Not to sound salty, so please do not take offence Kevin.
With the Varjo VR-3 you get what you pay for, a premium product with premium support.
There are no hinges that do not go down far enough, no eyetracker that does not work properly, no lenses that cannot accommodate the advertised IPD range without eyestrain, no missing facefoam in the box etc. No missing possiblity of mounting prescription lenses as promised in the eyetracker.
No need to continue the list but Iām sure itās a lot longer
Donāt get me wrong, I really love my 8KX
I just wanted to point out that you cannot compare the two products, apples to apples.
The yearly support if like Xtal I believe also includes maintenance warranties. However if the product become a paperweight without the yearly subscription definitely not a great investment unless your a business and your getting extremely quick exchanges on the headset if it breaks. Ie should be within 5 days.
But do agree it is a case of getting premium product; though more the premium support.
Not sure why pimax is still advertising outside of the mechanical ipd support with only mentioning that may support ipd x to y via software. Or the fact 3 years in with no Official ipd setup procedure since launch. The ipd guided setup should have been implemented within 6 months of product launch/release. Without needing the community do majority of the leg work.
Well there is at least 2 reviews on Varjo hmds here.
Like RoboVR1, RoboVR2 later Xtal 5k and 8k Models these are Enterprise Targeted hmds. The High Cost to own is in part due to very High quality testing standards than a Mass produced Hmd. Meaning that 1 defective headset holds more weight as fewer units are made and sold.
The support and Warranty subscription is much stronger than a regular headset. And why these specialty headsets are not priced to move.
However there are headsets that can compare to pimax. Like even the Vive Pro Eye of which the Eye Tracking works quite well. Unfortunately both Pimax and 7invensun rushed this product out in a very unready for release state. The MASes should have been the focus.
Which by your own reports it is great there are taking there time to try and get the DMAS right on release. Especially after the SMAS and even some of the design issues on the KDMAS(ie no laterial adjustment towards ears; thankfully @grodenglaive has created a simple solution in a 3dprintable). And of course the MASā hinges(not corrected yet based on reports) and no foam oem options save main foam of thick or thin; the rear foam for exanple should have come with 2 thickness or addon for smaller heads.
The hinges though are still the source of some main comfort issues in reviews as one shpuldnāt be being encouraged to force the hinges past the stops.
That being said I do agree with your sentiment on the exuberant price of the Varjo; however as VRgineers teased it is likely after Varjo makes aome āenterprise capitolā to recoup investments in R&D. They are likely to either release or license a consumer version. Though that is not likely for imho at least a year or two
Pimax just needs to focus on getting a variety of what should have been small details resolved that should have happened long ago; that they have been well aware of. As you are someone with a fair amount of experience. I am sure you would agree it can be difficult to keep a company with items falling through the cracks or buried with other things placed on a growing stack sometimes lost in the shuffle.
Reducing the VR-3 to the 70ppd focus area is a bit short-sighted, particularly coming from a competitor.
better ergonomics (please do look at the headstrap construction, itās very interesting and could be a great evolution of the CK)
better lenses with no distortion (this isnāt just a function of large FOV HMDs; anecdotally, for me the sweetspot and the distortion of the G2 were horrendous)
better, higher res OLED panels in addition to the 70ppd focus displays
UltraLeap hand tracking working and built-in
eye-tracking working and built-in with a functional and high performance FFR and DFR stack
automatic IPD adjustment resulting in absolutely no eye-strain
active eye-box cooling
very stable and non-jittery SteamVR tracking (considerably more stable than my 8KX ever managed)
super fast and competent support services
Cons are the price and the FOV which is definitely smaller than the 8KX and pretty much on Index level.
Regarding the focus displays itās a bit disingenious to compare them to competitors but compared to letās say the G2 and the 8KX in particular, the VR-3`s 70ppd area is larger by an order of magnitude than the clear sweetspot of both the G2 and the 8KX. Additionally, the OLED context panels themselves are higher ppd than the G2ās or the 8KXās panels, better color, better contrast and above all, can be seen clearly across the entire FOV.
Full agreement on the price but the delieverd product is nothing short of spectacular.
I wouldnāt take anything said as a personal attack to you, but more constructive criticism on where Pimax could improve future headsets @anon57422158
My suggestion would be why not look into doing stacked displays yourselves, that way you could compete with Varjoās main USP/UVP at a consumer price point?
Thatās still 3195 euros + 2495 euros subscription = over 5500 euros for a headset that will become obsolete in a few years time as new VR technology floods the market.
My biggest concern with this headset is that the texture resolution in games is just too low for this headset to really shine. You already touched upon this subject in hla. But what about other games? I guess itās the same in pretty much all games?
As I mainly use VR for simracing itās actually less of an issue as modern sims feature high res textures anyway for pancake mode. And even AC looks incredible when properly modded.
Regarding HL:A itās not exactly that the textures appear low res; itās simply that they can be recognized as textures whereas before HMD resolution kinda covered the uncanny valley aspect.
But going into any photogrammetry based application is insane! This is where the line between VR and reality gets actually blurred. Itās astonishing and allows an exciting glimpse of what impact VR will have on e.g. education, training and collaborative off-site workplaces in the very near future.
should be awesome for vr high res video content aswell . And dont forget guys you can see much more further into the distance with such a high resolution .
btw I wonder if you can finally read the text on alyx gloves ( on the small chips ) . I couldnt on the g2
Instead of concentrating on competitors catching up, thereās nothing stopping the company itself from dropping prices in the future as the company grows and the product evolves. Competition ramping up will help drive cost down as well.
The important thing here is that we now have (per reports) a visually comparable product to a high end flat screen oled without PQ compromises. That alone is a major milestone.
This I imagine has to do with the Bionic 70ppd 27Ā° displays (30ppd in peripheral).
I was reading in the specs it uses dual DP. Is this for seperate inputs for the main and Bionic displays? If so this makes sense how it can have much better FFR/DFR using a more hardware based solution vs a a single panel rendering different regions res/qualityā¦
The Bionic displays sounds like a great future for WFoV. I would imagine might be able to use the Qhd display with the 27Ā° focus display.
The Dual usb 3 is definitely a smart direction as well.
Varjo use two tethers coming from the PC and going into a linkbox, each with a USB 3 and a DP1.4 Port. The connection from the linkboxes to the HMD is via two cables, each about the weight and diameter of the 8KX optical cable.
The DFR and FFR functionality only works for Varjo SDK and OpenXR based applications so far as the functionality otherwise has to be supported on a driver and engine level or directly via SteamVR.
Having my racing buddies over for a training session in the simrig majorly improved due to Vajo Base offering a gaze view to the observer, so I can see where exactly the user is focusing in VR and also the ability to activate a cursor in VR, so that the obersever can actively alert the VR user to any given element in their viewport.
but Iām sure itās a lot longer 
