Found some interesting M2 impressions from Berlin meeting. BTW he also tested XTAL in another blog. He is also a VR developer, so I think he knows what he is talking about.
what helps is full RGB subpixel matrix; he’s saying it’s not pentile;
8K image is upscaled from 5K source, so the additional pixels are not used anyhow. In fact, the image is a lit blurred because of that;
distortion was not anyhow disturbing during game play and I wouldn’t notice if i wasn’t lookin;
older games might never support wide FOV without distortions;
there is more space for glass than on Vive;
with Pimax you can see much more details, and therefore notice all lower resolution textures or lowpoly models. It can be distracting, because the developers got away with on Vive or Rift, but now on Pimax it can ruin the magic;
5K might work with 1070, but 1080 is recommended;
XTAL uses classical non-fresnel lenses, so there are no glare effects. However, the lenses provide focus only in center vision. Outside the center the image is blurred quite heavily;
In my opinion, if you want clarity and no SDE, take the 8k. I was at the backer meetup and espacially when I tried Pavlov with the 5k+, I could see the SDE. Unfortunately I had no time to test Pavlov with the 8k. On the 8k I played Onward and Skyrim and it was very very good. I will to 95% take the 8k.
So you claim that you didn’t notice any blurriness on 8k? Because most of the people here from Berlin meetup say 5k has better clarity, while 8k is blurry but with less SDE.
They have even photoshoped some images to make an example of how it looks like:
Assetto Corsa:
I couldn’t notice any blurriness, even in Skyrim I looked very closely for details and it was very sharp. One of the most disappointing things (for me at the moment with my Vive) is the SDE and I backed something for zero SDE. So I won’t downgrade to have “just a little bit SDE”. This device will be the headset for the next maybe 2 or 3 years for me so I will take it.
thanks this is helpfull, funny i would prefer the second image.
When i think about it, its because a bit of blurryness is more natural in real life then pixels.
I use Google translation / for xtal he made an image showing the effect through the lenses. it’s a pity he did not do it for the pimax 8k test. I would have liked to see a representative image about the distortion.
StarVR is being reported as better than Xtal, and Xtal retailing at 5,800 USD. If StarVR undercuts Xtal, Xtal will have no choice but to lower their price. It’s possible that StarVR could price Xtal right out of the market, all they need to do it have a better price to performance proposition. But Xtal might be cheaper to manufacture in the end, so they might be able to push lower. I doubt there will be a real price war, but StarVR has the market advantage.
I wouldn’t call the effect here blur as the image itself isn’t blurry…just the edges. I think the better term is that it is a softer image instead of the 5k’s sharper image.
Maybe it’s only the checked edges of the SDE that made the 5k+ to appear sharper.
I am stiil rooting for the 8K to be a good device and that my 1080ti will be good enough for most things.
So I usually like supersampling since it helps me look passed the SDE, because it makes the image crisp, and I guess more crisp than the screen pixel outlines. Now I’m wondering if the crispness is unnecessary since the SDE is so little. Obviously having both would be nice, but this topic helps me think that the 8K loaner (until I get an 8K-X) will do just fine.
Part of the XTAL price is dedicated support, so the real headset price is lower, probably in the $3000 region. Still too expensive, but I guess this the price for non-Fresnel lenses. Looking at the StarVR it seems to me that the lenses are custom Fresnel. I wonder if these lenses are making all magic?
The problem with XTAL is low volume, the reps from the company told me that they expect to sell 50-100 headsets per year. No wonder that at this low volume, everything is so expensive. The price of StarVR is a bit mystery as well, by the looks of it they developed a completely custom displays, which would need higher volume units to be profitable to make, suggesting lower price. But we will simply have to wait and see
Who would want to wear such a heavy headset in XTAL lol. Plus, the focus on the center and everything blur out…isn’t that the same as looking through a goggle which would kick you out of immersion? How can this be a $3,000-$5000 headset? lol.
I am picking Pimax 8K from some of your impressions here.
Thx Jan for your impressions on the 8K and 5K+ it was a good read.
On the XTAL i don’t know at that price point i can’t see how that makes any sense at all even for businesses. You could by a whole Armada of 8K and 5K+ instead of just 1 XTAL.
If the HMD needs so much support that it is noted as one of the features to justify this extreme price something is very wrong.
HMD’s should be plug and play and if it is, for 1 XTAL i could get almost 10 Pimax devices so i could just swap a defective device 9 times before i even need to think about the support.
