Somnium VR-1 Q3 2023

The vr1 has no distortions , its the weight that you should be worried.

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Well I think it is a cost & pride issue(of wanting to come up maybe with their own).

On the flipside though Almalence already showed it can be patched in as an add on vs integrated. While integrated maybe better. They could easily license an add on for hmd manufacturers who do not opt in. Nvidia image sharpening as demoed on VR1 shows there is likely other paths.

But yes pimax should work with them to secure a license even if in pimax play you need a subscription to use. Much like pimax needs to push to get ALVR support like it seems Apple has.

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Well it is really foolish these days to try and conceal unfavorable reviews as it will be found anyway.

On the plus for some gaming other than ALVR

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One guy in the video mentioned it. And of course aspheric lenses will have distortion. That’s just the downside of that lens type.

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Hmm…

I remember @lionel Stating otherwise with the correct Distortion profile. :wink:

However he is likely one of the top folks in that area.

Granted in that post he was talking about more complicated Wfov being distortion free. But limited FoV hmds should be much easier in comparison.

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StarVR uses (stacked) fresnel lenses, not aspheric. I yet have to see a headset with aspheric lenses with perfectly stable geometry. I think it’s impossible.

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This article covers that Aspherical advantage over fresnel is less distortion. So at a guess it would be interesting to see what Lionel could do if he applied his techniques on aspherical lenses.

Pancake do indeed have an edge with even less Distortion.

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A good comparison is my index with dual compound Fresnel lenses. These had an Achilles heel of internal glare in high contrast scenes causing a position dependent fog effect reducing clarity.

Geometric stability was excellent though making them optically comfortable even when looking across the lens. Like most Fresnel the clarity dropped off at the edges, but I got very good clarity across most of the field of view. Sweet spot was relatively small so demanding a good fit and headset stability to maintain.

My Pimax Crystal has aspherical glass lenses, these don’t exhibit any glare or reflection artifacts, but do show chromatic aberration especially in overlays, or the steamVR chaperone. Also get some geometric distortion which can cause pupil swim unless looking forward and turning head instead of looking widely across the field of view. Found eye tracking with dynamic foveated rendering made a big improvement for performance and optical stability making it more comfortable to wear.

Get a good field of view slightly less than Index especially vertical, sweet spot like Index seems relatively small but easier to set incorrectly due to overall lens clarity - with Fresnel you can use a high contrast scene and godrays to make useful adjustment!

My time with Almalence digital lens software demonstrated the improvement of dynamic pupil as I’m aware your pupil can move 3mm across it’s range which has big impact on optical comfort, in my experience the aspherical seem less stable, if I remember Valve talked about using Fresnel because it supported a wider range of users making for a comfortable experience.

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For me personally I won’t be buying any headset that doesn’t have pancake. Until something even better comes along. I just really love pancake. Total geometrical stability, no glare and edge to edge clarity. And smaller/lighter headsets as extra bonus

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Indeed and with LG making new micro Oleds with 2x the nits of AVP and higher res. The future coming hmds should be quite cool.

How have you found ghosting as it is a known issue in pancake lenses. Though seems to be not a huge number of complaints on.

But due to the design reduces rendering costs.

It will also be interesting with is it micro LEDs?

Burbusters recent posts was also talking about demoing flickerfree displays at 1000hz. Apparently currently a 4090 can drive one. But doubt it will be high graphics.

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I respectfully disagree. The drawbacks to pancake are also huge though. Very limited potential FOV, very heavy on power requirements, lots of excess heat to worry about and the requirement for extreme brightness. Further they are usually polycarbonate lenses which provide even less passthrough and reduce the color reproduction.

Don’t get me wrong I think it has some applications and going with glass or highly transparent exotic materials can help a bit. But there is ways to go before it’s something that can check more of the important boxes.

As you know I greatly like the AVP but even with apple spending extraordinary amounts of capital even they wound up having to deal with my list above and couldn’t design around the limitations - at least not yet;. I think the avp is about what you can wind up with using unlimited funding.|

I would merely caution those who think this might be a silver bullet etc., as I assure you it isn’t even close to that at this time and is as much of an impediment as anything.

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Well it’s not just the AVP, of course the Quest 3 has pancake too for example, although META also has deep pockets. Both my Quest3 and AVP don’t feel very warm so I’m not worried about heat, though I’m sure it’s cost engineers some extra headaches to work around it. FoV indeed is a limitation but my quest3 and avp feel pretty ‘standard’ in terms of FoV. If you want more, like Pimax wide FoV style, then indeed best to forget about pancake.

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They are very close to the max theoretical fov using that method and these devices need large batteries and lots and lots of light generation which creates all sorts of technical issues. Trust me it’s more than a few extra headaches, at the current state its causing a catch-22 that clearly is hurting the sales of the AVP. Both devices go to extra ordinary lengths with exotic materials and designs to increase brightness and deplete the heat- laws of physics stuff.
IMHO its going to take a while to dream up something that does a better job checking all the boxes.

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Will definitely agree about power consumption, especially quest3 battery is quickly depleted. Not pretending it’s the ‘holy grail’ but for me personally I feel it are the best lenses I’ve used so far. But we’re now heading into a future where SDE will be a thing of the past and more resolution is at diminishing returns, so it would be logical to think more FoV is next up. And then indeed pancake won’t do it anymore.

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All sorts of cool solutions on the horizon it’s just the yields on a lot of it aren’t great just yet.

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This is indeed a good point on excess heat. One the reasons moving things to a brain box is maybe a good idea. For these standalone headsets.

It would also open up an upgrade path while adding benefits of moving some of the heat elsewhere. This could be even attached to the back of the headstrap.

Move to a new headset with the same brain box vice versas or upgrade completely

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Well until something comes say ATM from Xtal with Hypervision’s pancake prototype. :wink:

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@PimaxUSA Has there been any news on a potential paid licence for Crystal owners to use Almalence digital lens software?

It was an incredible visual upgrade and shows the potential of your aspherical glass lenses combined with dynamic foveated rendering and Almalence digital lens software both in terms of clarity/sharpness and optical comfort

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HI :innocent::fr::+1:t2:

you have a delivery date for your VR-1.
I can’t wait to see your test and what games.
Because since June 2023 we have been talking here about the Vr-1 in a technical way without having the helmet in our hands, with a lot of guesswork about the price, the quality of the lenses, the non-marketing of the helmet but in the end it will be in your hands for test it.
A REAL gamer or simer test is better than 400 kilometers of sterile technical discussions without having the headset in my hands for my part.
Steve from #Vrflightsim during his recent test of the Vr-1 Vs the Varjo XR-4/ Vs the Pimax crystal light loves the image of the VR-1, even in front of the crystal with a larger Fov.
In the end, its weight and comfort on the head are not its strong point.

I look forward to your test.

apluhhsss​:innocent::fr::+1:t2:

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I don’t deal with that side of it anymore but I’ll see if I can find out. For a while I was the contact for Almalence.

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