that is a bit huge but eh with Dynamic foveated rendering might be better.
Yes, that was my point ha. It’s always higher if you want to enjoy the headset properly.
The lens fix for now is some additional magnets to move the lense out slight further and works really well it seems, looked perfect to me.
Also there is the normal Portal on top and QLED with localdimming on the bottom.
Edit: Just to note the battery was low on the local dimming so the brightness was reduced a bit but the colours are indeed much much better.
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That looks actually horrible, lots of details in the first picture that were lost in the 2nd. But, since you took them at difference brightness levels it’s hard to conclude anything from this photo. It could very well be because of the lower brightness.
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Pimax should start adding free Diopter frames.
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It could also be the image quality from a camera. In person the colours were much better but yeah it was dim due to battery, might try again later if both are charged. In person I would go for the QLED 100% fwiw.
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What lenses are they, the 42 or 35 PPD? Did you test the FoV?
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@SmallBaguette Can you test how easy it is to slide the front cover on and off with pics, please.
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@SmallBaguette can you please confirm 90Hz refresh rate is available (i can see 120 is)? Also are there any future plans for 75Hz or any other refresh rates?
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have you tried the Aero yet?how is crystal in comparision to aero specially the fov?
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Hello
Thank you a thousand times for your responsiveness, for listening to gamers, Sebastian from #Mrtv on the lenses.
Great all this 
aplushhsss/laurent 
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Hello 
Thank tou very much for this photos
Aplushhhs /Laurent
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I tried the Xtal 3 today, and gotta say I was extremely unimpressed. I honestly wouldn’t use it over the Quest 2. I’m guessing it was setup poorly for me or something (they said the auto-IPD wasn’t working) but the clarity is no better than quest 2 and the vertical FOV is the worst I have ever seen. I couldn’t believe what I saw tbh, so I’m guessing it really needs a lot of work to get tuned right for a person. How have you found the vertical FOV? The horizontal is obviously impressive, especially the lack of distortions but the lack of vertical FOV completely ruined it and made it less immersive than pretty much any other headset I tried. I was really excited for a look into the future with it but that’s not what I got. You use it over the 8K X right? What do you enjoy about it? Wish I could of had time with the settings etc to try and get it running well for myself, I’m really guessing it can’t be as bad as I experienced.
Yeah, although the 8K X demands similar resolutions pretty easily. I’m guessing PP was on, didn’t get a chance to confirm that and back at my hotel now but will confirm tomorrow.
Didn’t get a chance today, will see if I can again tomorrow as I feel like that picture I posted is not doing the Qled model justice. I also am just using a normal galaxy s10 camera on auto, if anyone has any tips for getting a more real to life picture then let me know and I’ll try with those settings.
35 PPD. Didn’t test the FOV with any tool so all I have to go off is my impressions relative to other headsets. I will say that the vertical FOV felt much larger than Quest 2 for example, felt like 8K X vertical FOV. Horizontal felt like Quest 2 + 10% (maybe more though as the vertical FOV being large can make it seem narrower relatively). I was happy with the FOV tbh and could gladly use it. 12K will be better and the dream but out of my price range currently so crystal will keep me very happy for a couple of years until I get a secondhand 12K or something, or something else better comes out.
I tried the Aero shortly after the Crystal (also tried the XR-3 but didn’t seem to have the center display enabled, when I asked the person there they had no idea what I was talking about lol). Clarity is very similar, colours are not nearly as good. Headstrap I prefer but considering you’d need to wear headphones over it, it’s kinda a mixed opinion (I want a permanent solution, so I would mod on a DAS or something I guess). Aero seemed good but I wish I had tried it first tbh as it felt pretty unimpressive coming from the crystal. Like obviously I would like to have one, although the low stereo-overlap actually might be a deal breaker.
Stereo-overlap on crystal seemed good to me, not noticably more amazing than Quest 2 or Pico 4 or such but definitely up there with them so I’m happy with that. Everything felt like it had a real presence, looking at the interior of a car felt very “present” and like the correct scaling/distance. Aero, comparatively, felt like I was looking at a monitor against my face. I’m guessing this varies a lot between people though (and perhaps with personal setup it can improve).
Aero build quality is miles ahead, but I think is expected and known. Aero does feel fantastic, and the comfort is very good, I love the adjustable forehead strap.
