Well, this would be the point where PPI does become relevant…
IF the screen mount depth is the same for the 12k and Crystal models, and IF their respective display panels have similar PPI, and IF the Crystal models do not have a whole bespoke front part for the mounting of the lenses, but instead something of an adapter plate that goes where the 12k lens would normally go, and has the three screw holes that keeps each lens module in place; THEN it should indeed theoretically be possible to insert such an adapter plate into a 12k, for 110° 42PPD (EDIT: …for occasions where that is desired), utilising a portion of the 12k screens…
I wonder though, I remember that HTC factory calibrates each headset’s lenses and stores the distortion/mura profile in the headset. This can be found in the lighthouse.db file you can dump from the headset.
I guess Pimax does not need to do this as the manufacturing variance between lenses is near 0.
Did they mention how much the extra lenses might cost?
I think the two lenses have a different missions. They’re for different use cases. The 42 PPD lens is probably not intended for VR immersion and gaming. I think it’s for more utilitarian uses such as 3D design.
The 35 PPD lens is the one that comes with it by default, and that is probably the one that the vast majority of customers will use. That one is intended for gaming and general VR use. And probably most customers will never actually use the ability to change out the lenses.
One reason I’ll mention for this is that users of the Aero at ~35 PPD often mention that it’s actually too much PPD for most modern VR games. It shows lack of texture resolution and flaws that weren’t visible at the more typical PPDs that other VR headsets could achieve. Presumably this just gets worse at 42 PPD. The higher resolving power doesn’t get you anything if there’s no more detail to resolve.
A PPD of 42 should be very good for anybody who wants to use the headset in a VR desktop application, it’ll be amazing for watching movies web browsing, Cad work, if they ever launched a stereo 3D full color pass-through plate, I could see that working really well for AR applications. There are a lot of uses, and the best part is iyou have the choice.
I know with the aero that it’s 35ppd in a center ring of view only, then as u go out from the center the ppd drops, to something like 27ppd (iirc) at the edge. Maybe the crystal has similar, it’s 42ppd in the center only and it drops as u look away from the center, it may drop to 20ppd at the edge for example. It might explain the numbers, no?
if i buy the crystal i intend to make use of 42ppd. I wouldn’t upgrade from an aero to just have the same clarity. But i can see why if i never already had an aero, if i was buying the aero or crystal, then crystal would be the better proposition on paper.
I game at 35ppd in all of the games i play regularly (alyx, walking dead, ams2, ac, ets2, ats, msfs etc), the only 1 where fps is a cause for concern is msfs (but i just accept low fps/less smoothness and still use 35). Gpu makes all the difference (not cpu) at such high resolutions, my heavily oc’d 3080ti just about manages for the most part. 4xxx series will deffo be needed for 42ppd imo.
MSFS is an outlier. It’ll melt your GPU but even if there were no GPU limit, it still wouldn’t be able to achieve anywhere close to 90fps due to being CPU bound.
Yeah, as a Marketing Director. A premium product which the Crystal undoubtably now is in the class of (even prosumer range) should be premium right across the marketing mix. Ie everything to do with it: the software, the headstrap, the build quality, the packaging, the comfort, the warranty, the support.
It definitely shouldn’t be a janky fisher price toy that you have to heavily mod and has loads of broken bits. Lol.
I’m hoping the support for it will match as well. Even the best companies will inevitably have some products with problems and so having good support is vital for when that does happen. And either baked in or as an optional purchase I’d hope Pimax might consider a warranty longer than 1 year for something this expensive that’s supposed to be future proof enough to last for a few years.
Pimax has directly said that the 42 PPD is only in the center of the lens. The “narrow” lens concentrates PPD at the center while sacrificing PPD at the edges. The “wide” lens has the PPD more evenly distributed across the whole display.
This may not be the same thing as what you’re talking about with the Aero. What you describe with the rings sounds like foveated rendering. Whereas what Pimax is doing is a lens distortion effect.
Note that the narrow lens is also sacrificing total FOV as well versus the wide lens. Going down to 110 degrees from 125 degrees horizontal. It’s the combination of narrowing the total FOV and concentrating pixel density at the center that reaches 42 PPD.
I guess we might as well make sure to put it down in writing, rather than just leaving it to the implicit common: “As we all know…” understanding, that all lenses distort the image, and every “modern” HMD has this pincushion distortion, which concentrates resolution in the center.
That is part of this consumer-focussed VR “revival” era; When it was determined that given we had reached a point where we can afford to compensate for distortion in software, we could skip expensive and heavy correctional optics, and just use a single cheap lens, and you got people like Palmer Luckey duct-taping simple HMDs together in their spare time.
Of course, how much distortion each lens has can vary.
Oh, that would be really funny if Pimax asked 2,499$ for the 12K but then tried to get away with a paltry 1 year of warranty.
Sure, I’ll dish out that kind of money but let them off the hook after a year… especially considering the reputation Pimax have in terms of QA…
How is this calculated by Varjo ? At the end, you have a given number of pixels on the displays and the FoV is clear too. One unknown remains the percetage to which the display is actually utilized - it will never be 100%, but if there was a greater difference between Varjo and Pimax on that part it could influence the consideration too.
Right. So rather than fighting this distortion, Pimax is intentionally accentuating it to magnify the center of the image. Since it’s an aspheric lens, it’s possible to do this selectively. Something like varifocal glasses. So theoretically the design could be both intentionally distorting more in the center and also distorting less around the edges.
I think this is pretty ingenious. As it’s a way to produce the same kind of effect that Varjo gets in their commercial VR headsets (albeit only 42 PPD rather than 70 PPD) with a second higher density display projected in the center but at much lower cost because there is no second display. It’s just a different shaped lens and changes to the software correction profile. Brilliant!
I actually wonder if part of Pimax’s intention here is to dip into the commercial market with a VR headset which is much cheaper for a mid-capability if the full 70 PPD isn’t really needed in the application. $1900 versus $3400 + $1500 per year is a significant savings.
OR, Pimax did what they always do: exaggerate their numbers (like their FoV numbers). To me that sounds more likely (it’s not just Pimax though, most companies exaggerate their FoV)
I think one of the really smart moves with this approach is that it will get the effect of a VR-3 focus display, but unlike Varjo’s 70ppd foveated display, this will work with any and all software out of the box.
42 PPD should be enough that at least part of the display viewed through the lens should be able to resolve all the detail of a 720p display. If the backlight and strobe tuning is really good, this could be an LCD that looks very close to what an old tube looked like in motion, which will be worth it, just for legacy content.
I already know New Retro Arcade Neon with CRT shaders and other emulators are going to be amazing on this thing.
I know you and others mentioned a lack of texture detail in current VR apps, but that can be fixed by developers, or community based texture packs. At least now with the crystal, we could see a developer lead push to improve the quality of those games meant to run on Quest 2 era hardware.
720p quality at 42ppd cant be right,most people on aero discord if not all said its similiar to a 1440p monitor,just booted gmod in 720p,and then on my 8kx at its full res(gmod has a vr mod),8kx is way sharper inside,than what i see on my 32 inch monitor at 720p.