Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

 

[RCHeliguy]

This guy is saying that he felt completely fooled by virtual experience and couldn't tell the difference between reality and VR in this headset. That is saying something. Of course that headset does have a retina display and I'm sure there are things that could throw it off, but still pretty cool stuff!

 

[wajdi]

This guy is saying that he felt completely fooled by virtual experience and couldn't tell the difference between reality and VR in this headset. That is saying something. Of course that headset does have a retina display and I'm sure there are things that could throw it off, but still pretty cool stuff!

To much expensive sorry ! I tried it and yes it has great visual clarity but with that price I pretend 180 grade of of FOV and built in sound headset, inside/outside tracking or at least should include the light station .

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Better than life? Pornhub take note.
And another Metaverse fiasco.

https://www.rt.com/news/567612-eu-metaverse-party-flop-investment-neutral/

 

[RCHeliguy]

For some things real life is always better

 

[gamma123152]

"You say you love the picture AND color quality AND FOV.. Essentially that it’s better than every single headset on the market.
Then you make (self admitted) 100% speculative comments about some thin layer that “may” effect eye tracking if you clean it, that you clearly have no idea about. It didn’t fit you well but no one knows how you tried to adjust it so that’s unhelpful. And you get mad a hair got in between the removable lenses even though they told you how easy it was to remove.. Honestly, has ANYTHING ever made you happy?
You admit it’s the best in every single aspect of quality visuals that counts, then you proceed to complain about unfounded nonsense and personal opinion.. Bravo..
I don’t get it with some people. I’m really just dumbfounded by this completely nonsensical rant about what is clearly the best thing on the market. It’s like the better VR gets, the more people expect, so the more they complain?
I’ll be happy to buy it. Thank you."

Comment from reddit, but it's spot on. This is really a clickbait title.

I'm so tired of these "influencers" with their marketing title tricks just to get more views. Even if they like a product they need to come up with some nonsense arguments to get some extra clicks.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I can understand that sentiment, but Pimax haven't actually delivered anything yet, so it is still a leap of faith.

I heard from a guy who ordered one that while they said he would see it in January, he wouldn't bet on that given their poor record with delivery dates.

How is there any way that the swapable lens system is anything but a problematic gimmick? My first reaction to that was, WTF! WHY??

Maybe they wanted an easy out if the end user has any complaint, tell them they need to align their lenses better. Once again, why?

If they don't support lighthouse tracking from day one that is a very serious issue. This is a high end headset. It NEEDS light house tracking.

Maybe some people will be fine with inside out tracking on a static rig, but then why have wireless tech if it will remain tethered.

I could care less about a battery pack, wireless functionality, inside out tracking or the swappable lenses.

Given how poor the inside out tracking is in its current form, it seems like that is just a box they wanted to check off.

It all points to a marketing gimick as a product that happens to have a nice display.

There are many things that can make a VR Headset more trouble than it is worth no matter how good a display is.

In the end I have very little faith in Pimax as a company and their piss poor marketing.

I hope they deliver a great product. I would never preorder a product from them, but that's me.

I know a number of people who have said good things about the Varjo Aero especially in terms of display and build quality. However, I've also been reading the saga for months on the Varjo discord channel. There have been numerous issues they have been working hard to fix and piles of enhancements to performance.

The issues they ran into were frequently title specific.

I mention that because even if the Pimax works well in a demo situation, it may take them months to work out display issues with various sim titles.

Varjo is working with the military for flight simulators and the Aero is trickledown from their commercial product line, so in that sense they have some pedigree.

 

[metalnwood]

Personally, I think the goal has to be to not have lighthouse.

I dont think it makes a lot of sense for a stand alone headset to require external tracking devices you need to setup. Even if not stand alone, it can be a pita to need lighthouses.

So it really comes down to how good is the tracking rather than what is the mechanism. Certainly for sims where I dont use controllers it is great to not have lighthouses any longer. The current oculus headsets have pretty good inside out tracking, if ones like g2 had the same we wouldnt really hear about tracking problems that we do.

 

[gamma123152]

I heard from a guy who ordered one that while they said he would see it in January, he wouldn't bet on that given their poor record with delivery dates.

