Dream Air first impressions

[GiftGruen]

Hello VR guys

I  am currently switching over from Pimax Crystal Light to a Dream Air which arrived me mid of this week.

For now I'd share my first impressions and will maybe go on to share mods / improvements / settings whatever.

 

First steps

Since I already use Pimax Play and know the Pimax software, getting into usage was simple and straightforward:

• Did a complete reinstall of Pimax Play because this is highly recommended according some reddit channels.
• Plugging all the cables, installing prescription lenses and give it a go. There was some firmware update which took some time but worked without problems.
• Eyetracking, sBoys Driver, Pimax Evo ... I left these steps out for the start to keep it simple.
• First had to fiddle around with FoV settings because I felt quite crosseyed out of the box. This is still an ongoing process but maybe also a matter of 'get used to' and also will probably change with a new / modded face mask ( see below - faults )
• Knowing that the number of rendered pixels is not much higher compared to the CrystalLight ( though the resolution is higher - the CL needs a lot of pixels because of barrel distortion ) I left the Pimax resolution and InGame settings as optimized for my CrystalLight and started with some test flights in Korea and GB.  I Also started with 72Hz.

 

General impressions

• Colors, sharpness, contrasts and 'correct' brightness of the picture are simply phenomenal. In this aspects - this is out of the box far far better than anything I've seen before. There is something I'd call 'fill factor' that gives the complete image a 'juicy' and convincing feeling
• I am not that sensitive to fps, but 72Hz with the OLEDs feel supersmooth. So - no need for 90 at all at the moment ( which really helps in IL2 )
• FoV is sligthly bigger compared to CrystalLight horizontal + slightly lower vertical.   I measured it by WimFOV but it's rather hard to tell if I'd see it / feel it. So it is okay, but not really a step forward and therefore stays something "next VR headset generations" can and should work on.
• Lenses are okay in terms of edge to edge clarity - but I feel some eye strain and also warping when moving my head. It is not that it makes the thing 'unenjoyable' but this will be the thing to optimize
• The sound of these small speakers is surprisingly okay. Not really 'good' - no - somewhere between Pimax SMAS and DMAS. Nothing I need to hurry for optimizing, but the warm and deep sound of my 109s V12 is somewhat lost and the 30mm sound rather like 17s now.
• SLAM tracking is stable - no jittering, no problem.  Well - I will have to try some non-seated stuff, but I am for 95% a simmer, so ...
• This thing is really light. Great. No more 'brick feeling'. This is however somewhat killed by the strapping - see below.

 

Faults

• These Pimax controllers still feel as cheap as they ever felt. They do their work, okay...
• The headstrap which is a 2$ velcro fastener thing, is simply an outrageous insolence, considering the price of this headset. Having rather long and fluffy hair, I really struggle with adjusting headset position and pulling it off and on. Unbelievable crap.
• I already said: This thing is light. The bad thing here is that the cable now feels more annoying because of the lightness of the thing and the bad strap which struggles to keep the headset it in place if you don't strap them very ( to ) tight. Strapping it tight means - it's not this comfortable light thing any more.
• I am somewhat a lucky one because the face mask fits to my face, no light leakage. However, it is not really convinient because the pressure is high due to the small support surface. Could be worse ( and due to reddit channels I feared it's worser ) - but for sure could be better.

 

Next steps

• Try out this sboys / Evo stuff
• already have some 3d printed stuff to adapt Apple straps and will for sure do so asap
• Will try some Facemask mods which maybe also change the eye position and therefore could have an effect on the eye strain / picture warping.

 

Will I keep it

• For sure: yes - the sheer picture quality makes this decision a no-brainer.

 

Recommendation ?

Well. This is not so easy.

• It seems to be a Pimax experience. You need to have some joy with fiddling here and there to optimize the whole thing. If you dont like that and rather prefer a real plug-and-play-thing, then you are maybe not 100% happy with DreamAir ( or Pimax in general ).
• This is a real expensive piece of hobby hardware.  If you are lucky and don't have to mind about this, then do it. If you need to skip vacancies, your childrens birthdays, your sundays steak party or whateever - then don't do it.  It does not change the game itself.

 

 

 

Edited Friday at 03:37 PM by GiftGruen

[Husar]

What about render pixel number since aspherical lenses need more pixels for the distortion correction that pancake lenses?

[GiftGruen]

I dialed it in for the same ‚percentage‘ in Pimax Play and clearly have a sharper image ( proably due to higher display resolution ) with same fps and a somehow ‚more fluid‘ feeling.

Will report exact numbers later on.

Edit:

IL2 GB 4.1x3.5 per eye

Korea 3.6x3.1 per eye

Both MSAAx2 atm

However - take all this with a grain of salt for now cause I am still in my first experiences.

( e.g. i want to try out if I still need MSAA or better go to high supersampling )

Edited Friday at 06:35 PM by GiftGruen

[Husar]

What’s interesting about the Pimax Dream Air is that, despite having a much higher panel resolution than the Crystal, it can require almost the same number of rendered pixels.

The Crystal has 2880×2880 panels, but at Pimax Play 1.0 the render target can be around 4312×5104 per eye — roughly 22 million pixels. The Dream Air has 3840×3552 panels, but its render target is around 5188×4168, also roughly 21.6 million pixels per eye.

So the Dream Air has about 64% more physical pixels, yet the GPU may actually render slightly fewer pixels. The difference comes mainly from the optical distortion/overscan requirements of the two lens designs. This is a good example of why panel resolution alone doesn't tell you how demanding a VR headset will be to render.

[DecabrisT]

Today an update from Pimax arrived. After the update, IL-2 Great Battles started crashing hard. Just without any warning. Or the image freezes, but the sounds keep playing in the background. After investigating, I discovered that I previously had the NIS upscaler set to the "Quality" preset in my Pimax settings. And apparently I had been flying with it on. But it started crashing because I had completely disabled the upscalers. After re-enabling the upscaler, the crashes didn't stop entirely, but they became much less frequent. So the question is: why are they happening at all? I turned on Afterburner monitoring — VRAM is sufficient, it doesn't seem to go above 10–11 GB. The GPU (5080) is at 100% load, but that shouldn't cause crashes, I think. Has anyone else encountered this? Did you find the cause?

PS: I've gotten used to the good image quality. I don't want to reduce the resolution, even though that helps. And the FPS is fine, it's acceptable — but why does it crash?

I fly with Pimax Dream Air 

Edited Sunday at 03:33 PM by DecabrisT

[GiftGruen]

@Husar - yes, we had such an comparison table about rendered pixels > visual pixels in the old forum.

A user there posted a complete excel like this - but I cannot find the old forum any more (?)

You can see in this example that a 50PPD pulls double load compared to a 57PPD and I remember that CrystalLight and DreamAir are also somewhere on 57PPD level.

 

EDIT: found the oldforum again, but not the excel itself. However: This interesting CHART

The DreamAir is not in ( was an older thread ) but since panels and lense technology are quite similar to Meganex it will be somewhere in the region where also the Meganex sits. Here you can see at first sight also comparisons to a lot of other headsets.

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 04:30 PM by GiftGruen