Nice info on the Pimax Crystal with the Dynamic Foveated Rendering in DCS.
Timestamp is where he demoās it. Setting it all up is the bulk of the YT.
As he mentions YT compression is such that you donāt really see the effect in a video.
TLDR: performance improvement not crazy good but as expected very much clearer no matter where you point your eyes. Early days perhaps.
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And while Iām hereā¦for the Elite Dangerous crowd
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Itās not a huge gain in the Varjo Aero either, but every frame counts and if thereās no downsideā¦why not? 
Iām happy to see more developers using this tech. As you say, itās early daysā¦ I bet it will get even better with time and effort.
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Agreed.
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I have the Crystal since about a month and am extremely disappointed. The view has chromatic aberration and the power lasts only 2 hours, even when connected with the powered USB-hub. I am in contact with the Pimax support which is absolutely uselsess. At this point I just want to get a refund, but they just act like they didnāt read that. You hear a lot of bad things about Pimax and I thought it couldnāt be that bad. Unfortunately it is. I would strongly recommend anyone to stay away from Pimax.
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Sorry to hear that, @MBot.
I heard that about Pimax but hoped they had shaped up. That battery is a concernā¦
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He likes it, as in says it is the best option for simmers without base stations right now.
@MBot - that sucks, was a bit worried about Pimax support, as I think Iām on my 3rd HP Reverb and although they make cables out of tissue paper, HP support has been quite good - they basically just send out a replacement headset whenever I find an issue and I send the busted one back for free, but I did get the $99 business support contract thing anticipating clown like build quality.
Whatās with the power then? I spend about 2 hours setting up a flight 
so thatās a concern - why doesnāt it take power from the cable?
despite I bought mine Pimax Artisan through Amazon, went through few cycles with the Pimax support anyway as I had an issue with little wobbly tracking.
all in all the support was OK, still we didnt solve it.
so I took advantage of the Amazon return policy.
I wanted to say that my impression of Pimax support was that they were willing to help and were trying to extensively troubleshoot before return/refund.
definitely agree that the approach of āsend us the faulty unit, we send you new oneā could go long way.
It is advertised with 4-6 hours with the cable attached, but I only get 2. Once when I got the low power warning I stopped playing and put the headset aside. After about one hour in stand-by the battery run completely empty and it shut down. So it doesnāt even draw enough power to sustain stand-by mode. From what I can see, the headset does not draw power at all. Hot swapping the battery doesnāt work either, it will crash DCS. Since it is apparently drawing no power through the cable, I assume that the connection is lost when the battery is removed.
The Crystal came with its own powered USB hub, which is probably the cheapest that Pimax could find. The cables attached only loosely and the headset had constant connection failures. Just turning it on would require a dozen attempts at re-plugging the connections. I have switched to my own powered USB hub which at least has resolved this.
There would be the option to attach an additional (i.e. your own) USB-C cable for power and connect this directly to a charger. But I simply refuse to do this, as I do not intend to spend the next years playing with a headset with two cables attached. This is a $1600 headset and you simply should not be supposed to zip-tie extra cables to get it to work correctly. This is a premium priced product and I expect premium quality. Who would accept this from Apple?
Unfortunatly this is a deal-breaker for me. Just two hours is not enough for simming.
My other impressions are that it is pretty uncomfortable to wear and very bulky. Because of the battery at the back I cannot rest my head against my seat and when viewing around I constantly bump various bits of the headset against the headrest. I am constantly aware of this when playing (and try to avoid it), which is a pretty big imersion breaker. It is pretty fustrating, because I think all of that bulk is unnecessary. It is either because of the unnecessary standalone requirement (battery, its own computer) and because Pimax was lazy and they used their existing wide FOV cases (which the Crystal doesnāt need).
This is all very unfortunate, as the Crystal certainly has its merrits. The view is very clear across the whole FOV. I can read almost any cockpit labels by just glancing at them and check-six at the corner of my eyes, which is fantastic. Unfortunately image quality is impaired by very apparent chromatic aberration which starts at about 1/3 from the center of the screen and gets worse towards the edge. When glancing down at the instruments, the white needles have a green ghost needle offset by about half of the needle width. So that is hard to ignore.
DFR is fantastic. I got a 50% performance improvement from 60 to 90 fps with no visible difference. That is certainly the future.
Overall my impression is that Pimax is very keen on advertising their āflagship featuresā, but they have severe quality issues and are unable to provide a fine-tuned product that just works. For this price tag I have higher expectations.
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Thank You for infoā¦I presently use a Pimax 8kx and I have been happy with it with no issues for four years.
The whole Needs Battery thing with The Crystal bothers me when Iām plugged in to my PC.
Why should I be dependent on a Battery???
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Are you sure that you are using a high-speed/ high power charging cable?
I found when using my quest 2 that all cables are definitely not the same.
Its the proprietary cable that came with the headset.
So it took about a month with the support, but Pimax has finally agreed to refund me. I am not fully beliefing it though until I have the money back. Going to send back the headset now.
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So, still waiting to get by money back from Pimax.
First Pimax told me to return the headset to an address in Germany (I originally got it from China). I did as instructed. Then the shipment was sitting for several weeks in German customs. Apparently the recipient was unwilling to pick it up there. Importing from Switzerland to Germany obviously generates customs fees and taxes to be paid (not my problem) and I can only speculate that the recipient didnāt want to pay them. So the shipment was eventually returned to me as undeliverable.
To release the shipment back to me, Post wanted me to pay CHF 200 to settle fees and taxes. I suggested to Pimax that I would refuse and let the Post dispose the shipment. But Pimax wanted me to get the headset back, asking me to pay the fee and that they would reimburse it as well as my costs for the initial shipment. I agreed and paid the CHF 200 (because otherwise they would probably block my refund). I have yet to receive the reimbursement from Pimax.
Then Pimax told me to send the headset to an address in Sweden, reassuring me that they would track the shipment and take care of the customs. The shipment is now sitting in Swedish customs for 2 weeks waiting for the recipient to actā¦
I still donāt know whether Pimax is dishonestly trying to stall my refund or just incompenent. In any case, I can just restate my warning to never do business with them.
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thats unfortunate. especially as this should be simple process for the customer.
but we all have to deal with this from time to time. something almost similar happend to me with big dealer also.
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In Australia we have quite strong consumer protection agencies at both the National and State levels.
I pretty sure that what they are doing would be illegal here and would be taking my case to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Do you have a similar Government body or organisation?
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I finnally used mine today. I bought it in july but then got transferred here to iraq. Over Christmas i went home to get it. My first Go went okā¦ i guessā¦ A little bit of time to figure it out. Then it started to work. Only tried 2 aircraft and the graphics blew me away. The K4 looked gorgeous. The glass on the instruments and the damage model! Wow. Then had a try w the Huey in Marianas while raining. Pretty cool. But, its heavy and hurts my face. It is huge.
Hope to get more stick time tomorrow.
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It does look massive based on videos Iāve seen. So, howās the balance? The fact that it hurt your face makes me believe that it may be front-heavy.
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