Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

More FoV is simply not reachable for Pimax with their current design, that's clear to me now.

Given how much effort it has taken to get this far, it does make me wonder how feasible the 12KX is for them, unless they just go to fresnel past 100 degrees.

 

[gamma123152]

Given how much effort it has taken to get this far, it does make me wonder how feasible the 12KX is for them, unless they just go to fresnel past 100 degrees.

It's a completely different lens design and it uses 16:9 panels instead of 1:1(probably) so maybe less corrections has to be made by the barrel distortion profile.

But yes I'm wondering the same, especially because of what I saw through their poly 35PPD lenses (the first lenses that I received). Those lenses were so bad that they weren't even usable.

The current normal 35PPD glass lenses with 104 FoV are amazing but the 12K will have poly material again. I'm not convinced about the 12K at all too because of this. We have to wait and see, maybe they will suprise us.

 

[RCHeliguy]

It's probably a good thing that we are both happy with what we have.

If I didn't have a Beyond, I'd probably be waiting for the VR1, but as it is, I don't see much of anything in the pipeline that is remotely interesting. Maybe some company that is good at keeping secrets will surprise us.

Sadly I've pretty well given up on Valve. Someday they may surprise me, but I have zero expectations for anything coming soon.

 

[blekenbleu]

varying amounts of CA from unit to unit.

I suppose that can be attributed to loose lens positioning tolerances.

Almalence made a HUGE improvement for the Crystal

Reports vary.

 

[gamma123152]

Reports vary.

And there's a reason for it. Many users didn't run the Crystal in high enough resolution(because of not having an 4090) to see the big difference that it makes. Also some users didn't configure the plungin properly, I helped a few users that said that they didn't see much difference, after my advice in pm they got it working and were also amazed. And it doesn't work in all titles and when a title (like UEVR for example) is blurred because of the used engine, the difference is much smaller.

In general you could state that for some users it was a massive improvement and for some users it was a small improvement. There was a VERY small amount of users (could count them on one hand) that thought that it revealed to much detail, they seemed to like the blur of no Almalence for that reason. But a big majority saw a big improvement. And objectively it corrects the flaws of the barrel distortion profile, so it's not strange that the consensus is that it's an improvement, it's just logical.

 

[RCHeliguy]

OMG agreement between a couple YouTubers.

 

[gamma123152]

OMG agreement between a couple YouTubers.

Now I gave up my last tiny bit of hope for those lenses. Sebastian is always so enthusiastic and the way that he stated it just made it clear to me that these lenses are just flawed. The Crystal is and stays at max. 104 FoV, it's okay, vertical is great(especially with open wheelers and pinball), horizontal is ok. I'm not going to trade it for more ca/color shift/worse stereo overlap/a smaller sweetspot.

"It's probably a good thing that we are both happy with what we have." "If I didn't have a Beyond, I'd probably be waiting for the VR1, but as it is, I don't see much of anything in the pipeline that is remotely interesting."

Fully agree. Maybe I'll still upgrade to the VR1, but I'm very happy with the Crystal as it is now. I would still like the extra FoV but since Artur said that the render resolution is even ~50% more demanding than the Crystal for the full FoV I started to question the product, because I don't want to trade PPD/resolution for FoV and without the 5090 I probably have to if I switch to the VR1.

And by the time that the 5090 arrived, 35PPD with the exact same panels as the Crystal(VR1 has the same panels) feel a bit outdated and overpriced, because the VR1 will be around 3000 euro including tax. and eye tracking/CA fix and the Crystal/VR1 panels are ~2,5 years old by the time of it's release.

So I'll probably stay with the Crystal until something better is released, I hope that it keeps working until then because I don't fully trust the way that it's build.

 

[RCHeliguy]

There may be a shred of hope. Apparently if you don't remove the battery and allow a full reboot, it won't update the distortion profile.

It's possible both VRFSG and MRTV didn't do that, but I would hope the instructions with the lenses would have mentioned that.

And someone said if you don't uninstall the Almalance software, it causes issues.


Anyway, I guess we will see.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just got confirmation that the Almalance software was uninstalled and he hard rebooted his crystal.
He also verified that the hard reboot was part of the instructions.

I think he was a little surprised that people were more willing to assume he did something wrong than accept he didn't like the lenses.

 

[gamma123152]

Just got confirmation that the Almalance software was uninstalled and he hard rebooted his crystal.
He also verified that the hard reboot was part of the instructions.

I think he was a little surprised that people were more willing to assume he did something wrong than accept he didn't like the lenses.

