cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

HP Reverb First Impressions Thread (Gen 1)

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Some very quick first impressions and that's without experimenting with Super-sampling.

Ok, well I have that horrible vertical line in my headset which hopefully I'll get fixed or replaced but despite that. Wow, just wow. One word..."clarity".

More words.

Very nice headset all-round. Reasonably comfy but that cable is awful. I mean really bad and terribly distracting. Needs to be fixed to something to not become a hindrance. Headphones feel cheap  and the red smear is not very good when you abnormally move your head from side to side all fast like. In normal situations you won't notice it so much. SDE is so minimal it's the finest mesh like silk. Mura is there for sure such as looking at the sky you will notice it quite a bit.

Fallout 4 VR - Holy crap. Now this is how it's meant to be seen. Mindblowing, and I rarely use such hyperbolic phrases. Up close detail you'll see the textures as you would playing on a monitor. Distance details are just perfect now. NO MORE BLUR you can easily define medium range and long range objects which gives the game a complete overhaul on the visuals. Wonderful and if you're a FO4VR fan then nothing beats this crisp display.  Period. 

PCARS 2 - Ok I struggled a little to find the right sweetspot and keep it there. But once there this is it guys. The game just looks like it's meant to be on this headset. Nice details on the track and close up cars. Distant cars also look much better, they still can get fuzzy but none of that blur you might be used to. This is pretty awesome now and just looks great.

SLR APP/Movie viewing - Nice sharp visuals but you are restricted to the quality of the source material. The SLR thumbnails look fantastically crisp and the videos great. I ran a 4K gameplay video from one of my recordings and it looks really nice, so much clearer than any other VR headset. So if you have 4K movies then they are going to shine on this headset. I tried some older 1080p 3D movies but they didn't look much different to other headsets.

Desktop - wow now this is really nice. You can actually work with this now. Comfortably. See all the text and no shimmer or SDE to mess up your view. Really workable as an alternative to a monitor now. Nice vibrant colours and good contrast. I do notice what seems to be a fixed foveted rendering technique though where the center focus is incredibly sharp and when you move your eyes and head to another part of the screen it seems to catch up and then focus really sharp.I think HP talked about this with the way the screens are calibrated. 

Elite Dangerous: OK you're still getting these LCD blacks but the text readability is fantastic now without a shadow of a doubt. No distorted letters even in the info pane which has the smallest text it's easy to read, no leaning in. I just docked with one of the space stations and whilst there is still some shimmer on some finer lines/edges (there's a technical name for that which escapes me) it's nice a crisp and looks like a space station rather than a blurry mess of lights and protracting parts. Really clean. Upon entering the opening into the docking area...mind-blown! I really loved the extended FOV of the Pimax 8K in Elite D, made it feel more real, but I think I would sacrifice that for this wonderful clarity. I'll say it again if Pimax 8K X delivers the FOV and the same clarity then wowsers. I'm not holding my breath though, focusing on the here and now.

Even with the negatives, I can see this being a really great headset for the VR connoisseur. I am wondering how close the Pimax 8KX can match this as its increased FOV will stretch the pixel density. Either way, £600 well spent thus far and I will no doubt get lots of use from this headset and sadly the Pimax 8K will get boxed. Quest/Reverb combo for the win here for anyone serious about VR.



System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
376 REPLIES 376

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Odyssey+ was king of SDE until now. But it was such a soft image (even with high SS) that it put me off and I preferred the coarseness of the CV1 Rift. Reverb feels like what the Odyssey+ should have been.

