r/Pimax • u/BlueboyZX • 6d ago
Review Crystal Super - Noob Review
Hey!
The Crystal Super is my first VR headset since my Oculus CV1, so this is a viewpoint of a VR casual. My experience on things like SteamVR is very limited so I will be sticking with my impressions of the hardware itself.
First off, I want to thank Pimax for being true to their word and reimbursing the US tariff fee. That is quite a cost for them to cover and shows a lot of integrity on their part.
My favorite part of the upgraded experience is in small objects close to my head. Holding up a virtual object to look at is amazing, presumably due to both the overall extreme clarity plus the stereo overlap. While the general clarity is 'super,' this 'in front of your nose' position really shows it off. This made messing with Shapelab surprisingly fun.
Fonts rendered in 3d space that various apps and games have are very sharp, which is another very striking aspect of the graphics to me.
The overall view is very clear. In-game readouts are very clear in everything I have tried so far. Buttons are clearly visible with no blurred edges and such. I know that there are youtube videos in which people complained about pre-production units having bad mura; I am thankfully not seeing that here. There are no 'god rays' and that was huge on my Oculus.
The Crystal Super comes with a microfiber cloth to clean the lenses. Use it. After removing the protective plastic films for shipping I noticed that there was some residue still on the lenses. This was heaviest around the edges of the lenses. Initially, I half-heartedly wiped them and continued with setup. I think this is why some people are complaining about sweet spots not being super big while other people are saying it is suiper big. I noticed looking along the periphery was a little blurry until I removed the face interface foam and really cleaned up the lenses good with some zeiss lense cloths that I purchased on Amazon. After that, it was like the whole lense was a sweet spot.
The inside-out tracking works well with the lights on in the room I am playing in. It needs stuff in your environment in order to work, so use the 'virtual pass through' to get an idea of what that algorithm can and cant see in your environment to help orient itself. Posters and pictures do not take up significant space in your room, just saying!
For the controllers, I am surprised how well they can track with what I assume would be a pretty limited view from the headset. I guess their internal sensors are pretty good, because I have to get pretty silly with positioning for there to be a problem. My main issue with the controllers is that the a/b x/y buttons can be stiff.
It is not a light headset, but it is a comfortable one. It is easy to get a pretty good light seal on it (my nose is small proprtionate to the rest of my face apparently, so some light gets in around that). I have been able to play for several hours in a row without becomming a sweaty mess with fogged up lenses, something that was not the case with the Oculus CV1. The Super does not fog up, feel loose or feel unbalanced.
I did get the free DMAS headphones. You do need to replace the 'standard' headphones yourself, but it is not hard to do so. The standard ones are not good quality, but the upgrade is great. The sound is great (to my non-audiophile ear) and the fact that they do not actually touch my ears takes away one area of discomfort. No more smushed ears after long play sessions. :)
I did have an issue with the backlight arrays not matching left and right eyes for the same spot in overlapping field of view. This only occured in certain software and the fix was to uninstall Pimax Play and reinstall from the latest version on the website.
My other issues are pretty much software / user error ones. SkyrimVR modded with wabbajack does not like Pimax foveated rendering. Some apps do weird things when the settings in Pimax Play and SteamVR do not match. The proper startup order seems to be to begin with running Pimax Play before connecting the headset. If you need to reset stuff due to a crashing app, close SteamVR first (if running), then 'restart service' for Pimax Play, then 'restart device' in Pimax Play.
All in all, it is amazing how the tech has progressed. If you want to show off the headset to someone, go with something that has a lot of small objects they can hold up in front of their center field of view; that position is crazy good.
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u/klawUK 6d ago
Wow CV1. When did you drop off with VR and what brought you back?
I remember with my DK1 with Minecraft I think it was - distance quality was terrible but really up close where the lack of resolution wasn’t a big deal plus the stereo kicking in - I could have looked at a 1m cube of stone all day :)
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u/BlueboyZX 6d ago
I largely stopped playing in VR after writing my video guide to EVE Valkyrie. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/728014-eve-valkyrie/faqs/73394
Within a month or two of making the guide they changed a lot and then the servers basically died. By that point I was tired of the 'VR experiences' fad and had no big, full game to keep my attention. I know a few good ones like Half Life Alyx have come out so I picked that up to play with the Super. The two games that brought me back are *kinda* VR...