I already didn't expect much from those lenses tbh and that for a specific reason: The Crystal panels have a 1:1 native resolution of 2880x2880. The original 35PPD lenses have a matching ~1:1 FoV for that reason: both around 104 FoV, vertically and horizontally. So that causes the least amount of distortion and the best stereo overlap. With the new wide hFoV lenses they pushed above the logical limits imo, because the wide hFoV lenses try to force the 1:1 panels to widescreen image, but the panels aren't widescreen. This could only cause issues/trade off's with a single aspherical lens design. That's my simple logic at least, so I was kind of prepared to get disappointed.

 

[psinsyd]

Pimax should have gone for Almalence instead of these terrible new wide FoV lenses. I'm already sure that I won't like these wide FoV lenses because I returned the Aero because of the bad/low stereo overlap, these new lenses also seem to have that.

Eye strain/CA/worse sweetspot sound like a terrible trade off and a low stereo overlap is maybe what's causing it.

Almalence made a HUGE improvement for the Crystal, but somehow they decided that it's not needed to integrate it. Stupid moves from Pimax, but they don't disclose the real issue behind it (probably an large investment),

The visuals with the 104 FoV (I got 104 measured) glass lenses are the best on the market currently (XR-4 not counted, with 6000 euro I don't consider it as a serious option) even without Almalence but Almalence was/is a must have to make it really perfect to get rid of 90% of the color shifting/CA plus making the sweetspot much larger. So let's hope that Pimax changes it's mind about Almalence because with Almalence the visuals were as good as it could get within the 104 FoV range. More FoV is simply not reachable for Pimax with their current design, that's clear to me now.

How does one go about getting Almalence? Looking at their website, it says they're now only allowing companies/individuals that are doing studies on image quality or something to that effect. Would love to give it a shot on my Crystal.

 

[psinsyd]

It's probably a good thing that we are both happy with what we have.

If I didn't have a Beyond, I'd probably be waiting for the VR1, but as it is, I don't see much of anything in the pipeline that is remotely interesting. Maybe some company that is good at keeping secrets will surprise us.

Sadly I've pretty well given up on Valve. Someday they may surprise me, but I have zero expectations for anything coming soon.

How do you like the Beyond? Just looked it up and I'm intrigued since smaller and lighter is something I've been looking for compared to my Reverb G2s and my Crystal.

 

[RCHeliguy]

How do you like the Beyond? Just looked it up and I'm intrigued since smaller and lighter is something I've been looking for compared to my Reverb G2s and my Crystal.

If you want to know my thoughts on the Beyond, the following videos goes into detail. First my initial review after 6 days compares it to directly to my Varjo Aero and then a 2 month follow-up with a pre-production audio strap and thin cushion.

Whether it is a good fit for you very strongly depends on your personal priorities and sensitivities.

Pros: dark blacks, great color, no moire' or CA, extremely light and comfortable, very sharp in the center. The preproduction audio strap is very comfortable, with good sound.

Cons: Edge to edge clarity, requires a face scan, optometrist IPD to be safe, has a 3 month wait, may require swapping headsets out if the IPD is wrong, head strap is ships with is poor. The audio strap isn't shipping yet. Glare issues for many.

Possible Cons: persistence sensitivity, cushion comfort issues, not extremely bright (I've found it is plenty bright enough for me) FOV for some. I'm getting 90Vx100H which is close to what many are getting with the Crystal, but once again the outer 25% of the display isn't sharp.

For some the glare by itself makes the headset hard to live with. The lack of edge to edge clarity means you will need to move your head around. I small number of people have serious persistence sensitivity issues.

 

[psinsyd]

If you want to know my thoughts on the Beyond, the following videos goes into detail. First my initial review after 6 days compares it to directly to my Varjo Aero and then a 2 month follow-up with a pre-production audio strap and thin cushion.

Whether it is a good fit for you very strongly depends on your personal priorities and sensitivities.

Pros: dark blacks, great color, no moire' or CA, extremely light and comfortable, very sharp in the center. The preproduction audio strap is very comfortable, with good sound.

Cons: Edge to edge clarity, requires a face scan, optometrist IPD to be safe, has a 3 month wait, may require swapping headsets out if the IPD is wrong, head strap is ships with is poor. The audio strap isn't shipping yet. Glare issues for many.

Possible Cons: persistence sensitivity, cushion comfort issues, not extremely bright (I've found it is plenty bright enough for me) FOV for some. I'm getting 90Vx100H which is close to what many are getting with the Crystal, but once again the outer 25% of the display isn't sharp.

