My Pimax Crystal Review

[j9murphy]

My Pimax Crystal Review 

This will be brief, to the point, and opinionated of course:)

This is the 4th headset i have used now - Odyssey+, Quest 2, Reverb G2, now Pimax Crystal
Alternatives I considered before buying the Crystal: Quest Pro, Aero, waiting till next year.
What I use it for: DCS, FS2020, XPlane (not yet tested)
My system: 13900K, 32GB Ram, 4090

Comfort/Weight:  worst by far of all the headsets I have experience with, the Apache strap does help quite a bit, cant imagine a long session without that.  With the thick foam pad (additional purchase) you can wear glasses, but the headset then puts pressure on the nose.  I will be ordering lenses from Hons VR, I think that will address that issue.  The cable pulls down on the headset to a degree that I never noticed with G2.  Still considering ways to address that. I don't expect this headset ever to be as comfortable as the G2, but with those mods, it should be "tolerable".

Screens: the best part of the crystal, huge upgrade from the G2.  It is NOT crystal clear all the way to the edges, but it is clear enough most of the way out not to affect game play.  You only notice if you look for it. There is also some coma at the edges. I do have the glass lenses for anyone wondering.  Honestly, this is the only thing that makes you keep the crystal and put up with the other deficiencies. It's a FANTASTIC view.

FOV: vertical is really nice, I can see the edges if I really look but that it's a really nice VFOV.  horizontal is really not much better (if any) to the G2, if it is better it does not improve game play, speed perception, or anything else in the game.

Setup: Went pretty easy for me, but that was ONLY because of tremendous amount of doc/video from the web.  What you get from Pimax is not much help at all, although they link to a video on their website (that they didn't produce) that get's you started.  

72hz: not GA yet, didn't test

Motion Smoothing: doesn't work in the current version, fix promised in the next release

Performance:  I get more stutters with the pimax than i did with the G2, that may be due to not being able to use motion smoothing yet, but I'm sure it's also due to the sheer number of pixels being pushed. I can use the headset at full res, but I get better performance with PiTools at .75 and XRToolkit at about 3600.  Still a work in progress here, but DLSS, 72hz, motion smoothing will affect what is ultimately achievable.  Even with out those I'm mostly happy, but I miss butter smooth that I had with my G2 at the moment while I continue to tune. Quadviews, PimaxXR, Dynamic FOV are all must haves, without those, the headset would not perform adequately and would be going back.

Am I keeping it?  Yes

[Peedee]

3 hours ago, j9murphy said:

My Pimax Crystal Review 

This will be brief, to the point, and opinionated of course:)

This is the 4th headset i have used now - Odyssey+, Quest 2, Reverb G2, now Pimax Crystal
Alternatives I considered before buying the Crystal: Quest Pro, Aero, waiting till next year.
What I use it for: DCS, FS2020, XPlane (not yet tested)
My system: 13900K, 32GB Ram, 4090

Comfort/Weight:  worst by far of all the headsets I have experience with, the Apache strap does help quite a bit, cant imagine a long session without that.  With the thick foam pad (additional purchase) you can wear glasses, but the headset then puts pressure on the nose.  I will be ordering lenses from Hons VR, I think that will address that issue.  The cable pulls down on the headset to a degree that I never noticed with G2.  Still considering ways to address that. I don't expect this headset ever to be as comfortable as the G2, but with those mods, it should be "tolerable".

Screens: the best part of the crystal, huge upgrade from the G2.  It is NOT crystal clear all the way to the edges, but it is clear enough most of the way out not to affect game play.  You only notice if you look for it. There is also some coma at the edges. I do have the glass lenses for anyone wondering.  Honestly, this is the only thing that makes you keep the crystal and put up with the other deficiencies. It's a FANTASTIC view.

FOV: vertical is really nice, I can see the edges if I really look but that it's a really nice VFOV.  horizontal is really not much better (if any) to the G2, if it is better it does not improve game play, speed perception, or anything else in the game.

Setup: Went pretty easy for me, but that was ONLY because of tremendous amount of doc/video from the web.  What you get from Pimax is not much help at all, although they link to a video on their website (that they didn't produce) that get's you started.  

72hz: not GA yet, didn't test

Motion Smoothing: doesn't work in the current version, fix promised in the next release

Performance:  I get more stutters with the pimax than i did with the G2, that may be due to not being able to use motion smoothing yet, but I'm sure it's also due to the sheer number of pixels being pushed. I can use the headset at full res, but I get better performance with PiTools at .75 and XRToolkit at about 3600.  Still a work in progress here, but DLSS, 72hz, motion smoothing will affect what is ultimately achievable.  Even with out those I'm mostly happy, but I miss butter smooth that I had with my G2 at the moment while I continue to tune. Quadviews, PimaxXR, Dynamic FOV are all must haves, without those, the headset would not perform adequately and would be going back.

Am I keeping it?  Yes

Thanks for your review
 

Everyone seem to have different opinions about the Fov. My horizontal fov is for certain bigger than Reverb G2  
 

PiTool is old software. You should use the latest version of Pimax Play. 
 

