I'll start off by saying I got this HMD cheap off Amazon for £170 as a replacement for my Reverb G2 as I cannot be faffed with the WMR Deprecation nonsense in a few months, not being able to afford one of the high end headsets this one coming down in price so much meant it was a bargain and too good an opportunity to pass up.

After a few days of setting up, getting used to it and the way it works, looking at custom drivers & files and other tweaking stuff I set out on my first flight this afternoon. Initial impressions are very good, I had thought the hardened cushion would cause annoyances but as it turns out it was fairly comfortable in an hours long flight (my average flight time) and having removed the included nose pad certainly helped, with that on before even short sessions I could feel it pressing down on my nose causing discomfort.

Whilst the FOV is roughly if not the same as the G2, the biggest improvement is the lack of constantly needing to find the "sweet spot" that the G2 is infamously known for. Which edge to edge clarity I'm immediately turning my eyes instead of turning my whole head to read an instrument, this is a such a nice relief as being accustomed to racing sims I tend to "look" much more so it's also good for that. I'm currently sticking with OpenXR Toolkit as I use it's features a lot with MSFS, whilst this adds an extra layer of API over SteamVR I'm yet to notice any significant loss in performance. There were some stuttery moments (MSFS well known for this so it may be the sim not the headset) and FPS at one point in a rain cloud did drop from 46 to 30 but it was much smoother at 30 in the Pico than it ever was in the G2. When that dropped in FPS you knew about it, my target was low 40s as anything in the mid to low 30s was no good, but with the Pico low 30s seems just fine which is another welcome bonus.

I'm going to try upping the resolution and using DLSS next (if I can get the Res high enough it may alleviate the blurry garmin screens somewhat) as with slightly lower specs I might be able to get more out of this headset, the G2 on my system TAA was clearly the better option but I have plenty to tweak and tinker with yet, the colours/saturation/contrast etc needs adjusting for one as it felt a bit washed out.

Overall first impressions after my first proper flight are very good, for the price I wasn't expecting much but already it's given me a lot more, everyone I've spoken too who has one has praised the Pico 3 Link and with a bit more tweaking it looks set to become the perfect replacement for my soon to be deceased G2.

Just to add an hours flight, probably roughly 10+mins on top of that = 15% battery usage. I was contemplating getting an AC Adapter so it's plugged in and charging all the time, but not so sure I'll need it as I'll just charge it up when needed.

A week on and those great first impressions roll on, I gave DLSS a try and whilst it is a massive performance boost the blurry Garmin Screens are so off putting (personally). Overall there's a sense of blurriness associated with DLSS anyway and it just isn't as crisp as TAA, so I'm going back to that and will unfortunately have to lower settings again but I'll find a nice balance as I did with my G2. Speaking of which I sold my G1 & G2 which covered the cost of the Pico 3 nicely, so there's no going back now.

I've ordered a cheap AC Adapter to keep it charged as with charging my phone & headphones and camera etc it became a bit too much to add another device to remember and already this week I let the battery slip below 30% as I forgot!

Comfort wise another couple of flights and no issues, I do tend to lift my HMD to glance at the monitor from time to time, but in a long session in AMS2 (Automobilista2, car racing sim) whereby the HMD remains rooted to my face, the comfort never became an issue so that's definitely good. It's a harder cushion to what I was used too but I have kept my VRCover G2 face cushions so I may integrate them into the Pico one day but not any time soon. One downside is what to do with the cable that protrudes from the top right of the HMD, I've currently got it secured so it loops back to the left and up to a hook under a cabinet so that it's out the way, but unlike the G2 cable (that came out the top left side) I'm feeling it "drag" on my head when I turn, needs a bit of fine tuning. 

Also upgrading from a G2 and interested in this for the DP connection.

How are you finding it several months later?  What other headsets did you consider?

Thanks

Malcolm