What Pimax news from CES?

[Djonko]

I actually thought this is a VERY good review!! Ben is very thorough, if the only thing he found was some persistence blur, then I’m getting cautiously hopeful that the Crystal is going to rock!

@twack3r

Interestingly, Varjo have been struggling with the same issue from the get-go and still haven’t found a good solution to avoid perceived blur during head movement.

Maybe it’s the same thing, maybe it’s something different and they can easily fix it with a FW update. Either way, the blur on the Aero never bothered me. I can see it indeed but somehow it doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s because I liver in a warm climate, could be that it’s more visible when the panels are colder? I think I read that theory somewhere anyway.

[twack3r]

I don’t have or notice it either but that might be down to the differences between VR-3 and Aero.

But many Aero users on the discord seem to suffer from it; and as the panel res is the same between Aero and Crystal, I thought it was worthwhile to mention even though it most likely is just coincidental.

Looks like I‘ll have to renew my annual license for the VR-3 in April, would have loved to have found a suitable replacement before then and Somnium und Crystal we’re the obvious targets.

As it stands, Crystal most likely won’t be feature complete available via Amazon before April, and Somnium not showing a working HMD as well as their NFT bs make me cautious.

I don’t see anything else coming up which I find extremely disappointing.

[SmallBaguette]

@twack3r

Interestingly, Varjo have been struggling with the same issue from the get-go and still haven’t found a good solution to avoid perceived blur during head movement.

I believe Aero and Crystal use the exact same panels, right? Could it be an issue with the panels themselves?

[twack3r]

I only know they share the same resolution.

I know nothing beyond that.

[tykey6]

@Djonko

Either way, the blur on the Aero never bothered me. I can see it indeed but somehow it doesn’t bother me. Maybe it’s because I liver in a warm climate, could be that it’s more visible when the panels are colder? I think I read that theory somewhere anyway.

It wasn’t a problem for me either. I found there was blurring/smearing within the 1st minute or 2 the Aero was powered on but it went away once warmed up.

[tykey6]

@SmallBaguette

I believe Aero and Crystal use the exact same panels, right?

@twack3r

I only know they share the same resolution.

Not quite the same resolution but very close : aero 2880 x 2720, crystal 2880 × 2880.

[SmallBaguette]

I thought that was just the utilised resolution on the aero, but the panels were 2880. I could be wrong, I’ll try to find my source but I’m pretty sure when that chinese BOM list came out for the crystal a few months ago, they showed the same panels but I can’t find that now.

[Atmos]

@SmallBaguette

I’ll try to find my source but I’m pretty sure when that chinese BOM list came out for the crystal a few months ago,

This one?

[Atmos]

Prices in the third column are USD. So CPU and GPU are $80 total.

Displays are $240

Total BOM $618.50

[Atmos]

Pimax need to sell around 8000 Crystals a year to break even by my guesstimate.

Pretty scary when you think about it. By the time Crystal gets up to full production (6 months from release) it will be Q3 of 2023.

[Axacuatl]

Ben Lang from RoadtoVR, a journalist dedicated to VR I consider one of the best and most objective reviewers out there, has had a hands-on during CES and had a couple of notes. Overall positive, but he apparently experienced some motion blur. Not something I recall from the road show, but then again I was probably too busy to study the picture quality and tended to rather keep my head in the same position, and then got distracted by the convergence issues I saw.

Hands-on: Pimax Crystal Touts Impressive Clarity, But Suffers From a...

EDIT: just noticed, that I apparently missed a couple of posts, including Atmos‘ already linking this article. Oh well.

[SmallBaguette]

Considering SadlyItsBradley noticed low persistence on the Portal, which no one else seems to have noticed, I’m guessing it might be an intermittent software error or such. Hard to say. Brad didn’t mention any such issue with the crystal, nor has anyone else, so fingers crossed it just a rare bug or something.

[VRGIMP27]

Is there a trade-off between HDR and low persitence mode for the panesl used?

Many local dimming LCDs cannot strobe the backlight at the same time. I swear to god if Pimax is using local dimming, but losing the ability to use low persistence, this is the biggest rookie mistake they could make, and it would absolutely vindicate every criticism you have received so far that I have told people not to worry about.

@SweViver @PimaxUSA if this is actually the case, get rid of your local dimming feature, full stop.

For road to VR to.comment on your headset that is purpose built for clarity that he sees persistence blur, (solved since DK2) makes you look like the most amateur company in the industry.

Fake HDR, and local dimming is not worth it if it comes at the cost of image persistence. I would even say it is better that you sacrifice a little bit of brightness to make sure the display is extremely low persistence, so that you benefit from motion resolution.

He said you were good on edge to edge, clarity, pupil, swim, chromatic, aberration, etc. but you screwed up on persistence? that has been a solved problem, in VR since 2012, including on your first headset, that didn’t even have low persistence because you used active shutters to emulate it.

I really want to buy this headset, but if low persistence is not working, I won’t buy it. Fix this, and pray that this publication issues a retraction.

