Quest 3 or Pimax crystal with i9 3090

Ok so first impressions of my q3 with Virtual Desktop compared to my g2… on my i9 9900k with a 3090 and I just can’t decide if the q3 is worth the money over what the g2 already brings.

I just can’t decide what I like better. G2 or Q3. The need for the sweet spot in the g2 has gone with the q3 but felt that in the sweet spot the g2 is a bit sharper. However the FOV was better and clearer in the q3.

In the PMDG 737 trying to use the controllers to type a route into the FMC doesn’t respond very well at all. With the g2 it works well.

I think some of the colours in the q3 were closer to the 2D (non VR) graphics than the g2 was but the g2 were still fine.

The g2 felt much comfier on.

I get a slight gap at the bottom of the q3 as I have it sitting at level 3 of the glasses adjustment as don’t want to scratch the lenses.

I think I’ve got tweaks to still make.

However now I am thinking of getting a pimax crystal and returning the q3 but I am concerned about the spec of my rig not being enough. However I read some people getting on fine with a similar spec and others who say the latest cpu and 4090 is needed.

I don’t need to run on max settings. Happy to have some compromise and in time I will upgrade my PC further.

However for now I am looking for a comfortable headset with no sweet spot, but rather edge to edge clarity and a reasonable level of performance. Sound should also be good and the controllers should input into the FMC well.

Do you think the crystal will tick these boxes on my system?

Happy to hear of people’s experiences to see if it helps me.

To fully utilize Crystal potential I bought new PC with 7800x3D and 4090. Expensive. Also Crystal is not cheap. But such setup is balanced allowing running Crystal at full resolution with high settings.
Crystal is also rather heavy. For sims it’s acceptable given the superb optical quality, but I would not recommend Crystal for any room scale games due to heavy inertia. Fortunately I completed Half Life Alyx on Reverb G2 and there are no more room scale VR games which can compete with HLA, so I use Crystal for MSFS only and I’m happy about it.

I believe in the current world of high quality lenses we can consider:

  • high end setup with 4090 and Crystal or Aero
  • midrange setup with 3090/4070Ti/4080 and Quest 3

G2 with small sweet spot and fresnel plastic lenses seems a thing of the past in 2024.

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