I was in the 40’s so if I keep the order at least I should be in the first batch!
I’m not sure the 3090 will be completely up to the job though, and not sure I want to buy a 4000 series with AMD offering what looks like between 4080 and 4090 perf for $999.
Decisions decisions!
Either way look forward to seeing some feedback, although my biggest concern isn’t around hardware really, it’s around software and that will be hard to evaluate at a controlled trade show.
Would rather see it in the hands of a few reviewers early who can give a better overall impression of whether pimax have managed to step up their game on the software front.
Also looks a bit less ridiculous on the head than the 8KX, for those that care. Hopefully it’s fairly light and well balanced with that battery pack in the back.
Going by that video i’m quite surpised how small it is (i initially questioned if it was a Crystal in the vid), i expected it to be 8KX sized or maybe a bit smaller, i’d already heard it was lighter.
From comparing peoples orders numbers it appears like the order number is simply incremented with each reservation each day so yes it appears that way. It is now “out of stock” so further reservations cannot be made, there must have been quite a few orders for them to do that.
The xxxx numbers were clearly incremental for that day, in the above example it would be the 12th order on the 2nd November 2022.
I don’t think it’s particularly out of the realm of possibility for them to have had a couple of thousand pre-orders a day for a few days since it went live… it’s only been up for 4 days before now being unavailable - if they averaged 2000 a day then it would only be 8,000 headsets preordered which isn’t a crazy amount, especially when you consider there will be at least some looking to scalp there too with a new in demand toy.
MRTV has a lot of feedback on their channel. It looks very good indeed, the one that thing that sticks out is that the setup of the headset does not seem to be optically neutral, meaning, the image looked like the lenses were already corrected for short sightedness. Apparently Pimax themselves had not noticed this, but multiple people started mentioning it.
Once MRTV tells me the headset is good, I will consider it. I really like the way they review products, it’s technical but not overly so. Sebastian owns so many headsets, he immediately knows a winner from a loser.
I tried the Crystal at one of their roadshows last sunday
Being very new to VR and only having had my reverb G2 for a few weeks it was a nice opportunity to try some other headsets
They had direct comparisons set up between a G2 and the Crystal on a race game (cars 2?), the Aero and the Crystal were set up running Skyrim and a Crystal showing Msfs (with no other comparison Headset)
I quite liked the Crystal, it has a better fov than the G2 similar to the Aero
The clarity is a bit better than the Aero and the contrast is definetly better thanks to local dimming (which they could turn on and off to see the difference)
The biggest difference I thought was far less deformation at the edges than the Aero had
Resolution looked similar to the Aero I would say
It is a shame they couldn’t turn on dynamic foveated rendering yet (they were waiting for a driver by the third party who was responsible for this feature, I forgot the name but think they mentioned it is the same company that did it for the Aero)
Switching that on would save around 25% on the GPU and might be a great feature for our GPU hungry headsets
Build Quality not the best, but good enough
I did not experience the lens problem so I can’t comment on that, but did get the feeling they were on this issue and believe they said there were already new lenses on the way to the roadshow
Sharper
Way bigger sweet spot (also sharp toward the edges unlike the G2)
Has better contrast due to local dimming
Better fov especially horizontal
Colours are good on both
Bigger range and automatic IPD adjustment (mine is 71 and just beyond G2 specs)
It did not have the final sound drivers installed when I tested it, ut should end up comparable to the G2 I would think
G2 is a great headset. My IPD is 71 too and I have the G2 set at max.
The sharper image (higher PPD), much larger sweet spot, high range auto IPD and better FOV sound like a worthy upgrade. If it has foveated rendering then performance might be equal or better than the G2. Waiting for the final product and reviews but it sounds like it has promise.
I think the white letters on the G1000 stay a bit blurry no matter what vr headset you use, it must be something to do with how they are rendered. I owned a Varjo Aero for 5 months and the letters were slightly blurry in that too.
Latest update on the production Pimax Crystal over the recent Roadshow version. The hand tracking add on bar looks interesting, if it works for cockpit interaction in MSFS.
Latest info from Pimax is they’ll be shipping for delivery some units “shortly after CES 2023”, CES is 5-8 Jan. Personally I doubt this but who knows for sure.