Check out my follow up video here kzfaq.info/get/bejne/esejg8tzmpPSg4k.html

I love to see older people getting deep into gaming, especially sims. These are great times to be alive!

Great first impressions Mark and thankyou very much for the shout out. I look forward to seeing more content of this beasty in action soon. Your VR footage looked fantastic by the way. Take care.

I am an engineer by trade and have been patiently waiting for your video on this headset & just pulled the trigger on buying one per your recommendation. Thanks for your videos on MSFS and contributions to the community. Not many folks get to the point like you do :)

Thanks for the inspiring video Mark. My i9 13900k / 4090 system arrived yesterday. Now waiting for the Crystal which I am being told is 3 to 4 weeks away from shipping (pre-ordered on 4/27). As a long time Reverb G2 user can't wait to see what the the Crystal has in store. Between you and Steve us VR users are well covered. Many thanks - Kam

Great vid, my Crystal is on the way so really happy to hear your impressions.

Nice video Mark. My Pimax Crystal is on order. Setup looked easy however it would be great to get a step by step setup using the various software required. Thanks again.

Was on the fence until I watched this. Just completed my preorder purchase. Thanks Mark for the review.

Thanks a lot for a really great review, Mark. Yourself and Steve are all we really need to get the information we need. I pre-ordered my Crystal and I'm really excited to test this for myself, coming from a G2. I also have a 4090, but with an i7 13700K cpu. I guess that will be more than enough to get a great result. Love from Norway ♥♥♥♥♥

Dear Mr SimHanger, you have produced the best Pimax Crystal review video so far. I have been waiting and wondering when to buy one as it has been a work in progress until now. So thanks to you, I have now ordered one finally. Cant wait.

Have the headset now for four weeks and i love it, agree with you Mark this is the best on this moment, and more to come with eye tracking and Dynamic Foveated Rendering

Can't wait for mine to ship, thanks for the review!

Enjoyed that first review Mark thanks Your usual honest and informative video's are always worth waiting for and im looking forward to your next Pimax crystal video 😊 Thanks

Thank you for the great video. Received mine last week….. totally agree with your evaluation and suggestions. Cheers.

Thanks for putting out this video.... always great to see your real-world take on things. :)

Great video, thanks for sharing all your settings.

Good review. I received my Crystal yesterday and, coming from a G2 and a Pico 4, it just blew me away...just what I was hoping for. I truly hate the screen door effect and on the G2, because you are always having to centre your vision to get a sharp image, you also always see the pixels, especially when flying low and slow, checking out the scenery. Flat water and clear skies also made it very noticeable and immersion killing; you always know you are wearing a headset. Withe Crystal that has all gone, it's so damn sharp, but unless you really look for it, there is no SDE and what there is is so piffling and tiny, its not an issue at all. Plus I no longer need to use motion reprojection, which was a big surprise. With a 4090 and DLSS Quality I hit 70fps over photogrammetry Melbourne with no judder moving my head, or when banking the plane. For MSFS the Crystal is definitely the bees knees, if your budget can stretch to it.

Thx for this helpful vid Mark. Ready for mine soon with this tips!

Excellent video as always Mark !! I've gone from HP G1 to Valve Index and now waiting for The Pimax Crystal to settle out on price $ 1600.00 USD is a bit stiff ... I've built a new sim computer 7800x3d 7900xtx and it's got a Windows 10 fresh install and Radeon Adrenaline contemplating win 11 and a DOF p3 is in the works ... thanks again for your input and knowledge shared with all of us .. out for now TT

Very Concise! Great initial Review!

Excellent review, thank you.

very happy for you Mark, enjoy the Crystal dude.

Thanks for this. I might just need to pull the trigger now that these are shipping with glass lenses. Appreciate performance testing in city, so much more valuable than claiming 90fps while flying over the ocean.

Great! mine is on it's way!

As usual, very good review! Merci!!

Nice one Mark, that was a wonderfully crafted video. Some great points and the delight at the visuals really brings it home how good the headset can look. I've decided not to buy this at the moment, the weight is a factor for me and I want to get into more mainstream VR as well as flight simulation. Looking forward to hearing more on this device and maybe you can change my mind! 👍

Thanks for the great review. It is now April 2024. Yes, the PIMAX Crystal is a good VR headset for SIM gamers. I do SIM racing games. I found out from another video reviewer that to enjoy this VR headset it is recommended that a RTX-3080TI or better should be used. The 3080TI GFX card is what I currently have. But that said, I can't afford buying a 1700 dollar Crystal VR headset and then bump my computer up to run a 4090 GFX card which would be for me getting a whole new computer (cost 2200 dollars or more). So we are talking around 3900 dollars for hardware just to play a 60 dollar game on STEAM. And this does not include flight control accessories and Rigs, or DLC addons for more planes. Rich boys with their Rich toys. Right now, I find my Quest 3 works well with all the SIM racing games and the RTX-3080TI GFX card. I have an older Fight Sim, but don't know if I will ever get into doing this kind of gaming. Don't have time to spend learning how to operate a SIM airplanes. Maybe someday but not right now. PIMAX is coming out with a cheaper Crystal Lite this year for 699.00 dollars which is more respectable for my pocket book. I would probably still be on the bottom end of performance since it would have the same optics resolutions. Things eliminated on the Lite is the battery and no Eye tracking. The lite will be like the older VR headsets that plug directly into the Display Port of the GFX card. There are a couple different versions of the Lite VR headsets at different price points. I will wait for the video reviews on these new VR headsets when the products are released and if there are any issues or problems with them. I do not buy anything when it first comes out. Also I am hesitant with buying PIMAX products because of watching videos or reading reviews of problems getting VR to work right. Thanks for your video, take care.

