I think this headset is like Medal of Honor VR. Some people will absolutely hate it and others will love it and there are not many people in between lol.
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I started trying out the Pro 2 last night.
Quick thoughts:
-The headset dynamically changes brightness… It looks GREAT with high brightness, but sometimes it gets super dim in the same scene(like 8KX at 50%/Index below 80%), which sucks.
-I lose 10 degrees vertically down towards the floor vs the Index, which is lame. Feels like a wide-FOV quest 2 in a way at ~90 degrees vertical.
-Headphone hum
-Sound is only barely acceptable when I put it on 100%. I can’t get it to be decent, even with the tricks for KDMAS (messing with the audio enhancement tabs, etc), so something is wrong.
Positive
-I noticed being able to aim better with my non-dominant eye/hand in Pistol Whip (using dual wielding and DeadEye or whatever it is that makes you actually aim well). I think the parallel lenses (vs canting of Index/8KX) makes things easier to focus on for me.
-Colors are nice
How is the clarity on Ultra/Extreme vs High? I can only go up to High right now since I have a 1080Ti…and while the lack of screendoor (although I see pixels sometimes) is nice, the clarity of the 8KX and Index are definitely better since they’re not upscaling the image. I would hope it’s massively better on Ultra because I wouldn’t use this if I were to stick to my 1080Ti…I’d definitely stick to Index/8KX if I wasn’t planning on upgrading my GPU.
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@NextGenVR I have this same question. Could you compare the high setting in the VP2 to the native rendering of the 8KX? I also only have a 1080TI right now and noticed that the VP2 on high is not as sharp as what I get with my 8KX in native mode with the 1080TI. I’ve only used it for a couple of hours so far, so haven’t come to any conclusions but the sharpness drop from what I see on the 8KX with my system was a letdown and is the one thing that could maybe keep me from switching. I do hope to upgrade my GPU whenever I can get lucky enough to find one though so if I knew that was the only reason for the clarity drop then I wouldn’t be as concerned over it.
I used an Index for a year so the glare wasn’t a big deal to me. I found it very noticeable in menus, but when in a game I didn’t find it to be an issue. I like the colors on the VP2 but didn’t find them to be greatly better than what I get with the 8KX using the well known tweaks for contrast and brightness. Black level was definitely better on the VP2 but I know that is partly coming from the auto-brightness trick that it uses. I was quite happy with the FOV of the VP2 using the thinner face cover. Definitely felt like the small FOV from the 8KX which would be good enough for me. I actually thought the headphones sounded fine in comparison to the DAS that I’m using with the 8KX. No concern for me on that front. I don’t have the speaker hum that others have reported. I was happy with the comfort also.
Overall I really like the headset so far other than the clarity drop off from the 8KX when using my current GPU. I have a 30 day return window on it so have some time to test it enough to see if I would be happy with it while waiting on a GPU upgrade.
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Just did some AB comparisons between the 8KX and VP2 just to really see how much the sharpness difference is between the two when using the VP2 in high mode. I used the game Tarzan which is very colorful and has some very clean textures. The sharpness difference between the two is really extreme in this game with my 1080ti system. The 8KX just looks really sharp and I can see all kinds of texture detail from a distance in the rocks and trees that are in the opening area of the game. When looking at this same area in the VP2 all of the texture detail is blurred out. The image still looks good because of the no SDE and absolutely no mura but the sharpness of the image is all gone. The colors between the two looked about the same with maybe a slight edge to the VP2. The horizontal FOV actually felt about the same although the 8KX technically has more. (using 8kx in normal mode)
The VP2 did have a wider sweet spot regarding edge to edge clarity of the lens, but that is tempered by the fact that the image never gets to the sharpness of the 8KX when looking at the center. This is a tough one because I love the idea of getting the FOV of the VP2 without having to worry about the issues that come with the canted screen design of the 8KX. But the sharpness difference on my current system is just so great and even if upgrading my GPU would solve that, I have no idea of when I’ll be able to actually buy the GPU, since there is no way I’m going to pay scalper prices for one.
I also have the wireless kit for the VP2 but haven’t installed that yet. I’ll give that a try also to see if it changes my current thinking in any way.
I’ll see how things go over the next couple of weeks but right now I’m leaning more towards returning the VP2 and sticking with the 8KX at least until I’m able to actually get a GPU upgrade.
