What to expect from Pimax Sync, an update on Pimax Play, Crystal Light, 60G Airlink, and a big update on Pimax Crystal Super.
Starting with the Pimax Crystal Light
First, the Crystal Light. The more affordable and trimmed-down version of the Crystal is the best-selling Pimax VR headset so far. It has 17 million pixels with a refresh rate of 120 Hz, even at native resolution. It has glass aspheric lenses and a DisplayPort cable so that the visuals from the PC get delivered without visual compression.
It has a good field of view, the details look incredible, the colours are bright, and the headset is lightweight and comfortable. Digital Trends gave it 9 out of 10 with an Editor’s Choice Award. It was used at the official media event for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, and Optimum said it’s his favourite VR headset for sim racing.
The Pimax Crystal Light is a product added to the Crystal family aimed at making high-end VR accessible to everyone. And throughout this year steadily improving stability and quality control. It’s really in a superb place right now. Pimax has its factory, so it controls each part of the process. (Pimax Crystal Super)
Crystal Light Review:
Kelso from the Grim Reapers: “I was blessed with the ability to fly real stuff for over four decades. These are what I fly today, along with the Crystal and Crystal Light. I highly recommend them both. They make it real again.”
The Headset Historian: “The Pimax Crystal and Crystal Light are amazing headsets with great clarity.”
Louwbox is from Cape Town: “As you can see I am about to board a real-life Boeing 777 but if you want to fly one yourself from behind your desk I would highly suggest flying with the Pimax Crystal Light especially because of its fidelity. I am going to check in.”
Amir from The SimPit: “A channel dedicated to all things sim racing, and I’m using the Primax Crystal Light, a headset that has beautiful colours thanks to local dimming and top-tier performance. Whether you’re upgrading or new to VR, this headset is perfect for sim racers, and that’s thanks to its amazing clarity, great FOV, and stunning visuals.”
Pimax Crystal Light Improvements
On the software side, they have made lots of improvements to the Crystal Light. In the last half year, Crystal Light has improved with new software features such as native OpenXR runtime, native cloud views, quick desktop features, and upscaling. They have also massively improved the SLAM algorithm. This is something not many VR brands develop on their own so they can control this core technology to build the headsets the way they want and also provide an option away from the base stations to make everything simple and affordable. (Pimax Crystal Super)
They have made dozens of improvements and usability fixes, not only for the Crystal Light but all series of Pimax headsets. There are more language options. Tracker Battery Life is now shown. You can click the Pi button for quick resender and improve room settings. You can also tweak settings per decimal now, and configure the frequency of lighting to help with the tracking accuracy. All in all, the Crystal Light is extremely stable, easy to use, and feature-ready now.
Introduced Pimax Prime as a Membership
The company aims to advance Crystal Light and Pimax Play by adding more features and enhancing accessibility. They highlighted that Pimax was founded to push technological boundaries to their limits, a vision that has consistently driven their hardware development. Now, the focus is shifting to achieving similar innovations in software and services. To support this goal, the company is restructuring its operations to expand beyond a hardware-centric approach. This transformation will not only impact internal processes but will also become evident externally shortly. Hence, they have introduced Pimax Prime as a membership with hardware and software services, customer service, and more guarantees.
Pimax is trying to make progress in areas such as inside-out tracking, MR functions, reducing GPU load with foveated rendering, and other runtime performances. In addition to providing the world’s most advanced VR hardware with the best software and services for these headsets. What does it mean? Let’s look at the Crystal Light, it was originally launched at $899. To make it even more accessible to a wider audience and from user research and the community the price is still one of the biggest consideration points for many users. So for this, the basic membership lowers the entry barrier for new users.
Now, users can choose a 24-month contract and pay in advance only $599 to use it. After 24 months, Crystal Light and its software will be completely yours. Of course, you can also choose to pay this amount at one time and get a small discount. Benefits of this will include discounts on accessories and other services. (Pimax Crystal Super)
Pimax working on specific features to optimize the experience of flight and racing simulators like more options to tweak game-specific options, more configuration settings, interactive windows, colour filters, and even voice control.
