So, had an interesting night.
Firstly, it was a nightmare finding a USB connector that the bloody thing would work in. It turns out there is an issue with the G2 and AMD USB drivers. In the end after much faffing about and reading that people got it working by plugging it into a USB 3.0 socket that was not on their mobo, I remembered that my monitor has a USB hub built in that I’d never used and et viola it finally connected. That was a very stressful hour of my life and, hey, who doesn’t like flashing their BIOS and updating chipset drivers?
Anyway, I could not connect to iRacing with the WMR (Windows Mixed Reality) even though it should work, so in the end I managed to add iRacing to Steam and got it to connect through Steam VR. This was also a massive faff that was way more complicated than it needed to be. All VR tools seem to hate each other.
Eventually I got into iRacing but as the resolution of the G2 is so much higher than the Quest 2 I found that all my old graphics settings didn’t work any more. I will need to spend time tuning them again as with a dodgy framerate it was making me a bit queasy until I was able to get it running at 90FPS.
The headset itself I like, although with some caveats. I don’t think it’s quite as comfy as the Quest with the elite headband, even though it is a lot lighter. You need to adjust the headband of the G2 with Velcro and it was hard to get it comfortable. I remember it took ages with the Quest 2 until I was comfortable so is something I’m sure will improve. The visor does flip up allowing you to actually see which is nice.
The built in headphones are much better than the Quest 2 and the sound is loud and clear. This I’m happy about as I used to have to wear a separate pair of headphones when playing which was also a faff. One slight complaint, there is no volume control on the G2 like their is on the Quest, you have to go into the VR settings to adjust it (or use the Windows volume slider). I have not tried the microphone yet.
The tracking detection seems a lot better here. One of my biggest annoyances with the Quest 2 was if you removed the headset and the light level in the room was low it would lose track of your guardian area and you would have to reset it. When racing this would happen multiple times a night as you took the headset off between races. This time I set a stationary boundary and it did not complain about it once in the couple of hours I had with it, even when the lighting in the room got low.
The quality of the display seems excellent and you can really see the higher resolution. The display in the Quest 2 is good but always looks slightly washed out and when I first put the G2 on I was annoyed that the image here looked a bit blue, like the cool setting on a monitor. I was not a fan. Anyway, after about two hours of use I realised… that I hadn’t peeled off the little plastic eye protectors that were on the lenses. Two seconds later and the world leaped into vivid technicolour. Yeah, not my smartest moment. 🤣
So overall I’m happy with it even though the setup has been an absolute nightmare. Maybe tomorrow I’ll actually have time to do a race!