Sure, only lenses and displays to be crancked up to 210° horizontal, 135° vertical at a resolution of 5,760 x 3,240. Per eye that is.
No big deal for VR headsets. Just stuff in the new “bionic” lenses and the displays, package it and off it goes… \s
Ah yes, and then there was the face & body tracking. Proven tech by Pimax, no sweat.
As you already mention, getting the eye tracking to work over that wild FoV will be very challenging, not least because the actual placement of the diodes will be pushed to the periphery far more due to the FoV. The alternative would be to abandon eye-tracking and revert to the use of FFR because much of the resolution to be fed by the GPU is in the periphery of our normal view and there is little reason to ever render the part beyond 150° in any greater detail: just remember how little one noticed the switch from the large to the normal FoV in the 8K/8KX. So it suffices if it boils down to a kind of an ambilight effect; although that could be achieved much simpler & cheaper, if we are honest. @Djonko: didn’t you have the super wide FoV XTal or so? How do you appreciate the additional FoV at the periphery, and which kind of resolution is truly needed in any actual usage, when not bending your eyes to the corners till they bleed?
If they achieve the actual 200° Wide and what was disclosed of the lenses would be a complete redesign vs just an 8kX lems upgrade. The “fried egg” design was long ago stated to have a ceiling.
Far too soon to say. Plus with the new projected price point not that much of threat save maybe against Varjo’s higher end models. To which if VR-1 does meet expectations Varjo might indeed be in trouble.
I honestly don’t think VR would be any worse off without Pimax and I’m not saying that to be mean to Pimax because I appreciate their effort and passion for VR. I just wish their execution was better.
Secondly Crystal is basically an Aero fused with a Pico 4. But without the build quality of the Aero and without the Streaming and size of the Pico4.
As for the technology I don’t think Pimax can make the switch to pancake lenses and compete when it comes to size reduction. In fact Pimax seem proud to have a headset built like a tank. That mentality does not win customers. And let’s face it Aero is 2 years old and the XR2 chip is beginning to focilise.
I’m still looking forward to seeing the 12k and think it has more longevity than the Crystal.
Definitely. Which is why I am even going to follow the news on the 12K - it would potentially offer a level of immersion the mainstream headsets are not looking for, and that would be exciting for certain games & experiences. So even in 5 years it would likely be worthwhile to use as we probably shouldn’t expect any other headset offering 200° h to surface. And that would make the business case, and in addition allow me to accept certain negatives which come with Pimax as a vendor (Pimax substandard quality in R&D and production, shaky incomplete ever evolving soft-/firmware, missing/broken/issue-laden features, etc.) - having no choice if you wish to experience the super-wide FoV would let them vindicate.
The Crystal on the other side doesn’t have highly valuable unique features which I would expect to survive past the coming 1-2 years, so it will be replaced much sooner than the 12K and therefore the usage premium ratio (price divided by months of usage) is much higher at the end.
Those who bought it EXACTLY because of the wider FoV and not because of any other thrill, like me, sense it, value it and run always the large mode. Simple example is Aircar. I would never ever play it with “potato” or “normal” I still require more.
This is not about Ambilight features, for sure. If I am honest…
At least You have one other opinion to Yours.
Fair enough, perhaps trying it in a headset where we don‘t get irritating bright reflections at the rim when switching from 150 to 170 degrees would help.
And sure, in the long run I want to have a headset which covers my entire field of vision. But in the meantime it is about balancing the resources.
If the 12K works out really well, it could be a revelation. But I will wait to judge the final product once it is available. To be ambitious is cool, but execution matters. After years of tinkering with Pimax headsets and living with compromises, I am at the point where I‘d rather settle for less but well executed than very ambitious but hit & miss with a fair amount of friction & imperfection. Your mileage may vary.
You try to confuse me…
First You claim the 8KX large view as just an “ambilight” feature, then one post later you confirm, You would like “to cover the entire field of vision”.
Then You state, You “rather settle for less”.
In my opinion, fair enough after empty promises, this is just a sign of disappointment and impatience.
As already pointed out, do not expect 12KX this year maybe even not next year. Perhaps… end of next year some prototypes will be sent out.
I will be patient, because I do not see any competitor on the world to really care about the FoV like PIMAX does.
In addition to that, the RTX 5090 I expected to be a fitting driver, due to current rumors may perhaps not be powerful enough for using it properly without resolution reduction or FoV reduction.
So, I will wait for beginning of 2025.
In the meantime, feel free to buy any other head set, hope You will enjoy it.
You sound a bit sour. I am sorry if I offended you.
So, to perhaps clarify what you felt was contradictory:
Obviously I want to have a FoV which covers the human FoV entirely; actually, if it didn‘t have any trade-offs, I would even say I want it to be 360 degrees!
Having mentioned the ugly word „trade-off“, here‘s where the reality check kicks in. A greater FoV comes at a price. Sometimes the price is too high. The XTal featured a wider FoV than the 8KX, and was released prior to it. Go ask Djonko if he thought it was the ultimate headset, still beating everything out there - because it has 180 degrees of FoV. I believe he would tell you that 2560 × 1440 across 180 degrees did bring disadvantages which rendered it to not become the greatest headset ever.
