• ×
    Information
    Windows update impacting certain printer icons and names. Microsoft is working on a solution.
    Click here to learn more
    Information
    Need Windows 11 help?
    Check documents on compatibility, FAQs, upgrade information and available fixes.
    Windows 11 Support Center.
  • post a message
  • ×
    Information
    Windows update impacting certain printer icons and names. Microsoft is working on a solution.
    Click here to learn more
    Information
    Need Windows 11 help?
    Check documents on compatibility, FAQs, upgrade information and available fixes.
    Windows 11 Support Center.
  • post a message
Guidelines
The HP Community is where owners of HP products, like you, volunteer to help each other find solutions.
Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.
HP Recommended
HP Reverb G2
Microsoft Windows 10 (64-bit)

After noticing so many negative reviews, I decided to share some of my knowledge which may help you sort out your HP Reverb G2 connectivity and SteamVR VR gaming issues.

 

*** I will update this post if I feel there is more information that can help you resolve issues with your setup.


1. If your HP Reverb G2 was working fine and it quits working you most likely pulled the main headset data connector from the headset and it needs to be re-seated. It may look like it's fine but you most likely accidentally pulled it out of the socket so it may appear to be dead. However, first make sure your power brick is connected to the data cable which connects to your headset to eliminate that as a possibility. If the power brick is connected and you see the led light on the small data cable connector box then the issue is something else.

 

Once you confirm the data led box is on, disconnect the power brick to continue troubleshooting. Disconnect all the HP Reverb G2 cables from your computer while troubleshooting. Proceed by removing the data cable from the headset completely and carefully re-seat it into the socket until you hear it click in. Do not force it into the headset because if you don't take your time and insert it just right, you will not successfully inserted into the socket. You must insert it gently with even pressure until you hear it click.

 

Make sure you orient the cable connector properly before attempting to do this.

Once you hear it click, secure the cable to the back of the headset with the included cable clip or use a small cable tie to secure the cable from being pulled out of the socket during game play. This will also allow you to keep the cable away from your left arm and drop below your back so that you don't get tangled up.


2. Go to your computer and exit Steam completely. Shutdown the Windows WMR home if it's open too. When your system fails to detect a headset sometimes you must reset your computers USB ports! You should also turn off the USB power management settings for your device. You can find that under the Windows 10 "Device Manager". You would go into "Device Manager" and look for "Human Interface Devices" , Click that to expand it and look for "USB Input Device". Right click each one listed there and do a right mouse click and select "Properties". Navigate into the "Power Management" tab and make sure you uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power". Ok it to apply changes.


3. Now without connecting your HP Reverb G2 to your computer, launch the Steam client and launch SteamVR. Don't worry about the error about not detecting a headset. What you want to do is click into the hamburger menu and select "Developer" followed by "Developer Settings". Once you are there, scroll down the options until you see "Remove all SteamVR USB devices", now click "Disable Power Management" under it and Ok it. Finally, click "Reset Warnings" and close the Steam client.

 

Now your system should detect your USB devices as new after you reboot your system and re-connect your HP Reverb G2. However, you may want to uninstall the "Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR" software from Steam and re-install it to ensure a fresh start. Reboot your computer without connecting your headset and re-launch the Steam client. Uninstall "Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR" and re-install it. Exit the Steam client again and reboot your system.


4. Re-connect your power brick to the HP Reverb G2 data cable and connect your VR headset to your supported video card and USB port. If the Windows Mixed Reality Portal pops up and takes you into the default home section, your headset should work fine with SteamVR. However, there are two more things you may need to do.


5. Launch the Steam client and launch SteamVR without putting your headset on. You need to lower your HP Reverb G2 per eye resolution from the default 100% to 50%. This depends on how powerful your system is and the type of graphics card you have but 50% is a good baseline to troubleshoot your VR games for compatibility issues. Some VR games may launch perfectly at 100% if your graphics card can handle it but from my experience many will fail to launch at all and immediately crash afterwards. Keep in mind, that I have an Alienware Aurora R9 I7 system with 16 GB of ram and an NVIDIA RTX 2070 card. Many games fail me when I have my HP Reverb G2 per eye settings above 50% in SteamVR! If you have a system with an equal or lower video card spec you may need to go below 50% to maintain stability.

