Pimax Crystal - status, updates and fixes (Part 1)

[Djonko]

@Heliosurge

So in conclusion atm pimax is not really competing with enterprise targeted hmds.

I highly doubt Apple is aiming at enterprise, more likely prosumers. Don’t forget, Apple users are people who like to spend insane amounts of dollars on overpriced hardware If you like to spend $1700 on a phone, then $3000 on a headset is not out of reach I’d think. I think they’re just aiming at consumers with money with their first headset versions. They already said that the next version will be substantially cheaper and more geared at the masses.

Still, not everyone who is considering the Crystal would also care to cough up 3k for a headset. How big the overlap in users is, hard to say … But I do think they will directly compete.

Or look at it like this: if you have 3k to spend on a headset, what do you buy? Right now you’d be looking at Varjo or the Crystal. But in a few weeks there’s another option.

@jojon

I have hard time imagining Apple allowing any product of theirs to be used outside their ecosystem…

This indeed potentially is a huge downside of the Apple. If you can’t run SteamVR … well that would be a big thing. I’ll pass if there’s no SteamVR compatibility and 0 games to play at release.

[Heliosurge]

@Djonko

I highly doubt Apple is aiming at enterprise, more likely prosumers. Don’t forget, Apple users are people who like to spend insane amounts of dollars on overpriced hardware If you like to spend $1700 on a phone, then $3000 on a headset is not out of reach I’d think. I think they’re just aiming at consumers with money with their first headset versions. They already said that the next version will be substantially cheaper and more geared at the masses

True though here many get those phones on a 2 or 3 year contract where at the end if you want to keep usually being around $100 to $200 ca.

But yeah ppl that are into apple often are willing to pay top dollar.

@Djonko

Still, not everyone who is considering the Crystal would also care to cough up 3k for a headset. How big the overlap in users is, hard to say … But I do think they will directly compete.

This one maybe partly. But I don’t see Crystal Standalone being that appealing even with the mr faceplate. Pimax themselves are not focused enough in any area to really compete on that level with what Apple seems to be aiming for.

@Djonko

@jojon

I have hard time imagining Apple allowing any product of theirs to be used outside their ecosystem…

This indeed potentially is a huge downside of the Apple. If you can’t run SteamVR … well that would be a big thing. I’ll pass if there’s no SteamVR compatibility and 0 games to play at release.

I suspect they may use something like or use Virtual Desktop. But eco system lock is quite possible. Apple has been said to be working with some Game DeVs.

We will just have to wait and see where Apple takes this. Though the high end possibilities like final cut pro and such is very cool. And we know Apple typically does not often release half @ssed products.

[jojon]

I guess the starting point with Apple’s MR thing, is integration with the existing iOS – supposedly it will run all iPhone and iPad apps on-HMD; Presumably these can be pinned in your enviroment/on your person, like we’re used to, and you can probably use your actual physical handhelds for 1:1 spatial input. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a wireless mirror of your Mac desktop, too…

[Djonko]

Yeah I’m pretty sure all that will be possible. But it would be a tough sell if that’s the main goal for the headset, even if it’s for starters. They’d need a lot more to entice people to cough up 3k

[jojon]

Yes, well; It is not anything exciting, but it is “workhorse functionality”, with a sense of completeness and continuity, which I might think would be a more important target than bling, for anything aiming to one day augment everyday life actions, without being too disruptive to said life. There is also the question of how things done over the years with ARKit might evolve for the headset – will, e.g, your go-ing pocket monsters soon “really” appear, and wage battle in your real-time captured real world environment…? :7 (…for more practical matters, I believe iWatches already discreetly buzzes your wrist to tell you when to turn, when using GPS navigation on-foot?)

…but mostly, to my mind, Apple has almost always been more of a fashion brand than anything else, and is the stuff people buy, at any cost, and against any reason, to be “in”, with the “trendy” people, and to give off a sheen of affluency, as if that in itself was something admireable, not wanting to be looked-down upon as mere plebeians. Ok, so everybody may have an iPhone, so it’s not that it makes you unique and special, but at least you are not one of the contemptible: “green bubbles”, or one of those without recent model brand sneakers
I might suggest the company is quite deliberatly built on a bit of preying on people’s susceptiblity to such follies… :7

On the whole AR thing… Never minding things like the ill-fated: “Glass”, I always figured Google had, and still has, a tremendous headstart on that whole thing, due to their owning Google maps, and Streetview, and having extensive APIs for these; Already layering things over reality, and being way more than halfway to a base to build on, but I guess nothing is immune to the culture in that company, of growing bored of things and shutting them down, no matter how popular…

[Butters007]

@Djonko

I highly doubt Apple is aiming at enterprise, more likely prosumers. Don’t forget, Apple users are people who like to spend insane amounts of dollars on overpriced hardware

I think what @Heliosurge meant by ‘Prosumer’ may have been more towards the enthusiasts market. i.e. people who spend a lot of money for things yet typically know what rabbit hole they’re jumping in to, ready for the journey with either the necessary knowledge in hand or a willingness to learn in order to maximize their use of the product.

