Is VR dead?

[Deleted member 197115]

What about that guy who was making the best through the lens videos, what was his name, Tariel or something.

EDIT: Yeah, found him https://www.youtube.com/@Tyrielwood/videos

 

[RCHeliguy]

VR Flight Sim Guy just put out another video that basically repeats what he said earlier about the Crystal having a better display, and that Pimax has put up a firmware update that has eliminated a number of earlier issues he was dealing with. He's doing his best not to alienate Varjo owners by saying how he still loves that headset, while saying the Crystal looks better. He's recently completed a hot swap on the battery pack and said that worked pretty well.

He's past the phase of deciding if it is worth putting up with things about the Crystal to just adjusting and making it work for him.

Good news for those of you who have ordered a Crystal.

 

[Leynad777]

I stopped taking him seriously after the HP G2 launch. All of his videos for the G2 kept raving how amazing it was. I was really excited until the real world user reviews came out. I can't take him seriously anymore and I'll only watch his videos if I'm bored.

Sebastian (MRTV) was the only one I know who criticised the binocular overlap of the Meta Pro and he's the first one I know who criticized missing edge to edge clarity and glare of the Bigscreen Beyond. And now he's the only one who is reviewing the newest edition of the DPVR E4. It was awful in the past, but issues are fixed and for less than 1k it seems to best PCVR-headset for simming (if average IPD) according to him. 280 g, flip-display, best binocular overlap, decent FOV, great edge to edge clarity, no need for lighthouse and doesn't need a 4080 or better to render the resolution.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've seen some interesting Crystal comments from another beta tester who is a sim racer from just a few days ago.

First he says the display is currently the one to beat. It feels lighter than his 8KX and the battery in back is a nice counterweight. He also said the new firmware update has helped fix a number of issues.

"The lenses we received are polycarbonate, not the final glass versions. Pimax said that tooling for the glass lenses are very expensive, and they wanted our feedback before committing to the expense of the glass lenses (glass will be in the shipping version), which is fair. A few of the testers noticed some warping, and removing and reseating the lenses helped some, but the latest firmware included new distortion profiles which have fixed the distortion. Even the plastic lenses look great, and I can’t wait for the glass lenses to ship."

He says the Inside out tracking is still glitchy and drops out on him in a well lit room sometimes for a second at a time and while he expects they will work some of this out he is definitely getting the lighthouse tracking option.

He says the DMass update with the latest firmware is an improvement.

"As to the audio, the Crystal has 2 options: MAS and DMAS. The MAS is just plain bad, and if you order the Crystal, opt for the DMAS speakers. The design of the DMAS is floating, similar to the Index. Initially even the audio from the DMAS was horrible, with this weird phasing that was very obvious on the engine sounds, but the latest firmware fixed that and I would say now that the audio is plenty loud, but is very much mid-biased, with not nearly enough bass and highs. Pimax says they are working on EQ profiles and that will be fixed."

He is having comfort issues and says:

"As to comfort, it just doesn’t fit my head shape. The facial foam is too wide for my face resulting in some light bleed from the sides. Worse is that the back of the strap falls right on my occipital bone on the back of my head, and the whole thing kind of wobbles because it’s basically pinched on my forehead and the back of my head. Most of the testers are happy with the comfort, but one has already modded a Vive DAS to fit the Crystal, and I’ll definitely be doing that as well."

He ends by saying he thinks it will be the VR headset to beat and that he thinks it will be solid when it ships.

If you have iRacing you can read the whole thread there from April 28th.

iRacing Authentication

forums.iracing.com

 

[BrunoBæ]

@RCHeliguy thanks for the update.
Sounds promising and somewhat solvable.
But it sounds also like the sound goofy option will result in people who want some reasonable sound will need headphones.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I was thinking about that whole facial interface issue.

The Valve Index facial interface fit my face very well and I thought it was very comfortable, BUT it did not fit @HoiHman very well and he had to make modifications.

