatively unbalanced and less comfortable than a typical PCVR headset such as Rift/RiftS/Index/G2 etc. They have shaved 10% off the weight of the original quest but ultimately they have to pack a lot more in than a non-standalone, so all that weight is concentrated in the front just like with the original Quest. Even with the significantly beefier head strap and off ear monitors the G2 is lighter and with a better weight distribution.
- The G2 seems to have slightly higher FoV but I doubt it will be noticeable so call that a wash. It does however have more adjustable IPD along with a 2 screen design that will make the full FoV usable for more people, and more comfortable for more people - I've seen eg Tyriel mentioning that even though he was within the total IPD range, because he fell in between two of the three IPD settings that he felt a bit of discomfort after extended use and had more chromatic aberration than he would have were he able to set his actual IPD. Individual sensitivity may vary and of course you may be lucky and fall exactly on one of the three fixed settings or close enough not to matter.
- To use the Q2 as a PCVR headset you need to either use Link, or a Wifi streamer such as Virtual desktop which will require sideloading. There is quite noticeable compression on both, but do note the Q2 has the capability to handle much more bandwidth than the Q1 so I would expect this to improve in time... some of that bandwidth will be used in going from 72hz to 90hz, but the rest can be spent on improving image quality. There is also a little introduced latency on both, more so over the wifi options (about 30ms in my experience with a dedicated router connected to the host via ethernet. How it will compare to native such as the G2 remains to be seen, but one thing for sure is it won't end up
better than a native uncompressed stream. Normal USB 3.X cables are also quite heavy, thick and stiff while the G2 has apparently put a lot of work into making its 5m cable thin, flexible and lightweight. The official link cable certainly addresses this point, but at a significant cost.
- No battery to run out
- No need for a facebook account. To some this is a significant factor, for others it's not a factor at all - make your own choice!
In favour of Q2:
- While it comes at the cost of some some compression and extra latency, I can tell you that for 99% of my PCVR gaming I used the Quest with WiFi rather than plug it in... The freedom of not having a wire out the back of your head cannot be overstated, even seated it is better, especially if playing something that involves a lot of looking around like dogfighting in IL2 or DCS! If you've never used a wireless VR headset before you won't know what you are missing, so it won't be as big of a deal but man it's hard to go backwards. Note that this is NOT currently a native quest function but instead requires sideloading a version of Virtual desktop or ALVR for example, and could technically be cut off by Oculus if they removed the ability to sideload or forced the virtual desktop dev to remove it once they bring the sideloading in house as they are planning. I imagine there would be uproar and I don't expect it to happen but it's worth mentioning. Carmack allegedly has his own Air-link Using WiFi but politics mean oculus aren’t currently releasing it due to user experience concerns... it may or may not ever see the light of day.
- Oculus software is in my opinion ahead of the curve... ASW and ATW are the best in the industry, passthrough+ is very cool and the guardian setup etc is brilliant. The Quest can do native hand tracking, and do it pretty well. At the moment it's not a huge deal for me but I would imagine it won't be long before some sim games allow you to start using both real physical controls and then just your hands to interact with cockpits etc - that would be pretty game changing. I'm sure you'll see an addon for the G2 but ultimately it will probably come at extra cost unless MS release it built into the WMR stack.
- Oculus insight tracking is basically the gold standard in camera based inside out tracking. The G2 looks to improve on this substantially and WMR tracking is actually supposed to be very good, but I'm sure if you really push it to the extremes then the Quest will end up victorious. The battery life on the Q2 controllers is insane too if you care about that.
- There are some good oculus exclusive VR games currently. You should be able to play these through revive on a G2 but you are adding yet another layer of abstraction inducing performance overheads and occasional bugs/compatibility issues... some games going forward could conceivably be Quest exclusive given Oculus now have no dedicated PCVR headset in production. If this does occur and they are only found in the mobile store there will be no way to play these on the G2.
- The ability to play standalone is pretty cool. I'm primarily a PCVR sim racer/flier, but the ability to just use the quest anywhere was definitely a plus point for the other types of games - things like beatsaber, pistol whipped etc were great to just be able to use in the living room with lots of space. Exercise in VR is definitely more fun without the wire or need to be in the same room as a PC.
- Price. Clearly the Q2, even if you say everyone needs the elite strap, is a blinking bargain!
So overall I would say it really depends what you do. Both have some pretty clear advantages in my opinon... The best headset for Sim gaming and seated VR? Without a doubt it'll be the G2 even with the wire. Best general purpose headset? Has to be the Quest 2 in my opinion just due to how flexible it is and the value for money.
I think in a perfect world the answer is get both. If that isn't an option then you need to think about where your priorities lie - what do you spend most of your VR time doing? Would you benefit most from having the absolute best highest quality visual and audio experience with comfort for long gaming sessions, or would you prefer to trade some of that for features, flexibility and cost savings? Is the Facebook data mining and account blocking policy a deal breaker or not?