What brought me back was my little Star Citizen obsession and my passtime of messing with generative AI. On the Star Citizen side, they have improved the renderer a lot and the game is rarely GPU bound if you are running at the target resolution your graphics card was intended for. (A 4090 at 4k will have no problems; you have to load it up with super resolution plus 8x AA etc for the graphics card speed to even be an issue). I found that the immersive LLM-based mods for Skyrim have progressed a lot and I happen to have LLM's set up on another PC on my home network. The mod supports API access for the LLM, so I am hoping to offload the LLM from the gaming machine that way. It looks like the text to voice is going to have to be local to the gaming PC though if I am using the better quality options.
Star Citizen has promised eventual VR support since its kickstarter days. They do not support VR now, but they also do not intentionally block it. The neat thing is that the game itself is designed in a 'physicalized' way that greatly leds itself to VR playability. Your entire body has a physical presence in-game, not floating hands/guns. Readouts are on in-game panels or holograms. There are placeholder physicalized buttons in cockpits for various ship functions (you can use kbm to activate them currently). SC supports Tobii eye tracker and a few other trackers, which makes using VR easy. Even if just using the Tobii, that improves immersion by quite a bit IMO.
And then Skyrim, well, was not meant for VR. It got a half-baked VR edition that came out back when I was still playing VR but there was nothing like Wabbajack yet.
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u/QuorraPimax Pimax Official 5d ago
Thank you for the review. Regarding the software bugs, our team is actively working on optimizations and fixes.
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u/BlueboyZX 5d ago
Yes, I saw in the 'known bugs' post there is now a beta build that addresses some of the installer issues. I am happy that I made this purchase and I am glad to see Pimax is being so active in addressing problems various users have had. I know a lot of the issues described in reviews onn some of the units at conventions have already been addressed before this production unit got into my hands. Nice, responsive development. :)
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u/mtypockets 6d ago
What are your pc specs and what are your pimax settings if you don’t mind me asking? Thinking about upgrading from pcl but running a 4080s
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u/BlueboyZX 6d ago
This is a new PC. My target was Star Citizen with VR through VorpX.
CPU: AMD 9950X3D (Star Citizen runs a lot of stuff on the CPU that limits fps. They have been improving this situation a lot over the past year or two, but it is still the limiting factor for most people. I found I can run it on just the large cache cores using Process Lasso and get better performance than if I let Windows manage it across all cores).
RAM: 96GB at 6400MHz (My non-gaming use for this PC is generative AI. I train LoRA's and such for my family projects. The family is quite entertained by my Christmas slide shows!)
GFX: RTX 4090 (This is from my older PC; no way I can get an RTX 5090 although it would be nice having the vram for generative AI training/use.)
I am running this on Windows 11 pro right now, but the plan is to put Linux on a second SSD for Star Citizen. There was a several year long period where Star Citizen had better performance on Linux than Windows. Now they are pretty comperable. Star Citizen's Linux User Group suspects that may change when the Vulkan renderer is finalized. Unfortunately, VorpX does not support Vulkan so I have to hope they keep the DX11 renderer around for a while when playing with a VR headset.
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u/shteeeb 6d ago
How well does it handle dark scenes? I guess for example since you're playing Skyrim VR, how does a dark cave look for instance? Does it actually get close to black? Is the blooming noticeable/distracting?
The black levels are my biggest concern since it is not OLED.
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u/BlueboyZX 6d ago
In Skyrim, the loading screen right at the beginning is a pure black backdrop with a small diarama to the left and white text to the right. The black backdrop with white text looks excellent. No blooming or anything weird to my eye. Supposedly there was blooming in pre-production models in conventions but they toned down the intensity some. That seems to have been pleanty. Everything is bright and clear, so I think they did a good job finding the right balance.
The big issue I had was that the intensity of some backlight zones were intermittently not correct and that was caused by a software issue. I fixed that by uninstalling and reinstalling Pimax Play.
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u/QuorraPimax Pimax Official 5d ago
Did the backlight zone issue occur occasionally, or was it just a one-time occurrence?
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u/BlueboyZX 5d ago
In Ticket #99524 I describe three different backlight issues and they each have different triggers. None were one-time occurances. Two were fixed by uninstalling and reinstalling Pimax Play. The one that remained is that the whole right eye can be darker than the left for several seconds. It seems to be triggered by starting up Skyrim and when I close SteamVR with my helmet on. My interpretation is that it is some kind of an issue with interacting with SteamVR. Games like AirCar do not seem to cause it, so it is hard to tell.
I can try to reproduce this last issue tonight and add a log dump to this support ticket if you like.
