Those numbers are far lower than the demo folks noted at CES. Something must be off somewhere in the hardware. Or could it be a firmware glitch? Well, that’s why it’s being tested.
We get ours in a couple or three weeks I believe.
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It should be noted that we got no “hard numbers” from CES attendees. Only subjective impressions.
I could believe that most people would not notice a couple degree difference. The Index has 108/109 and the Crystal at 103/103 would be like, 95% of the FoV of the Index. That’s small enough people could easily miss it. Especially with the aspheric lenses. Some people claimed that the Varjo “felt” like it had more FoV than it truly did because of the lenses being almost 100% a sweetspot.
It’s lower than expected, but don’t think it’s too out of the realm of possibility, unfortunately.
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The Risa value is certainly correct from a technical point of view. But the subjective FOV can be completely different as the distance from the eye to the lens varies. It’s entirely possible that when set up correctly it looks like 109 degrees, which is what the index would match.
Well, if 103° are made to look like 109°, then that is an incorrect projection, with an unnaturally magnified virtual world, so let’s hope not… :7
There is of course the “feeling” of relative FOV, between headsets with different edge-to-edge clarity, but that’s another factor all of its own, which one suspect has inflated one or two tester impressions of new devices in the past…
We’ll see in time, but these numbers look like something I, for one, might reasonably have expected - pretty standard ranges…
If there is one thing we have learned, as VR users, it is to take numbers off specs sheets, and fair visitor testimonials, with a few oceans worth of salt… :7
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Just like in any other HMD with mask franken or whatever mod. Everything irrelevant and adjustable via software.
No, the lens should keep the degrees fairly constant at different eye relief distances; A room seen through a keyhole does not grow and shrink when you move closer or farther from the keyhole - you just occlude less or more of it.
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Which brings us back to the subjective FOV, which does not affect the actual space in any way. 
ONE MORE update, since I forgot to clarify something. We know that the 42PPD lenses showcased a “large” and “small” FoV option in the software in their local dimming video on youtube.
Now, while it’s not in the video, Kevin stated on Discord a few months back that there would be selectable FoV options for the Crystal at 35PPD as well here
Now, it should be noted this message came before the local dimming video showed a lack of 2 options at 35PPD, take that however you will.
If you wish to keep staying high on the copium/hopium, given Pimax’s history of some mix ups, there might be a non-zero chance that the tester units had firmware which was set to whatever is “small” for 35PPD. It could perhaps be like how the Varjo originally had something like 98? Horizontal FoV, but then later got bumped up to about 108(A whole 10 degrees!) somehow by firmware updates and changed distortion profiles. But that seems kind of suspect to me, given how the vast majority of impressions from the roadshow were and the lack of options in the videos which’ve been showcased so far.
Take this information however you want.
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Something seems off. Every single user feedback ive seen says Crystal fov is bigger than the Aeros. Index users were saying they were similar. Pimax owners were saying it’s like Pimax Small fov.
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That’s just the software though. From what the tester said to Omni, they said they only got 1 set of lenses and it appears to be the 42PPD ones.
It could be that the FOV seemed much larger to folks due to the edge to edge clarity, I know that’s how I have found it in the past. The same FOV on pancake or aspheric lenses feels bigger than fresnel.
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But people were trying out the Aero and Crystal back to back, both have clarity across the fov due to aspheric lenses, and people said the Crystal is significantly larger fov. If it turns out to have Quest 2 sized fov then i’m disappointed, that’s no better than the Aero.
You’re right, and I was one of those people actually. The vertical FOV is definitely larger, but it really seemed like a much bigger different than these numbers imply. I guess it could also be that the Aero wasn’t setup in a way for me to get the max FOV and the Crystal happened to be better in that regard. Like facial interfaces make a huge difference to FOV, along with even just how the headset is setup.
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So obviously they got shipped the wrong lenses. Not sure how people can be surprised Pimax makes mistakes like that after that they’ve shown the wrong lenses at CES but ok. People should just chill out, obviously things will look much better when they get shipped the right lenses.
So it seems with the correct lenses the FoV will be on par with the Pico 4. That’s not too bad. I’ll skip for sure, I can’t go back to that, it doesn’t even put me on the fence anymore, but in general the Pico 4 was well received by the public.
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Yeah, I mean, the PICO 4 looks like a relatively solid consumer HMD.
However, I was disappointed with their design choices and the fact that I’d have to buy a separate 3rd party battery thing-a-ma-jiggy just to play longer than a few hours.
That and the compression over USB with artifact’ing and lower performance while tethered were two things that just turned me off to it.
That would be disappointing to me, Pimax said 125 degrees horizontal, the Pico 4 is 104.
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I mean, it seems to me, that a major differentiator needs to be at least a 120 FOV from the Crystal.
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Why does Pimax keep giving people the wrong lesnes? Maybe they should consider adding an identifier onto the lens bracket. This isnt the first time this has happened.
I would say what I saw felt like 105-110 FOV when I tried the crystal, I felt like it was Index like bit more than the Pico but definitely enough margin for error that it could be 104 like the Pico. 120 seems off the table.
The official spec page is:
Which for the 42 PPD especially seems extremely misleading. People that tried the 42PPD said it was too narrow to really play any games or such, more suited for movies or perhaps productivity. Those impressions would line up a lot more with the numbers suggested above than the 110 horizontal in the spec sheet (which would obviously be a great FOV for the vast majority coming from normal 100 or so headsets).
Is something wrong with the software perhaps? Was this info projected rather than recorded? Saying 110 horizontal on the product page is not good if it’s more like 86-90, like false advertising claim levels of not good. Would like to see some comment on this by Pimax. Not trying to bash Pimax tbh, I’d like to see them add clarity to these numbers and potentially rectify them before more customers pay for something that is wrongly advertised.
The 8K X for example just says:
So while not super useful or clear, it means that the reality of 170 horizontal isn’t as outright misleading I suppose. It’s good that they added specific horizontal and vertical FOV numbers to the specs of the crystal, it’s just those really would want to be accurate. Like if the headset is telling software that the max FOV is significantly lower then there’s not really any wiggle room in terms of “Oh it’s the shape of someone’s face”, it’s pretty objective at that point.
Perhaps its just a software issue and the actual FOV is going to be higher when that’s fixed. Really would like some official word on this.
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Have to point out that the math here is not correct:
If a headset have 103 horizontal and 103 vertical FOV, the diagonal FOV should be 146, not 121.
Come here and use the calculator:
https://www.sven.de/fov/
or here:
Also, he is measuring VISIBLE fov, not rendering fov.
Quest has a visible fov of horizontal 97 and vertical 93, while Crystal has both at 103.
Update: Now I see my logical fault in the math. The calculation might be like this:
So it will not follow the rectangular calculation.
I know what you’re getting at but the 8KX on Large is 160.29 degrees according to HMD Geometry Database | Collected geometry data from some commercially available VR headsets. so the 170 is somewhat misleading. Not singling out Pimax here, all the manufacturers afaik exaggerate fov.
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