First of all, I want to thank PIMAX for holding a roadshow in Tokyo. While I was here I was able to stop by and try out the Crystal etc. The staff were very helpful and tried their best to set things up and answer any questions. They took feedback from people as well.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) when I attended there wasn’t too many people who came at that time. I suppose because it was cold and getting closer to the grind of the last few days of required work before the holidays. Though it will have to do with my next statement below:
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All roadshows activities and schedules should be clearly and obviously announced somewhere on PIMAX’s homepage at minimum. It’s fine to advertise such information on platforms like Twitter, Facebook etc.
Though not everyone is invested in these platforms alone, and everything could point back to a main central source for the information (PIMAX’s Website).
Now on to the Roadshow:
THE PORTAL:
I think the PORTAL may work well in Japan, a country where many use public transportation to go to and from most places. One often sees some handheld device and people of all ages playing some type of game on their commute.
However, since many competing products have already established themselves here, it will be a challenge and an uphill battle for the PORTAL to gain market share in my opinion. A lower price and simplistic yet powerful features will be part of what it will take to battle for a place in the market. PIMAX should prepare for the long haul in my opinion.
The VR aspect of the PORTAL I felt was borderline gimmicky. I think for some BASIC entry into the VR space and having some minimal VR capability is a nice to have, and if one doesn’t have high expectations of quality, then the price is certainly reasonable. I’m obviously not the target market for this.
The PORTAL itself was great. It ran very smooth, visual was crisp and clear. The controllers also worked pretty well too. I would have liked the screen to have more brightness. It was maxed on my settings, but I still felt it wasn’t bright enough.
Build and quality of the experience of the PORTAL, I felt that it’s like 90%+ ready to go to market from the hardware perspective.
THE CRYSTAL:
The team were using PCs with RTX 3080s.
Unfortunately there were some issues that impacted us.
- DCS was taking forever to load so we wrote that one off.
- Elite Dangerous was showing a copy of the same image for both screens, and we didn’t have the time/knowledge to make it work.
- The controllers, when they did work, were quite sporadic and lost tracking often.
- Then the controllers themselves just stopped working and even when paired to the PIMAX Software, still didn’t work, and it took the team near 20-30min to get them back to their original state.
The following is a list of what they couldn’t show us:
- They only had the 35PPD lens (Missing the 42PPD)
- No Passthru
- No stand alone mode and only could show us via Display Port, thus…
- No WIFI 6E
- No WiGig
- No Lighthouse Faceplate and thus
- No Lighthouse Base Stations
- No Tobii Eye Tracking, thus
- No Eye Tracking and DFR
- No Facial Tracking
Some issues I had:
1. LIGHT BLEED INTO THE HEADSET
There was enough light bleed for it to be at times distracting, coming into the headset (between the plastic base that holds the foam molding around the forehead) where the base contacted the plastic surface of the headset itself. Double-checked if everything was in place properly and also on the head. No change.
Recommendation: Create a small recess into the headset where the facial foam component plastic can reside in consistently to avoid this light bleed.
2. DARK SHADOWS TOP/BOTTOM EDGES OF THE LENSES
I could notice in most lighting situations faint darken areas near the edges of the lens top/bottom/left/right. Keep in mind I was on the 35PPD lenses
3. OUT OF FOCUS CLOSE TO CENTER FOCAL POINT
I noticed this mostly in the SteamVR room when looking at titles on the wall, but also in other situations too. When looking straight at the clearest in focal point on the screen, it started to get quickly blurry (Out of focus) the further away from the focal point. This was distracting and I felt like I should have more in my point of view that should have been in focus the same as the focal point.
Perhaps some setting applied where the FFR was very aggressive that caused this (Speculation)
FINAL THOUGHTS:
The image quality on the whole was simply excellent. Alex Half-life rendered beautifully. I couldn’t notice any screen door effect. Image was smooth.
It was further confirmed that there is a small battery in the headset that allows for the function of hot swapping batteries. THIS, I am very happy about and makes total sense. Unfortunately wasn’t able to test it though.
I was disappointed that there were so many features not ready to show off at the roadshow.
The issue with the controllers not working well (one needed constant plug in to a USB cable) really kinda soured the milk. Since they didn’t have the lighthouse base stations nor faceplate, and after witnessing the tracking issues with the controllers in this current state, simply does not give me confidence that PIMAX’s own tacking solution (QUALCOMM?) is sufficient enough to deliver a necessary quality experience for the user and that the LIGHTHOUSE base stations and face plate will be needed.
What this does is concern me even more, as I am to understand that you couldn’t use the PASSTHRU (special faceplate) with the LIGHTHOUSE controllers at the same time.
If they don’t get the controllers and tracking close to what can be done with the LIGHTHOUSE tech, I fear the user’s likely going to have a frustrating time with the controllers.
I would love to see a more mature version of the CRYSTAL with most all (if not all) features above working well. CES 2023 I feel is a make or break for PIMAX. They gotta get these things resolved before then and have the full gamut of features ready to show.
