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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
@RuneSR2 -I actually like the Fov on the HP Reverb because it's not like the binocular look that you get with CV1. This has more of a square look to it which makes it look bigger then CV1 even if it isn't bigger. I've tried a lot of games now just to see what they look like and it's exactly where the resolution for VR needs to be IMO. Elite dangerous in that big station is no-longer blurry like in CV1 -You can see literately everything there is to see really clear.
The cable on the headset is another story though when using it standing up. I think I'm going to have to use a belt clip to give it some slack to use it when standing. Even if I can't find a way around this though, I'm still keeping it for all the seated experiences because they look great. I also want to take a look at HTC Cosmos for other games, but I honestly don't think I can go down in resolution after seeing this, it makes CV1 look like DK1.
I'll see what the HTC Cosmos resolution is like, but it's going back if it doesn't look close to the HP Reverb. CV1 is boxed for good now 🙂

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 -I actually like the Fov on the HP Reverb because it's not like the binocular look that you get with CV1. This has more of a square look to it which makes it look bigger then CV1 even if it isn't bigger. I've tried a lot of games now just to see what they look like and it's exactly where the resolution for VR needs to be IMO. Elite dangerous in that big station is no-longer blurry like in CV1 -You can see literately everything there is to see really clear.
The cable on the headset is another story though when using it standing up. I think I'm going to have to use a belt clip to give it some slack to use it when standing. Even if I can't find a way around this though, I'm still keeping it for all the seated experiences because they look great. I also want to take a look at HTC Cosmos for other games, but I honestly don't think I can go down in resolution after seeing this, it makes CV1 look like DK1.
I'll see what the HTC Cosmos resolution is like, but it's going back if it doesn't look close to the HP Reverb. CV1 is boxed for good now 🙂


Yes, it actually made me feel sad, I didn't anticipate not being able to enjoy CV1 after getting the Index, but it happened. CV1 really feels like a nice item from a museum, it feels very old, sadly. I wonder what it'll take to feel the same about the Index, but no I'm sure Reverb won't be enough 😉

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"

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
@RuneSR2 -If some company made a HP Reverb with 6 camera's and Oculus controllers then I would be very happy. The only place where HP Reverb fails is the heavy cable when standing. I'm going to look at trying to make a belt clip to take some weight off the cable when standing, but failing that there's plenty of games I'll use it for. DCS World, No Mans Sky, Elite Dangerous, Sky Rim, Fallout 4. I'm sure there's a lot more games to add to that list 🙂
For some reason I'm struggling to get Alien Isolation working though, which I was really looking forward to. Any ideas why that might be?

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 -If some company made a HP Reverb with 6 camera's and Oculus controllers then I would be very happy. The only place where HP Reverb fails is the heavy cable when standing. I'm going to look at trying to make a belt clip to take some weight off the cable when standing, but failing that there's plenty of games I'll use it for. DCS World, No Mans Sky, Elite Dangerous, Sky Rim, Fallout 4. I'm sure there's a lot more games to add to that list 🙂
For some reason I'm struggling to get Alien Isolation working though, which I was really looking forward to. Any ideas why that might be?



I haven't tried Alien Isolation yet, currently it's set up for the Rift, but theoretically it should be working fine using the Index. Might test it later this evening. Polybius should be working too with a small hack, but I don't know if anyone but me plays that game.

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"

RuneSR2
Grand Champion

RedRizla said:

@RuneSR2 -If some company made a HP Reverb with 6 camera's and Oculus controllers then I would be very happy. The only place where HP Reverb fails is the heavy cable when standing. I'm going to look at trying to make a belt clip to take some weight off the cable when standing, but failing that there's plenty of games I'll use it for. DCS World, No Mans Sky, Elite Dangerous, Sky Rim, Fallout 4. I'm sure there's a lot more games to add to that list 🙂
For some reason I'm struggling to get Alien Isolation working though, which I was really looking forward to. Any ideas why that might be?



BTW, seems some got it working on the Index, and some had problems:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/ci8nvd/anyone_able_to_get_alien_isolation_to_work_on/

Some of the responses to the thread may provide help...

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"

Techy111
MVP
MVP
Come on HP where is mine !!!
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.

Techy111
MVP
MVP
Mine is on the way 🙂
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
Back in stock?


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

Techy111
MVP
MVP
Nope you have to phone them and hassle them mate. I had a great guy help me called Jordan. I got through to him and he said no stock. He phoned me back 10 mins later and said there is stock put aside for peeps like us who returned faulty units. PM me
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.

Techy111
MVP
MVP
In stock = https://store.hp.com/UKStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=6KP43EA&opt=ABB&sel=DEF
A PC with lots of gadgets inside and a thing to see in 3D that you put on your head.