I still use a valve index at home for VR
it's a convenient package and it's easy for my aging RTX 380 to drive but there
is no doubt that the rest of the industry has left valve and therefore
for me completely behind which I guess means it's time to go shopping our first
candidate is pimax with the crystal super a monster of a headset with specs
to match each eye gets a whopping 3840
by 3840 of resolution across a 100 20°
field of view they claim that this is the first retina grade VR headset and
there's more to love than just the resolution pancake lenses are super
compact which is cool but if you've got the space which they clearly do their
single element lens offers much better light transmission which enables their
claimed 280 nits of peak brightness now
that doesn't sound like much compared to the brightest TVs or phones but when
you're in a completely darkened environment trust me
that's a lot now there's no support for HDR at this time that's going to have to
wait for their upcoming HDR capable micro OLED headset later this year but
to improve their contrast at least they've got a th000 local dimming zones
per eye I can't wait to try this and
neither can our sponsor Wicked cushions fall in love with your favorite
headphones all over again with replacement earpads from Wicked cushions
your new favorite headphone pads are at the link in the video description so
head on down there what are you waiting for
for the head strap is thoughtfully designed and once you've got the rear
and top dials adjusted should be really quick to jump in and out of apple you
could stand to take some notes here it's got integrated speakers and a microphone
built in eye tracking and automatic ipd adjustment so you just throw it on and
oh wait you might actually want to decide if you prefer a foam or a
silicone style gasket this one's actually for their older headset but
it's just for illustrative purposes time to jump in uh hold on a second let me
just check wow you know I was trying to use my hack where I can kind of like
peek through the bottom of the headset to see my teleprompter whatever I cannot
I have no idea what my notes say comment on Comfort oh yeah pretty good
personally if I was to design it I would probably make this piece of foam at the
back a little more curved you can see it kind of sits up off of my skull I do
have a smaller head I wear a small size motorcycle helmet so your mileage may
vary but um I do get a bit of a pressure point on the back of the head nothing
crazy though and I suspect it would get a little bit better with some Breakin I
get a little bit of pressure also on my
uh proud Roman nose other than that
pretty good so the Keen it among you might have noticed that there's no
lighthouses around me that's because the crystal super can be used used either
with outside in tracking with an optional face plate or with their own
custom slam algorithm Inside Out tracking they admit that the Inside Out
tracking is not as good as outside in
but they found that for racing and flight Sim most of their customers are
happy with it personally I've already
noticed that it's a little disorienting and nauseating but your mileage may vary
I especially noticed it when I was moving around and I can see slight tracking errors in the pit but I'm
pretty sensitive to that and it's my job to notice these things so my next Point
says after gaming so that means I get to actually game for a bit wow this Sim
platform is something else I am going to
die okay I am not going to be setting
any uh lap record times so hopefully we
can all agree on that bloody hell does
this ever look good oh no I'm going to die yeah yep
it's a good thing they limit how hard this uh this wheel can pull on you I can
tell it was gated there cuz otherwise it was going to rip my arm off this is some
of the strongest force feedback that I have ever felt my immersion level is
extremely high Andrew extremely oh God
I'm going to die again what really stands out to me is
the clarity of like text like everything
is readable this looks the screen on the steering wheel Oh Lordy looks like a
screen in front of me I want to reach out and touch the dials all right I'm
actually going to stop go a little bit slower I just want to get a chance to
kind of check things out getting a
little bit of yellow fringing below
objects where there's very high contrast say in the Shaded area under a tree
against the sky little bit of blue fringing above high contrast objects
pimac says that they do still have some work to do on the Optics they're still a
little ways away from release on this thing as for the dimming zones I wasn't
expecting to be able to pick those out in actual content o and I'm dead cool but the good
news is in actual content I would have thought I'd need something more along
the lines of a you know a bright object moving on a black background to pick
them out but hey if you don't notice them in actual content I guess that's a
good sign and as for the
audio this clear isn't the best environment to evaluate it but I can
hear it so that's something I haven't even shown you guys the best part yet
the optical module can be popped out and swapped at launch they're planning two
versions the one that I used today and a second one that has the same panels but
different lenses that push the fov to a whopping
135° that is going to cost you some pixel density but it should make for an
incredibly immersive experience now sadly the last feature of the crystal
super is that you can buy it outright without any
subscription I hate that I have to bring that up but they are right that it does
differentiate them from some of their peers in the VR space of course the
onetime payment is a lot though which means that I do want to explore my other
