Pimax new headsets

[Vonrd]

I would have probably opted for the Crystal Light if I had known about this. The battery has been an issue (battery life) with my Crystal Sim. The only downside for the Light version is the lack of eye tracking which makes quite a difference for me for clarity in the focus area while reducing GPU load using foveated rendering. The Super looks great but quite pricey. The Light looks to be the best replacement for the G2 and doesn't have Zuckerburg in your room. Waiting to see how it compares to Big Screen Beyond. 

The Light starts at about 8:00

 

[Flyboy]

I got my "comfort/upgrade package" yesterday for the Crystal Light, including more comfortable face cushion, top strap, and better speakers. I wish I would have know about these and ordered them along with the headset, because what a difference! Actually quite comfortable now and the sound is much much better. I think that because I was jury rigging with weather stripping (near the bottom of my eyes to increase the distance from lenses and reading glasses) it was causing the tracking to get thrown off more easily (and the XR Necksafer was being a bit wonky). Now with everything is in proper place it is working much more smoothly, a LOT more comfortable, and the XR Necksafer is working great. Actually starting to really like this headset.

[Snaggle]

PIMAX had a special for G2 owners, so I went ahead and got one.

Everything up and running.

Question Steam VR or PIMAX XR for DCS?

Screen shot of DCS setting?

Any other helpful got you's?

[Klaiber]

1 hour ago, Snaggle said:

PIMAX had a special for G2 owners, so I went ahead and got one.

Everything up and running.

Question Steam VR or PIMAX XR for DCS?

Screen shot of DCS setting?

Any other helpful got you's?

What did you have before?  Meta Quest 2?

[Snaggle]

HP Reverb G2

[Vonrd]

I assume that you got the Crystal Lite. I have the Crystal OG so my settings are probably not appropriate. @Flyboy, @Labroisse and @Lee have the Lite and would be the best for advice. PIMAX XR over Steam for sure. Look at videos from this guy: https://www.youtube.com/@VRFlightSimGuy

[Flyboy]

5 hours ago, Snaggle said:

Question Steam VR or PIMAX XR for DCS?

Definitely Pimax XR for DCS. For IL2 it's a bit more tricky and you have to download Steam VR to work around it. I forgot the details but I can find the vid if you need it. @Patriot just set his up for IL2 recently.

[Klaiber]

2 hours ago, Snaggle said:

HP Reverb G2

That's right!  I forgot.

[Snaggle]

Thanks guys!!

@Flyboy IL2 not needed.

[Labroisse]

Snag, this video is a pretty good starting place:  

 

PimaxVR over Steam for sure.  I've had good success setting the Pimax Play refresh rate to 120hz but then in the Pimax Play Games tab restricting the frames to 1/2 framerate.  That give you 60hz in game which is plenty and seems to cut down on the stutter a lot. 

If you were using OpenXr tools, you can't use that now since it's already incorporated into Pimax Play.

Also, definitely enable quadview, good framerate boost.  I use the quality setting.  The Pimax centering and eye tracking in-game is not for the Crystal Lite so leave those off.  Note you have to set the quadview tickbox to on in-game in the VR settings tab. 

I leave Pimax Play rendering quality at 1.0 and in-game rendering to 1.0 but depending on your settings in game you can try and bump these up or down a little to get the framerates and quality you like.

I like using DLSS and DLAA in game, helps with framerates a lot.  But, you need to get the new DLSS 4 runtime and set the preset setting to "F", "J" or "K" depending on your preference, especially if you have an Nvidia 400 series card or above.  Otherwise DLSS and DLAA are too blurry and there is ghosting.  "J" and "K" have a performance hit, so I use "F".  Search for "DLSS 4" in the DCS forum and it will tell you how  to do this. It's not too complicated.

Next time we're on  we can walk through settings.

[Vonrd]

@Lee Good info for you as well. @Labroisse, Lee fly's mostly IL2. Any advice regarding that?

[Vonrd]

Regarding DLSS 4:

User asked:

"Dear @BIGNEWY, I asked this question in some of the DLSS topics but didn't get any answer yet.

It seems that DLSS 4 Preset "K" is a very huge step forward for VR users, its quality is exceptional.

Unfortunately right now we can only "hack" this version into DCS by DLL changing and for another question you replied that the devs will work on DLSS 4 only AFTER deploying Vulkan.

Of course there're some blurs (mainly in MFDs, mirrors and fast movig dial numbers) which could be mainly caused by the lack of proper support on DCS side.

But it seems that the performance and quality of DLSS 4 Preset "K" even in its unofficial state is so massive, that it needs URGENT attention.

May I ask if this timing has been changed? If your origintal statement means that we're just mere weeks away from Vulkan, then it's OK, but if not, then IMHO the devs should really prioritize the full integration of DLSS 4 before anything else, it's so revolutional - especially for VR users."

BN's reply:

"we are not ready to upgrade DLSS yet, but it is something we are discussing internally. I have no ETA's for the release of vulkan yet or DLSS 4. 

It is probably not the news you want to hear and we are unlikely to match your desired timeline, if you are using DLSS 4 currently with success that is good, but at the moment it is not officially supported." 

Since it seems to enhance performance more than quality and it looks like some blurring issues and with having to essentially hack the game in order to make it work, I'm not going to risk it since my FPS is fine as is. I did update to the latest driver and have the DLSS 4 stuff downloaded and might try at some point.

[Labroisse]

On 2/20/2025 at 2:30 PM, Vonrd said:

Since it seems to enhance performance more than quality and it looks like some blurring issues and with having to essentially hack the game in order to make it work, I'm not going to risk it since my FPS is fine as is. I did update to the latest driver and have the DLSS 4 stuff downloaded and might try at some point.

