It was the shape of the lens and the fact ACC and rFactor 2 are not really playable . Rfactor 2 is extremely beautiful if you do hot laps, but once you turn on AI or race multiplayer it's unoptimized even for the Varjo which is pretty efficient.
It's hard to explain but the edges have a round shape and you see the transition, especially in first person shooters or rpg's like Half Life Alyx, for me it kills the immersion a little bit. In racesims you don't really notice it, because you are more surrounded and mostly look forward.
So basically only AC, AMS 2 and Iracing you can really enjoy the Varjo for simracing. And AMS 2 and AC I hardly play so I would buy it only for Iracing. I think that's overkill at this stage, considering the g2 is still doing a good enough job in Iracing. One's the 4090 is out I will consider buying a headset like this again and I wish they solve the roundness of the lens. For that kind of money, it should work in all games. But we are really close to almost perfect VR.
I've also bought the Varjo Aero, but I also returned my Varjo Aero, this for the following reasons:
- Impossible to use with multiple people, you have to adjust all 4 headstrap adjustments very precisely every single time you switch from person to person. This plus the manual IPD adjustment in the software because the auto-IPD gives way higher(unusable amount of) chromatic aberration. So in fact also returned it for the same reason: "shape of the lens".
- (Motion) blur when moving the head, Varjo is still investigating what the cause is( for months already), they still have no idea what's causing it so they also don't know how to fix it.
- Edge distortion, still not good enough with the so called experimental profile. A lot of "warping" in the sides of the lenses.
- Major Chromatic aberration + red shift, very visible in automobilista 2
- The stereo overlap was extremely bad, I could see a black spot between my eyes, so the glasses looked like "2 tunnels". With the G2, I have a perfect stereo overlap and I don't have a black spot in the middle visible. A friend of me didn't have this problem, I have a high IPD, he a low.
- Lower FoV both horizontally and vertical then the G2, to low for me.
- My Aero had a dead pixel in the right panel, I spotted this within a few minutes, so bad quality control at Varjo.
- Headstrap was way less comfortable then my G2+comfort mod.
- Mura, which was visible in the skies.
- Worse black levels then the G2.
For me it was not a next level device but it was a beta device. In fact: Now with OpenXR toolkit+Opencomposite for sims as rFactor 2 and Dirt Rally 2 and the VR perf kit 0.3 with Foveated rendering+CAS for Automobilista 2 gives me overall a way better experience with my Reverb G2+FoV mod+comfort mod then I had with the Aero. The issues were huge for me, very distracting.
I saw that the lenses were very clear in terms of light passthrough and the higher resolution and the fan were all nice. Also the better software(performance for same resolution was better than with my G2). But for the rest it was really unexpectedly bad.
I still have good hopes for an Aero 2, I believe in the philosophy of Varjo(more than Pimax), so maybe they will surprise us in the future. All issues are solvable, with: 1. A better lens design 2. OLED panels 3. Software improvements 4. Better quality control. But until they make an better device with these improvements I think that the Aero is simply overhyped and even if the prices were the same: I would still have chosen the G2, because of all the issues that I mentioned.