options next up is the shiftall mean x super light 8K and even though I've only
walked about Five Paces I feel like I've stepped straight into the future like
the big screen Beyond which my bearded doppelganger checked out about a year
ago it's an ultralight goggle style headset that's aimed squarely at steam
VR users who are desperate for an upgrade to their aging Vibes and indexes
so you've got outof the box support for Vive wands and Knuckles controllers as
well as outside in Lighthouse tracking but unlike the beyond the mean X 8K is
packed with features here it is all rigged up with the single USBC tether
and their headstrap I'm talking motorized ipd adjustment eye relief
adjustment so that's the distance from your eyes to the screen a magnetic
gasket for quick sanitary swaps depending on user preference and even
the ability to remove the gasket entirely which combined with their
little flip up feature like this is great for developers who need to quickly
switch between working in VR and working in regular R here on the bottom they've
got individual diopter adjustments for each eye with support for custom lenses
for stronger prescriptions and they've even got mounting points for open source
face tracking and ey tracking Hardware I mean anything that you can hook up to a
USB 2 type-c port or you cannot do any of that and you can just plug in your
headphones anything USB now this does
come at a cost to wait it's about 40%
heavier than the Beyond at 179 G but
here's the thing I have a Beyond collecting dust in my home and the
reason I don't use it is that an individually fitted device just doesn't
work in a household that has multiple VR users and solving that is worth 50g to
me 50 g not 50 Grand don't get any ideas
about the pricing we'll talk price later first we
game I only play bead saber so I don't know any other games oh well this is VR
chats it's a social VR platform I know I know what VR chat you know what VR chat
okay anyways so I'm just saying don't me to be good at anything other than bead
saber there's nothing to do here it's just a visual uh enjoyment game I guess
so you're going to throw it on and then you're going to be able to proceive the Optics and I guess that's fine because
the Optics and the screens are the main story here each eye is getting a 3840 by
3552 micro OLED panel that means the
same Inky blacks and incredible contrast that you would get from an OLED anywhere
and because of the resolution wow is it ever Sharp I don't
know if it quite matches the sharpness of the micro LED we just looked at but
it's also an apples to oranges comparison and your micro OLED here
through a pancake lens is not going to be quite as bright as what we just
looked at and contrast can have a surprising impact on the perceived
sharpness of an image now on the subject of pancake lenses just like the big
screen Beyond I do notice a little bit of internal Reflections there's no way
you're going to get away from that with a pancake but to my eye it seems like
they might have improved it a little bit is there anywhere where I can look at an
even brighter object or are these lanterns the best I'm going to get
probably the fire I mean that makes sense it's easiest to notice when you
have a point light source because the the reflections are only really visible
against dark backgrounds so this is a fairly favorable environment for them I
do pick them up though there are two more compromises I see one is that we're
still limited to 90 HZ just like older Generations headsets but after seeing
this demo and the last one for that matter I can understand why the headset
manufacturers are pushing resolution rather than refresh rate this really
does improve my immersiveness more than a little bit more smoothness would and
until we've got DisplayPort 2.1 uhpr R20 we're not going to be able to have
both the other one is field of view
they're not quoting anything and I can kind of see why it's not the widest most
immersive headset that I've ever used but that that doesn't change the fact
that it's incredibly light and looks
incredible however I'm not ready to switch yet see the other big reason that
I went running back to my index was the clunky process for getting the Beyond
wired up to play and I'm going to be dealing with much the same thing here
headset headphones Cable Management
every time they are planning an audio strap like the one for the big screen
Beyond but it's not coming until later as an accessory which adds cost to
already pricey headset but hey even if their headset's Out Of Reach shiftall
has something else that might catch your eye their new grip VR controllers are
steam VR compatible with an ergonomic shape that's very similar to the valve
Knuckles controllers but with an Oculus Quest like button layout now as someone
who's only ever daed Oculus devices for review purposes I'm not sure that I
would want to change over to these but it's really nice to see other options in
the market I don't know which one to choose
but what I do know is it's an exciting time to be a VR Enthusiast again and
it's exciting to tell you about our sponsor Wicked cushions you don't have
to toss out your favorite headphones just because they've gotten a little crusty Wicked cushions replacement
earpads will bring your headphones back to life you can choose from Ultra
comfortable memory foam or dual layer cooling gel to get you through even the
most intense gaming sessions but they're not just for old headphones you can add
that extra Pizzazz to your new phones with more than a dozen cool Styles and
multiple finishes to choose from you're sure to find the perfect set for you at
the link in the video description if you guys enjoyed this video maybe go check
out the review of the big screen Beyond