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I noticed a realy big difference between high mode and ultra… ultra is about 30 %sharper… but this on a rtx 3090… even with the steam sampling on 76%
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It is too bad at present you seem to need that much extra strong GPU on the VP2 to get that sharpness vs the 8kX and G2.
Hopefully HTC can get there driver software more efficient with sometime to mature.
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Yes, it really is a shame that they weren’t able to get more resolution out of the panels for the older GPUs, especially since their competition is much sharper on those same systems. It seems like they were really focused on what could be done with the newer GPUs, which wouldn’t be as bad if those GPUs were actually available to buy. Hopefully as you say they will be able revisit the performance target for older GPUs as there is obviously a lot more that can be gotten out of a card like the 1080ti than what their current drivers allow for.
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@acegamer: try closing one eye and then move the headset around and see if you can get it to a point where it’s sharp. To me it seems the sharpness mostly is there, IF you’re exactly in the sweet spot
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@Djonko Thanks for the tip, I’ll give that a try. But you’re using a 3090 aren’t you? Did you test it in the “High” mode? I think the problem is just that the high mode resolution is so much less than the 8KX native mode.
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i know for sure… on high mode higher steam sampling on top doesnt make alot off difference
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I have vive at the highest mode. I see a lot of difference. Set it to 350% and gone is all blurriness! Also your fps though haha. But I also see difference between 70 and 100. I much prefer 100
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Perhaps HTC needs to refine/optimize the rendering modes. I have never witness such polarity of result from any VR headset from users 
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Yeah it’s definitely odd. But for me the steam ss works like you’d expect. The higher I set it the sharper the image becomes. I am on the latest nvidia driver, maybe that’s a difference?
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Maybe you will dump the VP2 once you get the Varjo
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that i think for sure… lol…
if it can give decent framerates ingame…
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Should not the “ultra” be equivalent to high mode with SteamVR SS set accordingly? Or is there something else special about the modes apart from the resolutions?
High: 3672 * 1836 = 6741792 pixels
Ultra: 4896 * 2448 = 11985408 pixels
SteamVR SS factor in High setting to get Ultra recommended resolution:
11985408 / 6741792 = 1.777 ~ 178%
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Not sure I am perhaps missing something here: but in the Vive console settings it is about using the full physical display resolution or less (downsampling), while increasing the SteamVR SS above 100% would be about applying supersampling ? In the latter case the Vive console would take the picture rendered at e.g. the native resolution of the Pro 2, seemingly making it equivalent; but then the Vive console would downsample the picture to the high settings value and you would lose the native resolution.
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Pimax 8K raw output was limited to the headset signal with 2560 x 1440 per eye, then upscaled to 4k, if I remember correctly. Adding Steam VR would be super sampling to that signal, but wouldn’t increase the raw image resolution to the headset display. I guess that is why the 8KX exist?
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Now, you got me thinking that I completely misunderstood the resolution given in the Vive console. I checked the data from VP2 I got from @JoCool and while the recommended target resolution he has recorded differed over the different modes the actual values do not correspond to the res given in the Vive console.
I guess the exercise is still left to some volunteer, who would run the different Vive modes with SteamVR SS set manually to 100% and record the recommended target resolution.
Now, if the Vive modes resolutions really relate to the display resolution (which the values kind of suggest), it really does not make much sense to me 
. What would be the point of that?
I could imagine that if the headset is not capable of running the highest res at 120Hz (e.g. Pimax), it would make sense to offer the same res at a lower refresh, and vice versa, possibly offer lower display res at higher refresh as a trade off. Either because the displays cannot handle it, or the DP bandwidth is not enough.
But since it seems VP2 can run the native (ultra) resolutions in both refresh rates, it would make sense just to offer the two refresh modes, run the panels in a native res and do all the scaling/over/super/sampling just by setting corresponding SteamVR SS factor.
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Okay just installed the wireless adapter and played a bit of skyrim. Wow…it worked really well and the picture quality was almost the same as what I was getting with the wired connection. Obviously has the same issue with not being as sharp as my 8KX but getting this quality on a wireless connection is really nice. Felt no noticeable latency at all. Need to play a few more games with it but if the wireless holds up like this for more games then I could see myself keeping it to play like this at least until I can get a GPU upgrade. The loss of sharpness is a lot easier to deal with when I get wireless freedom to compensate for it.
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