So far it does seem like, damn … software crashing, eye tracking not working, controllers not working properly. And then he says the sweetspot was rather narrow, when the Aero is one big sweetspot. This doesn’t bode very well …
But again, hopefully the next reviewer is going to be more positive.
Come on man, don’t be so negative….nothing a roll of gaffer tape can’t fix.
Well actually the guy on reddit now corrects himself, he says “Maybe I misunderstood you. I was talking about how you have to wear the glasses to get a sharp image. Image is clear over the entire fov. I looked out for distortion and chromatic aberration and it wasn’t noticable” Which sounds a lot better already
Easier to link the reddit commit as there are some additional questions and replies: MostlyRIP comments on Anybody going to VRberlin today to try the Pimax Crystal?
Initially they said the sweet spot was similar to other headsets but seems like confusion on terminology as later they said edge to edge clarity (I think they thought sweet spot meant like adjusting the headset on your head).
The lack of auto IPD, which honestly should be trivial overall compared to other features, is probably the most worrying thing. Actually the biggest would be “Controllers were not working”. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
So far, not great but will need to hear more opinions/experiences.
IO tracking not working and no SVR facelate. Anyone wanting before Christmas as to be wondering what they would be getting.
From the little bit of feedback thus far I doubt they will they be shipping to the West before Q1, maybe Q2 2023 imo.
Less money on Robert Picardo type hype and more on the actual product would seem to have been a thought.
The settings and firmware for the crystal controllers is a challenge because lots of people wanting to try them and the highest accuracy mode does at this time reduce the battery life a lot. That is the main thing that is being improved with the firmware updates. Lowering the refresh and accuracy increases the battery life.
So for a roadshow/convention type setting we are working on determining the sweet spot. Hopefully in the next few days or so we’ve optimized all sorts of aspects of the “event” experience.
here’s another roadshow attendee user feedback report (translated from German) :
So, since I’m waiting for my train, I have some time. I will subdivide my short report, the event, the glasses (Crystal and Portal) itself and my conclusion.
Event:
I met Sweviver (Martin) and Josh, just regular dudes, plus two others from China, there was a bit of a language barrier here, but they were nice too.
They communicated quite openly what the current challenges are, and even if it was sometimes stressful due to bug fixing, they took their time. Top.
But now to the event, I would call the current status as pre-alpha. There are new updates almost every day, all four of the four headsets hung up several times over the course of an hour. The main culprit is said to be the cable, because there were some from the 8kx, which is said not to have delivered enough energy, which is why the headsets with the battery ran in hybrid mode. So production units or not, the controllers and the cable were still crafts. You said yourself that the purpose of this road show is to get a feeling from the users and to let that flow into the optimizations.
This meant that one only briefly really
could play, 5 minutes Hellsplit Arena, something with cars (probably Assetto Corsa), FS 2020. Alyx is said to have left at some point, but it was then bugged in my slot. Also, only one of the 4 stations had VR controllers, the rest were Hotas etc. So that’s enough for the first impression, but it wasn’t possible to get used to it, and the choice was limited by necessity, I was happy to see a working picture.
Also, they didn’t have any other glasses to compare to at the very first appointment, will probably get better with MRTV.
So there really are reasons that my experience can differ from that of the next road shows, and the personal impression is different as well (I have also shared with others).
But without puppy protection, if there were problems that would be solved within a month, they would have been solved already.
So, enough foreword, now to the devices:
Pimax Portal:
→ The thing is still so far away from being ready for the market, you don’t have to talk about it. It’ll probably have to compete more with the Quest 3 etc, that’s a losing game. Maybe interesting in China as an Android tablet, but that’s not even dangerous for a Quest 2.
Now for the Crystal:
+Lens: Yes, they have more warping/distortion than Fresnel and also more than the Pico 4, which I noticed negatively when I first put them on.
But with Racing/Flightsim, where you don’t move your head much, it was quickly forgotten.
For being able to make such a display possible without glare and god rays, it’s the right trade-off for quiet gaming/videos.
Lenses: What I see as a big problem for me is the sweet spot. It was difficult to get him in both eyes, and with active gaming I can imagine that I have to move up here more often. I at least. And it’s not because of the resolution, it’s not very big, Quest 2 and Pico 4 are much easier to handle here. And outside of the sweet spot, the E2EC drops. Chromatic aberration is still there, but I suppose it’s easy to get used to (and Fresnel does too.
I don’t know if it’s related to the sweet spot, but I felt like I had some slight motion blur.
+Resolution, very good, together with the contrast it is a very plastic picture. The SDE is not completely gone, but this is more due to individual vertical “lines”. But not disturbing, not visible apart from bright, homogeneous areas. However, I guess that this can only be remedied with a high-resolution Micro OLED with a different pixel matrix. As for distance vision, there were distant objects that I could see clearly, but without side-by-side I can’t put it into perspective.
+FoV: neutral. At least vertically there were no negative losses for me, MRTV will definitely measure it. Luckily it’s not a slit.
Stereo overlap, also an issue that is a big problem for me. Feels like +-70%. What does a wide FoV without overlap bring me? The panels are “square”, if 100% doesn’t work due to lack of space, it’s OK, but the device is fat. Here the Pico 4 inspired me, large FoV with almost complete overlap. Sweviver said they hadn’t enabled the full width and height of the panels yet, but thumbs up a single panel was just a little narrower than it was tall, so I’m not expecting miracles here. I didn’t notice it all the time either, but when I did it was correct (e.g. in bright scenes).
