Well, IF it were to turn out Ben mixed up his experiences/notes/memories with the Crystal and the Portal, that would be a relief…
A few other things to keep in mind:
There is the matter of having limited time and application experience in a stressful environment, which can make you not pick up on whole lot of shortcomings during your test. Every new device demoed, after the very first Oculus prototype, demoers have reported: “Screen Door Effect is gone now.”
Sometimes politeness can be counterproductive… There is this social block most people have - even fairly blunt people, against criticising a product, when the company representative is standing right there with you.
Low frame rates can produce persistence-like effects, even on a low-persistence display: Most noteably ghosting from repeat frames, or blur and other artefacts from frame synthesis. That said: There are distinct, easily recogniseable differences between these, and if I’d rate any one likely able to immediately tell them apart, it would definitely be Ben.
Some have talked about distant things being blurry, even whilst things closer up are sharp as heck, which sounds kind of “impossible”, with fixed focus… Now, this could be down to optical matters, like any combination of accidentally being given the myopic-user-tailored lenses, and/or being thwarted by one’s own accomodation reflex; Or the simple fact that a slight unfocus doesn’t matter as much when details are blown up across a larger part of your FOV; But it could also have something to do with the tested game’s assets, LOD biasing, depth-of-field effects, and/or distance fog being rather too aggressive for the higher than usual display resolution.
Absolutely. Ben had from my understanding a more complete eval time. There is also the fact he is a seasoned tester of xr hmds. He would be looking specifics; much like Doc-ok.
Having a volume of folks have short demo hands on most will not see issues then due to time constraints and experiencing ‘wow’. Unless of course it is substantial effect or have sensitivity to an effect/issue.
Folks might recall @mixedrealityTV reporting strongly on a latency wobble (if I have the term correct) and being adamant about going with the 5k+ because of it.
Those of us that had received the og 8k thought he was reporting essentially something not there. And for us it was/is true.
It was later confirmed to be there by a DeV whom explained how to perform a “Latency Tap test”. He did though state that majority of ppl would likely not be bothered/affected by it.
So Ben being very seasoned and imho one of the top ppl in his profession. He will notice things easier even with a short demo vs the average joe.
Something that the average joe might see after say a couple weeks of ownership.
Pimax had a bunch of ‘seasoned VR’ reviewers try the headset. One mentioned this issue. Is it worth investigating? Sure.
Is it worth the hullabaloo being raised in here? Nope.
The sky isn’t falling. Just more users leaping to conclusions before stepping on enough evidence.
I watched Sebastian’s live feed with @sweViver and discoVr. They talked about the problems uncovered and fixed so far thanks to critical feedback during the roadshows and CES.
SweViver also noted that hundreds of Crystals had already been assembled and will be shipping asap after the New Year’s break.
All the hardware is in place, and he was open and honest about issues that remained, particularly with the wifi and wigig(sic) capabilities. At this point it is all about polishing the firmware and software.
If they expect perfection in the firmware in the initial release, some folks here are going to be disappointed. Or maybe elated, since that will allow them to stir up more tempests in teacups.
In the meantime, how about letting this one go until we have more feedback? A bunch of YouTubers will be getting review units , and according to SweViver, theirs will be among the earliest ones to ship.
Let’s relax a bit, and see how it goes.
No one’s going to be elated. I won’t. I would say scared. Because if Crystal does not make enough profit in 2023 I don’t see Pimax financially viable in 2024 unless there’s a 3rd round of funding.
Apart from the VR nerd types here, who else is going to buy $1600 Crystal direct from China from a Company with a reputation for shipping products unfinished? Most people want the guarantees from Amazon. That might not happen in 2023. I’ll certainly stick to my Pico4 until then.
For pure tethered PCVR I think Crystal will be a good headset. For Sims and casual experiences I can see a lot of potential. But for FPS’s and Sports I don’t see Crystal as a good choice due to its bulk v FOV. Beat Saber anyone?
Shelling out $1600 on an unfinished high risk item is enough to put me off. Especially when there’s a high possibility of the Index2 coming in 2023. Especially when Pico4 just works. But all power to those who get Crystal and enjoy those 2880x2880 displays and Aspheric lenses I’m sure it will provide hours of enjoyment. And it goes to show where mainstream VR is heading.
Interesting. Although lots of people would have wanted to see it, I think it’s better not to do that, as long as it’s not close yet to the final experience that they hope to offer. Most likely would have only generated bad attention. I think it was a good decision to do it like they did.
I’d still like to know what the sooper-seeeekrit device was, exactly; Denied-answers curiousity is most nagging curiousity.
So not the 12k, but something with either the 12k lenses, or lenses much like them; And not something likely to make a product – just an in-house experiment…
…sooo, simply a 12k prototype with 8kX, or Crystal display panels, in lieu of having any of the ones intended for the 12k? …or something else, entirely?
Then there is Martin’s playing down the 12k… This could be plain making an effort to direct attention to current products; Ooor it could, e.g, be utter disillusionment with 12k results – who uninitiated could tell…? :7
This is a good suggestion. The 12K will certainly be most attractive to PCVR players.
Dispensing with standalone and wifi makes sense to me. People who want to play standing could still do so just as they do with the index or 8KX.
Pimax might even be able to drop the price a bit. On the other hand, the base tracking is already created as a separate module, so I’d keep the internal tracking.
Whether it were ‘none’ or ‘very few’ was obviously not even my point, that’s pretty much the same thing. My point was that he always tries to blame things on people. Another very recent example is the 4090 lag issue thread where he first tried to blame it on the specific user’s hardware:
This has been going on since the beginning. It’s always first the user and/or his hardware. That’s his standard first line of ‘defence’. Just ask Bradley, same thing, he said Pimax employees looked at him like there was something wrong with HIM when he reported the problems he saw. That’s just so typical.
Distortion itself, in the beginning was pretty much due to the user not having good eyes, or something along those lines, odd facial shapes he even once said.
And now the most recent one is the blur. “Only 1 guy reported it out of a zillion”, implicating that it must be him somehow.
But yeah, like I said, let’s not go over all that again please.
I mean, the Index 2 (Deckard), still seems like some kind of pipe dream.
Valve is teasing stuff (intentionally?) in their software that people like Sadley has brought up a few times last year. Yet nothing really conclusive enough IMO to think we’d get the Deckard in 2023.
Maybe Valve is simply a company that doesn’t like to make official announcements unless they have a high degree of certainty that they can hit their targets. (which I respect)
Another vastly out of context example. You fail to mention I worked with numerous people on that and found afterburner was the cause for many. It didn’t solve all of them and the 3 additional instances I turned over all information I could gather to the engineering team.
Your 2nd example wasn’t even me that spoke to Bradley at CES. On that one it was I who tested and found that they included the wrong lenses and I immediately published this information.
Unfortunately these examples are emblematic of your average post. Very little objectivity and going big on subjectivity with a bias that would make politicians blush.
On a side note with bradley when he came to orlando - I had his entire video as it was filmed on my camera. Knowing what was said I turned over the entire thing, raw, and gave the courtesy of him using it anyway he saw fit.
