Gun Jam Posted 16 hours ago Posted 16 hours ago I have good eyesight but close up is a bit degraded I can still read cell phone text messages 0 issue but its most comfortable from 1 foot 5" away... further is fine but closer gets blurry and I cant focus on it. My primary VR unit has been the G2 I have used it for many years and have tons of hrs in dcs with it. Its been flaky the last 10 months probably because of a failing cable. The audio quit working and its hard to start up and the whole time its running its constantly disconnecting and reconnecting some USB thing (probably mic or audio) as you can hear it chime but I was using until yesterday. I had the VR1. It was an abysmal experience. It was suppose to replace my dying g2 5 months ago. It sucked on all fronts for 4000 bucks I expected the image to at least be clear. That sucked big time too. the center FOV was blurry and it was so bad I really can't imagine they all looked like this "how the hell did this get past inspection" I tried what I could with it but quickly lost motivation as it felt like a hardware issue and Somnium was always bragging about how awesome their quality control was... I didn't even bother trying to return it to get it inspected (no refund in US). I'm assuming it either doesn't work with my brain or it was damaged in shipping. a bunch of distortion, chromatic aberration, slight double vision and blurry center FOV. I knew I was screwed after 5 seconds of using it. "**** it's not ****ing collimated what the ****!!!" was the knee jerk words I spit out after putting it on. It looked like broken binoculars or a bent rifle scope. I was worried it was because aspheric lens suck with my brain or a bunch of people with caveman eyeballs are using these things and they are so blind they can't tell wtf is going on. I was super nervous I would be stuck with the g2 for another 4 years My super arrived 3 hrs ago and I gave it a shot... 1) The package is awesome and arrived unscratched it's well secured and protected without setting the buyer back 500 bucks for a pelican case they dont want (vr1) its cardboard and foam.. it's fine 10/10 2) its looks well built and compact enough its bigger than the G2 but its still reasonable the VR1 sticks out from your face too far this is less oddly proportioned it would be nice if it was a pound lighter but this is fine I can deal no problem. 3) after taking it out of the box the first thing I investigated was the cable. The VR1 had 2 of them (ultimate edition) this only has one but the cable on the super kind of sucks. its very stiff and heavy The Vr1, despite having 2 of them wins here as they were nice and supple and were just slightly less annoying than the single cable on the super. It wont even lay flat its still trying to coil up like it was in the box. This will probably need a ceiling mounted hanger. I guess you cant win em all. 4) Let's try out the fit... Put it on and meh. it's kind sucky not horrid but its far from good. the PSVR and G2 are pretty much the gold standard in fit. Companies be like " let's invest 4 million to develop a face interface and headstrap for our new VR headset. NO!!!! just copy the g2 and modify it as little as possible to make it work with your VR headset. OR maybe they didn't invest 4 million in R&D for their new HMD strap and thats the problem??? It doesn't seem like it can be adjusted to fit right and there is too much gap on the sides, also its just seems like it doesnt want to sit level and wants to drop to one side. However it AT LEAST feels like it has some curve to it and has "SOME" degree of proper fit. its like a 5/10 you can tell its kind of trying to fit right. The VR1 felt like strapping a hard back book to your face it was so bad it actually made me angry " Dude... WHAT THE ****" was the instant reaction... The super was more like " ugh... whatever ill deal with this later" 5) let's test it out in Steam VR house as that was my primary test room with the VR1. I would always get a chuckle out of the people who would complain that the image on a vr headset sucked and after much troubleshooting figured out it was because the lens protectors were still stuck on there. SO every new HMD I get I make sure to leave them on just for fun and my first 2 minutes is spent looking at the WMR house, Steam house or in this case the Pimax planet thing. The Pimax planet loads and Im super worried this is going to suck again and I put on the HMD with screen protectors in place... AND.... Its ****ing AWESOME the image is already way better than the VR1. This is great, I look around and everything is in focus I can tell within 1 second that this Is a win its way ahead of the VR1 even with the screen protectors in place over all its worse than the G2 at this point but I feel WAY better. I remove the screen protectors after about a minute and... yeah. Win. this is WAY better than the G2... Finally something better. 6) The FOV doesn't look as big as the VR1 but better than the G2. Dont know what it is but we'll investigate this, hoping I can find a way to get more out of it. This is a problem for later. Im not worried its okay but I dont think it beats the VR1 out of the box here. 7) The software is not bad. I think there are some items lost in translation. My biggest issue was selecting the open Xr runtime. That was the only thing to annoy me so far. Its implied that its selected but you actually have to click it to initialize it. thats really dumb that set me back an Hr trying to figure out why it wasn't launching dcs in VR 8). Finally got dcs to launch and it looks awesome. I set nothing up 100% render resolution and like nothing else just "does it load" type thing. Ran my test mission and everything looks amazing... 