Rift S >> Quest 2 upgrade. Is it worth it ?

[=RS=rulezcz]

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone could share their opinion if it is worth upgrading this way. I have 1080Ti so I am not sure about upgrading to ReverbG2, but obviously I would like as clear image as possible.

 

Thanx

[=420=Syphen]

No. The Rift S looked higher quality and ran better then my Quest 2.  You would be rather disappointed with the Quest 2. You really only want the Quest 2 for wireless roomscale gaming, IE, NOT simming.    I ran the G2 on a 1080Ti for a while.  IL2 actually ran quite good and looked amazing compared to both my Rift S and Quest 2 with SteamVR resolution set to 50%. Performance was on par with the Rift S.  

 

I would recommend the G2 for sure over the Quest 2 if you are only using it for simming. 

[Lensman1945]

5 hours ago, =RS=rulezcz said:

Hi, I was just wondering if anyone could share their opinion if it is worth upgrading this way. I have 1080Ti so I am not sure about upgrading to ReverbG2, but obviously I would like as clear image as possible.

 

Thanx

The Quest 2 is a huge upgrade to the Rift S. I made the upgrade a while back. I had quite good performance with a 1080 ti but it's pushing it a bit. Like the G2, the Quest 2 is rendering a lot of pixels compared with the Rift S. 

[=420=Syphen]

32 minutes ago, Lensman1945 said:

The Quest 2 is a huge upgrade to the Rift S. I made the upgrade a while back. I had quite good performance with a 1080 ti but it's pushing it a bit. Like the G2, the Quest 2 is rendering a lot of pixels compared with the Rift S. 

 

I've had them all and respectfully disagree with you. I started with DK2 and worked my way through all of the Oculus HMD's up to the Quest 2. I realize that the Q2 has a higher technical resolution, but when using airlink/wired/VD, the video compression artifacts lower the visual fidelity to me to a point where the Rift S supersampled gives a much nicer image. I hate and cannot stand the visual artifacting from the Q2 with PCVR.  Love the headset, but I do not consider it a worthwhile upgrade from someone ALREADY owning the Rift S for sim use. 

 

End of the day, a G2, Index or Vive 2 Pro blow away a Q2 easily. 

[Lensman1945]

4 hours ago, =420=Syphen said:

 

I've had them all and respectfully disagree with you. I started with DK2 and worked my way through all of the Oculus HMD's up to the Quest 2. I realize that the Q2 has a higher technical resolution, but when using airlink/wired/VD, the video compression artifacts lower the visual fidelity to me to a point where the Rift S supersampled gives a much nicer image. I hate and cannot stand the visual artifacting from the Q2 with PCVR.  Love the headset, but I do not consider it a worthwhile upgrade from someone ALREADY owning the Rift S for sim use. 

 

End of the day, a G2, Index or Vive 2 Pro blow away a Q2 easily. 

Fair enough. I had the same Oculus path to you, had all the Oculus headsets. I find the Quest 2 way sharper and more detailed than all the other Oculus devices. You do need a good PC set up and a high spec dedicated wireless network for the Airlink connection to get the best results. Further more the Rift S has very noticeable screen door effect compared to the Quest.

I use the Realovirtual.com test app to compare headset fidelity so the results are more objective. Anyway, interesting to get other peoples experiences.

[J2_Steve]

I use an Index so can't give my own opinion. But I do know my son went from Rift S to Q2 and after a month went back to the Rift S

[Riderocket]

On 1/4/2022 at 2:35 AM, =420=Syphen said:

No. The Rift S looked higher quality and ran better then my Quest 2.  You would be rather disappointed with the Quest 2. You really only want the Quest 2 for wireless roomscale gaming, IE, NOT simming.    I ran the G2 on a 1080Ti for a while.  IL2 actually ran quite good and looked amazing compared to both my Rift S and Quest 2 with SteamVR resolution set to 50%. Performance was on par with the Rift S.  

 

I would recommend the G2 for sure over the Quest 2 if you are only using it for simming. 