That's for sure. Pimax always delivers later.

How is there any way that the swapable lens system is anything but a problematic gimmick? My first reaction to that was, WTF! WHY??

Maybe they wanted an easy out if the end user has any complaint, tell them they need to align their lenses better. Once again, why?

You can also say the opposite: Why not? Because of a possible dust particle? Maybe there will be a big FoV lens in the future with 30PPD and maybe some users prefer Aero FoV but 42PPD. Why not give them the options? The "scratches" argument that the youtuber came up with is nonsense, I've cleaned the lens of my HMD daily for 1,5year+ now and there are ZERO scratches on it, nothing. I also don't see any reason for his loss of eye tracking story, he just made it up.

If they don't support lighthouse tracking from day one that is a very serious issue. This is a high end headset it NEEDS light house tracking.

The HMD tracking was very good/even close to flawless from what I understood from almost all reviews(controllers opposite). So not sure why it needs lighthouse tracking from day one? For simming the default tracking is good enough. Only for controllers it's probably a other story(NOT good enough probably). I prefer that they release the Crystal first and that I can then test the device with the default tracking system and if it's not sufficient for me; THEN I will buy the lighthouse module. I will probably personally buy it for the index controllers alone, but for simming; it's probably not needed at all.

In the end I have very little faith in Pimax as a company and their piss poor marketing.

I can understand that. I think that this is the case for most people. But in the end I don't care about their marketing if their endproduct is good. And the Crystal seem to grow into something special and especially for us as sim racers.

There are many things that can make a VR Headset more trouble than it is worth no matter how good a display is.

True, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this HMD if they get the software right and stable. I've not seen much downsides yet except the unfinished parts/subjects. If they finish it then it's the best on the market for sure.

I could care less about a battery pack and any wireless functionality

Same here. But I can imagine use cases that it could be handy, not for me, but for others it could be nice.

I hope they deliver a great product. I would never preorder a product from them, but that's me.

Same for me. Their return policy is the worst that I've ever seen in my life for a consumer product. So I will not even ever buy it from pimax itself, only from a reseller.

For a static sim rig the Crystal may have the best looking display without paying commercial prices.

I think that we indeed could conclude that. So I'm really hoping that Pimax don't mess it up this time again. If it delivers, then it's next-gen VR for sure, even a bigger leap then Varjo (bigger FoV, close to zero distortion(serious edge distortion still), much better stereo overlap(major issue of the Aero, smallest in the market), way better blacks/contrast, better manual IPD settings(buttons on hmd instead of by software and let's not forget no red/blue shift colors, no motion blur(both Aero issues)), better comfort from what I read) and that for a lower consumer price.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Personally, I think the goal has to be to not have lighthouse.

Fair enough. But the inside out tracking has to be very good and from what I understand Oculus has actually managed a pretty good inside out tracking system. So it is possible. It's still not quite as good as light house tracking, but definitely acceptable for most uses.

We've seen how bad HTC's initial attempts at inside out tracking were and if Pimax is using Snapdragon's out of the box inside out tracking, that could be worse.

My experience with WMR inside out tracking hasn't been as good as yours has been and there could be many reasons.
1. You may have a brighter room than I do.
2. The shape of your rig and what is in front of the headset somehow works better for tracking purposes.
3. Or since you don't use Rally on your motion rig, you are not bouncing your headset around as much.

My experience with base stations has been that it is a freeing experience that takes less time and works much better. I mounted two base stations in opposite corners of my room scale / sim rig area 3.5 years ago and was done. The setup took less time than the WMR setup. You simply place the headset on the floor in the center of your area and Done. Setting up a guardian wall is the same as any other walking a hand controller around your game space.

But that was it, I've never had to recalibrate or touch it again. It just works perfectly all the time. It doesn't matter how tall a person is. They put the headset on and they are at the perfect height and the hand controllers are perfectly tracked.

With WMR, if you are just sitting in a sim Rig you don't need a guardian wall, and once in game you can just press the center HMD button you are good to go. But for room scale it's more problematic.