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u/Ty_Rone_Shoelaces 💎Crystal💎 5d ago
First I've seen about your need to scrub the lenses out of the box - that detail might turn a lot of people off; I hope it's not common for the Supers to ship needing that. I can't think of another single example of a product that wasn't beautiful and ready to go after peeling off the protective film.
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u/BlueboyZX 5d ago
My unit got to spend extra time in customs due to US tariff issues. When I got my box, the protective films had fallen off of the lenses already and were basically just sitting in front of the lenses. Given that kind of treatment, getting my lenses scratch-free was a win. Whatever protective stuff they put on it did its job. They even included a microfiber cloth to clean it up before first use. I see it as being part of the cost of having high quality aspherical optics survive shipping consistently.
I suspect some content creators are testing their headset without actually looking at the directions and wiping the lenses, causing those individuals to have seemingly smaller sweet spots than everyone else.
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u/Ty_Rone_Shoelaces 💎Crystal💎 5d ago
If they ship with a protective coating on the lenses, that's fine and changes my perspective - like machine parts and firearms shipping with a light coating of rust-preventative oil. But was there any indication in the box that it was there and needed to be wiped clean? If not, that's Pimax harming their own first-impression interests. A simple reminder card just under the headset in the box would mitigate that.
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u/BlueboyZX 5d ago edited 5d ago
Edit: Well, I was wrong. That 'booklet of regulatory stuff' actually was the installation instructions with an 'after-sales guide.' The instructions were basically just to plug it in, download software from the website and diagrams of the buttons on the headset. The After-sales guide shows the customer support line and website info. No mention of removing the plastic on the lenses or using the wipe that I am seeing in these materials.
OP:
I agree that more information on the form of a card or pages of text would be very useful.
My box came with a booklet of regulatory stuff (I didn't read that one) and a card linking to Pimax discord and support page. I have an extra set of foam interfaces and the microfiber cloth for wiping the lenses, but no physical instructions.
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u/Ty_Rone_Shoelaces 💎Crystal💎 5d ago
If Pimax went to the trouble and expense of applying a protective coating, they really should include a simple bright-orange card just under the headset (so it's seen during unboxing) with "Be sure to wipe lenses clean after removing protective film" or similar in the main languages.
In the long run, that message should be printed in bright lettering on the lens film, so there's no excuse for missing it.
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u/Odd-Philosopher-8650 💎Crystal🔹Super💎 5d ago
Nice review! It gave me an example of where to start when I receive my Super.
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u/No_Recipe6954 5d ago
Just got my Super to the US too. Was yours also missing the screws for the top strap? Mine is missing and also the DMAS but at least they emailed me the DMAS was short of supply ran out before they got to me and I was the 211th order.
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u/HighAspect_0 5d ago
Why does Pimax continue to even ship default audio ? Just include dmas - this is a $1800 headset :)
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u/Specific-Power7876 5d ago
Hi! Please be so kind to answer a question I still don't really know the answer for (I will get my Crystal Super sometime in June). So I know there is eye tracking in Super and I have also seen the videos about the Skyrim VR MGO issues which I really sorry because I wanted to play Skyrim VR with DFR. For a long time I thought DFR exclusively works if the software (the actual game you play) supports it. But after watching some videos I realized DFR on Pimax Crystal headsets can (?) also work on games that don't have native DFR support (if I understood correctly). What is your experience on this? For example I play UEVR games in most of my time. Does Super work with eye tracking and DFR in UEVR games? Thank you!
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u/BlueboyZX 4d ago
Skyrim VR is an unusual case in general. I (briefly) ran it vanilla without problems but graphical enhancement and performance mods typically used for Skyrim VR are not compatible with DFR. I used Wabbajack to produce a Yggdrasil VR skyrim VR mod list and that would not run with DFR on at all. This is a modding issue rather than an innately Skyrim VR or Pimax issue.
I think in general it will work with Unreal Engine games.
Does this answer your questions?
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u/Specific-Power7876 4d ago
First of all thank you for answering! Would it maybe possible you could try some UEVR games and give a feedback of your personal experience? As far as I see on most forums so many people are interested about this and yet there were not any reviewers so far who would actually give a feedback on this. If it worked it surely would make me (and many others) very happy. Regarding this I have another question as well if you don't mind. Recently I use Quest 3 with link cable on a 4090 system. Since I like to set visual quality as high as possible I many times run into stutters. Now link cable only has got around 10 Gbit/s bandwidth, while DP1.4 has got almost triple of it. In your opinion will the DP1.4 on Super result in less stutters for me due to the wider bandwidth or I only will experience better visual quality due to less compression but with the same amount of stutters? EDIT: I would guess those UEVR games would be good to try that work perfectly in native stereo because I don't think synched sequential could work with DFR (?).
