I’ve been out of following VR headsets lately and my Pimax Crystal OG has been driving me crazy with A) Will it charge the battery, and B) Will it start without rebooting my PC.
I’m looking for a similar clarity and resolution with more comfort and less fuss, preferably:
- OLED (or good blacks)
- No wireless ability!
- No internal glare
- No battery
- eye tracking
- Inside Out Tracking (but willing to try base stations)
- No wireless ability!
- Available for purchase now or very soon
I’m willing to compromise on most things except on having no wireless support. No wireless! I already own a Quest.
Somewhere at the $2K USD or less mark. I only have an RTX 4090/7950X3D, so don’t want too much more resolution than the Crystal.
I switched from a Crystal Light to Meganex8K. It is a bit more fuss to get it right. But if it’s right, it’s amazing. The Crystal just was to much weight for me.
The base station tracking is so much better than IO tracking. But would recommend two base stations for flight simming. Otherwise you loose tracking everytime you look more than 70degrees to the left or the right.
But it’s a bit of a gamble if this headset fits you right as it seems. The no return policy makes it hard to test. I would recommend getting one second hand if you want to jump in that specific rabbit hole. There are always some offers, because not everyone is happy with it. As I said, you need to invest some time to get it right and some ressources outside of the official Shiftall channels. But you would need that for the Pimax too. I had to fumble around a lot to get the crystal working right. But not as much as the Meganex8K. It’s not a plug and play experience at this point. Maybe it get’s there with future updates. But for me at least it fires up consistently without any startup problems.
After experiencing OLED, I’m sure I’m never going back to LCD/microLED or whatever. Flying at night suddenly became one of the best things in VR I experienced in planes where the lighting is modelled great, like the Blacksqaure Dukes or the PMDG 772. There is some glare in Meganex8K but it’s minimal. It doesn’t distract me at all. Chromatic Aberations are visible but nowhere near as bad as in the Crystal Light.
Maybe the Dream Air is something to wait for, if you are already in the Pimax environment. Could be a great headset.
I have the face plate on the crystal that allows me to use either the inside out tracking or the base stations. I have two base stations, but the tracking is always a bit more jittery with the base stations. I’m not sure why as it should be better.