I absolutely believe that a high end VR headset needs to support base stations, because they offer the absolute best tracking available. I wouldn't want to give that up until they can replace it with something as good or better.

 

[RCHeliguy]

You can also say the opposite: Why not? Because of a possible dust particle? Maybe there will be a big FoV lens in the future with 30PPD and maybe some users prefer Aero FoV but 42PPD. Why not give them the options? The "scratches" argument that the youtuber came up with is nonsense, I've cleaned the lens of my HMD daily for 1,5year+ now and there are ZERO scratches on it, nothing. I also don't see any reason for his loss of eye tracking story, he just made it up.

He wasn't talking about scratches on the lens. I agree with you there. I've been cleaning and wiping the lenses on my index for years without any issues.

The issue with dust is that you have two surfaces to clean.
1. The removable lens.
2. The coated plastic layer mounted in the headset that sits under the lenses that is used for eye tracking. It is not made from the same material and his concern was more about wiping the coating off that that the eye tracking relies on.

On top of that there have been lens alignment issues because the lenses move and personally I would much prefer a headset come with the lenses permanently aligned properly from the factory.

I still think this multi-lens solution is an additional failure point. I also wonder if that was the issue that MRTV ran into with his lenses being out of focus. It seems like there are already too many downsides to this. This also points to this being more of an alpha product that isn't even ready for beta testing. They still don't have everything worked out yet.

Pimax does NOT need more points of failure and it seems pretty obvious that this product is not finished yet and they are still resolving problems with it. That means more delays or shipping an unfinished product.

I sense it's more likely a train wreck is about to happen. Maybe 6 months after launch they'll have found resolutions for the major issues and have the software working reliably.

 

[gamma123152]

He wasn't talking about scratches on the lens. I agree with you there. I've been cleaning and wiping the lenses on my index for years without any issues.

The issue with dust is that you have two surfaces to clean.
1. The removable lens.
2. The coated plastic layer mounted in the headset that sits under the lenses that is used for eye tracking. It is not made from the same material and his concern was more about wiping the coating off that that the eye tracking relies on.

On top of that there have been lens alignment issues because the lenses move and personally I would much prefer a headset come with the lenses permanently aligned properly from the factory.

I still think this multi-lens solution is an additional failure point. I also wonder if that was the issue that MRTV ran into with his lenses being out of focus. It seems like there are already too many downsides to this. This also points to this being more of an alpha product that isn't even ready for beta testing. They still don't have everything worked out yet.

Pimax does NOT need more points of failure and it seems pretty obvious that this product is not finished yet and they are still resolving problems with it. That means more delays or shipping an unfinished product.

I sense it's more likely a train wreck is about to happen. Maybe 6 months after launch they'll have found resolutions for the major issues and have the software working reliably.

The product is still in development. They said that it's not finished already by the start of the roadshow. Most people (including me, and maybe you if you're waiting for it too?) will wait until the issues are solved before they preorder/buy it so it's only in their interest to solve these issues.

I don't see any problem that they showed an pre-production beta unit on the roadshow? With the experience from the roadshow then can improve their product(and they did, from the results of Europe roadshow they already improved their product/lens placement for the next/US roadshow ! ). So I'm not sure what you have against it? They did/do the roadshow to improve their final product which is imo a great thing. More companies should do that.

"The coated plastic layer mounted in the headset that sits under the lenses that is used for eye tracking. It is not made from the same material and his concern was more about wiping the coating off that that the eye tracking relies on."

About the removable lenses, read this:
The arguments that the youtuber came up with(and you now copied from him) are simply not true (that the dust particles are moving/visibly together with your eye movement and that the eye tracking coating is on the side that you clean). You assume that both things that he said about it are the truth. Why? In fact; it were his gut feelings based on nothing(he admitted that to me even) and Pimax just explained their point of view about it as you can read there. It's nonsense.

If you don't want to use the changeable lenses then you simply let them stay where they are. They come factory preinstalled and the magnets are super strong so it's not any different then other VR headsets. No dust will come in and they are aligned in the final production unit. So I'm not sure why you see a train wreck here? The product simply isn't finished yet and all you have to do is wait and see if they manage to fix the last few subjects.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I guess it really doesn't matter until they actually deliver product.