19 fps but a really sharp 19 fps. Im not sure how much Ill have to give up in quality but using DFR and some other tricks Im expecting this to end up okay after some tuning. 10) I feel okay about this so far. I dont feel like im screwed (like with the VR1) everything feels like it can be solved and I have a good foundation to work off of. The only issue that seems a bit odd was the walls appeared to bulge out in the steam house. didn't notice this in DCS yet this looks like something that can be fixed in software. Over all distortion is much less than VR1. This will be investigated later. Ill write a review after sometime. 4090, 13900k and 64bg ram 4
Panzerlang Posted 16 hours ago Posted 16 hours ago Good to hear you're happy. The fit is entirely down to luck of the draw vis a vis head shape. Mine is the most comfortable headset I've had (Rift, G2, Pico-4, OG Crystal and now this Super). It is what it is. 1 1
Gun Jam Posted 15 hours ago Author Posted 15 hours ago Im pretty optimistic that this is going to be a good experience at the end. Did you find the G2 fit to be "unsatisfactory" and did you have to mod it? Or were you able to tolerate the out of box experience? Im pretty sure the super is going to need "modification" to some extent beyond what is included in the box to make it work for me.
Panzerlang Posted 13 hours ago Posted 13 hours ago The G2 was decent. Pico4 was pretty good. The OG was rough and hurt my nose after around 30 minutes. I bought the Bolo Strap for the Pico and the Apache for the OG, not that it helped any. Having earphones under the OG was betterer. 1
eFirehawk Posted 7 hours ago Posted 7 hours ago Hey @Gun Jam I was also a victim of the whole Somnium VR1 'experience' lol Pretty much same thing as you. Paid for that piece of junk months in advance, kept getting delivery estimations stalled due to the 'supposedly incredible quality control', and then when I finally received that thing I couldn't believe how spectacularly terrible it was. To get things tarted, the face gasket felt exactly how you described, like the edges of a hard-cover book pressing on my face. The visuals definitely felt completely wrong, headache inducing. Not terrible enough to maybe give you an impression that there was any manufacturing defect, but bad in a way that nothing seemed remotely close to the any decent clarity while being genuinely incredibly uncomfortable to look at. Yes, true there were plenty of things to adjust, but heaven knows I spent a good deal of time trying all possible things, for a long time and that headset was JUST PAIN, plain and simple. And to add insult to injury, the 'least bad' wearing position for me with the best sweet spot meant that its very narrow nose opening under the headset would literally completely close my nostrils - rendering me completely unable to breathe through my nose. Oh, and don't even get me started on eye tracking... very important feature, oversold by their CEO even mocking Pimax, and turned out it was so bad, inaccurate and unstable that it was downright useless in every regard. At the very least I'm in the EU so I could request to return it. I did my deeds, returned it within the 14 day trial period, and yet their support team (repeatedly claimed by the owner to be great, responsive, true to 'more expensive but better EU service standards') was less than responsive to say the least, and not just with me. I spoke to at least 3 other members who were struggling for a long time to actually get their money back. Eventually I did (after they got enough complains from us and even some threats to resorting to contacting credit cards and banks) , but it was one unsettling experience dealing with that company. Somnium's lies about production and delivery dates, constant stalling, broken promises (even today they still don't have local dimming), poor product design, appalling buggy and unfinished software, steep price and all wrapped up by bragging how great their made in EU product and services were and how amazing their quality to control was, makes Pimax look like an angel. With that rant out of the way.... your feedback about the Super seems encouraging. I also placed an order but for the Ultrawide, which will probably be delivered around end of year or next year. However, what concerns me is what you said about the FOV. I have an OG Crystal and I'm very happy with its clarity already, so what I really need it just more FOV. It supposedly should have even better FOV than the Somnium VR1, and yet in your case it doesn't? Did you measure how many degrees you got with the VR1? Also, could you measure how much you're getting with the Super? With the OG Crystal I get 104 HFOV and the VR1 around 115 HFOV, both with corrective lens inserts. In case the HFOV turns out being nothing to write home about, I'll definitely just keep my OG. Got it dialed in and working fine (though it took 2 RMAs with replacement units. First had dead pixels and second broken IPD adjuster. 3rd is flawless). 1 1 Pentium II 233Mhz | 16MB RAM | 14.4kb Modem | 1.44MB Floppy Disk Drive | Windows 3.1 with TM Warthog & TrackIR 5
