The lenses overlapping convergent thing is the issue right? Isnāt it similar to 8KXā¦sometimes when I am playing racing game and my car is off on an angle and I look at the displays or menu that was showing while drivingā¦it looks distorted? Is that the issue Sebastian talking about? This is probably due to wide FOV and lenses overlapping. But when my car is not off of an angle, everything looks fine.
Crystal isnāt wide FOV though. From what Iāve heard itās like a weird effect where things are sharp up close but blurry further away, like opposite to most headsets. Sweviver mentioned it was something to do with the tilt of the panel or something (not canting afaik but vertical tilt). Enough people have mentioned it that it seems to not be a rare specific user type of thing. Looking forward to seeing for myself next week.
Sebās ābutā is just way too close for comfort, to my own experiences with the 8k series lenses, which make my 8kX utterly useless to me; Itās like were they outright tailored for near-sighted people (ā¦like Sebastian), leaving those with young, healthy eyes still being able to use them, albeit with a very wrong focal plane, like were that distant thing at most half a metre in front of them, as opposed to at least 1-to-2 metres like with most headsets (in lieu of actual dynamic depth of field); Whereas older users, who can no longer focus on things close-up, and have started to need reading glasses, are basically smoked ā in my own case, reading glasses of any strength do still not help ā itās all just a blurry mess outside a tiny pinprick spot in the middle, no matter how I position the lens in front of my eye.
ā¦and no matter how light-hearted, the not non-flippant response does not exactly inspire confidence.
ā¦and this ties together with what I was already about to comment: I am yet to see anybody reporting on the eye-relief-, and diopter adjustibility, which the devices are ostensibly supposed to haveā¦
what would valve index 2 be without eye relief/diopter adjustmentā¦ pimax crystal?
Itās funny you say this. I spoke to a guy who was speaking to the XTAL rep, who messaged me:
āAccording to the support rep I talked to the focus point on wide FOV headsets is closer than standard FOV setsā
Just like you say. And indeed, while my eyes are good I noticed only recently that I need to hold anything I want to read, further away from my eyes than when I was younger, probably about 40 cm if I want to read it without eye strain, I can read it up to 30 cm with eye strain and closer than that things just get less sharp.
I do wonder if this is a āgeneralā problem with wide FoV like the XTAL rep claims it is.
I also wonder if this is the problem that people noticed on the Crystal.
I still need to try my XTAL with reading glasses, if this is indeed the problem, reading glasses (which I never use myself, dont even have them) might make things better, although I understand that it didnt help you on the Pimax so that doesnt sound very promising, still will try it
They donāt have eye-relief or diopter adjustment (at least not crystal). @PimaxUSA Did say this on discord about the crystal:
But Iām guessing that was a prototype that never made it to production, or was just talked about. I do appreciate Kevinās communication on these topics and his willingness to talk to Pimax enthusiasts but itās probably best to not mention these things until they are absolutely certain.
He did later mention:
So eye relief I would imagine is now āpad adjustmentā which is the same as the current Pimax headsets. So not really eye relief tbh but it can do the job tbf. Diopter seems to now be interchangeable lenses (definitely present) but set to your specific diopter soā¦first party prescription lenses I guess?
Other than on Discord from Kevin, I donāt think diopter or eye relief have ever been mentioned as features. I think itās best to take those sorts of messages as ācutting room floorā talk about features being explored etc and only really latch onto those official announced and in promotional materials. I might be wrong and they were mentioned other times elsewhere though!
Indeed as @Djonko has said lens design is a key point in being hard to perfect. Especially when attempting to make a one size fits all. Due to varying facial profiiles that affect vertical/Horizontal alignment without tilting either axis. Then add varying pupil to lens distance. A lot of variables. In theory as Pimax had mentioned during the first KS they were looking into using ET to do Dynamic Distortion correctionā¦ Which unfortunately never came to be with @7invensun-JC 's very poorly released ET. Which ended up needing a 3rdparty DeV to make it usable for ET foveate rendering to work reasonable well. Definitely better than the oem.
Pimax has a much better partner with Tobii and it seems they are the better choice for VR/AR.
I guess now that there is native eye tracking, and they are working with Tobii, maybe this will actually happen. It does seem like eye relief is a very important feature in particular, we need as many ways as possible to adjust a headset to our own particular features. Itās honestly something I feel for any company making a VR headset, itās a nightmare to make a one size fits all.
Iām looking forward to the day where you can go into a place and get a custom fitted headset that is perfect for you, like a glasses shop basically ha.
Well probably insanely priced on releaseā¦But MojoVision does have some very interesting AR contacts in development.