In this case we have someone who says the Pimax doesn't fit his face well and with the interface being as wide as it is, wrapping around many different people's faces will be harder.

WHAT IF, we borrowed from the BSB concept?

A headset would ship with a stock generic replaceable interface so family and friends could share your headset. But what if you could then scan your face and have a custom interface created that would maximize your FOV and be more comfortable?

 

[BrunoBæ]

Just saw this survey:

 

[RCHeliguy]

The Quest 3 is coming and will likely be a low cost leader for it's abilities.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think issue #1 is that she really should have a 4090.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Sounds like she had some reasonable points in the beginning of the video but stopped watching because I cannot stand her shrilling voice.

 

[Leynad777]

Sounds like she had some reasonable points in the beginning of the video but stopped watching because I cannot stand her shrilling voice.

She run through a tiny fraction of the isses compare to what I had to do to run the 8KX DMAS. I had no display and no sound first. Fix for the display was disabling the internal graphics of my i5 13600 in the BIOS and for the sound I needed so set it up in Windows as a 7.1 sound device with only two outputs, but on stereo it doesn't make a peep. The sound was still poor in volume and I couldn't get all channels in AMS2 even on headphone-mix. So I have to audio-mirror the PC stereo output to the Pimax and use a combination of Equalizer APO and a PlugIn called 'Peace' to boost the gain.

Looks like the DMAS for the Crystal fixed most of the audio-issue by providing a better headphone-amplifier, but it still doesn't provide a mechanic to get the headphones closer to the ears, which would be a nice improvement here. I've tried 3D-printed mods similar to my Pico 4 passive sound amplifier, which does a great job for the Pico-sound, but the DMAS headphones really need to be absolutely free floating. I've tried cups directly attached and with a distance to the headphones, but the sound just got horrible and hours of CAD-work with some filament for the bin.

And I had further graphics-problems as well. Parallel reprojection wasn't active and all games I've tried had a double vision first. Than setting up the IPD-Offset was tricky because the IPD-adjustment only moves the lenses, not the displays. The tutorial from MRTV is pretty useless without controllers and I luckily find another way, which is better as well. The best way was standing on a track in AMS2 with nice white lines in the distance, switch to Pitool, click on one of the round handlebar of the offset-slider and now I could tune the offset with the arrow-keys while in the headset. At least having the possibility to setup the offset seems like a good idea and the visuals without proper overlap reminded me of the issues I had with the Vive Cosmos. It's looks like squinting by intention. Than the displays were much too bright and lowered the contrasts, so took me about a week of trouble-shooting to get the 8KX to work.

Oh, I forgot the tracking. I had tracking issues and still have occasionally. First I was only using the 9-axis mode without Lighthouse and would be great, if it doesn't occasionally drift away from the center. I've bought two used Base Stations 1.0 even I only wanted one for Sim-Racing, but one idi.., eh, nice person sold two for less than one and I had to use two stations for proper tracking. One station alone wasn't working. Than I thought, buying one 2.0 Valve Base Station and selling the two 1.0 would be a good idea, but the 2.0 have new issues and seems unsolvable. They are way too sensible to EMI and were slowly shivering/jittering probably due to my actuators. Got my money back yesterday from the Steam store and had to open and fix one of the 1.0 stations already. So I'm not a fan of Lighthouse-tracking at all...

 

[gamma123152]

I think issue #1 is that she really should have a 4090.

Agree and at the time of the release of the 3090TI it was all over the news that it didn't work with certain vr headsets such as the Reverb G2 and the Pimax 8Kx if I remember correctly. The fact that she's an VR reviewer and didnt know about this made her lose credibility(they had to tell her this in the mrtv podcast, she clearly didn't know). So she could have expected trouble with that GPU. And second point; a 4090 is mandatory for the Crystal in terms of performance, the 4090 is not even fast enough/not as fast as we want it to be. Anything less is imo simply not good enough. Her review didn't make much sense to me for that reason.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hmm...
Why would he say this after all the positive Crystal press?

