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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

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
HTC already said it's not going to be $900 because that's to high. I'm thinking if it comes in at $600 then it's probably worth it considering what you get over Rift S. Higher resolution displays or display at 90Hz instead of 80Hz. You also get headphones and also an Ipd adjustment that will please a lot of people 
The extra camera below the headset might just fix the tracking problem with FPS, which is what totally put me off Rift S. Obviously build quality also counts, but pricing also counts if it want's to compete with Rift S.
If the price is right then I think it looks like a good headset, it has everything people were asking for that is missing on the Rift S.
.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary

RedRizla said:

HTC already said it's not going to be $900 because that's to high. 


The running joke at the moment is it's $899 to counter the "it's not $900 because that's too high" HTC remark. 




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

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
I expect they will charge $700, but are the four things I mentioned in my post worth $300 more? When you consider the Valve index headset alone costs more then $700 and HTC Cosmos has the same resolution displays as that headset I start to wonder if it is worth it.
But it's also about build quality like I previously mentioned.

RuneSR2
Grand Champion


Not as good as the HP Reverb then and marginally better than the index on res but not on Hz.




Index also has dual lenses, Cosmos has single lenses? Then there's FOV, and Index controllers... 

Cosmos controllers look like the new Touch - and maybe HMD flip up is a good thing. Cosmos also has gesture controls, maybe that will be interesting...

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Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD
"Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"

Anonymous
Not applicable
The flip up thing will be great for developers!

I just can't help feeling that HTC are going to price themselves out of the market again though.

Valve also had an opportunity to release a Rift S killer but passed it up. If the Index was £720 I would have jumped on it.

The cheapest I can see the Cosmos being is £599 but if they release it for £399 things could get VERY interesting, particularly with the issues that have plagued the Rift S launch so far.

I'm expecting the Rift S price to drop to £349 around Christmas and possibly £299 this time next year, although a permanent price cut to £349 is more likely. Oculus will be making a decent profit on Rift S sales right now so they have room to manoeuvre if HTC get aggressive with their pricing.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

snowdog said:

.....
I'm expecting the Rift S price to drop to £349 around Christmas and possibly £299 this time next year, although a permanent price cut to £349 is more likely. Oculus will be making a decent profit on Rift S sales right now so they have room to manoeuvre if HTC get aggressive with their pricing.



How long was it before the price dropped on the CV1 after it launched?

Also if HTC get aggressive with Cosmos pricing (say from $799 too $499), as they did with the VIVE - would not its better graphical performance and design elements swing the balance?

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

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@snowdog - How can it possibly be £399 when that is the price of Rift S? HTC Cosmos has higher res displays, headphones, an ipd adjustment and an extra camera. With those things added you have to expect around $200 more or it just means Rift S is way overpriced, if HTC match the price of Rift S.

Anonymous
Not applicable

kevinw729 said:


snowdog said:

.....
I'm expecting the Rift S price to drop to £349 around Christmas and possibly £299 this time next year, although a permanent price cut to £349 is more likely. Oculus will be making a decent profit on Rift S sales right now so they have room to manoeuvre if HTC get aggressive with their pricing.



How long was it before the price dropped on the CV1 after it launched?

Also if HTC get aggressive with Cosmos pricing (say from $799 too $499), as they did with the VIVE - would not its better graphical performance and design elements swing the balance?




About a year I think. The resolution of both the Index and the Cosmos aren't that much bigger than the Rift S tbh. 1440p vs 1600p. And because Oculus decided to go for 80Hz displays the minimum specs are the same.


RedRizla said:

@snowdog - How can it possibly be £399 when that is the price of Rift S? HTC Cosmos has higher res displays, headphones, an ipd adjustment and an extra camera. With those things added you have to expect around $200 more or it just means Rift S is way overpriced, if HTC match the price of Rift S.



If the Quest is sold at cost Oculus will be making a decent profit selling the Rift S for £399. The Rift S IS way overpriced. They could have launched it for £299 without losing money on it.

HTC should be able to release the Cosmos for £399 without losing money on it. They want people in their Store.

kevinw729
Honored Visionary

snowdog said:
......
If the Quest is sold at cost Oculus will be making a decent profit....

HTC should be able to release the Cosmos for £399 without losing money on it. They want people in their Store.



Thanks for the Oculus price drop info - I was not sure it was a year or 14-months, but close enough.

Regarding the "decent profit" - that requires some major assumptions - we have no idea of the scope of licensing deal for Lenovo to pick up the manufacturer and support of the Rift-S - if its anything like what Samsung leaked their deal with Oculus was like on GearVR it may not see Oculus making that big.

Also, all the speculation that HTC is at deaths door - though I agree they are in a garbage financial state, they have managed to get some good support deals - and along with the Google money there is their 5G partnership with Qualcomm. Along with the Cosmos 5G wireless announcement there is some options on the table that could see them focus (in VR) away from mainly consumer (so slowing their rush for a cost reduction).



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

Anonymous
Not applicable
The licence deal with Lenovo will be a percentage deal, these things tend to be 5% of each sale at the most but let's say that Facebook aren't able to negotiate well and it's as much as 7%. It really isn't that much.

The biggest savings are the inclusion of the BOE display and the sound tubes. It's the exact same display that the Go has had for more than a year so the manufacturing costs must have come down quite a bit, same for the sound tubes too.

Compared to the Quest there's bugger all to speak of inside the thing. No RAM, no Snapdragon 835, no battery, no manual IPD adjustment.

They're probably selling the Quest at cost and they're probably making around a hundred dollars profit on each Rift S sold right now, and in a year's time they'll cut those manufacturing costs down even further.