The Quest 2 Default resolution is turned down. You have to manually increase it to native resolution

[Angry_Russian]

Quest 2 pushed to ~3000x3000 per eye with latest updates will give you almost G2 clarity in the center with a better sweet spot, vertical FOV and a 72 Hz refresh rate option which is very useful in heavy sims like DCS or MSFS (not flickering like G2 60 Hz, and more realistic for CPU to keep up in a badly optimized games like DCS). Some report achieving a better sweet spot on G2 by using a thin face pad, but that didn't work for me, it could be that the shapes of the heads are different and Q2 fits me much better than G2 ? I've had both for a while and at the end got rid of G2 as I saw no point in it when comparing to properly setup Q2, I can achieve better image quality and experience with Q2. Some people are saying that link is a resource hog but IRL when you have RTX card it doesn't take anything but a bit of a CPU to process the image, in fact SteamVR+WMR was a much bigger resource hog for me than running SteamVR+opencomposite or games with native Oculus support. But it worth mentioning that I don't only play sims in VR and if G2 didn't have a garbage hand tracking and WMR was supported in a better way I'd probably keep it. And I love 120 Hz in Beat Saber ?

 

If you set bitrate to 500 mbps on link you won't ever see compression artifacts in flight sims. G2 over Q2 has better colors, a little bigger horizontal FOV, a tad better sharpness in the center, better comfort comparing to default Q2, and of course proper compatibility with AMD cards (Q2 likes RTX cards very much due to h265 encoding used in link, and pretty much hates AMD for that reason). I've solved comfort issue and sound of Q2 with HTC DAS which fits my head fine, there are lots of aftermarket head straps for it and I'm sure one can find a strap for his head. Another con of Q2 is stupid IPD adjustment but luckily for me setting it between position 1 and 2 works perfect.

 

Air Link doesn't worth it IMO, as bitrate loss is obvious (bad for sims), some extra latency is introduced (bad for Beat Saber) and I think proper wire management solves all the issues especially for flight sims, I don't ever notice a cable attached to my headset no matter how hard I turn my head around. But that's definitely personal, I can see someone can decide that even a tiny cable is not comfortable. I can just imagine how much stuff was/is on a fighter pilot IRL and I bet it's much more uncomfortable than a tiny link cable ?

Edited February 18, 2022 by Angry_Russian

[BlackMambaMowTin]

On 2/18/2022 at 2:57 AM, Angry_Russian said:

Quest 2 pushed to ~3000x3000 per eye with latest updates will give you almost G2 clarity in the center with a better sweet spot, vertical FOV and a 72 Hz refresh rate option which is very useful in heavy sims like DCS or MSFS (not flickering like G2 60 Hz, and more realistic for CPU to keep up in a badly optimized games like DCS). Some report achieving a better sweet spot on G2 by using a thin face pad, but that didn't work for me, it could be that the shapes of the heads are different and Q2 fits me much better than G2 ? I've had both for a while and at the end got rid of G2 as I saw no point in it when comparing to properly setup Q2, I can achieve better image quality and experience with Q2. Some people are saying that link is a resource hog but IRL when you have RTX card it doesn't take anything but a bit of a CPU to process the image, in fact SteamVR+WMR was a much bigger resource hog for me than running SteamVR+opencomposite or games with native Oculus support. But it worth mentioning that I don't only play sims in VR and if G2 didn't have a garbage hand tracking and WMR was supported in a better way I'd probably keep it. And I love 120 Hz in Beat Saber ?

 

If you set bitrate to 500 mbps on link you won't ever see compression artifacts in flight sims. G2 over Q2 has better colors, a little bigger horizontal FOV, a tad better sharpness in the center, better comfort comparing to default Q2, and of course proper compatibility with AMD cards (Q2 likes RTX cards very much due to h265 encoding used in link, and pretty much hates AMD for that reason). I've solved comfort issue and sound of Q2 with HTC DAS which fits my head fine, there are lots of aftermarket head straps for it and I'm sure one can find a strap for his head. Another con of Q2 is stupid IPD adjustment but luckily for me setting it between position 1 and 2 works perfect.

