Pimax Crystal 42PPD Lenses Review | Too Many Trade Offs for too Little Gain

[@stevebobowski3507]

Love your rage rants

[@Omniwhatever]

Thanks, they're fun to do!

[@MikA-dw2fp]

Useful content. Unpleasant audio production; I stopped watching shortly after 6:16. In postproduction, please better normalize max peak audio level.

[@Omniwhatever]

I don't really see what you mean on the audio complaint. I was a bit louder in general because of being so frustrated with this particular product, but in OBS my recording was still(Mostly) not higher than yellow and the volume was similar on the editing timeline. I only noticeably turned down 2-3 brief parts, like the time stamp, because those still got a bit loud but turned them down a bit intentionally because of it.

[@sprtndlx]

mic clipping which is understandable if you are using a dinky vr mic

[@British_Dragon-4K-Simulations]

Hi! Great channel! Subbed! I just purchased the Crystal and have a 4090 and 12900K with DDR5 32G CPU RAM, like you I believe. I usually play Flight-Sims but I'm looking into other genre's to get the most out of this great HMD. What VR games would you recommend without the VR controllers as I only purchased the Sim version of the Crystal. I would like to use the Xbox Series-X controller over my Keyboard & Mouse. Thank you! :) PS: I really enjoy RPG games and I spent approximately 1,800 hours in Skyrim when it first came out, with two playthroughs and approximately 400 hours in Fallout 4. Both on console as I only purchased a PC back in 2019. So Skyrim or Fallout 4 in VR looks interesting to me.

[@Omniwhatever]

I've had a 7950x3D. Unfortunately, I don't have much to recommend without motion controls, as I generally don't like VR games without motion controls, sorry. Skyrim VR and a lot of mods for it also heavily center around having a VR body and motion controls too, so you might be out of luck there.

[@British_Dragon-4K-Simulations]

@@Omniwhatever Thanks. I heard that the Pimax Crystal motion controllers tracking was quite bad with just the inside out tracking cameras in the HMD.

[@Omniwhatever]

@@British_Dragon-4K-Simulations I'd, personally, disagree with that. I've found it pretty good. No Quest 3, but worked pretty well for almost all my use cases.

[@sean.d7171]

I do like the 42ppd better the fov isn't that bad but the sweet spot i way worse I have to line up the headset clamp it on good also ipd is now at 62mm to look good and I'm 65mm on the standard lens. I'm a racing sim user and i like so see way down the track i also wish the 160hz would happen it doesn't matter how clear the screens are if the fps is only 120hz. And 90hz looks terrible to me at high speed. refresh rate its a big deal after using 160z on the pimax super

[@tetley3737]

I got the crystal for sim racing/flying, so I (thankfully) ordered the wide fov (still waiting on them 6 months later). I had a feeling the 42ppd were gonna require some sacrifices, but this is ridiculous. Thanks for the video.

[@markus301]

Hi, I have a laptop gaming with a 3070ti and i would like to know if is a good idea buying the pimax crystal using this laptop? I mostly like action games, puzle and my favorite game is beat saber.

[@Omniwhatever]

Beat Saber'll probably be okay but most games definitely will not work that well. You can check out my DFR video where I benchmarked every setting with it on the Crystal, one of the GPUs was a 3080 TI mobile, and it got absolutely destroyed. You'll absolutely have to downsample the resolution a good bit and/or rely on reprojection, probably both.

[@lassmirandadennsiewillja3943]

dont worry iam sure the 12k qled is just around the corner lol

[@der60er]

so we need more pixels on displays and this is the only way getting more PPD in future. hope of new HMDs 2024.

[@jamescampbell8482]

We don't actually need more pixels, we just need properly designed optics. OSVR had a dual element aspheric lens doublet on their HDK1 headset back in 2015. It had a resolution of 960x1080 per eye but because it was a dual element lens they didn't need distortion correction on it, and had no chromatic aberration. Those lenses are about twice the cost of the average single element lens to develop, but if pi max had decided to do a 42 PPD lens properly in glass, it could have been done. A dual element lens probably could've done 42 PPD at about 96° horizontal as opposed to the 88 in these current polycarb lenses. It's a great feature to have exchangeable lenses for repair and longevity, but I feel like the company half ass the 42 PPD lenses on purpose

[@chrisclarkson7077]

Great review 😂

[@TonyDrecaps]

Good honest review

[@thatstokedgamer]

Thanks for the transparency!

[@EndersVRcade]

With the 35 PPD lenses, I thought I might be seeing the limit of HLA textures but wasn’t certain if that was just my experience. I thought my Reverb G2 was approaching the most resolution we could (mostly) appreciate. Crystal surprised me and I wouldn’t mind a bit more resolution for pixel peeping distant skies but again not really something I’m really pining for. Given this and your reactions to the 42 PPD lenses, I’m hoping the 12k will be the sweets spot with Crystal 35 PPD combined with 8k FOV although I haven’t done the math to see that adds up or not.