 

With that said, after you launch SteamVR. Go back into the hamburger menu and select "Settings", select "Video" on the left side and on the right where it says "Resolution Per Eye" slide that to 50%. Under that you will see,
"PER-APPLICATION VIDEO SETTINGS". This is where you would enhance your games output clarity within the headset by testing super sampling over the set 50% "Resolution Per Eye" setting. Do not mess with that for now, I'm just letting you know about it because you can come back here and enhance your visual output per VR games by testing the super sampling multipliers without causing your VR titles to crash. You must first ensure that your system can handle the 50% resolution per eye setting first!


6. Some of you may have to lower your HP Reverb G2 Hz output from 90Hz to 60Hz. Failure to do so may render black screen in some VR games & flickering. To change this in Windows 10, go to start, settings ( the gear icon ), select "Mixed Reality", select "Headset display" on the left side of the screen. Now click "Change" under Experience options and try 60Hz. Save it and reboot your system. Try out your VR games again. You may want to try the "Automatic" option to allow VR titles that can handle 90Hz to utilize it but you should try 60Hz first to see if your issues are resolved.

 

7. Some VR games like Project Cars 2 require you to have a swap file on the drive where the game is installed! If none exist the game will fail and may yield a bug report prompt. I didn't have this issue with Project Cars 1 so it had me stumped for a little while but I finally figured it out. Make sure you have some spare hard drive space that can be used as virtual memory to meet the demands of your VR games.


Solution


A. Right click on "My Computer" ( This PC ) icon on your Windows 10 desktop, select properties from the context menu and click into "Advanced systems settings" on the left side of your screen.


B. Now that you are in the "System Properties" location. You will see the following under the "Performance" title section


Performance
Visual effects, processor scheduling, memory usage, and virtual memory


Click into "Settings..."


C. Under the "Visual Effects" tab set that to "Adjust for best performance"


D. Under the "Advanced" tab set the "Adjust for best performance of:" to "Background services"


E. Now under that you will see the "Virtual memory" title section.
A paging file is an area on the hard disk that Windows uses as if it were RAM.


Click the "Change..." button and select each drive where your steam games are stored if you have more then one. After selecting each one set each to .. 


"System managed size" and click the "Set" button after doing it for each of your drives ( Assuming you have more than one designated for Steam games. )


F. OK the changes and reboot your system to apply changes.


After you reboot launch Steam and then launch your game in flat mode. Modify the games graphics settings and attempt to launch it in VR after restarting it. If your system can handle the graphics settings assigned it should launch the game without a problem.

 

Remember that your HP Reverb G2 VR headset may need to be set to 50% per eye resolution within the SteamVR video settings after you launch SteamVR. You can do that via the SteamVR hamburger menu under settings.

 

8. Open the Microsoft Store from the Windows Start menu and click the little dots on the top right of the screen.

Make sure you do all the updates listed there if any. This is not the same as the standard Windows update your system engages in via the operating system Windows update service.


I installed "HP Reverb G2 VR Headset Setup", "Mixed Reality Portal" and "OpenXR for Windows Mixed Reality" from there. I recommend you do all the updates because that is where the Windows Mixed Reality updates are listed.

 

When you launch the Windows Mixed Reality Home watch out for alerts in the header. It may warn you to enable OpenXR which may be required to play VR games with the HP Reverb G2. It will most likely offer you a "fix" button you can click there and it will automatically resolve it for you.

 

9. An SSD drive will give you better performance than a standard mechanical drive. Furthermore, if your system BIOS supports  UEFI booting from the primary drive, you should setup the partitions on that drive to GPT and not MBR. GPT will greatly enhance performance and drive responsiveness.

 

If your system does not support UEFI via the BIOS then you can setup a secondary drive dedicated to gaming and have that setup as a GPT drive while leaving your primary system drive as MBR so that it can boot up without issue.

 

Do not convert your primary boot drive to GPT unless your system BIOS supports UEFI booting capabilities! You will have to convert it back to MBR and run a Windows system boot repair to get it running again. It may or may not workout for you so avoid doing so unless you are sure. 

