Night Flying in the Pimax Crystal Super

[Twwhitey]

So I finally sorted out my speaker problem on my Super (turns out the DMAS speakers that shipped with my unit are defective... sigh) anyhow I'm now 8 days away from needing to make the decision as to whether I'm keeping the Super or not.

Coming from the Reverb G2 I was hoping the local dimming on the Super was going to make for a much better experience flying at night... my initial experience has not been great though.

Launching the F/A-18 Case III recovery mission and the F-16 Night Free flight mission I have to say - at least on my unit - flying at night is a literal kaleidoscope of colors in the clouds.  I tried to snap a picture of what I'm seeing on my phone through the lens....  I see REDS, PURPLES, BLUES... it looks.. well terrible and completely unrealistic.  Is this what everyone else is seeing?  Is this the Chromatic Aberration effect I've heard about? or might this just be a case of a poor set of screens?  Or am I crazy...

null

 

[Panzerlang]

Same in IL2 at night but it's not a game breaker, so meh.

[Dawgboy]

On 8/25/2025 at 6:47 PM, Twwhitey said:

So I finally sorted out my speaker problem on my Super (turns out the DMAS speakers that shipped with my unit are defective... sigh) anyhow I'm now 8 days away from needing to make the decision as to whether I'm keeping the Super or not.

Coming from the Reverb G2 I was hoping the local dimming on the Super was going to make for a much better experience flying at night... my initial experience has not been great though.

Launching the F/A-18 Case III recovery mission and the F-16 Night Free flight mission I have to say - at least on my unit - flying at night is a literal kaleidoscope of colors in the clouds.  I tried to snap a picture of what I'm seeing on my phone through the lens....  I see REDS, PURPLES, BLUES... it looks.. well terrible and completely unrealistic.  Is this what everyone else is seeing?  Is this the Chromatic Aberration effect I've heard about? or might this just be a case of a poor set of screens?  Or am I crazy...

null

 

Wow...not what I would expect, simply because some of the Pimax Super's demo videos showed crystal-clear night flying, albeit in other simulations.

[MissionCMDR]

Night flying with the Crystal, for me looks like peering through a smudged window for black levels...I am looking into this as well, as it's likely a setting I messed up somewhere or ignored. Inside the cockpit seemed normal, but I will have to verify as I was too busy getting distracted by the "fog"

I did have an older Quadviews/OpenXR setup, and recently uninstalled that to use the Pimax version builtin. I will do some testing today or over the weekend, see how far I get.

[MissionCMDR]

I found a reddit post about adding a line to your profile.json under your \AppData\Local\Pimax\runtime folder.

Search for "local_dimming_black_level", which should be 0 by default I believe. Set the value to 0.002, and restart Pimax services (I restarted my PC for good measure)

This "helped", and did improve somewhat, but I am not sure why the background of parts of the cockpit, are black and display properly, yet outside the canopy is a foggy mess.

Looks like it's daytime sorties for me until the issue is resolved...the artifacts kill the experience.

This was done using the native and builtin PimaxXR with DFR enabled.

 

Edited August 29 by MissionCMDR

[Calvin.Pimax]

Another thing you could try is to 

On 8/26/2025 at 9:47 AM, Twwhitey said:

So I finally sorted out my speaker problem on my Super (turns out the DMAS speakers that shipped with my unit are defective... sigh) anyhow I'm now 8 days away from needing to make the decision as to whether I'm keeping the Super or not.

Coming from the Reverb G2 I was hoping the local dimming on the Super was going to make for a much better experience flying at night... my initial experience has not been great though.

Launching the F/A-18 Case III recovery mission and the F-16 Night Free flight mission I have to say - at least on my unit - flying at night is a literal kaleidoscope of colors in the clouds.  I tried to snap a picture of what I'm seeing on my phone through the lens....  I see REDS, PURPLES, BLUES... it looks.. well terrible and completely unrealistic.  Is this what everyone else is seeing?  Is this the Chromatic Aberration effect I've heard about? or might this just be a case of a poor set of screens?  Or am I crazy...

null

 

Try to lower the brightness and play around with the local dimming slider?

[Nedum]

@Twwhitey I don't have this issue. I had to lower my brightness in DCS to 1.8 and in Pimax Play to 99 %. 

[Pteradon]

About a week ago, the Crystal Super 50 ppd was delivered at my home.

I used the video of Tally Mouse for setting headset up for DCS.

With daytime missions it looks stunning, but nighttime mission, i also got some strange effects on the edges of the clouds. Way less than the picture of Twwhitey. Inside the cockpit everything looks fine.

Already set the brightness in Pimax Play to 99 and in DCS to 1.6.  (Came from 2.1 )

I still want to try the solution wich MissionCMDR mentioned.

 

But i got some days left of those 14 days.

My question i have, is the problem wich is mentioned in this topic an software issue, or should i send this Crystal Super back because there is issue with hardware itself?