I would classify Apple users as consumers. People who don’t want to jump down any rabbit holes, with lots of customization (hardware or software) options. IMO Apple has never been as ‘pro’ in their products as even Android devices have. Apple has been all about simplicity and lack of customization in their OS and design, historically, and for better or worse.

I just don’t see Apple consumers going out and building their own PC, or researching RAM timings for their PC Build. And while the ‘Geek Squad’ is there to help the less adept users in the Apple Realm, most Apple users I’ve known all state they like Apple because “it just works out of the box and is easy to use”. That is certainly not akin to building a PC or purchasing a product with lots of complex features (working or being worked on), which may require 3rd party software and various tweeks in order to make the product work well (which is PIMAX).

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with choosing an Apple product. I’m just saying that in my experience, Apple products wouldn’t be thought of as ‘Prosumer’ or enthusiast products.

@Djonko

This indeed potentially is a huge downside of the Apple. If you can’t run SteamVR … well that would be a big thing. I’ll pass if there’s no SteamVR compatibility and 0 games to play at release.

I agree on this. But who is the target market for?

If I were in Vegas, I’d likely put a good amount of bets down on the table that a high % of Apple users are people with limited interest/knowledge to use something like the Apple VR product with Steam. Rather I’d suspect that Apple users will expect to use this product with Apple’s own ecosystem and offering of games and content. Indeed I expect Apple to offer and PUSH this on the end user and limit the end users’ choices on how they can use the Apple Product. To be used only with Apple services. This is the ‘typical’ Apple strategy, and one of the reasons why I don’t use Apple products.

[Djonko]

@Butters007

I think what @Heliosurge meant by ‘Prosumer’

I said ‘prosumer’. Helio said enterprise

[Butters007]

@Djonko

I said ‘prosumer’. Helio said enterprise

Sorry. just woke up! haha

[Butters007]

A video made from these guys back 2022 in Early November.
Wait, Crystal already released? Where is this girl getting her information?

THE PIMAX CRYSTAL | The Most Insane VR Headset?!

[Axacuatl]

@jojon

…but mostly, to my mind, Apple has almost always been more of a fashion brand than anything else, and is the stuff people buy, at any cost, and against any reason, to be “in”, with the “trendy” people, and to give off a sheen of affluency, as if that in itself was something admireable, not wanting to be looked-down upon as mere plebeians. Ok, so everybody may have an iPhone, so it’s not that it makes you unique and special, but at least you are not one of the contemptible: “green bubbles”, or one of those without recent model brand sneakers
I might suggest the company is quite deliberatly built on a bit of preying on people’s susceptiblity to such follies… :7

While they surely don’t mind having reached this status (it was quite tiring when the first iPhone released and each bloke who owned one felt the urge to let everybody know he had one…), the difference to what I would consider mere brand/fashion kind of commodities here is that they actually often function better than what you would get elsewhere. I skipped the iPhone for a while (I still had my Sony Ericsson P900 at the time) but when the iPad released, I immediately ordered one because I was sold on its ease of use. And till today iPads are very much in use by me - it was such a gain in convenience to surf the web from the couch, with a relatively small, light device essentially consisting of nothing else than the screen. There had been attempts at tablets, but none was even near the perfection the iPad achieved (and same logic of course holds true for the iPhone too although I passed on it).

If they manage to do the same with the Apple reality headset, it could be the dawn of a new era. Probably not going to really take off this year, rather 2025 when it hits the mass market, but we will get an idea of Apple’s vision, which makes me very excited.

About SteamVR compability: I’m convinced that won’t happen, Apple never really cared to open their devices up to software not sold by them (see the Epic law suit), they don’t want to miss out on their 30% share. Only Intel Macs allowed for the VM to run Windows, that is the only occasion where I recall it was allowed.

[Heliosurge]

Well remember Blackberry was the earlier Status phone. Nic’d Crackberry. lol

[jojon]

That said: If, in an alternative universe, I could have had a successor to my “Passport”, with a brought-up-to-date BBOS10, I would buy it in a heartbeat. These Android and iOS devices I find myself resigned to using, keep making me want to throw them out the window…

[Heliosurge]

Well there is or was the Blackberry Android phones. lol

[MikeJeffries]

Not sure what you’re “rambling” about but the location of the file that steam Vr uses can be found using the pathreg app. Open command prompt and input it’s location which should be something like:
"C: \Program Files (×86) \Steam\steamapps \common\Steam\R\bin\win64\vrpathreg.exe

Under the config line is where you will find your steam VR settings file.

the file never had the maxRecommendedResolution line written in it. I had to manually type it in even from three years ago when we first started editing the file, I never saw those lines in the file I had to manually input them in.
The guide even says that if you do not see the lines at them in yourself.