For some the glare by itself makes the headset hard to live with. The lack of edge to edge clarity means you will need to move your head around. I small number of people have serious persistence sensitivity issues.

Thanks so much for the detailed insight and the videos! I'll definitely be watching them, and nice Pikes Peak shirt in the first vid!....lol. Made the drive up it last year since it's @ an hour from me.

 

[Leynad777]

The Bigscreen Beyond only runs native 1920 x 1920 pixels per eye at 90 Hz, so less than the Quest 3, which has the best lenses today (even better than Apple Vision Pro), still with half the weight of a Crystal. Quest 3 is IMO the only headset to recommend these days.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The Bigscreen Beyond only runs native 1920 x 1920 pixels per eye at 90 Hz, so less than the Quest 3, which has the best lenses today (even better than Apple Vision Pro), still with half the weight of a Crystal. Quest 3 is IMO the only headset to recommend these days.

First I agree that the Quest 3 is a great bang for the buck.

However the resolution thing is only partly right.

1. The Beyond is always displaying 2,560 x 2,560 resolution, period. This is what the display is showing all the time.
2. At 90Hz it uses compression to fit the video stream into the size of 1920x1920. The end result is lossy after decompression, but still very good. I'm still rendering over 3K pixels both directions for both eyes even at 90fps and over 4K in both directions per eye at 75fps.

FWIW, it HAS to decompress to upscale properly, or they wouldn't get the results they are getting.

I still felt that the Beyond looked sharper than the Aero at 90fps in Dirt Rally 2.0. The additional contrast and lack of artifacts ( moire', CA etc ) made the resulting image look excellent.

In iRacing the difference between 75Hz and 90Hz was more noticeable to me, but I still run iRacing at 90Hz. I do run DCS at 75Hz and 75Hz on the Beyond looks much smoother than you would expect because the uOLED panels refresh about 100X faster then miniLED.

The bottom line is that this is a theoretical argument. In practice the solution works well. Yes, it absolutely is a limitation. Would I like it not to be a limitation, absolutely! No arguments there, but the implementation still works well.

 

[RCHeliguy]

FYI, in terms of the Pimax Wide angle lenses. It was admitted that because of the poor QC by Pimax that it's possible both Steve and MRTV got dud lenses and that it's possible that there are examples of good lenses, mostly because the normal lenses also have quality control issues.

 

[cnhoff]

The bottom line is that this is a theoretical argument.

It's by no means a theoretical argument. Calling it that is the same as calling a heavily compressed mp3 file the same as High-end lossless audio.
It might work ok, but it is still a major limitation that people have to be aware of, to dismiss the loss in clarity or not.

 

[Leynad777]

First I agree that the Quest 3 is a great bang for the buck.

However the resolution thing is only partly right.

1. The Beyond is always displaying 2,560 x 2,560 resolution, period. This is what the display is showing all the time.
2. At 90Hz it uses compression to fit the video stream into the size of 1920x1920. The end result is lossy after decompression, but still very good. I'm still rendering over 3K pixels both directions for both eyes even at 90fps and over 4K in both directions per eye at 75fps.

FWIW, it HAS to decompress to upscale properly, or they wouldn't get the results they are getting.

I still felt that the Beyond looked sharper than the Aero at 90fps in Dirt Rally 2.0. The additional contrast and lack of artifacts ( moire', CA etc ) made the resulting image look excellent.

In iRacing the difference between 75Hz and 90Hz was more noticeable to me, but I still run iRacing at 90Hz. I do run DCS at 75Hz and 75Hz on the Beyond looks much smoother than you would expect because the uOLED panels refresh about 100X faster then miniLED.

The bottom line is that this is a theoretical argument. In practice the solution works well. Yes, it absolutely is a limitation. Would I like it not to be a limitation, absolutely! No arguments there, but the implementation still works well.

This explanation sounds confusing. The BSB is so small because it's basically only a dual-display. The DP-port is not the limiting factor, so the BSB on 90 Hz is like running a 4k display at 1440p with a game, you can still upscale to a fake 4k resolution, like this resolution-slider in ACC. But whatever you run, you only get the 1920p into the headset. Unfortunately there are no proper comparisons I know of with the Quest 3 and Link cable at 700+ MBit. I think the Quest 3 might be the winner because of it's better lenses.

 

[RCHeliguy]

It's by no means a theoretical argument. Calling it that is the same as calling a heavily compressed mp3 file the same as High-end lossless audio.
It might work ok, but it is still a major limitation that people have to be aware of, to dismiss the loss in clarity or not.

It is a limitation and I would love it to be the same quality at 90Hz as 75Hz. There are times when I would notice it.