 

[MadMonty]

Yesterday, I had my first flight in a campaign in the dark of night and unfortunately have to confirm that the Super is causing problems here. I have a bright corona around the aircraft, sometimes the aircraft disappears because the headset seems to dim on its own, and when I go into the cockpit, everything is gone until the headset brightens up again. It almost seems as if some kind of glare function is integrated. The sunrise looked disastrous and completely unnatural. I've only just discovered this thread and will try to change the settings tonight. If necessary, I'll have to revise my positive review of the headset due to its lack of nighttime suitability...

[Papamiraculi]

I can confirm and this is something that should be addressed.

Question is: does it only happen in DCS? I don't have any other VR games which feature similar dark environments. Maybe somebody else can check.

Night flying in DCS has always been a problem. In general I think gamma (and colors in general) has always been a problem in DCS. So this might also be a bad combination of DCS' poor gamma solution and the Supers color issues:

If I use the general recommendation of seeing contrast to -1 and brightness to -3 in PIMAX Play I get good colors and contrast in daytime in DCS. Same settings at night crush blacks heavily. Back to stock and you get the color halos. 

I don't know if PIMAX plans to do something about the colors of the Super, it if the above workaround will be their "solution".

The local dimming sliders does not help at all with the halos. The only way to get rid of them is to crush blacks entirely.

In the meantime: Has anyone found a good setting for profiles.json that MissionCMDR mentioned above?

 

[Panzerlang]

3 hours ago, Papamiraculi said:

I can confirm and this is something that should be addressed.

Question is: does it only happen in DCS? I don't have any other VR games which feature similar dark environments. Maybe somebody else can check.

Night flying in DCS has always been a problem. In general I think gamma (and colors in general) has always been a problem in DCS. So this might also be a bad combination of DCS' poor gamma solution and the Supers color issues:

If I use the general recommendation of seeing contrast to -1 and brightness to -3 in PIMAX Play I get good colors and contrast in daytime in DCS. Same settings at night crush blacks heavily. Back to stock and you get the color halos. 

I don't know if PIMAX plans to do something about the colors of the Super, it if the above workaround will be their "solution".

The local dimming sliders does not help at all with the halos. The only way to get rid of them is to crush blacks entirely.

In the meantime: Has anyone found a good setting for profiles.json that MissionCMDR mentioned above?

 

It's the same in IL2, noticeably the clouds are fubar.

[MadMonty]

Hey guys - quick update...

I have now extensively tested the issues and adjustment options in a night mission (Syria, June, 4 a.m.) and a dawn mission (Syria, June, 04:15–04:30 a.m.):

Problems:

1. HALO around bright objects, especially the aircraft in external view

2. Indefinable dark mass from the horizon downward; the transition from the stars over the horizon to the ground is not a clear line, but a constantly shifting “something”

3. Partial “blackout”: when rotating the external view of the jet, brightness suddenly dims completely (across everything); when I then switch into the cockpit, everything is pitch black and the headset gradually brightens again

4. Chromatic Aberration at sunrise / clouds, as described at the beginning of the thread

 

Adjustment options:

1. Contrast & Brightness in PP

2. Local Dimming in PP

3. Gamma in DCS

4. Modifying the profile.json file as described by missioncmdr

 

Upfront, everything that doesn’t work or has no effect:

Problems:

1. HALO does not go away, no matter what I do

2. Horizon-to-ground transition remains undefinable

3. Blackouts are still present

Adjustment options:

      2. Local Dimming in PP makes no difference

      4. Modifying the profile.json (simply adding the line with the value, as it is not there initially) causes changes, but in my view nothing that Brightness couldn’t also achieve

 

The only progress so far:

Problem:
4. The Chromatic Aberration at sunrise or sunset on the horizon and in the clouds can be removed.

Workaround:

Set Brightness in PP to -2 and Gamma (previously 1.8 for me) to 2.8 (!). This results in beautifully smooth transitions without artifacts. I tried calibrating the correct brightness against the stars: everything I can see at B=0 and G=1.8, I can also see again at B=-2 and G=2.8.

The problem then is with daytime missions: here, with B=-2, Gamma needs to be set to about 2.2–2.4, otherwise it looks too bright. You can fine-tune this a bit by setting Contrast to -2. Then Gamma can stay at 2.8 without affecting nighttime visuals, and during the day you get roughly the same brightness, although the colors appear a little more muted. On the other hand, Gamma can be changed during flight (for day/night missions).

So – currently I’m using:
In PP:

• Brightness -2

• Contrast -2

In DCS:

• Gamma 2.8

Fun fact:
If Pimax Play is completely closed and restarted, you still get the Chromatic Aberration despite Brightness -2 and Gamma 2.8. I need to briefly move the Brightness slider in PP, set it back to -2, hit Apply, and then the setting works again. This seems to be another bug.

@Calvin.Pimax – please have your team take a look at this. It should all be solvable!

Edited 1 hour ago by MadMonty