Finally, a Pimax headset that isn't gigantic for no reason.
For a moment, I thought we would finally have integrated eye tracking on a sub-2K headset, but today is not that day. $2K is a lot more in line with what I would expect given how other headsets with integrated eye tracking, OLED etc. are priced.
The feature set is great, so it might be worth the $1990 for those that have the expendable income. Which sadly isn't me.
You will need a 4090 to have any chance at running those 4K panels, and even then, the framerate will struggle in demanding games. In short, this headset is for the 1%. Literally. According to Steam's Hardware Survey 1.08% of users have a 4090. Needless to say, you don't buy a $2K headset to run it at a lower resolution, you'd just buy a Bigscreen Beyond for half the price if you don't have a need for 4K panels.
Pimax has a history of creating headsets with insane resolution that no hardware on the market is able to properly drive and this isn't even the first time they make a headset with a similar resolution, but it's just kind of unnecessary. I suppose they are gearing up for the RTX 5090 launch which may be able to drive this at 90 FPS, but who's going to buy that? Even less people than currently own a 4090, I would assume.
I hope they will release a "Light" version of it with more reasonable specs and price. The main drawback of the Crystal Light is the size, the screen resolution of the Crystal Light is more than adequate to push high end hardware to its limits, and combined with good quality lenses, is enough for great image quality. So if they take the hardware from the Crystal Light and put it into this new shell, I'd probably buy one. 2.8K*2 is a lot more reasonable in terms of system requirements needed to run it, I know my 4070 Ti is just about capable of running that (though not with a stable 90 FPS at full resolution) so the bar of entry is lower, and the potential market is several times bigger.
they are still bothering with VR? like a dozen people still use it. get with the program AR is the rage now also that price is a fucking joke!
All AR glasses on the market are a joke, a tech demo at best, not a finished product that people should actually buy.
3DoF isn't built in, none of them even support 6DoF, and they all have pitiful FOV. There are hardly any apps supported. There are also no controllers.
Their intended use case is as a heads up display and that's about all they're good for. VR and AR are entirely different use cases and they are not suited for the same kinds of things. Maybe you could get some use out of watching movies on them but games are out of the question, the hardware just isn't there to support that use case.
AR glasses don't enable any kind of unique experiences the way VR does. The most use you can get out of AR glasses is using them as a portable 2D display to plug USB-C/HDMI sources into. Which is neat, sure, but hardly ground breaking. I can already do that with my laptop using a USB capture card, or any random portable monitor. And it would probably be a better experience as well, not to mention cheaper.
AR glasses aren't even AR. It's a misnomer. They don't have the hardware capability to support augmented reality experiences. They are simply a continuation of the video display glasses that have been around for decades now, with slightly updated display tech.
It's clear what AR glasses want to be - you don't need to look any further than Meta's $10000 Orion AR glasses. If that was what AR glasses today were, they would have some merit. But that technology is probably a decade away from mass production. Until then, AR glasses aren't worth consideration.
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