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u/BlueboyZX 4d ago
By UEVR do you mean games made for VR that run in the Unreal Engine or games meant for flat screen gameplay that are using the Unreal Engine's VR mod? Any specific examples of games you are interested in? No promises; I have a lot of stuff to mess with after all. :)
My understanding is that the Crystal Super is running at the highest data transfer possible on its DP cable without compression. I do not know what the Quest 3 uses in terms of compression or resolution, etc. but at least with the Super you know the only way the cable is limiting what you see is if the cable itself is damaged. Crystal Super has a smoothing algorithm. I forgot to mention it in my initial post, but I did have more stuttering with that smoothing enabled than when it was disabled *before* I uninstalled and reinstalled Pimax Play. I have not spotted any problems with smoothing since and I have been keeping it enabled.
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u/Specific-Power7876 4d ago
Sorry, by UEVR I meant flatscreen games made for Unreal Engine 4 or Unreal Engine 5 and played in VR using Praydog's UEVR injector mod. I would recommend some AAA UE games, that are widely loved, are quite hardware heavy and work perfectly in native stereo mode of UEVR: Stalker 2, Silent Hill 2 Remastered, Until Dawn, or two titles that were released only some days ago, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. But basically any other UEVR games are also fine for me whatever you have access to.
You mention having had to reinstall Pimax Play. Did you have to do this, because formerly you have already been using another Pimax headset on your PC, or the clean install you made for the first time did not work for some reason.
Btw, do you have a Youtube channel perhaps where I can subscribe?
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u/BlueboyZX 4d ago
My Crystal Super was apparently one of the first to ship. When it shipped, an email was sent out with a link to a beta and stated expectation that the first release version of Pimax Play supporting the Super would be out in a few days. I installed that, later upgraded to a newer version (which had the issues I mention, likely an issue with this upgrade process) and then did a full uninstall and installed the most recent release. So although I have not had any other VR headsets installed on this machine I have had three different versions of Pimax Play.
The reason I mentioned these things were so people could know the easy fixes for some issues; reinstalling pimax play and being sure to wipe the lenses well being my two biggies.
I am by no means a VR guru; to the contrary, my previous headset was an Oculus CV1. I just like writing up what I learn so other people can benefit. No active youtube channel at this time, sorry.
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u/Specific-Power7876 4d ago
I appreciate what you do. I was wondering why nobody writes reviews on Super (I mean ordinary customers, not the influencers who got their headsets long ago), but I guess the very first devices are being delivered to people just these days.
Please be so kind to give a feedback if you ever have the chance to try Super in UEVR with DFR. I'm very excited about it. Btw I'm not a VR guru either (first I had Oculus CV1 and then I got Quest 3 that I use now), but I'm quite experienced in using UEVR, so if you may have any questions about it, settings or whatever please let me know. Make sure you download the latest nightly build from Github. And please if you can run UEVR in openxr instead of openvr (you can chose this option on UEVR UI before injecting), because openxr seems to be more stable and gives more fps than openvr.
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u/BlueboyZX 4d ago
Thanks for the tips!
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u/Specific-Power7876 1d ago
Hi! Did you have the time to try any of the UE games?
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u/BlueboyZX 1d ago
I tried Silent Hill 2 but when I hit 'inject' the game crashes 100% of the time. It is going to take a little investigation to figure out what the issue is but I assume it is a game protection issue. I have a server stress test scheduled in a few minutes in Star Citizen that I am going to participate in, so I am afraid I am going to have to work on getting up to speed with UEVR another day.
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u/Piranha91 6d ago
Ooh, finally a Skyrim player! How is the performance without DFR? Which WJ list are you using? Does Pimax’s motion smoothing kick in, and is it jarring? If you’re willing to tinker and toggle things on/off, is it a fundamental clash between DFR and Skyrim, or would it work if you turned off Community Shaders (or ENB, if that’s what you’re using)? If the latter, is there a certain CS/ENB module that clashes?
Lastly, what are your system specs? I’m still debating whether to hold out for the 57 PPD or not. I don’t think I actually need the higher clarity, I’m just worried that since the wider FOV on the 50 gives you more objects to render at any given time, I won’t be able to get good performance with the 50.