I recently re-installed my OS and went to win11.
And I reinstall windows, 10 on another PC a few months ago each time I updated it, the steamVRsettings app got wiped and those lines do not even appear in the file they have to manually be entered for the resolution line. And yes, the reason why we were using “16384” is to let SteamVR know that we can have up to that amount of resolution. It wasn’t actually rendering the maximum. So yes much

I was on the main branch of steamVR. When I use the headset, it looked worse than before, and that’s when I started looking into it again and noticed the file was blank, as if it was a new installation again.
I entered those figures and my image was better. Simple

You can try it or not try it doesn’t matter to me. I just put the information back out there.

I was told that it is now on by default with the increased resolution in the beta installation. I did not install the beta version and have been on the main branch.

If steam updated itself to allow the wider fov headsets with larger res values, can someone link me to when that update happened?
Its possible “default” is 8192x8192 now for max resolution so if the file is missing those lines it uses these default figures. Once we change them manually this way it overrides the defaults. But I haven’t heard of this being updated anywhere except in our discord.

(Personally Tested on 3 pc’s and 1 laptop with an 8kx. 8700k, 9900ks, 11900k laptop, and a 13900ks). And 2 users tested this separately and responded that the resolution values changed AND image is better for them still.

The info is out there if you want to try it or not, that’s up to you see a difference or not. Theres too many variables to say whether its working or not for someone else.

[Heliosurge]

Mike,

This steam update notes from Oct 3, 2022 details the change to 8192. However there are posts on Steam and reddit about the res issue still in Oct 27, 2022.

So might be a steam bug.

SteamVR 1.24

https://steamdb.info/patchnotes/9645429/

Reverb g2 wmr Reddit Oct 27 2022

[MikeJeffries]

it’s possible xabbu is right and it was just the beta branch. But i clearly saw it change back to normal, and the values for horizontal and vertical pixels update to correct numbers as well.

[Heliosurge]

I dunno will have to dig into my settings.

On searching the max res thing also came up with this on il but it only shows in the preview and I am not a member so can’t search it.

This was the google search term I used.

“maxRecommendedResolution”:

However ppl use to bump it to 16xxxx so still likely worthwhile for ppl to try adjusting the setting instead of being equally stubborn.

Just seems no one is really taking the time to listen to each other and that is on both sides.

---

There is no need to have this limiter and from scanning it was at one tine even lower than 4096. So on Steam it was restricting other hmds from one upping SteamVR sponsored hmds from benefitting from higher res.

[MikeJeffries]

Yes that number is just telling steam we can render UP TO that max.
And yes it doesnt hurt to save the file with a different name, and let it recreate a new file when opening steamVR next time, and then go in and see the stats (res, fps, etc), turn it off, change values, retry and then check values again.

Send me the link i can go in there and see IL-2 forum

[Heliosurge]

This is where the link takes me.

https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/forum/109-virtual-reality-and-vr-controllers/page/2/

Added to post above yours as well.

[MikeJeffries]

Yes i saw this reported yesterday as well - past a certain SS it stops increasing… See below the post i copied from that link:

In SteamVR there is a parameter called SuperSampling %, this determine the number of pixel to render the scene.

The higher the better definition of the images (not necesarily spotting) but more GPU load. Here you can see the effect of increase it.

All devices need an internal level of supersampling (to countereffect the lens distortion) and then we can manully add certain level of %SS depending on how powerfull our GPU is.

This is adjusted in the settings of SteamVR, in the “General” or in the “Video” section, it is called Custom “Render Resolution” per eye:

The interesting thing is that if you increase the %SS above certain limit, that factor has no further effect in the rendered resolution. There is cap.

This cap is a parameter called “maxRecommendedResolution” in your steamvr.vrsettings file located at

c:\program files(x86)\Steam\config\steamvr.vrsettings

For my Index the value is 3240.

For the G2 it is also 3240.

For the Aero is 8192

The weird thing is that the parameter is the same regardeless of the GPU model, it doesn´t matter if you have a 980 or a 4090.

In this post, @MilitantPotato was able to use fpsVR to see the effective resolution used when he was applying 500%SS in SteamVR (7104x6928 !!!), but the real resolution revealed by fpsVR was 3240x3160 for the G2:

I would like to know if other devices like Aero, Pimax8KX, VivePro2, etc are also having this cap in SteamVR and what value they show in fpsVR when a large number is used (if you have fpsVR)

Or just report the “maxRecommendedResolution” shown in your steamvr.vrsettings file.

It seems that OpenXR way has not that limitation.

Edited November 1, 2022 by chiliwili69