Overall, I don’t see why anyone would go with an Aero over the crystal. That might be controversial and get some folks claiming I am biased but when it comes to what amounts to the most expensive single hobby purchase of my life to date, I’m only really interested in my own bang for buck and value. That said, Aero is literally out of my price range so I guess there’s some bias there where I know I wouldn’t get it anyway, so trying to be as open as possible about that but personally I don’t see there being any competition between Aero and Crystal. That said aero came out much earlier and has a good level of polish so it’s not like Aero doesn’t have advantages and it certainly made sense as a purchase up until this point but once the crystal is released (assuming LH faceplate or solid controller tracking) then I don’t see any reason for the Aero to be considered.
Also, I didn’t get trying the controllers yet unfortunately. Will see if I can tomorrow. They were there charging when they were setting up the booth but I haven’t seen them since so I guess they weren’t working.
Didn’t look to me like this was possible, pretty sure these prototypes are just solid without the removable faceplate but I could be wrong. I’ll confirm tomorrow. I think Kevin mentioned the US units being production runs so maybe someone over there can answer?
Actually, one random side point also. The pimax staff there knew more about the hardware than literally all the other headset companies there about their respective headsets. Some of the non-headset companies knew their products inside out (sense glove for example) but Pimax were really going above the others in terms of being knowledgable and able to answer questions.I won’t say who specifically, don’t want to be rude, but the rep for one company told me it used fresnel lenses which clearly wasn’t the case. Another when I asked what PPD lenses there were installed they said “The IPD is automatic”, I tried to politely rephrase the question but got no where (they hadn’t misheard me, just didn’t realise the product had different lense options and didn’t know what PPD meant). I don’t mean to bash other companies, as some I’m guessing just got whoever was available to go but I think it speaks well for Pimax that all 4 staff members were very knowledegable and could recall all specs from memory. Big shout out to Dragon Wang, great guy.
Also I tried the new DPVR headset (G4 I think?). It’s normal FOV, quest 2 level visuals, completely broken tracking. Very comfortable though, so that’s something! If they fixed the tracking and dropped the price to 199-249 then it would be a decent entry level option but as it is right now (especially considering the price) it’s not good.
I tried 90hz so it’s there. (Or at least I was told it was 90hz, I didn’t actually see the number on sceen). 75hz I will ask about tomorrow.
Yup, I mentioned a good bit above. For the FOV I would say the Aero wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (going by other opinions online). Also especially after trying the XTAL lol, the vertical FOV looked much better. Crystal FOV is definitely bigger. I would say vFOV on Crystal is 8KX similar. hFOV is like maybe 10% larger than quest 2? Just a guess though, also the tall vFOV might make the hFOV seem comparatively smaller than it normally would. Actually, maybe that’s why the XTAL vFOV looked so awful? My friend that had just tried VR once before today tried the XTAL and without prompting from me just immediately said his first opinion was the vFOV sucked. Sorry, don’t mean to bash XTAL here but for 8k I was expecting a real glimpse into the future.
Alright this post has gotten out of hand lol. Feel free to send on more questions though.
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Might be of interest. This is the non-QLED model, just to give a bit of an idea of tracking. Not a particularly useful video but thought I’d share.
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Vrengineers was there with a broken headset? As you said auto ipd was not even working. That’s really weird not something I would expect from them to go to a demo with a broken unit. About the vertical FoV it’s great not sure why you experienced it otherwise. Everything is completely configurable as is the vertical FoV sounds like for some reason it was set to a low value. But why would they demo it like that, makes no sense to me. To me the xtal has some downsides but vertical FoV is not one of them.
I have all high end headsets at home and am not using anything else other than the xtal anymore. Weird that yours seemed to have been completely configured incorrectly
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You have another day right? Go back to them and ask them to set everything to max, so inner and outer horizontal FoV (inner = binocular overlap) and set of course vertical to the max. Maybe someone decreased it for more fps.
The xtal is not perfect though. I dont like the lenses too much nor the lack of 90 hz (or higher) in the highest res. Build quality is not as high as the varjo. But overall it’s the best experience for me. But I would not advise it as the price tag is just ridiculous for what you get. Price tag should be about 50% above the 8kx in my opinion to be fair
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Thanks for the replies! That’s good to hear, I expect that it was setup poorly. Glad to hear the vFOV isn’t actually that low. It was running on a 4090 so really shouldn’t have been restricted as it was. I guess I just got unlucky, I’ll ask again tomorrow as it definitely must be capable of more than what I saw, maybe there were some other issues with the rig or such.
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Yeah talk to them about it I am sure they will help you out. I was a bit disappointed by the xtal myself, I had expected it to be better, especially for that crazy price. Yet it is still the best out there a least in my opinion. Hopefully the pimax 12k will be even better
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