Pimax Crystal Light PCL performance / doubts / RTX4070 SUPER

[Mateo]

I have just received my PCL and it is my first VR ever. I have got some doubts regarding performance vs hardware. There are many youtube videos, tutorials, even on Pimax site, and I would like to ask somebody who own PCL if I am optimize settings right.

 

My setup:

AMD 7800X3D

Gigabyte RTX 4070 Super

64 GB RAM DDR5

SSD 2TB

Windows 11 Home, latest chipset for AMD, latest Nvidia driver.

 

DCS Settings:

Textures High

Terrain Textures High

Antialiasing DLAA

DLSS - balanced or performance

Shadows Medium

Water Low

Vis Range Medium

All rest OFF / Disable

VR Settings in DCS - Pixel Density 1.0, (Quad View ON - only if quad view in Pimax is also set)

 

Pimax Play configured:

Refresh rate 120Hz - tried other setting, 120 feel the best

FOV Normal

Image Quality Auto - btw, does auto mean 0.60 all time ?

Fixed Foveated Rendering 

Quad views Customized

45%

45%

100%

25%

Pimax Central Priority Rendering - OFF or Performance

Smart Smoothing ON

Lock to Half Framerate OFF

Hidden Area Mask ON

Vive Compatibility OFF

 

Sometimes I turn Quad view OFF and turn Pimax Central Priority Rendering ON, similar results.

Sometimes I play with Image Quality Customized - increase it or decrease.

Nvidia Control Panel optimazed for DCS - maximum performance set, DLSS Preset K with DLSS Swaper for DCS, FPS limit OFF

Results:

DCS FPS counter gives me smooth view and 50-60 FPS constant, FPS feel like over 100 due to Smart Smoothing ON. when I turn OFF smart smoothing there is much stutters and FPS spikes, with FPS increase to nearly 70. Best results I achieve when FPS limit is set right below the max number of my PC can get - around 60.

 

I tried Quad Views Companion with PimaxXR and it gave me worst performance even I set "I want FPS".
I have doubts if it is everything I can get from PCL on my configuration, I saw youtbue videos that people on RTX3080 or native 4070 have more FPS than I do.

 

The problem is that I would like to have Image Quality 1.0 and reasonable, higher FFV but I got then 30 FPS, and even smart smoothing can't make it playable.

I will appreciate every sugestion to achieve better quality to peeformance ratio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 21 by Mateo
More info

[Calvin.Pimax]

On 11/21/2025 at 4:12 PM, Mateo said:

Image Quality Auto - btw, does auto mean 0.60 all time ?

 

This setting is determined by your GPU. Pimax Play will detect your graphics card and automatically apply the most optimal configuration for image quality.

If you want to manually set the image quality to 1.0, you’ll need to lower some in-game settings. Keeping the same settings while running at 1.0 resolution will likely cause low FPS.

Have you also tried setting Anti-Aliasing to MSAA 4x?

[MissionCMDR]

I don't have the PCL headset, but I do own the Pimax Crystal. One setting that I would suggest working with is the image quality setting in PP. I have found through my own testing that 1.00 works best for visual fidelity when using DLSS. I had mine set to .75 to try and get max frames out of it which works fine, but sacrificed visual quality in a big way.

I am on just a regular 4070 and need to use the 72hz mode to have an enjoyable experience, so I can imagine you are quite happy with 120! 

[Mateo]

@Calvin.Pimax @MissionCMDR thank you for advices.

After a long period of testing how different settings affect quality and performance, I found that DCS settings themselves don’t have a big impact on performance. In my case, VRAM seems to be important limiting factor.

- I set DCS textures to medium and shadows to medium.

- I slightly increased the Image Quality in Pimax Play and found a good balance at IQ = 0.65. Interestingly, IQ = 0.65 + DLSS (Performance) + 120Hz performs and looks better than 90Hz (Upscale) + IQ = 0.95 without DLSS in my case.

- Fixed foveated rendering is off; quad view gave me a maximum of about 2 FPS, same with Pimax Priority Central Rendering. I turned those off.

- Smart Smoothing caused occasional flashes of large bright triangles, so that’s off as well.

- “Lock to half framerate” is currently off, but I manually limited FPS in DCS to 60, since I often adjust that slider to test how high I can go and under what circumstances. 60 works fine as a lowest limit and is accurate to 120Hz of display.

- Sharpness in Pimax Play set to maximum, in DCS to zero. I have noticed influence on quality - too much of sharpening doubled by different app is simply too much.

I can't explain that after change of some settings, in DCS or Pimax, game restart wasn't enough. I needed to reboot PC to see actual impact, I have noticed it accidentally.

Now everything is smooth and clear. At high altitudes I can reach around 85 FPS, and on the ground around 60 FPS, but I prefer stable FPS over high FPS. 

Edited Wednesday at 11:28 PM by Mateo

[Calvin.Pimax]

Glad you managed to sort something out.

To be honest, I’m not a heavy DCS user myself, but I’m always learning from everyone else.

Some of my suggestions might miss the mark here and there, so thanks for bearing with me.

[Mateo]

Community appreciate engagement and effort you put on answering and discussing.

 

Regards

Edited Thursday at 10:43 AM by Mateo