I think they need the diopter relief- itās not rocket science. They just need some way to, as you say, provide eye relief. A simple āfore and aftā adjustment built into the face mask perhaps? I donāt think it will need new lenses.
But it does need to be addressed, and fixed, and Iām pretty confident it will be.
Iāve just watched some of the German MRTV Crystal feedback vids that are available, Sebs is similar to what he said in the English interview vid, that itās on the whole good but he has some issue. Then thereās 2 members of the public who praise the Crystal, they donāt mention the issue Seb has, atleast 1 wears glasses (he is seen putting them on).
Edit: iāve just read the comments in those videos, there are some people who were at the roadshow who say they had an issue that sounds similar to what Seb is describing.
I agree 100%. Itās laughable that they still have this issue. I was willing to give them another chance, but after reading the latest feedback, Iāve lost all hope of them solving it when their engineers havenāt figured it out for the past 5 years.
The Pimax 5K+ was literally unusable garbage for me and most other people I talk to due to this exact issue: unable to focus properly, causing cross-eyed effect and eye strain. They can have the greatest headset on paper, but it all means nothing when itās not comfortable to use. Itās an absolutely critical flaw that needs to be fixed.
Yeah, the facemask itself seems like a way to do it without changing the main hardware. Maybe like 2 or 3 space options (like how reverb g2 or quest 2 have the glasses space but maybe 1 or 2 more).
I donāt think something like that exists. They could make an eye relief, but if the issue is like Sebastian describes it, that the projection length of the virtual image is really short, so maybe 30 cm from the lenses, then an eye relief wonāt fix it. An eye relief is just meant for the āother sideā of the lenses, to get the right distance between your eyes and the lenses. The lenses have been developed for a certain distance but since not everybodyās face is the same, this distance might be different among users, hence an eye relief can help in those cases, to get everybodyās eyes at the exactly correct distance from the lens. But that doesnāt affect the other side of the lens, so the length between the lens and the virtual image
The only thing that would fix this problem would be different lenses. Now the good thing is that they made it so itās easy to replace the lenses. The question of course is, will somebody make better lenses for the crystal ā¦
Yeah lenses definitely are Pimaxās achilles heel. Everything else I expect them to fix, but the lenses worry me. It seems they just donāt have the right optical engineers.
@jojon seems to know quite a bit about lenses. What do you think, did the engineers make this projection distance on purpose really short, to lessen distortion? Intuitively Iād say there is. Iād say pupil swim gets less important when the projection distance is shorter since the projected image gets smaller. But I might be wrong here 
It would explain this anyway, if correct, then they might have made lenses with short projection distance on purpose: less distortion but it would then introduce this new problem ā¦
I hate distortion but I hate eye strain even more. I kind of could live with the distortion on the Aero, especially after that āexperimental modeā they introduced a while ago, which SEEMS to be some form of dynamic distortion correction (since it seems to use the eyetracker in that mode). If all the above is true, Pimax should just make similar lenses like the aero (with longer projection distance, maybe that explains why my eyes feel so relaxed in the aero), do some form of dynamic distortion correction and theyād have a winner.
BTW did you guys notice that in that video, when Sebastian brings up this point, Sweviver immediately responds ābut did you see distortionā and sebastian confirms thereās none. So who knows, the above might be right and they did it on purpose to solve distortion. And it might work for young people or nearsighted people like Sebastian, but for oldtimers like me (47) who have started to lose clarity on objects really close by, this solution might actually be worse than the problem.
Ah the right term here is āfocal distanceā
āFocal distance is the distance to the virtual image produced by the virtual image opticsā
https://sid.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsid.981
It exists on the vive flow, along with Arpara and the upcoming Meganex. That said,it seems to be a pancake lenses thing so far (which crystal is not using) so Iām guessing itās basically moving the distance beteen the 2 lenses that make up the pancake lens stack.
will somebody make better lenses for the crystal ā¦
Thatās actually a super interesting proposition. Especially if they allowed people to use their own distortion profiles and such. I canāt imagine there would be a big enough market to justify such costly development but itās definitely a very very interesting proposition.
Are you sure youāre not confusing it with eye relief? Like the index has, so where both the lens AND panel move at the same time. Iām pretty sure itās just that. So no, that wonāt help.
In theory, I think what could solve it was if they had a mechanism where you could move only the lens, not the panel. But then youād need a mechanism also to change the distance between your eyes and the lens.
I edited my last message with another response btw but yes Iām 100% sure Iām not confusing it with eye relief. The diopter adjustment allows you to set your own glasses perscription so you donāt need to wear glasses (assuming it lands within the range of the diopter adjustment range present).