Just to recap, what is included in Pimax Prime? Early access to new software features. invitation to user-only events, technical support, including remote one-on-one sessions, and more flexible returns. So if you purchase the Crystallite now, it will ship to you. You have 10 days to try it out. If you like it, then select to start the membership of Pimax Prime. If not, then you can get a fast refund paid back to you within one week. Crystal Light with Pimax Prime Basic Membership is available right now. You can place an order on the official Pimax website immediately and it will start shipping within one week.
60G Airlink
The 60G Airlink is one of Pimax’s key technologies going into the future, aiming at making PC VR not just wireless, but also maintaining high clarity. When using standard Wi-Fi protocols, you lose a lot of what makes PC VR great in the first place, fantastic visuals. The 60G Airlink module for the Crystal enables visually compression-less data transfer, meaning no visual artefacts, no colour banding, and no perceivable lag. It is an ultra-high bandwidth with a stable connection across 5 by 5 meters from your PC.
Pimax isn’t the first to use this technology, The TP-CAST for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift achieved this at 1080 by 1200 per eye at 90 Hz. HTC’s wireless solution works at 1632 by 1632 and again 90 Hz. The Crystal achieved 90 Hz and pushed for 120 Hz all of this at 2880 by 2880 per eye, which is much higher than anything before. The 60G Air Link will also be available for public demo at CES in January.
Upcoming Pimax Crystal Super
The Pimax Crystal Super is the world’s first retina-level VR headset. It has a resolution of 57 PPD or pixels per degree. Not just a tiny part of the focus area, but a much larger and wider one. Apple defined Retina and Pimax has achieved it in a VR headset, the first and only in the world. This can achieve a level where users not distinguish VR from reality. In the media and discussion places, micro OLED often takes the limelight because it’s smaller and lighter, and they are the future of standalone VR headsets.
However, in high-end PC VR, Pimax QLED panels are still the best solution for the best visuals. Except for contrast ratio and size, all the specifications of QLED are better than micro OLED. QLED panels are more readily available and more affordable. The resolution is higher with an incredible 29 million pixels high and they’re larger making it easier to extract a larger field of view from it.
Crystal Super comes with integrated tracking and spatial audio. Four internal cameras coupled with Pimax’s own SLAM algorithm handle the tracking, so you don’t need to install or purchase base stations.
The Crystal Super works with a huge range of GPUs, both NVIDIA as well as AMD cards. Eye tracking enables dynamic foveated rendering, meaning your PC only has to render in high resolution the area where your eye focuses. This alone can give you up to a 50% framerate boost. Even if you render games at a lower resolution than the panel, you still benefit from the panel’s resolution. Everything looks seamless, and you still benefit from the wide colour range.
The Crystal Super is also the world’s first VR headset with a changeable optical engine. This means the whole lens assembly, including the panels, can be swapped out easily. An optional micro OLED optical engine will be available with 27 million pixels, 16.5 more than the Apple Vision Pro, at a maximum refresh rate of 90 Hz. This module comes with pancake lenses, eye tracking and DisplayPort connection for uncompressed visuals, making this the highest clarity micro OLED VR headset on the market. (Pimax Crystal Super)
There’s also a 50-PPD QLED optical engine. This has the same resolution as the 57 PPD optical engine, but a wider field of view. The Pimax Crystal Super will launch at CES 2025. The price for the Crystal Super 57-PPD is as follows. This is the most technologically advanced VR headset with the highest clarity by a big margin, and thanks to Pimax Prime, also within reach for many people. Original Crystal users get a $399 discount, but this is taken from the Pimax Prime membership. Pre-ordering of the Pimax Crystal Super started on the official Pimax website.
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