Pimax Reveals Two New High-end VR Headsets at its Frontier Event, Starting at US$699

[TheLostSwede]

Pimax, a leading innovator in the Virtual Reality industry, announced two new high-end VR headsets at its Frontier 2024 event, held on YouTube this Monday. The Crystal Super is an ultra-high-end headset, packing 29.5 million pixels and the world's first changeable optical engine, allowing users to swap between QLED and micro-OLED panels. The Crystal Light offers the same 16.6 million pixels as the Pimax Crystal, but is much more budget-friendly, starting from 699 USD. Additionally, Pimax unveiled the 60G Airlink module, which leverages WiGig technology to enable true high-fidelity wireless PCVR.

The Crystal Super represents a substantial leap forward from the highly successful Crystal, with its greatly increased number of pixels, enabling a much larger field of view (FOV) and higher pixels per degree (PPD) simultaneously.




Besides FOV and PPD, the choice of displays plays a critical role in user experience. QLED and micro-OLED each offers distinct advantages, and Crystal Super allows users to choose between the two or opt for both. This flexibility stems from the world's first replaceable optical engine system invented by Pimax, which combines the displays and lenses as a single detachable module.

Pimax Crystal Super starts from 1799 USD (excluding VAT), and ready for shipping in Q4.

The Crystal Light serves as a streamlined iteration of the Pimax Crystal, retaining the core specifications that underpinned the Crystal's success while removing features less essential to PCVR. Such adjustments have significantly reduced costs and also decreased the weight by 30%. This enables Pimax to position the Crystal Light at a starting price of 699 USD, offering unmatched value in its category.

The Crystal Light is available for pre-order now and shipping in May.

Pimax also clarified that they will continue to evolve the Pimax Crystal, which has been designed from the start as a high-end wireless PCVR headset. This requires extremely broad bandwidth and highly efficient utilization, necessitating the XR2 chip and battery, which have been integral parts of the Crystal.

An extra set of hardware, the 60G Airlink from Pimax, is introduced to complete the wireless solution. Utilizing Wigig technology, Pimax's 60G Airlink offers significantly higher bandwidth than conventional WiFi.

The 60G Airlink is priced at 299 USD, ready for shipping later this year.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

No mention of resolution

 

[AsRock]

The pic does not say ?.

 

[robal]

The pic does not say ?.

The pic does say what the resolution is. Nice, well done.

When I clicked this, I thought "hey new VR headset", "I'll read the article. I wonder what the FOV is"
The FOV is "massive". Jesus Christ. Time for bed.

 

[Space Lynx]

4k per eye, so it can run a total of 3 games on a 4090 ya? neat.

or is 4k per eye still only taxing as a single 4k monitor? or is 4k x 2 hitting the gpu?

 

[evernessince]

4k per eye, so it can run a total of 3 games on a 4090 ya? neat.

or is 4k per eye still only taxing as a single 4k monitor? or is 4k x 2 hitting the gpu?

Rendering two 4K VR screens is lighter than rendering one 8K display.

VR employs many tricks to exploit the fact that ultimately what's displayed on both screens has a high level of commonality and share the same scene, one of them being multi-res shading for example. This headset apparently supports fixed foveated rendering as well, which allows the edges of the screens to be rendered at a lower resolution. This exploits the fact that human vision is only really sharp in the center. The problem is this is fixed foveated rendering and not just foveated rendering. Fixed foveated rendering implies the center of the screen will always be high res and the edges low res as compared to real foveated rendering that uses eye tracking to determine where you are looking and by extension which parts to render in high res and which parts in low res.

DLSS also works in VR, not DLSS Frame Generation though. VR is more demanding in general but there's a lot of optimization that can be done as well.

 

[DaemonForce]

It's fine. I wouldn't want frame generation in VR titles as that sounds like way too methodical to render already upscaled images in the first place. The refresh for these sets is 80 at worst and the highest I've ever seen is 120 with 90 being the norm. I've been a PiMax fan since the 8K units but still wouldn't be able to fully utilize them even on today's loadout. This looks like a massive step up.

 

[AsRock]

No mention of resolution

The pic does not say ?.

View attachment 343778

The pic does say what the resolution is. Nice, well done.

When I clicked this, I thought "hey new VR headset", "I'll read the article. I wonder what the FOV is"
The FOV is "massive". Jesus Christ. Time for bed.

HAHAHA. Like come one i did box out were it clearly says it.

 

[Bwaze]

Must be terrible for designers of high resolution VR devices to know "the era of getting more performance for your money is over".

 

[DaemonForce]

Wtf does that mean? All of our hardware has been WAY behind the curve for as long as I can remember. My Phenom II desktop was barely suited for 720p low experience even with the 580. It got interesting with the FX-8370 and R5 3600 but was still getting locks and stutters. More performance for the money is only something I'm going to see out of the 7900 XT and concerning any degree of VR performance, especially the types of VR apps that interest me, heavy doubt on massive improvements. ✖

We don't even have proper VR benchmarking tools for the past and current era and no...

