57ppd Crystal Super Feedback

[ldwater]

Hey,

Feeding back on the 57ppd Crystal super incase its helpful for anyone else considering the purchase.

TLDR: Eye strain, sweet spot is tiny and for me a backwards step from the OG crystal.

 

First impressions is that the headset is nice, slightly smaller than the OG crystal but also the cable is a bit shorter meaning my setup had to change a bit to make it all fit.

The install was straight forward and since I already had Pimax Play installed the whole process was pretty seemless, firmware upgrade and off I went.

Unfortunately that is pretty much where the good stuff ends.

Immediately as the headset is on my eyes hurt.  Spent a good few hours trying to fiddle with the IPD, left and right configuration but could never find a comfortable configuration.

The image quality was nice but I saw a shimmer, like a flowing water effect over the viewing area.  Tried both the OG quadviews & the Pimax Quadviews and the shimmer was on both, but less on the Pimax QV.

Turns out the default sharpness was set to 6 (and I wasn't aware of that default) and removing it (set it to zero) removed this shimmer entirely.

The brightness was also a bit too much for me.  Even when I reduced the brightness to 50% & local dimming night ops didn't seem pitch black, and even worse I saw a weird purple hase while looking around.

My biggest issue was the sweetspot was tiny.  So looking straight ahead was great, but as soon as you look away from the sweet spot the image is blurred or distorted) 

In normal flight I would keep my head looking straight and 'peek' at my gauges, MDFs etc with my eyes, and even with quadviews (both types) looking away from the sweetspot was so distorted or poor quality that it was a deal killer for me.

I also preordered the super (14/08/25) and didn't get any pre-order bonus (Dmas headphones?) as I was expecting.  Not a huge deal for me personally because I wasn't going to use them anyway.

 

I've raised my return request (20th October 10:00) but not heard anything back and the ticket is 'waiting customer support'.

I'll caveat this by saying that the 50ppd engine could be completely fine or that MY 57ppd engine was defective in someway (the QA document showing all passes is included), but as I had no means of verifying what I should expect or create a comparison.  I read that for the 57ppd the IPD is even more important but without anyway of knowing what I need, and leaving the auto IPD to do its thing still resulted in instant eye strain.

There is a very good chance I was wrong to select the 57ppd engine and I'd be happy to try the 50ppd engine, but at the moment I'd got an expensive door stop back its original box sitting behind me

FYI @Calvin.Pimax

[Peedee]

5 hours ago, ldwater said:

Hey,

Feeding back on the 57ppd Crystal super incase its helpful for anyone else considering the purchase.

TLDR: Eye strain, sweet spot is tiny and for me a backwards step from the OG crystal.

 

First impressions is that the headset is nice, slightly smaller than the OG crystal but also the cable is a bit shorter meaning my setup had to change a bit to make it all fit.

The install was straight forward and since I already had Pimax Play installed the whole process was pretty seemless, firmware upgrade and off I went.

Unfortunately that is pretty much where the good stuff ends.

Immediately as the headset is on my eyes hurt.  Spent a good few hours trying to fiddle with the IPD, left and right configuration but could never find a comfortable configuration.

The image quality was nice but I saw a shimmer, like a flowing water effect over the viewing area.  Tried both the OG quadviews & the Pimax Quadviews and the shimmer was on both, but less on the Pimax QV.

Turns out the default sharpness was set to 6 (and I wasn't aware of that default) and removing it (set it to zero) removed this shimmer entirely.

The brightness was also a bit too much for me.  Even when I reduced the brightness to 50% & local dimming night ops didn't seem pitch black, and even worse I saw a weird purple hase while looking around.

My biggest issue was the sweetspot was tiny.  So looking straight ahead was great, but as soon as you look away from the sweet spot the image is blurred or distorted) 

In normal flight I would keep my head looking straight and 'peek' at my gauges, MDFs etc with my eyes, and even with quadviews (both types) looking away from the sweetspot was so distorted or poor quality that it was a deal killer for me.

I also preordered the super (14/08/25) and didn't get any pre-order bonus (Dmas headphones?) as I was expecting.  Not a huge deal for me personally because I wasn't going to use them anyway.

 

I've raised my return request (20th October 10:00) but not heard anything back and the ticket is 'waiting customer support'.

I'll caveat this by saying that the 50ppd engine could be completely fine or that MY 57ppd engine was defective in someway (the QA document showing all passes is included), but as I had no means of verifying what I should expect or create a comparison.  I read that for the 57ppd the IPD is even more important but without anyway of knowing what I need, and leaving the auto IPD to do its thing still resulted in instant eye strain.

There is a very good chance I was wrong to select the 57ppd engine and I'd be happy to try the 50ppd engine, but at the moment I'd got an expensive door stop back its original box sitting behind me

FYI @Calvin.Pimax

The tests I have seen mentioned that the sweetspot and edge to edge clarity was smaller on the 57ppd Crystal Super than on the 50ppd Crystal Super. I have the 50ppd Crystal Super and also still have my Crystal OG. Both the field of view, sweetspot and edge to edge clarity is better on my Super than on my Crystal OG.

So - your observations seem to fit with what I have read and seen in reviews about the 57ppd. Personally, the 57ppd does not make much sense to me. Much smaller field of view, smaller sweet spot, the 57ppd is only in the center and so on... When you get to 50ppd, like on the first Crystal Super (that I have), I thin that any ppd value above that gives diminishing returns, and not worth sacrificing the nice field of view and edge to edge clarity of the Super 50ppd.

The OG is still a nice headset. (The only thing I hold against the OG Crystal is the battery). But my Super 50ppd is a real step up in all areas. 

As for the night missions - I haven't spend much time in that. But the Crystal Super (at least the 50ppd - but I think the 57ppd has the same panels) can show nice dark areas. So, it's a DCS problem I think. I have played other games, like Skyrim VR modded with a light mod that makes the nights and caves truly dark -unless there's a light source, and it's dark... and when there are torches and lights in the caves and such, those lights fit in real good I think. In DCS you have to lower the gamma, and in Pimax Play you have to find the place where you adjust the brightness for right and left eye separately, and turn that down to -1 or -2 - for both eyes of course.  The overall brightness slider I haven't really done so much with, if I remember correctly. 

Don't trust the auto IPD. On my Super I get the best results when setting the IPD about a 1 or 2 above what the headset thinks. But that would be different from person to person I think.

Hope you can return your headset without any problems.