While I agree the Lighthouse Face plate needs to be available on launch. The reason they need the non lighthouse tracking would seem to likely be linked to not likely being able to use in Standalone mode. Is there an Arm/Android SteamVR tracking implementation?
And you would need to carry and setup lighthouses for standalone mode.
One of tge reasons I mentioned hybrid tracking like is used on non SteamVR hmds to use SteamVR motion controllers. Is because pimax has working knowledge and would be able to implement native hybrid tracking for pc modes with there own setup.
A user may need to buy a Dongle or see if you can make the Controller dongles swappable. But I suspect should be fine with using one of 3 USBs.
I’ll agree with you when everything is working as intended on the Crystal, on paper specs the Crystal is much better but alot of those specs on paper haven’t been demonstrated/function poorly. If you’re comparing them as they stand today it’s closer than 1 blowing the other away imo, in fact the Aero has an advantage of functioning eye tracking and premium feel build quality. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Pimax fan and I’m rooting for Pimax to pull it off!
If they had the LH face plate they wouldn’t need to show their IO tracking until it’s finished. This assumes their face plate works. Given they have been using LH tech up until now, I would have thought that would have been easy to complete.
Yes Hybrid tracking llike has been demoed on non SteamVR Tracked headsets using SteamVR controllers. But implementef natively due to modular software and hardware. The Steam Face Plate can release later and there can be an option to purchase without inside out controllers in the meantime.
5 years comes from just examining GPU power relative to the current Flagship headset and that it’s abilities are still not fully utilized.
Even a 4090 doesn’t fully feed the 8K-X yet at its Max refresh rate, FOV, or resolution. As @Heliosurge mentioned, that’s in games that are already out right now, not counting more graphically intense VR titles that will inevitably launch.
Ie the current Flagship device is still not long in the tooth yet, and still has value in it because of what specs PIMAX managed to hit.
The 12K qled is going to have the same kind of longevity and growing pains at the start because of the limitations in rendering power.
If a 4090 can’t drive the 8kx at full spec yet, driving two 6K panels for the next gen headset is going to be even more intense.
That’s why Crystal is such a good device. It’s going to give a really great experience on the hardware people can buy today, as opposed to a subpar experience that will take multiple years to fully flesh out.
I realize that, but it goes to the point that a VR headset is a passive device. It’s a lot like a monitor in that sense. If you get higher and higher end gpus, CPUs, Etc you’re old 8kx will still have value even years down the line with even new games. Even though 8kx is “old” by modern VR component standards, it’s still got breathing room as far as what it can do.
I think Bradley is brutal throughout the video. I think he has several valid and meaningful points in it though. He’s clearly biased against Pimax, so I tend to take anything he doesn’t harp on as a pretty reliable indication of goodness. And so it’s a pretty big takeaway that he admits that the visuals on the Crystal are great.
I strongly disagree with Bradley’s opinion on this. I don’t think getting dirty is a concern at all because most users are not going to be regularly changing the lenses out. The vast majority of users will change the lenses at most once or twice in the lifetime of their ownership (not counting just fiddling with it when they first receive it). They’re going to put whatever lenses they’re going to use on it and be done.
But the big thing that this enables is the possibility of prescription lenses. Not a prescription lens you jury rig on top of a VR lens like on every other VR headset, but prescriptions built into the VR lens itself. And I do think that this will actually exist. I think we’ll see existing labs pick it up, even at relatively low volumes. Just because they’ll already have the equipment to do it, and they’ll be able to charge a pretty good profit margin to people who were willing to buy $1600+ VR headsets.
The idea of being able to easily replace the lenses if they get scratched is really nice, too.
I find Bradley’s videos to be useful. I don’t necessarily share his opinions and conclusions about everything, but the important thing is that his videos contain data. He brings up some interesting information in this video that I haven’t seen from any other source and wasn’t aware of. I have to adjust that data for bias, but at least his video is more than just putting his own spin on repeating other people’s data.
I doubt that is technically feasible for a number of reasons. The different aspect ratio, panels not canted enough, limits of lens design, etc. I would guess that the difference in FOV between their 35PPD and 42PPD lenses is probably about as far as you can go. I think it’s likely that the narrow lens is 42PPD and not even higher because that’s the limit.
Yeah. Of my various concerns about the Portal, this aspect isn’t really one of them. Not in a technical sense. It’s just different packaging.
The biggest drawback to this approach is that consumers have been taught Google Cardboard-like devices are necessarily bad. And that could be a hard hump to get over.
He does seem mystified as to why Pimax has a following at all. Perhaps he has the kind of head shape and eye positioning that doesn’t work well in an 8KX.
I think he makes mistakes in this video of assuming that other people are necessarily like himself and so would have the same evaluations of these products. In this respect, I think Mateo311 (who also has a negative view of Pimax) does a better job of recognizing that his personal views aren’t everyone’s views.
Actually in the interviews, Pimax mentioned the 42PPD lenses on the Crystal being aimed at business use.