[Axacuatl]

Okay, that‘s quite a fierce reaction. I would agree with you all the way - but I believe Ben was the first voice to raise this issue on the Crystal. As he has been very accurate in the past I don‘t think that he got it completely wrong, but it could be either a malfunction in that one headset. Or it is actually present, but very subtle and he, having trained himself to check all boxes of a VR headset meticulously, experiences this more pronouncedly than most other users, hence why the others didn‘t even notice it.

Before I would consider this a bigger problem I‘d want see at least 1-2 other users also mention that they at the very least even noticed it.

[Omniwhatever]

Okay, yeah. That was kind of extreme. I know a lot of people don’t give Pimax the benefit of the doubt, but that’s a bit much to jump on with one report.

Kev, A.K.A @PimaxUSA responded to this on the MRTV Discord.

i stood there while he tested the portal and crystal, I don’t recall him mentioning anything like that while testing the crystal but he did while testing the portal - i wonder if somehow he flipped it

Between the road shows and CES maybe around 2,900 people tried the Crystal. It’s a fairly substantial number. The issue that was uncovered with the focal length we were able to replicate very early in the road show like the first 8 days or so. But so far only 1 report revolving around persistence on the crystal.

Considering this is the first time we’ve heard about the Crystal having persistence issues from anybody, yet there have been more than one report about the PORTAL having some, and even people like Bradly who raised a very critical perspective on the Portal in part because of that, did not mention it on the Crystal among all the other things they said in the same video, I think that perhaps they might’ve gotten it mixed up. Or at least maybe their unit was defective and it’s not an issue to worry about in general on the Crystal.

I know people are jumpy and eager to get some impressions from people that get extended time with the Crystal, but let’s not bring out the pitchforks and torches at the drop of a hat, shall we?

[tykey6]

I’m not worried about 1 person out of several 1000 saying there’s blur, non-issue for me.

[VRGIMP27]

This extreme reaction from me comes from the fact that this is arguably, the most reputable VR publication on the Internet. It’s been there since the beginning.

Ben knows VR HMDs like the back of his hand.

How does a company that’s done this several times now demo a less than flawless unit to this specific publication?

He’s telling you it looks nice, but to paraphrase in terms of what persistence blur is and means, might as well have Vaseline on the lens that shows up when you move your head.

Persistence blur, also mitigates effectiveness and purpose of high frame rate. If they have blur at 90 frames per second, either the back light is not being strobed and low persistence is non-functional, or it is functional, but the panel is still too slow in it’s transitions.

This isn’t a small issue

If you don’t have low persistence, right, you don’t have one of the crucial ingredients necessary to induce presence. That is VR 101 basics stuff.

Since pimax is using an LCD tuning the strobing and nailing low persistence is essential to make up for LCD shortcomings.

Oculus’ quest 2 has a 0.3 ms pulse duration on its backlight it gives it motion clarity, very close to that cf high end plasma or even close to CRT. You need pixels to have sufficient time to switch, so much the better if It can be done during time between back light pulses

I don’t want to see Crystal or 12k be the next Highsense U9DG. Great contrast with awful motion clarity.

If you are having persistence or pixel switching issues, you need to get them fixed especially when it comes to the 12 K because persistence issues are more likely to cause severe nausea as the FOV goes up. I wouldn’t have had this reaction from another publication saying it., or a non issue

Call Mark Rejhon at Blur Busters and get his input. Let him test it. Check TestUFO motion tests with it.

[Djonko]

@Omniwhatever

Between the road shows and CES maybe around 2,900 people tried the Crystal. It’s a fairly substantial number. The issue that was uncovered with the focal length we were able to replicate very early in the road show like the first 8 days or so. But so far only 1 report revolving around persistence on the crystal.

You do realize that he says this EVERY SINGLE TIME? It’s his standard response, implicating that there must be something wrong with the guy who noticed it.

And just like @VRGIMP27 notes, this is not ‘just some random guy’, this is arguably the best VR reviewer in the world. Of course Ben himself also notes that it might be easy to fix, who knows, I remember that Pimax introduced this effect in some of their firmwares and then fixed it in the next. So let’s hope it’s not too serious. But I really really hate this ‘we had thousands of visitors and only 1 guy said something about it’, which they literally claim every single time. They said 'distortion is solved now on the 8kX, NOBODY saw it at CES 2020 (or which CES was it). LOL

[Atmos]

It might also be down to the demo people were playing. If 90% of people at CES were playing flight sims who’s going to notice or be looking for persistence?

[Omniwhatever]

I am very aware. I am just relaying the information for the thread since some people are, rightfully, wanting some answers but I don’t see him anywhere around here, so may as well post it.

I’m also aware of who this person is, but I also know that there’s been literally nobody else that’s cited persistence issues on the Crystal, including the people who did point out persistence problems on the Portal, A.K.A those who would know what they’re talking about and it would not be unreasonable to assume they’d see it on the Crystal if it was there then.

Thanks for ignoring the entire second half of my post.