 

Air Link doesn't worth it IMO, as bitrate loss is obvious (bad for sims), some extra latency is introduced (bad for Beat Saber) and I think proper wire management solves all the issues especially for flight sims, I don't ever notice a cable attached to my headset no matter how hard I turn my head around. But that's definitely personal, I can see someone can decide that even a tiny cable is not comfortable. I can just imagine how much stuff was/is on a fighter pilot IRL and I bet it's much more uncomfortable than a tiny link cable ?

 

I own a Rift S, Q2, Index, and G2. I agree with the others who felt the compression using the Q2 made it inferior to the Rift S. 

 

I bought the Q2 cable but only tried it once. I was very disappointed by the clarity and colors using the link cable. I may need to revisit and test your settings. 

 

Your claim that it's better than the G2 is something I have not heard anyone else claim. Your opinion is an outlier. I'll test using the 50 mbps rate. But then you have to factor in that the Q2 is not comfortable and doesn't have proper audio and the link cable is pretty flimsy. 

[Goffik]

1 hour ago, BlackMambaMowTin said:

Your claim that it's better than the G2 is something I have not heard anyone else claim.

 

That would be because it isn't true. ?

[Angry_Russian]

Very few people know how to setup Q2 properly, I think that's one of the reasons why this is not a common opinion. It looks very bad with airlink, only with cable link it is possible to make it look good, but still people don't realize how to set it up in Oculus software and debug tool. If you do the Q2 setup properly and push 3000x3000 to both headsets the image will be almost identical, there is a Russian VR thread here on the forum and people who owned them both agree on this. Take in account that many simmers bought G2 at the end of 2020-beginning 2021 when it was actually much better than Q2, but Q2 improved a lot over 2021 and now it's almost the same thing. And the fact that people think that Rift S is better only proves my point, I really don't know how is it possible to setup Q2 so bad that it looses to Rift S.. probably leave it at 1.0 PD in the main Oculus software, I don't know..

 

Indeed you need to make Q2 better by adding a headstrap, audio solution, good link cable etc. I'm fine buying $300 headset and spending $150 more to make it good, some prefer to buy an $800 one with better comfort and audio from the start, it's up to personal preference. But you still would be wrong if you think you can't get good audio on Q2 and make it comfortable.

 

If you actually start looking opinion of the people who knows how to do it you'll see I'm really not alone with this. So don't be so sure about Q2 being much inferior to G2. Still I'm not here to prove you anything, for me the difference was not strong enough to justify having them both. Also don't forget the people's heads are different and Q2 doesn't allow to adjust depth of the lenses and for somebody the sweet spot would be bad, IPD would be wrong, headset can be faulty etc. Snellen chart test shows me almost the same result with them both at 3000x3000 and I've spent enough time playing with them both, so I think I can say that they are pretty much the same at 3000x3000 which is basically the limit nowadays for DCS and IL-2 to have enjoyable experience on most performant GPUs. The more you go above that the more G2 wins over Q2 obviously as 3000x3000 is a limit for Q2 optics in my experience and G2 can benefit from 3500x3500 per eye and even more, but we are not quite there with flight sims performance yet to go above that. Racing sims for sure, some other VR games for sure, but not IL-2 and DCS.

 

Probably when we will be able to push 3500x3500 or 4000x4000 per eye with reasonable FOV in the sims we will see a better all around headset on the market. But right now for what we have now Q2 and G2 are pretty much the same for flight sims, unless you can do with 45 reprojected frames, which I personally can't. If you can though then good for you - you can push G2 to be much clearer than Q2 can be.

Edited February 20, 2022 by Angry_Russian

[Honeymonster]

I own several sets too, To me the Rift S 1.6SS with some AA has always looked better than the Q2. My old Acer was actually pretty good heavily SS too before it died. The G2 is better but a pig to drive, I run no shadows in IL2 to get satisfactory performance (3080/5800X). Q2 looks really amazing for stuff close up but at any distance it has a weird fuzziness. This is not IL2 specific most of my testing has been done in racing simulators. It's not the most comfortable set either... That said I wouldn't part with it. As a standalone set it's unbeatable and I use it primarily for fitness (Boxing) and it's also great as a remote desktop. If I could only own one set it would likely be a Q2 but for a dedicated Sim set there are better choices IMHO.