 

[Pär Öqvist]

I think issue #1 is that she really should have a 4090.

nah I have had two runs with pimax and the software is incredibly hard to get running correctly. Second one I didn´t actually manage to get to run because steamvr couldn´t find it. It also had sunburns on the panels so it went back to the seller but I at least have recent experience with pimax not improving their drivers.

Clearly see where she comes from. Dunno why she get questioned so much for having issues. She is not the first influencer having issues with pimax software and put it on record.

 

[Pär Öqvist]

Hmm...
Why would he say this after all the positive Crystal press?
View attachment 661365

My guess is obviously he has less issues with the aero. Also the hardware requirements will naturally be an issue with more pixels to render and less mature drivers.

 

[RCHeliguy]

if BSB actually has had a FOV breakthrough, that makes their headset a lot more compelling. It still may be hard to drive well without foveated rendering, but I'll definitely watch with interest while waiting for the next next Index release in hopefully a similar time frame.

 

[gamma123152]

Hmm...
Why would he say this after all the positive Crystal press?
View attachment 661365

The guy has been in Varjo's office and interviewed people there. I think even multiple times, it seems that he is a personal friend to some Varjo people. He seem to be a fan of the company for a long time. He struggles with his feelings I think.

After all he said what the Crystal is better in(in his video from yesterday): colors, blacks, fov, stereo overlap and 3d effect because of it, chromatic aberration, red shift, distortion, audio he literally said that Pimax had the advantage on all these points. It's hard to think that after saying all that; that he would prefer the Aero indeed. Comfort was close to equal. The only things that he preferred the Aero with was that it was maybe a little bit sharper in the distance (probably because the resolution is spread over a smaller lens, but he said that the cockpit looked sharper in the Aero and that it was pretty close the distance sharpness) and Varjo's software is a bit more efficient and has 7-8fps extra compared to the Crystal(I wonder if this is because of eye tracking? Which the Aero doesn't have yet). And the build quality of the Crystal was better but that's not something that you mention while having the device on your head. Maybe it's the motion compensation? I cannot stand that/will never use it, but maybe with flight sims it makes a huge difference? Or maybe it's the little fan in the Aero? That he gets overheated in the Crystal?

But i think that it's because of his friendship with Varjo, he wants to stay loyal to his friends.

 

[gamma123152]

My guess is obviously he has less issues with the aero. Also the hardware requirements will naturally be an issue with more pixels to render and less mature drivers.

He said that he had no issues at all with the Crystal, no crashes nothing, it was very stable. But yes with eye tracking enabled the Aero will probably run much much better in MSFS and that's what he plays and that combined with better motion compensation can maybe give the advantage in flight sims for the Aero despite the fact that the Crystal has better visuals overall.

But this all doesn't apply to sim racing, since motion compensation isn't usable in sim racing (for me not, maybe for some other it is?) and most sim racing titles don't support eye tracking.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Just read a rumor that an Index 2 announcement is coming this year and the product may actually be released before Christmas. The rumor suggested both a high end and less expense headset.

Fingers crossed....

Fyi, he has also said he doesn't think an Aero 2 is coming.

 

[gamma123152]

Just read a rumor that an Index 2 announcement is coming this year and the product may actually be released before Christmas. The rumor suggested both a high end and less expense headset.

Fingers crossed....

Fyi, he has also said he doesn't think an Aero 2 is coming.

I really hope that the Index 2 doesn't have Fresnel lenses again.. or pancake lenses. "Less expensive" sounds not positive/not high end enough, maybe they want to compete with the Quest 3 which is also going to be "a less expensive" hmd with pancake lenses... I would have preferred a more expensive headset, in that case we could have expected more impressive specs/lenses/panels. Not sure what to expect now.

And no Aero 2 is even worse/very unexpected news. I don't believe that rumour because Varjo said that the Aero had been a success for them. I had really high hopes for the Aero 2 now that the Crystal is released. I would have expected that Varjo wanted to beat the Crystal.. because they surely lose a lot of market share now to Pimax. Strange.