VRMark does not count. SteamVR Performance Test gets pinned to the ceiling under an i9-9980HK but the real head scratcher is that Ryzen gets dunked on by the FX:

Something somewhere went seriously wrong. We need some set standard benchmark tool for VR performance before getting into this. Until then, PiMax go BRRRRR.

 

[tpuuser256]

50+ ppd ? jesus christ

 

[Vayra86]

Wtf does that mean? All of our hardware has been WAY behind the curve for as long as I can remember. My Phenom II desktop was barely suited for 720p low experience even with the 580. It got interesting with the FX-8370 and R5 3600 but was still getting locks and stutters. More performance for the money is only something I'm going to see out of the 7900 XT and concerning any degree of VR performance, especially the types of VR apps that interest me, heavy doubt on massive improvements. ✖

We don't even have proper VR benchmarking tools for the past and current era and no...

View attachment 343816

VRMark does not count. SteamVR Performance Test gets pinned to the ceiling under an i9-9980HK but the real head scratcher is that Ryzen gets dunked on by the FX:

View attachment 343820View attachment 343821

Something somewhere went seriously wrong. We need some set standard benchmark tool for VR performance before getting into this. Until then, PiMax go BRRRRR.

The lack of standardization is really what kills VR actively.

They still didn't figure it out. They need to come to terms on a bottom line wrt specs and featureset. 'The market will figure it out' they think. Yeah, right. The point isn't selling four hundred different kinds of HMD. The point is making and selling content. Content will drive VR sales. Not a neverending stream of iterative hardware improvements.

I can somewhat understand why Apple wants to enter the arena here. They can be the one defining that bottom line. Except if you do it with a 3500 dollar headset, I'm not sure its going places.

 

[remixedcat]

hope this smokes tf outta the goofy ahh apple vision pro that's 3500USD lmao

 

[DaemonForce]

Well the Apple Vision isn't a SteamVR device so no, it won't. Completely separate markets.

 

[tpuuser256]

According to resolution and ppd, we are looking at a field of view of less than 80 degrees. It's sharp as hell but screw your peripheral vision I guess

 

[DaemonForce]

The horizontal or vertical? The whole point of the PiMax is maximum advantage and while PvPvE constantly reminds of the meme gamers don't look up, the FOV for this looks infinitely superior to where I started.

 

[Arco]

4k per eye, so it can run a total of 3 games on a 4090 ya? neat.

or is 4k per eye still only taxing as a single 4k monitor? or is 4k x 2 hitting the gpu?

Luckily not the case, this is only true for flight sim games. The normal distortion profile is at a mind boggling 4312x5100 per eye.

A 4060 mobile at low settings can run it at 60Hz. (Normal profile.)

This counts on what games you want to play. HL:A, Superhot VR, and Beat Saber all run fine. Similar fidelity level games preform the same.

A 4090 lets you play higher end games like DCS or War Thunder at high settings and low frametime.

 

[Bwaze]

There is no graphic card in the universe that can run DCS in any form of high settings on 2 x 4312 x 5100. Of course people then say you don't need good antialiasing on such a high resolution, you don't need this option, that option, in the end you turn down quite far to achieve even low framerate (which is cobsidered OK), so you have compromise upon compromise, with graphics card that costs 1800 EUR!

 

[Arco]

There is no graphic card in the universe that can run DCS in any form of high settings on 2 x 4312 x 5100. Of course people then say you don't need good antialiasing on such a high resolution, you don't need this option, that option, in the end you turn down quite far to achieve even low framerate (which is cobsidered OK), so you have compromise upon compromise, with graphics card that costs 1800 EUR!

Do you know what DFR or Quadviews are?

 

[tpuuser256]

The horizontal or vertical? The whole point of the PiMax is maximum advantage and while PvPvE constantly reminds of the meme gamers don't look up, the FOV for this looks infinitely superior to where I started.

I had a Rift S, horrendous FOV. As much as I like high ppds, the Rift S is the minimum acceptable
Calculation are as follows : 50 pixels per degree, for a 3840 pixels horizontal that gives 76.9 degrees to fill out. I hope I'm wrong but the fact they didn't show any numbers or ranges for the FOV kinda worries me

 

[Arco]

I had a Rift S, horrendous FOV. As much as I like high ppds, the Rift S is the minimum acceptable
Calculation are as follows : 50 pixels per degree, for a 3840 pixels horizontal that gives 76.9 degrees to fill out. I hope I'm wrong but the fact they didn't show any numbers or ranges for the FOV kinda worries me

They bias the PPD more towards the middle of the lenses and lower it down at the edges. Its not really noticeable due to the actual lenses lowering the quality further away from the center.

 

[tpuuser256]

They bias the PPD more towards the middle of the lenses and lower it down at the edges. Its not really noticeable due to the actual lenses lowering the quality further away from the center.

I forgot about the foveated rendering... This should make a good horizontal FOV.
I'm still favoring the pimax 12K due to the dual 6K panels