But as an engineer, I see a lot of red flags and based on their track record, I will never give Pimax the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise.

However if Valve announced a new headset and took pre-orders for it, I would jump at it, because they have earned my respect.

Different strokes.

 

[gamma123152]

I guess it really doesn't matter until they actually deliver product.

But as an engineer, I see a lot of red flags and based on their track record, I will never give Pimax the benefit of the doubt until they prove otherwise.

However if Valve announced a new headset and took pre-orders for it, I would jump at it, because they have earned my respect.

Different strokes.

For me it's all about their refund policy. I could preorder anything as long as I can return it normally and expect a 100% refund. With Valve no issues indeed, but with Pimax? Hell no!

But the Index controllers are probably one of the best VR products usability wise but also one of the most unreliable products in history(I've read that someone had up to 15 ! refund cases). So the quality control has been on par with Pimax.. My right index controller (which is barely even used) also started squeaking already.

Let's not forget that Pimax was a start-up Chinese kickstarter company, they are in a differenty position now. They have my benefit of the doubt that they come up with a great product(but never for preorders). This since I think that Sebastian and Marco of MRTV know what they are talking about and they both agreed that the Crystal was going to be something impressive/first real next-gen VR HMD if they solved the "big but" issue, and that seems to be solved now.

 

[gamma123152]

My experience with WMR inside out tracking hasn't been as good as yours has been and there could be many reasons.
1. You may have a brighter room than I do.
2. The shape of your rig and what is in front of the headset somehow works better for tracking purposes.
3. Or since you don't use Rally on your motion rig, you are not bouncing your headset around as much.

Not sure what goes wrong: I have 2 lights on (sometimes 3) in the room(pretty dark..) that I use VR. And I have flawless tracking with WMR in dirt rally 2 and all other sim racing titles(HMD only).

But I still prefer lighthouse tracking because it's technically better and maybe a bit smoother for that reason and also supports flawless controller tracking (inside out tracking is imo not good enough for controller tracking). But for simming inside out tracking should normally be good for ~95% of the users.

 

[metalnwood]

The only thing that inside out was not good for with me was when my friends and I would get on something like onward, I would use my VR rifle stock and of course at times occlusion would happen and get janky tracking for the rifle.

Of course the best thing for that is when they start releasing proper rifle stocks that can be tracked that have their own triggers etc. Same with pistols, I hope they get around to it quickly and if I am in lucky the will model it off my CZ or SIG The combo of that and just hand tracking for not using weapons will have me back in to it.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

For head tracking WMR works very well, lighting in the room is important though, too dark is bad, too bright with lights or sun shining into cameras is not good either. Some soft diffused light in my experience works the best.
Controllers tracking on G2 while improved since earlier WMR HMDs still can use some work.

 

[RCHeliguy]

And the quest for the VR headset of our dreams continues and progress continues to be made.

We should probably just be happy the process is continuing.

Of course as soon as we get photo realistic VR displays, people will look for the next weak link which will continue to be hardware to drive these displays and software to show their capabilities.

Unreal Engine has been creating new features to allow scalable graphics allowing the virtual world we experience to display the coming resolutions of these headsets in all their glory.

Software companies will then be pressured to include higher resolution graphical assets.

So we will still have a number of waiting periods while different parts of this puzzle evolve.

The days of a Ready Player One Oasis are a long way off

 

[blekenbleu]

Analyst firm IDC predicts 2026 AR/VR device sales exceeding gaming consoles
"We're still years away from mass consumer adoption of AR glasses,
and the earliest timeframe for such products would be in late 2024 or early 2025
as companies such as Apple, Meta, and others
use what they've learned from virtual reality headsets
to launch a more streamlined and consumer friendly design for AR glasses"
AR and virtual reality VR headsets not going to be big sellers any time soon
"The Register" article presumably based on 5 Oct 22 AR & VR Headsets Market Share

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Somehow it's always the next year that is The Year of VR.
Moving like a mirage or horizon line.