Elite Dangerous: OK you're still getting these LCD blacks but the text readability is fantastic now without a shadow of a doubt. No distorted letters even in the info pane which has the smallest text it's easy to read, no leaning in. I just docked with one of the space stations and whilst there is still some shimmer on some finer lines/edges (there's a technical name for that which escapes me) it's nice a crisp and looks like a space station rather than a blurry mess of lights and protracting parts. Really clean. Upon entering the opening into the docking area...mind-blown! I really loved the extended FOV of the Pimax 8K in Elite D, made it feel more real, but I think I would sacrifice that for this wonderful clarity. I'll say it again if Pimax 8K X delivers the FOV and the same clarity then wowsers. I'm not holding my breath though, focusing on the here and now.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

forestguy
Expert Protege



forestguy said:

Yes I have a simlar Quest/Reverb combo, both fulfil different needs. Just sold my Pimax 5K+ on Ebay. To be fair to Pimax they did push the bounderies and tried something other companies didn't/couldn't do e.g. 170 FOV, however both the Quest and the Reverb are so well constructed and offered something a little better. For me Quest for roomscale (you can't beat wireless), and Reverb for seated experiences (clarity is awesome)...so over to you Valve Index.


Why did you sell the Pimax 5k +. I own the XR version


It was only because I couldn't justify 2 headsets and couldn't be bothered with the process of plugging then unplug different headsets, please don't get me wrong the Pimax 5K is an awesome VR product the difference with the FOV is there, however I have decided that the trade off of clarity was worth it for me, I would not have sacrificed my Pimax for a valve Index because I cannot see how that will be better than the Pimax both on clarity and FOV. It would be interesting to see the reviews of the Valve index because it seems that a lot of people have seen this as the 'second coming'. The resolution of 1440 × 1600 Valve Index compared to 2560 × 1440 Pimax  and 2160 x 2160 HP Reverb was a bit low in 2019.


RedRizla
Honored Visionary
Some good reviews and looks like I'll have to get one.
@Techy111 - How is DCS working? I thought they had to add VR for HP Reverb later this month? I don't have the Steam version, but does this still work and how?
@Shadowmask72 - How has it gone with support for your faulty headset? They have a contact number so did you speak to them? Surly they should allow to to return it without hassle if it's got a fault?
What fps are you getting in DCS & Fallout 4 with a Geforce 2080ti?

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Support have been terrible so far. Very polite but totally disorganized due to having so many departments. I don't think the device is on the radar yet for many departments to know what it is and which tech support team deal with it.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.

Jotokutora
Adventurer


Support have been terrible so far. Very polite but totally disorganized due to having so many departments. I don't think the device is on the radar yet for many departments to know what it is and which tech support team deal with it.


The Reverb was made by a very tiny team. Yes, there is probably chain communication issues at the moment

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
Are the controllers really as bad people make them out to be? I think I'd like to play games such a Fallout 4 if the controllers aren't that bad with this headset.
..

forestguy
Expert Protege
The controllers are not that bad, but of course the quest ones are better, however, I only really plan to use the quest for roomscale and the Reverb mostly for Seated experiences because I have Flight and Driving gear.

vannagirl
Consultant
This is great thank you for contributing and giving us an idea of what to expect

what of screen door or any visible godrays compared to cv1??

@Techy111

haha yes Tony your awesome I am on it as we speak but they are sold out now, still I think I know what hmd yo own now while seeing where oculus go in 2 or 3 years time this is an great stop gap for seated exp
Look, man. I only need to know one thing: where they are. 


RedRizla said:

Are the controllers really as bad people make them out to be? I think I'd like to play games such a Fallout 4 if the controllers aren't that bad with this headset.
..



Hmmm they are ok, they feel a little flimsy.  Not as good as Touch, not as bad as Wands.
Big PC, all the headsets, now using Quest 3

kevinw729
Honored Visionary
Thanks for this @Techy111
Just to add one point - this system also runs really well with the latest backpack PC's. A really nice overall package - we have started evaluating the Rift-S to see if it is comparable in performance.

https://vrawards.aixr.org/ "The Out-of-Home Immersive Entertainment Frontier: Expanding Interactive Boundaries in Leisure Facilities" https://www.amazon.co.uk/Out-Home-Immersive-Entertainment-Frontier/dp/1472426959