Pimax Crystal Light Distortion question?

[Uncle]

Hey. 

So I just got my Pimax crystal light its super sharp, however it feels like something is off. Im not sure if its just me being used to a Rift S or I have a faulty headset. 

When I move my face from left to right there seems to be this tiny distortion effect in the middle, almost like you are looking through the bottom of a glass bottle. 

And when I look left, right up or down it also feels like the picture is going towards me. Almost like you looking though a fish-eye lens. 

Due to this distortion i can only play around 20 min before I get really nauseous. 

Currently I own a Rift S which I can play with for hours. 
 

I've tested this in DCS and in the regular bootup level that comes with pimax play

Am I doing something wrong in my setup or is that just how the headset is and im just used to my old Rift S? 

[av8orDave]

1 hour ago, Uncle said:

Hey. 

So I just got my Pimax crystal light its super sharp, however it feels like something is off. Im not sure if its just me being used to a Rift S or I have a faulty headset. 

When I move my face from left to right there seems to be this tiny distortion effect in the middle, almost like you are looking through the bottom of a glass bottle. 

And when I look left, right up or down it also feels like the picture is going towards me. Almost like you looking though a fish-eye lens. 

Due to this distortion i can only play around 20 min before I get really nauseous. 

Currently I own a Rift S which I can play with for hours. 
 

I've tested this in DCS and in the regular bootup level that comes with pimax play

Am I doing something wrong in my setup or is that just how the headset is and im just used to my old Rift S? 

What it sounds like you are describing is why I stopped using the original Pimax Crystal. My experience with the headset was that the "sweet spot" in the middle of the screen was so small it was practically useless. Any slight mispositioning of the headset, or glance with your eyes to the right or left, and you'd get a ton of "distortion." I also never solved the pretty significant "fish-eye" effect of the lenses. Sure, it has a sharp image in the middle, assuming you can get it perfectly aligned on your head, don't move too much, and are ok with the fish-eye / barrel effect.

[Johnny Dioxin]

You'd be better off asking here - specifically type u/QuorraPimax in your post - he's very active there and has helped a lot of people. Maybe use this thread:

 

 

[Calvin.Pimax]

Hello @Uncle

Do you notice this issue in both eyes, or is it only occurring in one eye?

Based on your description, it could be related to the lens, but we'll need to investigate further to identify the exact cause.

 

Hey @Johnny Dioxin , pleasure to meet ; I'm Quorra 

Thanks for sharing that thread around! I'm checking this forum as well, but I'm mainly active in the Pimax subcategory.

[Tom Kazansky]

3 minutes ago, Calvin.Pimax said:

Thanks for sharing that thread around! I'm checking this forum as well...

That's pretty cool and good to know.

I'm on the fence to change my G2 to something new/better and appreciate any news on this topic from close to pimax as it can be, so thank you Quorra

[Calvin.Pimax]

9 minutes ago, Tom Kazansky said:

That's pretty cool and good to know.

I'm on the fence to change my G2 to something new/better and appreciate any news on this topic from close to pimax as it can be, so thank you Quorra

You're most welcome, mate.

Just doing my part to ensure our users have a good time with our headset. Of course, there might be exceptions when issues arise, but I'm always here to provide assistance.

[Calvin.Pimax]

Lovely! Indeed, I do connected with many users on Reddit and Discord!

Now it's time to meet some fighters here. 

[Uncle]

On 7/30/2024 at 10:11 AM, Calvin.Pimax said:

Hello @Uncle

Do you notice this issue in both eyes, or is it only occurring in one eye?

Based on your description, it could be related to the lens, but we'll need to investigate further to identify the exact cause.

 

Yeah its In both eyes. its not very much, but enough to be a bit off. 

