I was one of the few(or many) depending on who you ask, that had issues with eye strain with all the wide FOV Pimax headsets.
Some conclude this issue is from the canted displays.
Does anyone confirm if the new Crystal will have canted or straight displays?? The body looks like the 12K unit and Im pretty sure they are canted.
I’m not 100 percent sure I will get either of them. (Money is alot tighter for me nowadays) but since FOV is most important to me if I do go ahead with one it will definitely be the 12k. The nice thing about it coming later is alot of the tech in it will be debuted and tested by the masses when the Crystal releases. This will give 12k buyers alot of real world info on the underlying tech running these two headsets and hopefully if there are any outstanding problems they can be squashed before the 12k release.
My money is pretty tight, so I’ll choose Crystal.
I just need my headset to show high-resolution videos, no games invovled. Crystal’s 42ppi fits perfectly with this purpose. Originally I worried about the narrow FOV, but after using Quest 2 I concluded that a wide FOV is actually not that important.
The other factor is mobility. I love the standalone mode of Quest 2. Don’t want to be limited by the computer any more. Plus if the XR2 chip can handle 8k videos smoothly, then I can save the money of buying a new GPU, while having the best video quality headset Pimax can offer.
Hi,
I will wait before deciding to buy the Crystal. Want to see more tests and reviews first. I am afraid that my 3090 will not be able to handle the 12k and I don’t want to buy a 4090 after having spent a fortune on my 3090.
Since the FOV of the Crystal is about the same as my Index, I can live with that as long as the picture is super sharp throughout its entire range of view. If the Crystal only has a small sweet spot then it will be a no go.
To ask, who is getting a 12K is ridiculous, isn´t it? I hope we really will see the product to be revealed. If I am able to order it, I will do. To be able to order here means, it must be offered first. It may be end of this year,… or end of next year… or later… who knows. For sure, I will not order a Crystal, just because of the narrow FoV. Neither I would buy any other headset with narrow FoV. I just will not go below the level of th PIMAX 8KX, regardless what they or any competitor offer.
Skipping Crystal and going straight for 12K.
The Crystal seems to be some kind of stop-gap for the inevitable 12K Delay.
A lot of people seem to be afraid that their GPU which they’re using now for the 8KX will not be enough for the 12K. It’s like they imagine that if they don’t have enough GPU to run the higher native resolution, then they should not buy it.
That is erroneous thinking. To begin with, there is no such thing as rendering to native resolution on a VR headset. That is a concept from computer monitors which does not apply to VR.
You will be able to run the 12K at exactly the same rendering resolution that you are using with the 8KX now, and it will look better. The image will be sharper especially toward the periphery, have less distortion, have less SDE, and will have better colors and contrast.
On top of that, the eye tracking will enable DFR which will allow for running much higher rendering resolution at the same frame rate you were getting before on your 8KX.
But even if you don’t believe any of that foveated rendering magic will actually work, you can still run the same rendering resolution as you were on the 8KX. It will be entirely reasonable to do that. And it will still have a substantially improved display quality over the 8KX while enjoying the same frame rates as before.
If your current GPU can handle the 8KX, then it can handle the 12K.
Not sure that I agree here.
I appreciate that the resolution isn‘t displayed 1:1 as rendered due to barrel distortion etc., and that you will have a slightly better picture if you have more physical pixels at your disposal e.g. due to smart upscaling on the headset processing side.
But you will not get the same picture quality per inch if you have to render a FoV which is 25% larger. The math checks out here. And to be clear, for a gamer the wide FoV of an 8KX is great, and the even wider FoV of an 12K would be super, but in many games you will be focusing on the middle 50 degrees where the action is and you need the visual fidelity you experienced with your 8KX to at the very least not be disappointed. And I don‘t expect to see the small gains due to higher (non-utilized) PPI outweigh the lack of less GPU power for each of these render resolution pixels.
As mentioned, I felt my 8KX did not perform at the level it could potentially with my 2080Ti, so a new 4090 may be breathing a second life into it. For a 12K without end2end DFR I would expect to have to run it at settings which diminish its potential advantages over competing headseats to a degree that it becomes pointless for me to purchase one in 2023. Ahead of its time in FoV & pixel count, but probably not so much in other areas which could mean it will never really provide the best experience at any point in time.
But we will just have to wait until they release. There are lots of theoretical arguments we can throw at each other, but the proof is in the pudding, so let’s wait and let the headsets do the talking when the time has come.
That is true. So don’t render at an FOV which is 25% larger.
We already know the 12K will have adjustable FOV. It’s an easy guess that it will have an FOV setting that is similar to the 8KX. So use that if you’re trying to run the same settings as you were running before on an 8KX.
On the 8KX, the extreme edges of its widest FOV are blurry. The same is likely to be true on the 12K… only those edges are further out. The implication is that if you restrict it to the same FOV as the 8KX, it’s probably a lot sharper out to the edges than the 8KX at the same FOV.
I’m hard pressed to think of VR games where peripheral vision doesn’t matter. I mean, yes, you’re focusing on the center portion most of the time, but usually when something that matters comes up in your peripheral vision, it matters a lot.
I say this right now having just come from playing Contractors VR where I was dominating a bunch of enemy players with a 7:1 kill ratio in terrain where I could sneak around in the weeds. I was absolutely taking advantage of the 8KX’s FOV and fidelity and my knowledge of the enemy players’ narrow FOV limits. I could see them trying to flank me and sneak up on me, but they could not see me doing the same. It was really unfair.
