Pimax Crystal Light VR Headset Partial Payment Version-with Controllers, 8K QLED with Local-Dimming, Lightweight & Comfortable Compatible with Flight Simulators, iRacing & PC Gaming

Pimax created this simplified version of their standalone offering by removing some of the extras, like onboard battery, eye tracking, etc. to make it more affordable for those who intend to use it seated at their computer desk for flight simulators and racing games. Their advertisement and product description clearly reflects on that and surely, they are spot on, everything about this headset as advertised.The Crystal Light retained the original Crystal's super high resolution and high-quality display. It is somewhat disappointing that they are charging extra for the software, but once installed and the VR headset initialize, it is ready to go! The game controllers aren't really needed for flight sim, but they are very easy to set up and can be useful time to time, while can be turned off at any time. During the initial setup, it is recommended to charge them right away before the setup is completed, in case one chooses to use them right away. For seated applications like flight simming, I recommend disabling the safety boundary by unselecting the "Activating Chaperone" feature in the Device Settings/Advanced. With that feature selected, the headset will keep turning on the see trough screen and safety boundary lost error every time the headset is removed and placed on the desk. Very annoying, because one cannot select another flight and continue with the gaming session without exiting the game and recalibrate the room setting. That's something to beware of. Otherwise, the software is fantastic, very simple and easy to use, and includes their own version of built in Open XR. I must say it does worth the extra, if they keep on maintaining it.The performance enhancing features work great, fixed foveated rendering greatly reduces processing load, and the lack of eye tracking probably won't affect most of the users, while also eliminates some extra burden of processing. I expected a serious performance hit coming from the HP Reverb G2, but to my surprise, it was the other way around, I noticed a slight increase in the frame rate, while sharpness and clarity blew me away. I surely did not expect that level of upgrade in performance, The Reverb G2 is known for its incredible image. The mild screen door effect of the G2 completely disappeared From the Crystal light, colors and brightness are eye candy. I tried the "smart smoothing" feature enabled from Device Setting/Games, also works as expected, but I did not gain enough boost to keep the feature enabled. For fast aircrafts Like the Daher TBM930, Pilatus PC-21 trainer, fighter jects or choppers it worth enabling smart smoothing over busy terrain at very low attitudes, but for normal flights, for maximum clarity and sharpness, better leave it off.As far as comfort, this unit is a mixed bag. It is incredibly big, almost intimidating, and covers one's entire face! Because it covers my nose as well, it tends to fog up very easily, and I have to remove the headset several times to clear it out, until it warms up enough to eliminate fogging. It takes lots of attempt of adjustment to make it the most comfortable, and once that's done, it can be worn for hours without much of any discomfort. The 120 Hz refresh rate is a Godsent. It took me a year to be able to use the Reverb when I started, I was hit with motion sickness so powerful that I felt sick even the next day. The high refresh rate of the Crystal Light helps to completely eliminate any residues that I still suffered occasionally time to time, when simulated real time weather conditions and some turbulence effects. While not a perfect product, the team's attempt and effort to fill the void Micro$oft left in the wake of deprecating its own VR portal, is greatly appreciated. Hopefully they will be successful and are here to stay. I cannot recommend this headset strongly enough for other potential armchair pilots, who are looking for superhigh resolution crystal clear VR solution to upgrade their existing deprecated ones or just getting ready to immerse into the VR flight realm for the first time, without mortgaging their homes for a Somnium VR1 or other super expen$ive units out there. The seamlessly working standalone software independent from Steam VR (though it is supported and featured if one chooses to install it) and any other standard platforms, plus the solid performance of the VR headset with incredibly stable tracking is difficult, if not impossible to beat at this price point! Kudos to the team at Pimax for their work and dedication!

Presumably the product is fine, if you receive one that is working. (I'd be interested in that probability if anyone knows.)Unfortunately, I had a hardware issue with the headset where the lower half of the left display was discolored and would drop pixels or show them as a primary color that was glaring. If you don't spend hours a day in VR, then fyi if one eye is malfunctioning its distracting and annoying at least, but at times nauseating. It worked pretty good other than that. Except I had an issue with beat saber not respecting my head position. This was almost certainly software related, I never got far enough to fix this beat saber bug due to the hardware issues.After about a month of somewhat stressful (hilarious in hind sight) interactions with numerous customer service representatives I was issued a RMA. If there is a hardware issue, Pimax can really only communicate one message a day, unless you are willing to switch to China's timezone. Also, at first, the tech support would show up in my e-mail, but if I responded by e-mail the message was not delivered, I had to use the support forum, this furthered the delay. I believe this issue has been fixed and an e-mail reply will reach tech support at this time.Communication was difficult in general, and due to the slow pace of interactions it took a month for something that should have taken a few days maybe a week. Then when they gave me the return label, it was wrong, the destination was my house, at this point it was over a month from the purchase.I had gotten in the habit of calling Amazon support first and then conference with Pimax and Amazon support. This tended to help communications and it was the 4th time I had contacted Amazon support to help with Pimax support. This time around the Amazon representative allowed a refund prior to conferencing with Pimax. Its not clear how Amazon allowed this, the first 3 times Amazon insisted that I go through Pimax, which I was fine with at first. Maybe if enough grief is experienced by the customer Amazon will let you go through them? Whatever the case, I jumped at the opportunity because the progress with Pimax was excruciatingly slow, and showed no sign of improving.In theory, I really like the idea of a independent high tech VR company, and I would really like to see a company like this succeed. I don't especially like giving a bad review, but I paid a bunch for this headset and I expect it to work as advertised, when it didn't work correctly the path was long a narrow.If I got a TV and 1/4 of the pixels were bad and would display bad colors and dropped pixels, I would hope the return process wouldn't take longer than a month. It was over a month and I hadn't even shipped it back yet. Who knows how long the total process would take, and if it would have gone smoothly. With so many goofball mistakes its hard for me to believe that none of them were on purpose, this would allow them to draw out the time of the return improving the bottom line. This is purely speculation on my part, maybe the support staff is just really bad at their jobs.Supporting Pimax seemed fine at first, but I'd rather not subsidize them. Good thing I bought it through Amazon despite the sharp price difference from the Pimax website. It might make you wonder, why is Amazon priced so much higher? I know why.