Pimax Roadshow-Third stop: Third stop: MRTV Headquarter

General discussion
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Here comes the next opportunity to meet us in Germany and this time we will host a big event with @mixedrealityTV

Third stop: MRTV Headquarter, this Wednesday & Thursday!

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Sign up for Pimax RoadShow :

https://static.appstore.pimax.com/roadShow/html/VisitorRegistration.html

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Firsts impressions of the Crystal from MRTV Headquaters.

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What did he say? I just had eyes only for Marcin on the ground. Watch your knees!
Ok, now I’ll listen. :joy:

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Yeah, all I’ve been watching is the man with yellow shirt and blue jeans. Crystal’s headphone seems cool, and the cable is very thin. Is that the same fiber-opti one the end users will get ?

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As I understand it, the Crystal will have a more robust and higher bandwidth cable. I think one of the problems- or maybe more than one- is the fault of the jury-rigged 8KX cables they’re using at the shows.
I don’t think any of the issues are significant in and of themselves, but the combination of them may slow things down.
I’m betting they’ll have a production model for CES, with shipping to follow that within weeks.
Maybe a tad sooner or later.

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Looking forward to more indepth opinions!
Is that box with the orange keyboard in front of Joshua the Pimax station?

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Here are a couple of observations from my visit to the demo at MRTV‘s place. Disclaimer: my ability to judge certain aspects was impaired b/c I am farsighted and everything is blurry w/o glasses, but I had forgotten to carry along my glasses I use for working at the PC and only had my varifocal ones with me which sucks b/c only a small portion of the FoV is in focus at the required distance within the headset.

Displays:

  • crisp
  • no SDE, could not make out pixels
  • black levels are very good (in PJC2 I stuck my head into the interior, where it‘s pitch black, and I could not tell where the lenses/displays end and the housing starts).
  • colors seemed to be quite vivid too, but I have never been too sensitive about these

Lenses:

  • clarity in the center was really nice; seemed to offer more or less edge2edge clarity, with perhaps a soft drop-off near the boundaries - but due to my impaired view with my wrong set of glasses, I would advise to not out too much weight on my observation and I couldn’t check for any further details, e.g. ability focus the same item on screen with both eyes with 100% clarity (something I don’t manage to accomplish on the 8KX)
  • convergence: hmm. As I had & have with the 8KX, I felt something is slightly off with the Crystal too. Comparing it to the Aero, which was available too, the Aero gave me a more natural feeling of the space, of the sense of depth - the experience simply was fine, while with the Crystal I felt less comfortable, somehow slipping out of focus easily. I should mention that not many users shared this issue with me on the 8KX, so it might not be noticed by these same users on the Crystal either.
  • I did not notice any distortions, mura, chromatic aberrations, god rays but didn‘t spend too much time on looking for all of this b/c of the general inconvenience with my wrong pair of glasses which made any scrutiny burdensome.
    -FoV: it is okay (35 ppd) but of course a far cry from the 8KX. It honestly felt more like my other headsets (G2, Vive, Rift, Quest 1/2) than the 8KX, so unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) not instilling any „meet me in the middle“ sensation between these.

Comfort:

  • seemed a bit better aligned to my face than my 8KX which always remains slightly loose, wobbly no matter how much I fasten the screw/knob
  • it‘s not a light headset, although the balance is okay. But I noticed that the Aero felt lighter (as to be expected given it has no stand-alone enabling hardware in SoC, battery)
  • wearing my glasses was easier under the Aero than the Crystal (but if you spend 2 grand on the headset, you would be a moron to not buy prescription lenses which nullify this issue)
  • longer term comfort - n/a, didn‘t wear it any extensive period.

Build quality

  • looked solid, an improvement over the 8KX, and definitely over the 5K+/8K. Still not of exquisite quality but at I would say of acceptable look & feel. The knob worked as expected - something I cannot claim for my 8KX, whose always offers up a gamble if it will do the job this time or not.

Audio

  • I didn‘t pay any further attention to the audio, and it didn‘t strike me as being unusual - neither exquisite nor poor. DMas/KDMas level, I would guess.

Tracking was limited to the headset, no lighthouse plate available, so I didn‘t test it. Controllers, wireless, lighthouse, stand-alone, mixed reality, eye-tracking - all missing in action.

So there definitely is some serious potential, but in the shape as presented today it is not yet beyond prototype stage as too many major (!) features are still missing. And I wonder if the 12K isn‘t the more compelling offer after all, provided both manage to be completed by Pimax in good quality one day. The improvements on clarity, blacks/colors etc. are all really cool, but it still could end up being too little for too mich money for me at the end - not sure about it. The 12K would offer this total immersion option on top of it.

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Ah, pity to hear the controllers weren’t there. Did they give any reason why? Seems to confirm that the controller tracking is in a broken state so far.

Thanks for taking the time to write up! Visually speaking it seems to be pretty much the best headset out there right now. The miniLED seems really well implemented, gotta give pimax huge props for that. Hearing very mixed reports on the binocular overlap.

Glad to hear build quality has improved also! Overall this is all very positive imo, seems like it’s a good 6 months to a year away from being feature complete and solid but when it is it will be an incredible headset.

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Thanks for your review @Axacuatl!

Yeah I have that too with all Pimax headsets and also with some other brands by the way, the XTAL 3 has the same issue and I also felt it somewhat with the Vive Pro2. I didnt have that issue on any of the other headsets I own, but the most natural of all feels the Aero and the Index comes second. You describe it very nicely, it’s indeed about the feeling of space and depth, simply the feeling that everything is right. Of course ‘everything’ except the distortion, haha. In that sense the index is still my favorite headset, there the whole world feels just ‘right’. Really hoping that Valve will release the index 2 next year.

Hopefully Pimax can optimize that but as I understand, the lens design is final (?) so that seems a bit worrisome.

BTW I kind of expected this. I think lens design actually is the most difficult part of a headset. Even the XTAL 3 misses out there. Valve came pretty close to creating the ‘perfect’ lenses, their only downside is the glare and they’re of course a tad less sharp than aspheric lenses.

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Rather think that this is less due to the lenses, but is an artifact of the canted design. A compromise that has to be made. I’m just surprised that you have it with the HTC too.

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This is where i expected development was last Jan when they didn’t make CES, not now. That they still haven’t got controllers working is serious. Sword wasn’t inspiring and Pimax needs to get controllers right this time.

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Just a heads up. Sebastian at MRTV gives his lowdown on the Crystal in just over 40minutes on his Deutch YT channel.

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Wow Portal is still a prototype. I thought that was a finished product. Nothing is finished.

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Pretty positive view on the products from Seb imo.

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Josh is extremely knowledgeable

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But…!