Even for something like walkabout mini golf it makes a big difference because I can easily see the hole and the ball, whereas my Index wielding friends can only see one or the other at a time.
When I’m playing co-op VR games with my friends, I routinely spot stuff they missed. Objects on the ground that they just walked past because you have to constantly pan and scan with a narrow FOV headset, and it’s just much easier to miss stuff.
A very typical exchange when I’m playing VR games with my friends goes like:
Friend: “How did you spot that?!”
Me: “Pimax.”
Friend: “Pay to win! Cheater!”
Me: “Yup.”
I have to agree with that. I formerly had a 2080 Super, and I waited until I got a 3080 Ti before buying an 8KX. And even the 3080 Ti can’t max it out. I think the 2080 Ti is around the bottom of the range that can reasonably drive an 8KX, and admittedly that makes my comments about still being able to run a 12K and get more out of it less true in that case.
If I had less than a 3080, I’d put my money into upgrading the GPU before upgrading from an 8KX to a 12K.
Sure, I can restrict the 12K to a narrower FoV and lower settings in general, and it will run with my current 2080Ti.
But - what’s the point in buying it in 2023 then ? It would end up being an even heavier headset giving me an 8KX or even lesser experience.
Why would I go out and pay big bucks for a device which would give me the 8KX experience for the next 2 years ? Sure, in 2025 with a then-current high-end GPU it finally would come to the fore - but by that time chances are >50% that I would be able to buy an even better headset (save for the ultra-wide FoV) and that would mean that the 12K at no point in time really gave me a better experience than the competing headsets available at such time.
And I am not going to dish out 2+ grand just for the hope that it will still be top notch in 2025 (actually I do not believe it will).
If you are absolutely mad about as wide a FoV as you can get, this is your device, no question - but I am not. For me it’s a trade-off between different specs which needs to hit my sweet spot, and I have doubts about the conceptual approach Pimax took with the 12K. If the XR2 is simply required to help processing for the enourmous resolution by applying split rendering (similar to what is being said of the Valve Deckard), that justifies the inclusion of the additional weight & cost, but I want to see all of that work out with average Joe’s PC, SteamVR library and his average technical skills.
Aspheric lenses in the center? QLED with MicroLED dimmable backlight? Wireless capability? AutoIPD? Inside out tracking and almost no setup? A lot of other things as well.
12K launch 2023 confirmed?
My response wasn’t related to the date he stated there is essentially no benefit to the 12k beyond the wider fov. There is much more to it than that.
My discussion here revolved around the question if this headset would still be worth the price tag even if the full resolution & FoV cannot be taken advantage of for another 2-3 years until the GPU‘s catch up; at least for a user mostly interested in playing VR games. If Pimax nail all the features you noted, it could still be worth the money - time (independent reviews) will tell…
And if my previous Pimax headsets have been anything - „almost no setup“ never was part of the offering, and we will have to see how well Pimax manages this shift in paradigm.
I swear my 8kX has aspheric lenses at the center. I mean i dont see the fresnel if thats not the case. So what does the change imply as far as benefit over 8kx
Also will the 12k have interchangible lenses? Im sure that was clarified elsewhere, but…I think i crossed my wires while interested in the Crystal - would surprise me if so because theyre huge.
Can I confirm the 12k will use 2x1.4DP? Or is that STILL unsdecided?
I keep seeing this kind of thinking come up over and over again. There’s this notion that the GPU must be able to max out the displays on the headset.
I believe this is a holdover from flat monitors where it really doesn’t make sense to buy a monitor with higher resolution than your GPU can drive. Particularly because there’s a substantial benefit to rendering at 1:1 native resolution of the monitor. The higher resolution monitor you buy, the slower your desktop is going to run all else being equal. So there are good reasons to prefer lower resolution displays.
Consider if Pimax were to up the specification on the 12K to have 100K displays with no increase in cost, weight, or any other detriment. No GPUs for the foreseeable future will be able to drive 100K displays at native resolution. By the logic above, this would make the product complete trash. The higher the maximum resolution, the more trash the headset becomes.
But in reality, that’s not true at all. The hypothetical 100K displays would be great! The reasons to not buy monitors that are higher resolution than your GPU can handle don’t apply to VR headsets.
Feeding a 4K per eye image to a 100K per eye display will look substantially better than feeding the same 4K per eye image to a 4K per eye display. And FPS will not be reduced at all. There are no inherent downsides to the higher resolution panels.
And all of this is ignoring the fact that the 12K will have eye tracking and DFR which will allow running higher rendering resolutions at the same frame rate on the same GPU.
That is the primary goal of the project. Went from LH to inside out, manual IPD to auto, led to qled with dimmable backlight to eliminate need for color calibration, automatic audio equalizer integrated on device so no need for software calibration, wigig that runs externally and is driverless, internal controller tracking and more.
Almost every hassle point has a direct attempt to address. Manual config still possible but even that is much easier because the setup platform is always the same and it has internal storage to save the config. The idea is to put it on and use it for pcvr or stand-alone with little or no interaction/setup.
So when are you going to release?
Hmm, this conjures a follow-up question: Multiple configs, for different users? :7
I hope display port 2.0 will be supported since new GPUs will have that . Dual display port 1.4 isnt stable and a bit buggy.