Peedee Posted 4 hours ago Posted 4 hours ago 2 hours ago, eFirehawk said: Hey @Gun Jam I was also a victim of the whole Somnium VR1 'experience' lol Pretty much same thing as you. Paid for that piece of junk months in advance, kept getting delivery estimations stalled due to the 'supposedly incredible quality control', and then when I finally received that thing I couldn't believe how spectacularly terrible it was. To get things tarted, the face gasket felt exactly how you described, like the edges of a hard-cover book pressing on my face. The visuals definitely felt completely wrong, headache inducing. Not terrible enough to maybe give you an impression that there was any manufacturing defect, but bad in a way that nothing seemed remotely close to the any decent clarity while being genuinely incredibly uncomfortable to look at. Yes, true there were plenty of things to adjust, but heaven knows I spent a good deal of time trying all possible things, for a long time and that headset was JUST PAIN, plain and simple. And to add insult to injury, the 'least bad' wearing position for me with the best sweet spot meant that its very narrow nose opening under the headset would literally completely close my nostrils - rendering me completely unable to breathe through my nose. Oh, and don't even get me started on eye tracking... very important feature, oversold by their CEO even mocking Pimax, and turned out it was so bad, inaccurate and unstable that it was downright useless in every regard. At the very least I'm in the EU so I could request to return it. I did my deeds, returned it within the 14 day trial period, and yet their support team (repeatedly claimed by the owner to be great, responsive, true to 'more expensive but better EU service standards') was less than responsive to say the least, and not just with me. I spoke to at least 3 other members who were struggling for a long time to actually get their money back. Eventually I did (after they got enough complains from us and even some threats to resorting to contacting credit cards and banks) , but it was one unsettling experience dealing with that company. Somnium's lies about production and delivery dates, constant stalling, broken promises (even today they still don't have local dimming), poor product design, appalling buggy and unfinished software, steep price and all wrapped up by bragging how great their made in EU product and services were and how amazing their quality to control was, makes Pimax look like an angel. With that rant out of the way.... your feedback about the Super seems encouraging. I also placed an order but for the Ultrawide, which will probably be delivered around end of year or next year. However, what concerns me is what you said about the FOV. I have an OG Crystal and I'm very happy with its clarity already, so what I really need it just more FOV. It supposedly should have even better FOV than the Somnium VR1, and yet in your case it doesn't? Did you measure how many degrees you got with the VR1? Also, could you measure how much you're getting with the Super? With the OG Crystal I get 104 HFOV and the VR1 around 115 HFOV, both with corrective lens inserts. In case the HFOV turns out being nothing to write home about, I'll definitely just keep my OG. Got it dialed in and working fine (though it took 2 RMAs with replacement units. First had dead pixels and second broken IPD adjuster. 3rd is flawless). I have the OG Crystal and the Crystal Super. The Super wins clearly over the OG in FOV - and all other aspects as well. A clear upgrade. I am very happy with mine. 1 System 1: Intel I9 13900K, ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4090 OC, 32 GB RAM@6000Mhz. System 2: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D, ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 OC, 64 GB RAM@6000Mhz. Thrustmaster TPR Pendular Rudderpedals. Realsimulator FSSB-RL MKII ULTRA Joystick base + Realsimulator F16SGRH V2 grip. WingWing Throttle with F 16 grip. Moza Force feedback base + Thrustmaster F-18 grip, Virpil F14 grip, Thrustmaster A-10 grip. VR: Pimax Crystal Super, Crystal OG, 8KX, Pico 4, Quest 3. Buttkicker Gamer Pro. Next Level Motion Platform V3.
Gun Jam Posted 4 hours ago Author Posted 4 hours ago @eFirehawk your VR1 Experience is pretty identical. I also could not get eye tracking to work well with the VR1 I could get it to work if your eyes were super close to the lens and it would be good but if you moved the headset calibration was proper ****ed at that point and it was game over trying to get any tracking needs dialed. A few members here seem to have got the VR1 to work well for them so thats awesome for them. The Super is awesome. I got eyetracking working late last night and its perfect, move the headset its fine, calibrated once and it seems good to go. Even not fitting well eye tracking seems to work great. I did get an unofficial 126 horizontal and 100V with TestHmd. Ive got to work with the fit a bit more. I could not test the VR1 because it did not have controllers and I didn't have lighthouse controllers and I wasn't buying them just for that thing.
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