I thought it was pretty tasteless for him to include that in the video. Unnecessary and also probably wrong about what kind of hair it was. He’s probably never had a beard.
I’m not a flight simmer. I’ve been spending most of my VR gaming time using the 8KX to kick other players behinds at Contractors with an unfair advantage because I can see much wider and farther than they can. They can’t flank and blindside me, but I can do it to them. I call them Pimax kills when I get a kill that definitely happened due to superior vision. They’re probably about 20% of my total kills.
Bradley’s comments about Pimax’s bulky headsets being for flight simmers only is very presumptive about what customers value. Lightness and compactness is clearly very important to him personally, but for me and a lot of other people, improvement of VR immersion trumps that. There is a market for that. Even for action gaming.
Pimax has essentially no competition in that market. Which is why Pimax is able to survive anyway despite making a lot of mistakes. Eventually some other company out there is going to realize that this other market does, in fact, exist and start competing in it. Pimax had better have its act together by the time that happens.
Something that I keep explaining to my friends and other people that ask me about my Pimax 8KX on VRChat is that the size of the headset hardly matters. It’s the weight and balance that counts. Pimax headsets are much lighter than they look. And my 8KX actually feels about the same as my obviously much smaller Index.
You can’t see how big the headset is while you’re in VR. Do you need to keep your hands out a little farther when reaching toward your own head? Sure. But so what. You get used to that quickly, and it really has no functional drawbacks.
If it was for my own personal use, I would agree. But I’m not convinced that this is a wrong move for Pimax. They’re clearly trying to reach a different market with the Crystal than the already converted Pimaxians. And there is a lot of preference for inside out tracking out there. Personally, I’d think people would value performance over one time setup difficulty. But apparently not.
I disagree. I think you’re really only talking about stuff like flight sims with this statement. The 4090 is able to max out the 8KX on most of the VR games I play with room to spare. Notably including VRChat. And these are not all lightweight games.
I’m not convinced that this is actually true. There’s an assumption there that performance requirements are more or less linear with the number of pixels being driven. But there are other factors at play coming with this new technology which stand to affect that equation substantially. Especially the introduction of eye tracking and DFR.
I have done a substantial amount of performance testing with the 8KX relative to foveated rendering, and my data suggests that the 12K rendering at 6K with DFR can be theoretically expected to hit the GPU about as hard as an 8KX rendering at 4K without DFR. I think in actual practice this won’t be quite true, but it probably won’t be far off.
With the exception that there will be some games where DFR won’t work (like VRChat because EAC is blocking it from working now), and then you’re going to see the linear performance hit, and rendering resolution will need to be brought down to 4K’ish. But 4K output being displayed on a 6K physical panel is still going to look better.
I replied to his video in what I think was a measured way. I asked him if he has ever reviewed or owned a Pimax headset. He hasn’t replied, but I see zero such videos on his channel.
So… what is he basing all this hate upon?
What on earth are you trying to prove? Bradleys an idiot? He’s stated several times the visuals are good. He raised a valid point that Pimax claim Valve has not been easy to work with on lighthouse which is why they have adoped the less superior Qualcom tracking. Not a good option for a high end device. This makes sense why the faceplate is on hold. For the lenses he simply states the wide FOV set are good enough due to the great visual performance. Keep it simple and make one model that nobody can mess up. All good points
He makes some valid points, but he’s not giving the company any benefit of the doubt, while just ignoring that this is the only company that will LET HIM FIX THE ISSUES. That makes him look like an idiot even if he isn’t one.
For example, when he loves the visual experience, but finds out post demo that the lenses were not aligned right for him?
He spends so much time complaining about exchangeable lenses, when the problem that he just pointed out as a negative can be easily fixed because the lenses are removable.
So it seems like he’s criticizing just to criticize and seems obtuse.
Take all of his criticisms and apply them to any other headset that has a he exact same problems but lacks all of the modularity and adaptability of a pimax device.
If he was having focus problems, ipd issues, tracking issues, face foam issues, you name the issue: if it was any other headset that was all in one and completely sealed and factory calibrated, you would have spent money on a paperweight that you just can’t adapt or fix.
The criticisms are indeed valid in so far as they would be valid on any sealed and unchangeable VR device that Sony would sell, or valve, or oculus/meta.
But since the crystal isn’t a HMD that is set in stone, and he could actually fix it uniquely for his use case the issues become superfluous in this specific context.
He sounds like he’s pissed that Pimax isn’t catering to the lowest common denominator of customer who just wants to have a disposable piece of crap that is one size fits all. Thing is you can already buy a product like that from any other manufacturer.
He looks like a moron because he’s complaining about things that need fixing, but the device he’s demoing is the only one on the market that you can fix these problems without having to buy a whole new HMD. Does that make sense?
Imagine that iFixit made a Leatherman multi-tool.
Someone’s complaining that there aren’t enough bit sizes of screwdriver on the multitool.