Many thanks Mark

I looked forward to your review by the day and you always do a great job. I really appreciate what you do for the VR and flight sim community. I know the crystal offers hand tracking, but does the Pimax OpenXR tool kit has the option to enable it? I’m building little by little a tactile vr cockpit and being able to see my hands is a must.

I wish the Crystal had a bigger sweetspot. I came from a Quest Pro and I ben using Crystal and Aero primarily and going back to the Quest Pro its free clear 95% through the lens where the fall off on the Crystal happens very early.

thanks!

You can see the quality of the Pimax, even through your captured footage. Maybe I'll get into MSFS VR properly at some point.

Hi! Thanks for all the excellent videos and reviews. I‘m about to embarque on VR, and I‘m looking at a 7800x3d with a 4090rtx and a pimax crystal. Is there anything I have to consider before buying the pc and the headset? I‘m an absolute newbie when it comes to VR.

First! LOL Going to watch now. Patiently waiting on mine to be delivered! BTW, do you own a Ryzen 7800X3D? I would love a nice setup guide for a MSFS 2020 + 7800X3D + 4090 + Pimax Crystal setup. 🙏🏼

If you programmed the mcdu and set up the efis in vr I would be impressed 👍

Cool video! Are you sure Pimax would use the WMR steam plug in though? Isn't that only for WMR headsets? It should be a native steamVR (via openxr) headset. As long as the steamVR openxr runtime is selected, WMR should not be involved.

I recently attended the FlightSim Expo 2023 in Houston and was able to preview the Pimax Crystal. They had a flight set up over the pyramids in Egypt and maybe because my expectations we so high I was sadly disappointed. The location and mid day view had colors that seemed very washed out. It also seemed to stutter a bit. I asked the sales guy and he said they were running on a RTX3080 which should be good enough. Maybe they hadn’t set up PimaxXR correctly. The visual quality inside the cockpit was quite clear though and I did enjoy that. Also didn’t care for the size and weight of it. It sounds like I’m being unfairly negative but I was expecting much more after listening to Steve with his multiple reviews and already had my checkbook ready to place an order. While I was there another company “Beta” was demonstrating their cockpit with an Aero Varjo. Wow was that great. I hope they drop the price to compete with the Pimax Crystal. Anyways, I realize this is only one persons experience. Maybe version 2 of the Crystal will be better. Love and watch your channel regularly .

The graphics on the recording don't do this headset justice. It is like looking at a monitor...literally. Please bear that in mind 😀

Looks fantastic but how does VR work when using VATsim? I regularly need to write things down from ATC, check charts, enter squawk codes and change radio/nav frequencies.

Hi Mark, thank you for a well authored setup video on the Crystal. One question through, are you going to try this headset in MSFS using an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU with the RTX 4090 GPU? Cheers.

Nice one, Mark- Can you tell me if VR Wave are catering for the Crystal yet?

This is fantastic news. I just confirmed my address with Pimax so hopefully it will be shipped within this week. Now the only concern I have is having a 3080TI and I9 9900k PC but I really have a good feeling this will still be a fantastic display and it will still be hands down the best visuals I have also ever seen. For me visuals is everything. The more real it looks the more I go down that rabbit hole. Thx for such a positive review you having me smiling from ear to ear keep up the great work.

Hi, Was it easy to set up mark .I have the G2 and the video from the vrflightsim guys video helped me set that up .I Am a knoob when it comes to this type of thing thx for your video.Dave

Thanks Mark for the great video. Just received my Crystal and no instructions on how to charge battery. Please advise - thanks

The Pimax Crystal works only with Steam or also from MS Store?

Does anyone know how to get DLSS to show on the sim options window ? I've tried everything, new drivers, new MSFS install, i can't get open xr to work either, i have to use steam vr now with my G2 ever since i updated the open xr software. it's been nearly 3 months now without using open xr runtime. I miss it so much. I know it's a bit off topic but i have tried other places for an answer and was just hoping to catch the attention of someone that might know the answer, it was your settings section of the video that reminded me of it. Thanks for the video btw, iv got a grand saved so nearly there, think i might just pull the trigger on this bad boy. RTX3080TI 10850 32gb m.2

I wish I could afford this 😩 Will have to settle for the endless tuning of my G2 to try and get better picture. Sigh.