[@Omniwhatever]

Oh, I'm not worried about the 12k getting similar pixel density despite the absurd FoV when the resolution is as high as it is. On paper think it'll be high enough fidelity to appreciate most games without the games being TOO limiting a factor and then huge FoV.

[@Matt-mt8rc]

I think Pimax is going forward with these because its marketing and misunderstanding the market. The Crystal was supposed to be the "clarity" headset and the 12K the ultimate with wideview. They were obviously surprised that most early buyers (pre August) wanted the coupon option for the wide FOV instead of the free 42ppd. They were already too far down the road for the lenses in R+D and production and it would be one more thing they promised they would make and then didn't.

[@mathiasv010]

Thanks for the vid. Hope to see a video on the "wide fov lenses" at some point. They seem like the only ones that would be worth switching lenses for.

[@Omniwhatever]

I know that Pimax is doing a slight redesign on the wFoV lenses based on feedback from the prototypes, so I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how they compare to the prototypes I reviewed a bit back! Hopefully they improve on some of the short comings!

[@mathiasv010]

@Omniwhatever ohh I totally missed that video, it was a good watch aswell. I agree with you in that video, that eye tracking is a must. Feels very wired that they don't have it on the 42PPD lenses

[@HighAspect]

Probably why many of us choose the wide lenses option. Shocked to hear no eye tracking . Why they even made these is questionable.

[@Nobody-Nowhere]

I think there are people who are simply curious of seeing what 42PPD would look like. And if they are mostly just for movies anyhow. Might also work for flatscreen games. Those "AR" glasses people like so much currently, have really narrow FOV (like ~50 degrees) and only 1080p image, and they still advertise them as 200 inch screens.

[@Omniwhatever]

I'm pretty sure the only reason these ended up being made was because Pimax boasted about having 42PPD lenses in the announcement video way back so they could one-up the Aero, which was the highest consumer PPD at the time. These definitely feel like they were meant to tick a marketing box and not much else.

[@jamescampbell8482]

If they had decided to go full sand and develop the lenses properly, with the actual intent to do so, there are ways they could've gotten more out of these 2880 x 2880 panels. I wonder what the panel usage percentage is on both of these lenses, because an aspheric doublet could have maintained the 42 PPD over a slightly wider FOB because a dual element would require less barrel distortion.

[@D-money813]

Are you sticking with the crystal or are you going to get the varjo xr4?

[@Omniwhatever]

I don't know why people keep asking me that, I've never expressed interest and it's literally more than x2 the price, waaaaaaaaay beyond my budget. Plus the 50PPD aspect only works in games with Varjo's SDK/Quad-View support, so you can't even really leverage the full fidelity for gaming. It's only 30PPD otherwise. Though the screen's still physically much higher res than the Crystal so benefit a bit there, but not as much. I'll be sticking with the Crystal because the XR-4 feels like a tremendous waste for gaming purposes.

[@D-money813]

@@Omniwhatever we are asking because you do high end pcvr

[@Omniwhatever]

@@D-money813 Fair enough, but the XR-4's far higher end in price than anything I've looked it. That one thing is about as expensive, maybe even a bit moreso, as my top end PC and Crystal combined. I'd consider it in a totally different price tier than even everything I've looked at. The only other high end headset on the horizon I plan on looking at, bar something like a review copy being sent my way, would be the 12k and that's mainly because of the huge discount I can get from the trade in program. Otherwise bit much for me.

[@techfun123]

So over the top ranting, doesn't seem very constructive or productive. Hopefully you are more composed when you report your findings to pimax folks. Unpleasant to see/hear etc. to say the least.

[@Omniwhatever]

If there was a single redeeming factor, even the performance gain isn't much to speak of if the visual experience is borderline unusable, or it didn't come at a very tiny improvement to one spot from sacrificing literally everything else, I might've been easier on it, but it was hardly not constructive. I laid out the FoV/stereo overlap loss, the lack of eye tracking, the IPD problems, plastic when way back it was supposed to be glass, etc... It's just a bad product by every stretch when the normal lenses everyone gets by default exist. Especially when these were going to be sent out by all indications I was given. Just because somebody's angry or harsh on something doesn't invalidate what they say.

[@TrevorJones1]

Woah, first I'm hearing that the 42 is not cancelled. good.

[@Pyrocumulous]

plastic and no eye tracking, I'm not thrilled. Not sure if I should change my second lens order, but neither option sounds that great.

[@Omniwhatever]

Honestly, the default 35PPD lenses are really good and feel like they've mostly squeezed all they can out of the panels without major compromise elsewhere. The wFoV ones I could at least see a niche for if you really NEED that extra FoV and don't mind a sizable but not otherworldly bad reduction in stereo overlap. If stereo overlap's important to you though then I don't think either lens is gonna be that great. Pimax is doing a little update to the wFoV lenses vs the prototypes everyone else used so perhaps it'll be better by then, but I wouldn't expect it to be a significant change. The wFoV lenses are clearly where Pimax's focus is between the two alternate lenses though.