For what it’s worth, an experienced user in the German forum does like the Crystal for sims, he compared it to the Aero, Quest 3 and others, and as expected in terms of the pure visual quality, he sees it on top.
It’s just the weight and form factor, which made him limit it for use in seated sims, and he will be using the Quest 3 for other VR games & apps. So nothing new, but good for me to see it confirmed by somebody who has a lot of VR knowlegde (and headsets), is quite neutral towards Pimax (has has an 8KX but has a sober view of its strengths & weaknesses) and often drew similar conclusions on headsets to mine for other headset assessments.
So if Pimax decide to push a Crystal light around 1K incl. taxes which is eligible for the 12K trade in, I might be interested after all. But at the current cost point it’s just too risky, as I expect it to be superseded by another headset within reasonable time - perhaps the 12K, in which case the trade-in would make the price acceptable, but perhaps it’s another headset like a Aero 2, Index 2 or Somnium, in which case it would have been too much money to fill the gap of perhaps 1 or 2 years.
So at least the (limited) feature set seems to be working more reliably now. I guess for simmers that is the most important part, as they can do without wireless, MR and stuff.
If Pimax reduced their price as Varjo did, it could become interesting, also considering the trade-in option. But at the current price point it’s still a pass for me.
Such a petty that my Crystal is barely used, collecting dust until the software matures. I really like the clarity, do not mind the weight, the FOV feels also nice (still eager for trying the big-FOV lenses).
It could be the best headset if
promised software features are delivered,
promised hardware accessories are delivered,
standalone mode is actually USABLE.
regarding the last point i feel almost pain. No Playstation/Xbox/Steam/desktop streaming. WHY NOT? I would love to sit at my couch and play xbox/Playstation games streamed to this two perfect panels or stream 3D SBS/TopButtom (vorp-x, reshade) from my PC to the headset. The Youtube app is also terrible (only three fixed windowsizes??? Hello, Pimax, it’s 2023…, really frustrating.
I want to play my games on a big screen in front of me, in 3d, at my couch. Is that really so difficult?
Anyways, a Quest 3 arrives tomorrow and will most likely be my default headset until the Crystal matures (pass-through faceplate supposed to be better res than Quest 3(!!!)) - hardware and software-wise.
To date i hardly can recommend the Crystal to anyone except probably simmers with a neck like a bull…
did some jitter tests with the LH plate i get 0.8 and 0.9 compared to the 8kx that i get 1.7 sometimes 2 the plate is actually more stable than the built in 8kx
It mentions updates on i.a. the big FoV lenses, the Airlink 60G, the MR faceplate and more. The curious thing was that on those features which aren’t available yet, he didn’t really give us any ETA (admittedly I didn’t listen very carefully so perhaps I might have missed one).
And they promote the Crystal for a 100$ & free shipping - only for today.
So, what does this give us? At the end it seems to be almost more about creating an opportunity to push their one day promotion - mentioning all the missing features as if they were just around the corner. I don’t really get this - if they are addressing new users, it would be better to show what it performs well, mainly the displays.
For experienced Pimax users/followers we have seen similar statements at “launch” on 30 September 2022, so why would we fall for the pie in the sky now?!
Oh yes, and another detail made me laugh - they are pushing their viewers to the discord and reddit. I am sure they will feel safer over there.
Yeah, bit disheartening that the community here at openmr has apparently been declared non-desireable but then again, the user numbers have dropped into the very low digits by now anyway.
WiGig seems ages away and I’m really disppointed that not only does wifi streaming not yet work, it wasn’t even meantioned as a feature in this update. Not a good look and I continue to be happy not having purchased this HMD.
What’s happened to PimaxUSA? I thought he was the US CTO? Josh has basically taken over.
Hopefully the wide FOV lenses are good but if the current lenses inhibited chromatic aberration then going wide will certainly get worse. Then there’s the price and yield rates. Are Pimax going to run a parallel line to manufacture both lenses at the same time because it looks like their normal lens line are running flat out. Will people pay £200 or more for lenses or just go for a 12k?
I think Pimax have given up on Streaming altogether.
Is that the case @PimaxQuorra? If so please do announce that, your current advertising material provided by retail partners such as cyberport.de and bestware.com certainly entails WiFi Streaming as an available feature, whilst you changed you own marketing material on pimax.com to ‘The AIO mode features support for wifi 6e with planned support for wireless streaming in the future VIA Wigig’!
I find that incredibily disingenious and it will get your retail partners in trouble.
I guess they understand that he is a bit better at communicating with the community (I haven’t seen him insult or censor/ban or remove posts, etc.). As a Co-COO, Kevin should better focus on the internal processes anyhow, so I think this is nothing to worry about.
So looks to me Pimax are going to copy our Studioform Comfort strap rather than improving the terrible design of the MAS head strap. I contacted them months ago offering to make a range of accessories and was assured nothing would be copied. Moral of the story NEVER do business with a Chinese company
Well, they don‘t have a magic wand, so a gain in FoV would cost either binocular overlap or PPD. They had to chose for one of the two. My guess is that they feared the fallout from reducing the PPD more than the less prominently reviewed loss of binocular overlap (we don‘t even measure it with new headsets, typically you hear either nothing at all about it or just a „it‘s less than usual“). Difficult to blame them for that as the user still has the option to stick to the default lenses.
Maybe the guy is using the free version of ROV, which, unless things have changed, does not lock the camera in place, so you can stand in the wrong spot, or maybe he’s somehow got the recently added world scale tweaker in SteamVR come out wrong, despite making a point of the folly of its existing, and despite making sure its at 100%…
Neither here nor there, but is that Robin in the background, at the new San José facilities?
World scale doesn’t really change the virtual world scale, it only reduces or increases the distance between the virtual cameras (virtual IPD). That shouldn’t change the FOV much.
He is using the paid version that gives him the 104 degrees with the stock lenses if he doesn’t overtightens the headsets but that is supposed to be the max the headset can render, unless he used the big FOV option.
We need to know what the ./hmdq geom command (risa2000) gives when this option is selected.
I apologize for the delay in my response, had several meetings and works this morning. I wanted to address something you mentioned. I’m not sure where you heard that we are planning to copy the Apache design and sell it on our website. The top strap for Crystal has a completely different design from the Apache strap. Please take a look at the email I sent earlier where I explained this and addressed some of the concerns you had.