Hi Mark I have the reverb g2 . And also 4090 . Do you think its worth upgrading from g2 to crystal? Thanks.

Hello Mark. If money was not a thing, what would you get: AERO or Cristal?

How does it look in IL2?

How do you record VR footage? I have an HP Reverb G2 and the Windows Mixed Reality Portal mirror has such a low FPS, and it jumps around a lot of, making it useless for recording video.

Great Video, can you tell me the sequence of starting in VR? I have OpenXR toolkit and Pimaxvr runtime. Any help appreciated.

Hey Mark , Do you feel it’s worth the money to buy the Crystal now that the Varjo has addressed the red blue shift issue which has increased it’s Clarity and overall sharpness ?

I just got confirmation on my delivery. I'm a Reverb G2 user and can't wait for the upgrade. One question. When I use the Reverb G2 I start the Windows Mixed Reality Portal. Is this still necessary with the Crystal?

Interesting to see you are using nvidia reflex low latency, is this worth trying on my 12700 / 3090 setup please Mark.

How do you open the UI OSD for XR Toolkit in the goggles?

Thx. I'm curious how this kit behaves with XP12???

I'm wondering if it is worth buying the Crystal if I already have the Varjo Aero. I do want the best VR experience I can get, but is it really a significant improvement vs the Aero?

One thing I can't seem to figure out is open XR. My HP Reverb G2 LOOKS so much better under Steam VR than it does under Open XR. No amount of fiddling with the settings makes Open XR look even remotely close to the clarity I get with Steam VR.

POINT OF CORRECTION : Pimax does not need or use the Steam add-on Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR. In fact it is recommended you don’t download or use this app with Pimax headsets. The app is used for WMR headsets such as HP Reverb etc. my oversight. Apologies.

I noticed in this video you said to turn the HAG on, you're older videos you said to turn it off. I am running a RTX 3070 sodit be on or off? Thank you

Hello, have anyone yellow dots at the screen while playing the Microsoft Flight Simulator?

Thanks Marc! Is the primacy crystal way more than the Pico 4?

I have a Quest Pro running on a 4090 (smooth), is it that much better visually as the Qpro is awesome to me.

I read somewhere that this headset doesn't have active cooling? After trying many headsets with and without it that would be the main thing stopping me buying one. if true

I had the G2, and it was like scuba diving. Is it still the same these days with these types of headsets or is it better now?

The box is of higher quality than the HMD 🤣

I need this for the xbox series X!!

Mark I enjoy your videos very much but I noticed that you are doing videos on MSFS only latelly ...Please dont forget the Xplane community we are a very large number of simmers and suppoters of your work

But for when in XBOX?

I think you missed a talk about comfort in the headset, and battery life…….

Almost as good as your Pico 4, lol!

It may be a great headset but at 1499 EUR its crazy money and out of reach for the casual simmer. Dont abandon producing content for cheaper headsets like some other flight sim channels!

Great stuff as always, but at 5:22 you mentioned WMR for SteamVR.... no no no no no! Please anybody reading this, do not install WMR for SteamVR, this will 1) not work with Pimax and 2) cap the resolution of your Pimax to 3000 pixels... The SteamVR driver for Pimax is already included in your Pimax Client download. WMR is an umbrella of headsets including the HP Reverb, Samsung Odyssey and it is not compatible with anything else, definitely not Pimax.

hi mark - ive received my crystal today and i have to disagree with your findings on the visuals. i was certainly not blown away and there was certainly no "wows". yes it is maybe a sharper across more of the image and the vertical fov a big larger than my G2 but other than that very dissappointed. its just not much of a difference and the face place is very uncomfortable and has gaping holes around the temples. maybe im missing something? i was hoping to be blown away but nothing....certainly not a £1000 upgrade.

Looks cool but it sucks to get just 40-50 fps with such a monster specs .. I have the same specs and it’s definitely more worth to use a ultra wide screen with Trackir and get 90-150 fps

Nah that thing looks too big and unwieldy. I guess they need that lump of battery for balance because it seems insane to me to add a battery to the unit when you need cables anyway. No way I want that contraption on my head for hours on end.

AVOID PIMAX!!!! Irrespective of how good the Crystal headset is the Pimax customer service is shockingly bad. My 8KX developed audio issues after 6 weeks and I returned it in April (23). Its now the end of July (23) and I've been told they can't replace (as they have none) and all they can offer is a discount on a 12K. To be released when?! I've asked for either a refund or to pay the difference for a Crystal. 2 weeks ago they said they would get back in 3 days. After 2 chasding emails still nothing. I guess I'll have to take them to court to uphold their guarantee. AVOID PIMAX - don't say you haven't been warned!

Organic technology will always be better. If you are impressed with this, wait until you try 5 grams of mushrooms and go flying through the Universe.

You people are becoming like the Borg in Star trek. There will be no turning back. "Resistance is Futile."

Don't care how nice the visuals are; I will never wear something so big and heavy on my head