I run it at 3800x something (set by openxr toolkit) and use Quadview. Smooth.   Hope you get it tweaked for your system so it gives you smooth performance too. 
 

Also, since you are coming from G2 - if you ever use SteamVR for a game you will most likely experience the “resolution bug” which will lead you to not experience higher resolution than 3240x even if you set it higher for that game. So if something doesn’t look as good as you expected and you use SteamVR then that could be the reason   

Good luck and enjoy your headset

[j9murphy]

I typed the wrong thing above, I'm using Pimax Play, not PiTools.  I hope I find a good path to smoothness as well!

[Go2Matt]

21 hours ago, Peedee said:

Thanks for your review
 

Everyone seem to have different opinions about the Fov. My horizontal fov is for certain bigger than Reverb G2  
 

 

Dont forget the FOV will change the tighter you have the head strap (ie. Your eyes are closer/Further away from the lenses)

I got my Pimax last week. Got the Apache strap today which helps.. I need to spend some more time getting it set up. But im having issues with it resting on my nose(Which isn't big) Or I move the headset up a bit more and lose Vertical FOV. Well gain upper but lose the lower view.

Quality of the visuals is fantastic but the comfort leaves a lot to be desired...

[bomber]

On 10/18/2023 at 9:59 PM, Peedee said:

Thanks for your review
 

Everyone seem to have different opinions about the Fov. My horizontal fov is for certain bigger than Reverb G2  
 

PiTool is old software. You should use the latest version of Pimax Play. 
 

I run it at 3800x something (set by openxr toolkit) and use Quadview. Smooth.   Hope you get it tweaked for your system so it gives you smooth performance too. 
 

Also, since you are coming from G2 - if you ever use SteamVR for a game you will most likely experience the “resolution bug” which will lead you to not experience higher resolution than 3240x even if you set it higher for that game. So if something doesn’t look as good as you expected and you use SteamVR then that could be the reason   

Good luck and enjoy your headset

I’ve seen this a couple of times, of running at a reduced res in open XR. What is the benefit when you can reduce pixels (or increase) in the Quadviews companion? Eg 75%. ?

 

[j9murphy]

I'm starting to ask the same question... There are so many places to set resolution..

DCS PD, Pimax Play, QVFR, OpenXR Toolkit...  I've lost track of how to use these together in a coherent way lol, but I'm convinced that's why people have such different experiences on similar hardware.   would love a tuning "recipe" which said 'start here', then have branches of what to do next based on what you see, but now we've added even more permutations with DLAA/DLSS/TAA/MSAA etc...  I get that its always a game of quality vs performance but I always seem to be chasing my tail.

Another factor with the pimax is that the high resolution of the display is both your friend and enemy compared to other headsets.  I can run the  pimax with no msaa because the resolution of the display doesnt create shimmering and aliasing (ymmv) like I saw in the G2. but since I dont need msaa (again ymmv) dlss/dlaa/taa just add more overhead than just running without, so why use them unless I can render at lower resolution and upscale with one of those to create more room to turn more gpu candy on, which I'm struggling to do..

Xplane has a great addon tool which dynamically adjusts the level of detail based on the frame rate.  This is a great thing in my opinion because as the number of things to render goes up it will maintain fps and smoothness by lowering the quality to maintain a minimum frame rate and vice versa. it does this by adjusting the render distance, the cockpit stays clear, but objects in the distance are rendered at less detail.  I find this to be an acceptable tradeoff for me because studders and jitters destroy the immersion for me faster than minor changes in quality (imho).

anyway, I digress...

[Peedee]

7 hours ago, bomber said:

I’ve seen this a couple of times, of running at a reduced res in open XR. What is the benefit when you can reduce pixels (or increase) in the Quadviews companion? Eg 75%. ?

 

Good question  For me it was just simplicity. I have never downloaded Quadviews companion app, not sure it existed the first time I started using Quadviews - or at least I was not aware of its existence then. So, all settings in Quadviews were at default first time I ran it. I had to manually edit the settings file if I wanted change anything , but since the Quadviews info webpage stated that default settings would work for most people, I didn’t care to experiment much with it. And since I was already used to OpenXR toolkit and adjusting resolution there, I set to 3800x(4497 ish) and got excellent results in terms of clarity and fps when I installed Quadviews. 
 

So now it’s set, and forgotten one might say, for DCS. Don’t wanna spend any more time tinkering - I want to fly…. 
 

Don’t want to download yet another app to fly…. Now I have/use Pimax Play, PimaxXR, OpenXR Toolkit, and Quadviews is installed too with default settings…. So no Quadviews companion app for me. Enough is enough for now. The end result in terms of pixels would be the same since I don’t change anything else in Quadviews either. So, for me it was easier. 

[bomber]

So now it’s set, and forgotten one might say, for DCS. Don’t wanna spend any more time tinkering - I want to fly…

.  Too true, times I think I’ve spent 50% of my time fiddling with hardware or software