[Calvin.Pimax]

I suggest filing a support ticket and allowing our tech support to provide further assistance. I guess a replacement lenses will solve the issue

[warmachine79]

I received my Pimax Crystal Light, too, and honestly, I am very disappointed. Even in terms of clarity, the picture of the Q3 via VXDR and WLAN is better despite the significantly lower resolution. Although I maxed out Gamma and Brightness, the picture of the Pimax Crystal Light is somewhat dark. Also, it is blurry and I only get clear letter readings with one eye at a time. It seems to me that the screen or whatever it is called in a VR headset has great potential but the lenses ruin it all. I can get a sharp picture for one eye if I close the other one and move the headset around. But this sweetspot is immensely small! No matter what IPD settings I tried (I measured my IPD, it is 65.3), the other eye wont get a sharp picture. For the right eye it is almost impossible to get a clear picture, only in a very weird headset position. I also tried "pulling" the headset away from my head as I read reports about the eyes being to close to the lens. The colors are distorted, too. The FPS figure from OpenXR toolkit companion overlay is yellow-ish-green with some colors around it, only if I move the headset so that the FPS figure is in the middle it becomes clear. I also noticed chromatic aberration from hell in Automobilista 2. 

Edited August 9, 2024 by warmachine79

[Aapje]

@warmachine79

You may have an asymmetric face, so your eyes are a different distance from the center. 

[Hartsblade]

14 hours ago, warmachine79 said:

I received my Pimax Crystal Light, too, and honestly, I am very disappointed. Even in terms of clarity, the picture of the Q3 via VXDR and WLAN is better despite the significantly lower resolution. Although I maxed out Gamma and Brightness, the picture of the Pimax Crystal Light is somewhat dark. Also, it is blurry and I only get clear letter readings with one eye at a time. It seems to me that the screen or whatever it is called in a VR headset has great potential but the lenses ruin it all. I can get a sharp picture for one eye if I close the other one and move the headset around. But this sweetspot is immensely small! No matter what IPD settings I tried (I measured my IPD, it is 65.3), the other eye wont get a sharp picture. For the right eye it is almost impossible to get a clear picture, only in a very weird headset position. I also tried "pulling" the headset away from my head as I read reports about the eyes being to close to the lens. The colors are distorted, too. The FPS figure from OpenXR toolkit companion overlay is yellow-ish-green with some colors around it, only if I move the headset so that the FPS figure is in the middle it becomes clear. I also noticed chromatic aberration from hell in Automobilista 2. 

 

Two things to try/consider.  Try cleaning the lenses thoroughly. Some folks are reporting some "glue" left behind by the plastic protective cover used for shipping.  Also try re-seating toe lenses. Some have reported that the lenses in their hmd were not seated correctly when installed.

[warmachine79]

14 hours ago, Hartsblade said:

Two things to try/consider.  Try cleaning the lenses thoroughly. Some folks are reporting some "glue" left behind by the plastic protective cover used for shipping.  Also try re-seating toe lenses. Some have reported that the lenses in their hmd were not seated correctly when installed.

Yeah I removed the lenses and cleaned the lenses front and back and also the mirrors behind. Still, there is hardly any improvement. 

[п-к В НАТУРЕ]

On 8/1/2024 at 1:11 PM, Calvin.Pimax said:

I suggest filing a support ticket and allowing our tech support to provide further assistance. I guess a replacement lenses will solve the issue

Calvin can you clarify this?  How its possible if we paid for glass actually? 

Edited August 14, 2024 by п-к В НАТУРЕ

[Dangerzone]

1 hour ago, п-к В НАТУРЕ said:

Calvin can you clarify this?  How its possible if we paid for glass actually? 

 

The only reference of this I can find is here:

https://community.openmr.com/t/crystal-shipping-update/40766

Which appears to be from last year, so most likely talking about the Pimax Crystal, not the Crystal Light? 

Edited August 14, 2024 by Dangerzone

[Calvin.Pimax]

7 hours ago, п-к В НАТУРЕ said:

Calvin can you clarify this?  How its possible if we paid for glass actually? 

 

This is from the earliest batch of Crystal, not Crystal Light.

All Crystal series headsets now come with glass lenses. We no longer manufacture polycarbonate lenses for the Crystal series.

[Marklar]

On 7/29/2024 at 1:48 PM, Uncle said:

Almost like you looking though a fish-eye lens.