I wouldn't call it a "hack", it is simply replacing the third party DLL file (nvngx_dlss.dll) in the DCS game directory with the most current version. If you are currently using DLSS you should at least try the updated version of the DLL.  Even if you don't change the DLSS preset from the default ("c"), it is still better image quality than the outdated version of the DLL that DCS is using and virtually eliminates ghosting.  You can always change it back by doing a DCS quick repair or saving the old DLL.

[Labroisse]

On 2/20/2025 at 11:54 AM, Vonrd said:

@Lee Good info for you as well. @Labroisse, Lee fly's mostly IL2. Any advice regarding that?

I use the same Pimax Play settings in IL2 as with DCS.   in-game MSAA antialiasing is a massive performance hit, so I use FXAA X4 which is actually very good with Pimax' high res.

You can use Open Composite to switch from SteamVR to PimaxVR and use OpenXR Tools in IL2 as well to adjust colors, etc.

[Britchot]

Patiently waiting for my 50ppd Super to finish beta and ship. Hopefully all these lessons learned on the Lite will transfer.

[Lee]

@Vonrd Good information. My Crystal is new enough that all I needed to uninstall  was the WMR stuff. I also deleted OpenComposite and OpenXRToolKit before installing PimaxPlay. MSFS2020 runs natively on PimaxPlay. I reinstalled OpenComposite to run Il2 without needing any of the Steam stuff.  And I reinstalled OpenXRToolKit for tweaking Il2.  I have so far resisted getting DCS.  Elite Dangerous, MSFS2020/2024 and Il2 keep me busy enough.

My rig is an i7-12700k, 64GB RAM, RTX 4070.  I’m currently running Il2 with PimaxPlay set for 90 Hz, High Render Quality (1.00) and OpenXR Toolkit 70% upscale with sharpness 100%.  I'm getting 90 fps with no stutter but a lot of background shimmer.  I do have an annoying problem where Il2 doesn’t always start in VR. Setting it to run as administrator has helped a lot, but not completely fixed the problem.

I recently learned one can zoom the view in VR with pilot quick zoom. I didn’t think that was possible since the (+) and (-)  zoom keys didn’t work in VR.  That’s going to help a lot. Thanks @Gabi for the info. 

[Jaus]

I'm looking at upgrading my aging Reverb and evaluating the Crystal Lite.   Can anyone summarize the steps to get it running on IL2 if you currently run a Reverb with WMR and OpenXR?

 

 

[Vonrd]

Look at @Lee's post directly above. Before you plug in the headset or install Pimax Play I would completely uninstall / remove WMR and OpenXR. I'm pretty sure that OpenXR was the possible cause of all the freezes I was getting in IL2. Pimax has it's own version of OpenXR embedded in Pimax Play. I used Revo uninstaller and also followed some Google instructions for Regedit and removing them. I think there is also something in Windows Settings regarding WMR. Google "completely remove WMR".

@Labroisse & @Flyboy? Any recommendations?

[Flyboy]

On 6/8/2025 at 10:19 AM, Jaus said:

I'm looking at upgrading my aging Reverb and evaluating the Crystal Lite.   Can anyone summarize the steps to get it running on IL2 if you currently run a Reverb with WMR and OpenXR?

 

 

It’s a real goofy thing for IL2 but you have to run steam VR first, even if the game isn’t on Steam, before it will work. 

[Jaus]

1 hour ago, Flyboy said:

It’s a real goofy thing for IL2 but you have to run steam VR first, even if the game isn’t on Steam, before it will work. 

So after you run Steam first you can ditch that and just use OpenXR/PimaxXR ?

I see  'Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR' as well as 'OpenXr for WMR' and 'OpenXR Tools for WMR'  in add/remove programs.   Is that what you have to remove?

[Lee]

The Reverb G2 may be getting a new lease on life.

 

[Labroisse]

3 hours ago, Jaus said:

So after you run Steam first you can ditch that and just use OpenXR/PimaxXR ?

I see  'Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR' as well as 'OpenXr for WMR' and 'OpenXR Tools for WMR'  in add/remove programs.   Is that what you have to remove?

Leave OpenXR Tools for WMR, you can use that for Il2.  You will also need opencomposite so that you don't have to use SteamVR for Il2.  You can ditch the rest.

[Lee]

This one has me stumped.

I have two workstations with Pimax Crystal Light headsets. Both are i7-12700k 64GB RAM systems, one using an RTX3080 and the other an RTX4070 GPU.

The 4070 system runs fine.

The 3080 system started to give me trouble where it would occasionally need the USB 3.0 to be replugged in or to use a different USB port before the Crystal would work.  Normally, a reboot would be enough to get it up and running.  Then I started to get a program freeze with system crash and reboot 5 to 10 minutes into a game.  After the reboot everything worked and I could finish playing.  Finally, the crashes became too frequent to be playable.

So I disconnected the Crystal Light.  Ran some simple system diagnostics on the 3080 box with no issues found.  Ran the games in 2-D using Track IR that I had been playing with the headset. They ran perfectly.  So I figured the problem’s the headset,  Just to make sure I installed my other Crystal headset from the 4070 system on the 3080 box and it ran perfectly.

Getting ready to send a ticket to Pimax, I plugged the problem headset into my 4070 box to see if I could duplicate the issues.  Well, it ran perfectly.  Started right up and didn’t crash.  IL2 and Elite Dangerous run with no problems.

I’m happy to have both headsets working, just puzzled as to why the headset works fine with one computer but not the other, particularly since the other identical headset works with both.

[Vonrd]

Maybe an iffy cable on the problematic headset? Try swapping cables.

 

[Jaus]

I'm very curious to hear from those who upgraded from the Reverb G2.   Did the Crystal Lite improve definition?   I'm particularly interested in whether or not it reduced anti-aliasing shimmer and pixel chatter.