They harp on said complaint while simultaneously glossing over entirely the fact that IFixIt sells all the other sizes in its kits that you could use
Are scratched lenses that much of an issue? I watch all the podcasts and never really hear people talking about it. Also the new lenses are glass so there’s far less chance they will get scuffed? Aspheric are more like a pair of glasses you can be quite rough with. Bradleys really gripe is that they don’t just focus on one premium headset which has always been the issue. Instead we get all these gimmicky features that will likely never work 100%
Maybe you missed it, but a couple days ago I shared about what happened with my original oculus rift.
That is a completely sealed device. You cannot change lenses, it only has some different face foam.
I had it stored in a box, and bugs got inside of it, as in through the casing, behind the lenses. I had to Chuck it. That kind of problem could happen to any device, and they would say just buy a new one particularly if it’s out of warranty.
All these things people are saying or problems would be with removable. Lenses are already a problem in any device you could buy.
If I had the piMax Crystal and bugs got behind the lenses, I can pop them out, clean it and still have a headset even if it’s out of warranty, and I never had to send it off anywhere.
In many different contexts, yes, it’s a problem. Not on things that you can fix the problem.
Sorry, with all sympathy for what they are trying to achieve and how hard they probably work: they are „launching“ a product as ready for delivery to customers asked to pay 1,600$ plus taxes which they can‘t even demo with more than half of its supposed features. Whatever parallel universe we dive into, this is and remains simply poor execution. Does it mean the headset is hopeless? Not at all, but it means they screw up their market entrance completely by trying to market it with pre-orders potentially several months before its feature complete, which they actually announced would not happen this time around. You can feel sorry for those who are doing their best at the company, but don‘t direct the anger at those who express fair criticism but at those, who took the inexplicable decision to stick to the launch date more or less when they already knew damn well that they aren‘t there yet.
If these are priced near the price of typical prescription lenses, i.e. 50-90$, fine. If they cost substantially more, not fine at all for me. This headset is already very expensive, with such additional cost it is pricing itself out of the market even more.
I wouldn‘t manage to play a game like Contractors on the 8KX, no chance that it wouldn‘t wobble to a degree which ruins it for me. I pribably have the wrong the wrong head shape.
I get what you mean, but the 8KxX is bulky and I feel it, in particular if I use controllers and also have interaction near my head. If headsets in 2 years all use pancake lenses and micro OLED and are much smaller with the same resolution of the Crystal, it won‘t be any competition, you won‘t want to put on the bulky one again. But we will have to see when such headsets materialize, could take longer.
I wrote my master’s thesis on critical thinking. Fundamental to it is forming opinions based on evidence and holding those opinions only so long as the best evidence you find continues to support them. As I said in my reply to his video, the arguments he makes on his actual handling of the crystal are quite a bit more fair minded than the diatribe against the Pimax company that preceded it. At no time did I suggest that he’s an idiot, nor would I. But I do think he’s formed some very strong opinions based upon what seem to a purely hearsay fundament. I see no evidence that he had any real experience with Pimax products. I’d be very interested to see him do a longer term use review of the 8Kx, rather than spraying water from a poisoned well. He does make some good points based on his brief use of the Crystal. I don’t agree with all of them, but he’s not an idiot.
For what it is worth, Bradley got a message from somebody who tried the HMD at some point after him, that the lenses were knocked out of alignment for that later user.
Whether they were already out of place when Brad used the HMD, or it happened afterwards, is unknown.
A later yet follow-up Youtube comment, from that user, clarified that the reason for the lens attachment’s not being secure, was that the MRTV-prompted diopter fix was in the form of a makeshift spacer, that didn’t have a snug fit (one might expect a coming permanent solution to likely be more reliable). This clarification was given after the video was made.
Heh, the face gasket on my Index is way too narrow for my face, and pinches it like like an old aunt telling her nephew: “Oh, look how you’ve grown!”; At the same time, the “comfort kit” on my 8kX leaves so large gaps on either side, that it can rock across my face by more than the lenses are canted.
I’ve used double sided velcro under the side wings of the facial gasket to make it hug my face properly.
That’s a personal alteration that required a simple bit of crafting. I don’t think that it’s great that this was required. Products should work well out of the box without such alterations.
But, on the other hand, I do also find that the Index pinches the sides of my face too hard, and I only really noticed how much this was true after altering the 8KX to fit better. It’s not possible to do the same sort of alteration on the Index. I suspect that Pimax designed the facial interface on the 8KX to error on the side of too wide so that you could bolster it to fit your actual face as needed.
So there are pluses and minuses to the Pimax way. (Which I think also touches on @VRGIMP27 's points)
Hm. Smaller and lighter is always better for a headset… but to get a decent vertical FOV- a certain extra bulk might be required. But lighter is likely still possible. Comfort is based on fit, weight, and balance. A lot of it comes down to individual face shapes and preferences.
But, yeah. Lighter is better. we’re at the Model ‘A’ stage (to use an auto comparison). Better design and materials will evolve and probably fairly quickly if VR gets more mai stream.