Hi Uncle. Did you find a solution to fix it or did Pimax send you better lenses? I just got my Crystal Light and this barrel distortion is awful. 

[mgpinard]

On 7/29/2024 at 8:48 AM, Uncle said:

When I move my face from left to right there seems to be this tiny distortion effect in the middle, almost like you are looking through the bottom of a glass bottle. 

And when I look left, right up or down it also feels like the picture is going towards me. Almost like you looking though a fish-eye lens. 
 

Hi Uncle,

I also would like to know if this was resolved

 

[TK-421]

I am experiencing the same thing, just received my headset today. Honestly the best way I can describe it is when you don't require glasses and you put a set of glasses on from one of your mates who is short sighted. 

This was just giving me a head ache, like as you described looking through the bottom of the coke bottle. I get this weird wavey spot in the centre, like it's lifting off the screen, like I am staring at a convex image... maybe it has something to do with foveated rendering? 

Like if I am still and I look dead centre the image is great, but anytime I move my head or the headset shifts a little I feel like throwing up. 

Mind you I have had a Valve Index for over 4 years and never had an issue. 

On 8/15/2024 at 3:44 PM, Calvin.Pimax said:

This is from the earliest batch of Crystal, not Crystal Light.

All Crystal series headsets now come with glass lenses. We no longer manufacture polycarbonate lenses for the Crystal series.

Any help from these issues?

[Aapje]

@TK-421

You may have a defective headset. Foveated rendering has nothing to do with this. It just results in some parts of the screen being sharper than others.

[Tensorial_Architect]

I have owned or used roughly ten Pimax headsets over the past five years. Only one, a 5K worked reliably out of the box with no snafus. The Crystal and Crystal Light I own now are not unusable but they do host several annoying problems, with some being mentioned above. Because of this long-term experience, I usually regard their headsets as late beta-release models. It becomes a major time suck to try and fix all their problems, ... and for those who are not tech savvy or just want to get straight into VR flying, they are an experience I do not recommend.

[TK-421]

Okay I think what it is called is "barrel distortion", and it sucks.

Although now my struggle is finding decent stable FPS performance.

Honestly my old Valve Index seems to have been better atm. I had higher graphics settings, stable FPS and didn't even use foveated rendering. 

On the pimax device settings I turned on the 90 Hz Upscale(lab) refresh rate, render quality to high. 

I disabled the OpenXR quad view and central priority rendering as I'm using the quad view setting in DCS to get that running. 

I downloaded the Quadviews companion and have it set on default. 

I am also using the hidden area mask option on pimax. 

Smart smoothing is turned off. 

My openXR run time is set to Pimax OpenXR apparently. Also don't know if this normal but even if I have steamVR open if I run DCS it turns off SteamVR?

I downloaded the OpenXR toolkit and the PimaxXR control centre but I don't think I need them?

In game my pixel density is set to 1, and all other settings were low or off. 

I booted up the cold start in the f-4 on afghan and I get about 75 FPS just sitting there but turning my head it drops to like 50ish to 30ish and it feels laggy, like there isn't a consistent refresh or frame rate. In game it says it is only using like 44% of my GPU. 

Edited January 17 by TK-421

[TK-421]

*** update ***

So I think the pimax is rendering so much higher than my valve index that I needed to pull the throttle all the way back. Going off some other info on the forums here I noticed an issue where it seems like the spikes were causing stuttering. Like I had excellent 60 plus FPS but it would constantly stutter when I moved my head? Super annoying. 

Anyway going on some advice I dropped the pimax render setting to low (0.8), and refresh rate to 72.

Internal to DCS I set pixel density at 0.8 as well and reverted back to my settings I used with my index which gave me a stable experience. 

Seems to have fixed the stutters, but I'm still getting the barrel distortion effect. 

The graphics have been turned down slightly, so basically the Pimax at its lowest setting is still rendering higher than the index was. So to compensate I had to lower in game settings. 

Long story short, MSAA at 2x, DLSS off, textures med, terrain low, vis range med, everything else low or off. 

I'm not using quad views, instead only the pimax version of whatever it's called but is similar but not as drastic.