“Canted Displays”, i.e. horizontally inclined (as the housing suggests), which is why you need adapted profiles for some games with parallel projection, i.e. an adapted distortion profile. The vision is that the Pimax tool will take care of that, but I’m not a Pimax user to assess the impact on usability. It is actually used for high FoV, but the Pimax Crystal could have done without it. The only reason is that it is related to the 12k, the Crystal sits in the same housing as the 12k. So you can really think of the Crystal as a 12k with simple lenses and small-sized displays, which makes the Crystal an “after-thought” in my eyes. Cost savings. Back to rotated displays, will Virtual Desktop work with it? Does it have other disadvantages in optics depending on the user? I couldn’t say that the stereoscopy is only 95% correct, but it’s a feature with no technical advantage at a small FoV that the competition doesn’t have.
Tracking HMD: neutral. The flight and racing sim weren’t running at 90fps and I’d have to test with familiar experience if it’s the warping or something else. But in general it was good, not perfect but good, the Pico 4 bothered me more and 99% have no problem with it.
Tracking Controller: Pre-Alpha. There was only one set up pair, and 50% of the time 6DoF didn’t work at all, and if it wasn’t authentic with dropouts etc. But they admitted that they were still connected to a hub via USB. The XR2 is therefore no guarantee for good out-of-the-box tracking, but companies still have to put a lot of their own brain power into it.
Stability: unusable. Why doesn’t matter if it fixes a magic wire, great. But I really hope they don’t ship anything before Christmas.
Each of 4 devices lubricated every few minutes. I don’t care if other slots did better, maybe they’ll get most of it fixed in a few days. But reliability must be proven over time. And since Quest 2 and Virtual Desktop, I don’t feel like doing anything like that anymore.
+Build Quality: HMD good, felt solid. Controllers were not final, the finish was missing (I hope)
+Comfort: OK for me, I couldn’t rate the weight due to the short intervals
Conclusion:
I canceled my pre-order. For two reasons.
First: I think Pimax has great engineers, people make a company, and I think the product itself is cool. It’s also been said that Pimax wants to learn from past mistakes here with products sold immaturely, but for all its goodwill, there are investors who want their money to be crunched. The products are pre-alpha, will it take a month or 10 to fix them? Doesn’t matter, it’s too early to preorder.
Secondly:
I think you can get used to most of it, but the sweet spot bothers me too much, let’s see what others say. If the Pimax Crystal largely fixes its solvable problems, it is a great high-end device. However, it will also share most of the advantages and disadvantages with the 12k. I don’t see it as the device for people who prefer sharpness, but rather as a cheap bridge to the 12k, both in terms of price and time.
There are more points, e.g. details of how USB-C audio works.
Speechless…
Sounds like they had it right then - or to be a bit more specific: Getting the HMD sat on your head in such a way that both of one’s eye lenses intersect the focal point of their respective HMD lens - in the middle of its eyebox: I.e: In the spatial “sweet spot”; People misappropriating the word to mean "edge-to-edge clarity, through mixing up cause and effect, is a long standing bugbear of mine - later joined by things like writing “foveated” with the first three letters in upper case, as were they an acronym, or had anything to do with field of view. 
At least it sounds like that first report about fresnel lenses was mistaken. :7
How were these roadshows not cancelled? Sounds like another CES2022 shambles.
It just makes Pimax look incompetent especially when people start cancelling their orders. Sounds like peoples confidence in this product are shattered.
I really feel sad for Sweviver and Josh when you’re given halve baked products to present, but when you have all yes, yes, yes men this is what happens.
I honestly thought there were but a few software bug fixes to be solved while stocks of Crystal were being built in the warehouse. Not this.
This is considerably more barebones than what I would have expected, that’s for sure.
If controller tracking were the main issue, as @PimaxUSA pointed out, this can always be a venue and setup issue under extreme conditions.
But the state of literally the entire package is, well, somwhat familiar.
I really wonder what actually was shown back at CES 2022 to those under NDA. There’s at least 10 months of ‘almost realtime’ updates and R&D work in between those two showings and I assume the Crystal is both highly similar to the 12K as well as considerably further advanced in development (“70% R&D stage” vs. “already in volume production”).
Ahh, it’s the setting…
But why is this happening? One explanation would be when there’s a very autocratic narcistic leader who will only snap at people daring to point out even the slightest bit of criticism, causing a cult of fear in a company. If you’ve seen Robin in the video’s it’s hard to believe he’s somebody like that. But why then is this happening, why didn’t somebody say ‘ok, stop, this roadshow is a BAD idea, our product is not ready for showtime, showing it in this form doesn’t help our customers and it won’t certainly help us’.
I don’t get it …
Because people at the start of the line like Robin have the plan, the goal, the vision. You have people at the other end of the line who are not production guys. They’re the dreamers, optimists, believers who think the guy at the top has all the answers.
You have people like me and you who are the realists. We see what’s coming down the line and want to shout STOP! I don’t care if it makes me unpopular, I don’t care if you think I’m a hater but let’s get the product right first.
I’ve worked most of my life in production and I’ve seen the harsh reality of it.
With Pimax - the visionary and the optimist want to listen only each other with no middle man to question their methods.
I honestly believe I could of sold Pimax 100,000 units in 12 months in 2022.
I hope it’s not too late for Pimax but when you have Apple and Valve looming next year I really think this race is over before it began.
Youtube video about the posted on Reddit :
Why did you delete your post? I watched the video anyway.
No LEDs on Portal.
i just seen Small baguette had posted the same video in another thread just before i posted it so thought best not to spam it in other threads etc. yeh no LED’s!
Edit: but have just undeleted it. it’s a suitable video for this thread so why not.
This whole thing just takes me back to pre 5k Kickstarter days.
I’ve all but written off Crystal.