 

10. Cable management is important too. Most of us will not need the full length of the cable because we are close to our computers. Depending on your setup, you can use small zip ties to gently organize your cables. You don't want to twist and turn your cables all over the place which can happen quickly when playing VR games.

 

I've included a photo of my headset so you can all see how I managed my cable to avoid causing connectivity issues from cable kinks ect ..

 

HP_REVERB_G2_CABLE_MANAGEMENT.JPG

 

If you can't see the photo above, see it via the provided link ....

 

HP Reverb G2 Cable Management 

 

If none of this helps you resolve your headset issues but your headset worked initially you can try doing a Windows update via both the standard Windows Update and the Microsoft Store app in your Start menu. You can also try updating your graphics card drivers or installing an older version to attempt to resolve your issues. If that fails, then it might be a hardware issue or your system is not capable of handling the headset.


Hope this helps some of you out. These methods apply to all WMR headsets and is the way to go about troubleshooting VR headset detection issues and VR launch problems within SteamVR.

 

Good luck!

Albert

 

#######################

 

UPDATE 2/5/2021

 

I have an Alienware Aurora R9 Intel 3.0 Ghz system with an NVIDIA RTX 2070 video card and 16 GB of ram. Before I began tweaking my system, I was only able to run SteamVR with the HP Reverb G2 set to 50% per eye resolution. I was lucky to be able to get VR games to run without a swap file ( page file / virtual memory ) at low to medium settings without crashing.
However, for VR games you want to use virtual memory to get the most out of your VR experiences!

 

My system has multiple drives installed and I dedicate some partition space to games depending on how big and how demanding those games are. My system has a Micron M2 NVMe SSD drive which was included by default, a Western Digital 1 TB mechanical drive, a Kingston SSD drive and an Hitachi SATA drive. The bulk of my games are on my 1 TB WD drive and my Micron M2 NVMe SSD drive. I have one game "Aerofly FS" installed to my Kingston SSD drive. What I noticed was that when I converted by drives from MBR to GPT the drives were more responsive.

Initially I configured Windows 10 to utilize virtual memory via the "System managed size" option but after reboot I noticed that Windows hogged all my available drive space. So, I re-configured my system to assign 5 to 8 GB ( 5000 MB to 8000 MB ) of virtual memory on each drive. ( Assuming your drives have the space to spare. ) Afterwards, I was able to play my VR games on Ultra settings without a problem! I was also able to boost my SteamVR HP Reverb G2 per eye resolution from 50% to 66% which took my VR gaming to a new level!

 

With that said, I also did the following ...

 

I would enable "VSYNC" within game options if available and enable FXAA ( Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing ) Ultra settings when possible. Furthermore, I also disable background applications in Windows OS to free up system resources.


EXAMPLES

Windows update
Secondary Logon
User Experience Virtualization Service
Themes
Remote Desktop service


Go to start, run and type in "services.msc" ( without the quotes ), Hit enter on keyboard and click the "status" title on the very top of the service list to easily find services you wish to disable temporarily.

 

*** Do not run a system cleaner after doing this because you can wipe out system registry entries that will render the services you disable non functional later. Lastly, only disable the services I mentioned above or ones you know for sure won't cause system issues. Do not disable it, if you don't know it's purpose!

 

By doing a combination of these things you should get more out of your VR experience.

 

#######################


UPDATE 2/23/2021


If you increase your VR display fidelity within your VR game options, it's best to turn off VSYNC. I was able to bypass the display stuttering badly in some VR games after turning it off and sticking with FXAA ( Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing ). I also configure shadows to low or turned them off completely because it's pretty harsh on my eyes. From my perspective, the VR display looks better without shadows on.

 

Archived This topic has been archived. Information and links in this thread may no longer be available or relevant. If you have a question create a new topic by clicking here and select the appropriate board.
† The opinions expressed above are the personal opinions of the authors, not of HP. By using this site, you accept the <a href="https://www8.hp.com/us/en/terms-of-use.html" class="udrlinesmall">Terms of Use</a> and <a href="/t5/custom/page/page-id/hp.rulespage" class="udrlinesmall"> Rules of Participation</a>.