The HP Reverb 2 and the dance of USB ports

Recently, the HP Reverb 2 went on sale for $399, which is $200 off the normal price. I’ve been on the fence of trying one out, but the $200 sale gave me the excuse to pull the trigger. In fact, that’s how I got the Samsung Odyssey and Samsung Odyssey+, which both had a $200 mark down when I purchased them.

Having watched a few reviews from other journalists, I was excited by the prospect of the higher resolution and lightness of the HMD. It was going to replace my HTC VIVE Cosmos in my sim rig so I was really anxious to see it working in person.

After experiencing the HTC VIVE Pro 2 (review coming soon), I was ready for more ultra high resolution VR headsets. And with the HP Reverb 2 using Windows Mixed Reality and inside out tracking, I was hoping to just plug this into my current VR system and play games such as Elite Dangerous, American Truck Simulator, and Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Let’s say my first day of usage consisted more of trying to get it working than being in VR. I’m not a stranger to Windows Mixed Reality. I have had two Samsung WMR headsets on various systems from my main PCs to my Microsoft Surface Book 2 working together so I know what kind of errors that can pop up. Yes, the mysterious error messages with two sets of numbers with a dash in between is pretty common in WMR setups, but for the most part, I’ve had good successes with both Samsung headsets.

The system I was testing the HP Reverb 2 consists of an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X paired with a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti on a MSI X570 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard using a BIOS from April that has ComboAM4PIV2 1.2.0.2 with improved USB compatibility. I’ve used this system with the Valve Index and HTC VIVE Pro 2 with the Valve Index being a solid experience with no problems whatsoever.

Out of the box, the HP Reverb 2 needed the all-in-one cable plugged in and then it plugs into an open USB-C port and a DisplayPort on the video card. You’ll also need to plug in the 45W power supply as this WMR can’t be powered from the USB port like the Samsung Odyssey+. So following the directions on the HP Youtube site, I plugged in the Reverb 2 into the USB-C on the back of my motherboard and into the DisplayPort of the video card.

Nothing. After a few minutes the dreaded Error 7-14 popped up.

Mixed Reality Portal sat on the screen saying to connect the headset.

I tried turning the plug around and putting it back in.

Again, nothing until the 7-14 error reared its ugly head again.

Well that’s strange as my Oculus Quest 2 had no problems with the port. OK, I thought. I’ll try a regular USB 3 port on the back since the box came with a USB-C to USB-A adapter.

Three more ports tried, three more times nothing happened. DId I get a bad unit? The HP logo on the front wasn’t lighting but the light on the breakout box was on signaling that power was indeed getting to the HMD.

I have a front panel USB-C connection on my case so I decided to try that.

Success! Or so I thought.

The final part of the installation started happening. Everything was going fine and there was an image in the Reverb 2. When you first startup Mixed Reality Portal, you go through a tutorial that you can use your voice to navigate through. On the first screen it says you can say, "Next" to continue. I’ve done this countless times so I knew what to expect.

“Next”, I shouted. Nothing happened. “Next” I said again. Nothing happened. I tried for a good 3 minutes trying to use my voice to continue all the while I would occasionally see an icon of the audio level flash in front of my eyes. That’s weird I thought.

I took off the Reverb 2 to notice that on my screen, my audio was switching inputs and outputs every few seconds. I have a program called Soundswitch that lets me switch between headsets and microphones easily and it kept popping up showing that it was being switched without any interactions. That’s weird, I thought.

So thinking it was the program causing interference, I killed it only to have it continue switching audio sources.

Frustrated as this is now an hour or so into my experience with the Reverb 2, I tried rebooting my system a few times and unplugging various components only to have it keep happening.

I had two more USB 3 ports on the front panel in the USB-A style so I plugged the convertor back on and tried one of those ports.

Finally! Picture appeared inside the Reverb 2 and I was finally able to use my voice to navigate through the tutorial.

Needless to say, my first experience with the HP Reverb 2 was incredibly frustrating and it seems like this isn’t something new. Combing through some support boards and reddit, I see a lot of owners complaining about the HP Reverb 2 and various issues with the X570 chipset that’s on my motherboard being a large subject of concern in getting the Reverb 2 to work.

It’s been many years since Windows Mixed Reality has come out, we shouldn’t be dealing with these issues. I haven’t begun to talk about how fragile WMR can be with Windows Updates, but I can see how people can get turned off by the prospect of VR if you can’t even get it to plug in and work like say a keyboard or gaming controller.

From my time inside the HP Reverb 2 after I got it working, the picture quality, colors, clarity was truly amazing. I’m really excited about getting to work with my sims, but I’m also afraid that I’ll run into all sorts of issues to temper my excitement. I have no problems with the Valve Index. I can’t even remember the last time it didn’t work when I plugged in the cables and fired up SteamVR. The same can also be said for the HTC VIVE Cosmos (I don’t use the controller tracking as this is just on my sim rig).

But Windows Mixed Reality is a finicky beast and you throw in issues that I’m seeing with the HP Reverb 2 and it just makes it hard for me to recommend it as there are plenty of gamers with a lot less patience than I have to try and figure out what’s wrong. Especially with how I got it to work by trying different USB ports, something I didn’t have to do with others.

I’m hopeful I got the kinks out of the way, but I haven’t even tried the HP Reverb 2 on my sim rig yet as I wanted to make sure everything worked on my main gaming rig. My sim rig has an ASUS X570 motherboard with even less ports since it’s a mini-ATX motherboard so I’m hoping if I run into this on there, there’s one USB port that will work. I don’t have room in that machine to pop in a PCI-E USB expansion card so that’s out of the question. Although I’ve read some people having success with powered USB hubs, which by the way, didn’t work on my main gaming rig.

HP, the screens on the Reverb 2 truly look incredible with the small amount of time I was able to spend in it. Please continue to look into the issues to improve the user experience as I want VR to continue to grow and we need to have all these issues ironed out for it to happen. Otherwise, we’ll have too many frustrated users to enjoy a remarkable experience that VR can bring.

-Update- And now it's the next day and I can't even get the computer to recognize the headset. I tried all the various USB ports and nothing's happening. Other things are being recognized by my USB ports and my Valve Index works fine. After a few reboots and still nothing. The light on the breakout box comes on when I plug in the headset though. Talk about frustrating.