My 8KX was nice, but the extra 20 degrees in the large setting for me was largely lost to a beam of bright light where I couldn‘t see the details which should have been visible but instead saw the distracting bright light. The immersion was rather better at normal than less as a result, and I concluded that even if it had shown the proper picture, it wouldn‘t have been massively noticeable to me. Nice to have, but no longer a game changer. To me, mind you.
When I mentioned the ambilight concept, I tried to argue that as a compromise, in order to save resources on both displays and computing, companies could experiment with said concept to see if that enhances the immersion while saving the valuable pixels & GPU for those areas we usually really pay attention to. If you don‘t like the concept you probably also don‘t like the Philips TV‘s using that feature; in any case it would be missing the point if one argued „I‘d rather have the TV 40“ bigger so what the ambilight only vaguely hints at is actually properly visible on screen on my TV!“ Of course, that would be a no brainer, but the whole point is to make more out of limited resources, i.e. to trick the brain into assuming a greater FoV without sacrificing any actual pixels in the central areas for such peripheral FoV.
And finally I appreciate, that your priorities may be quite different than mine. If FoV was everything to me, if I didn‘t mind that part of the periphery wrongfully shows a bright light, that I get painful eye strain after 2 hours in a well dialled-in 8KX (took me three weeks of fine-tuning the software IPD) or 10 minutes if I‘d just set it to my measured IPD, and a number of other downsides, I would be very happy with my 8KX. But FoV to me is only one of a number of specs & criteria which are really important, and the downsides outweighed the FoV at the end. If the 12K achieves what it promises on paper, without the downsides as I experienced them in the 8KX, I will surely consider to buy it.
And yes, I agree that it will likely take another 1-2 years before we see it released in at least near feature-complete form. Until then, I will gladly continue to seek better experiences with the headsets the market is making available in the meantime. My golden ratio of say 130-150 degrees horizontally unfortunately is not on the menu at all, seems none of the companies working on Vr headsets considers that to be a great compromise under the current restrictions with regards to display and computing resources.
Thank You for sharing your thoughts.
Maybe our expectations regarding a headset are not that different.
As You explained, FoV is not the only topic for a headset. Immersion requires FoV, colour and contrast and brightness, as well as resolution and refresh rate, low drop rates little or better no god rays, chromatic abberation MURA etc. Then, things like IPD adjustment, managing with glasses or diopter adaption, weight and comfort during wearing, having it wireless, using open standards etc.
Everyone has his own thoughts what can be accepted regarding Immersion or not, decision making remains individual, for sure.
By the way, no offence taken, but stumbling over inconsistent statements triggered me indeed.
What does anyone think of the Crystal Sim Limited Edition? lol. I like the option of not having the Pimax controllers included since I already have Index controllers. I also like the different vanity faceplates…I wish the blue one is racing and not flight though since I only does racing lol. I like the blue only, not sure about red and green.
I would say give us a version which gets rid off the XR2, battery, etc. and comes in at 800$.
But even then I bet everybody is holding their cash to see if the Pico rumours are validated. If they are true (really big if) why would I want to grab the Crystal if a much more sensibly sized & weighted Pico 5 PM is at the horizon? We are talking of a 14 months wait.
Who knows, perhaps Pimax‘ move to add Crystal to the trade in program was motivated by the Pico rumours. And if that is the case, it would sort of validate these rumours inadvertendly, because we can assume Pimax know their home country‘s VR scene pretty well.
If you are keen to get the 12K, the Pico 5 PM isn‘t necessarily satifying that urge. So those users might be lured into the Crystal even if the Pico 5 PM were to be announced.
It would be a travesty if they’d go all the way up to 4K per eye but stick to the 100 degree range for the horizontal FoV nevertheless. But that of course is much simpler as you just exchange the displays and you‘re done. As they are allegedly lining up three models with 10 months, my guess is they will unfortunately exactly do that, because increasing the FoV significantly would cause much more R&D efforts, less re-use/swapping of existing parts, i.e. less volume effects.
And in addition I bet the majority of customers they are looking at will be easier persuaded by a retina-screen offering, because that is of course one of the holy grails of VR/AR development goals, than „just“ a greater FoV. And in fairness for productivity use cases, e.g. a virtual office, it probably is more meaningful: if you can read text on your virtual monitors just like that it will make quite a difference.
My guess for now is, that they will show the first public demo of the 12K on CES 2024, the roadshow will happen in late Q1 2024 and the first final units will be sent out in late Q2 of 2024, maybe even at first in Q3.
Pico 5 PM is the best Quest 2/3 replacement. It will be the best headset on the road. Crystal is too big for that.
Pico 5 PM’s 4k x 2 resolution will finally make virtual desktop practical, and I have no doubt that watching 3D movies with that will be a great experience.
