Why you SHOULD use Pimax Crystal to watch movies in VR

Virtual Reality is not only  about VR games and experiences. In fact, lots of people use VR headsets just to  watch movies and series on a big virtual screen. In today’s video, I’ll explain to you why the Pimax Crystal is such a great  VR headset for this purpose. Especially if you are picky enthusiast striving  for the highest image quality and clarity. I will also show you my favorite apps that  I use to play all kinds of video files. We’ll cover traditional 2D or two-dimensional  movies on a

big virtual screen, video streaming services, 3D movies and  of course 180- and 360-degree movies, including some… educational  content, just for science. Hi everyone and welcome back.  My name is Martin, or SweViver. Before we go through the options on how  you can watch various movie types in VR, let me first explain to you why  you should do so and why todays high-end VR technology finally is  mature enough for this purpose. You may or may not remember  this, but roughly 5 years ago, I made a

video about watching movies  in VR on a Pimax 8K and a 5K+ I think. Already back then, in the early days  of Virtual Reality, it was a hot topic. Since then, a lot has happened  and improved with the VR headsets, especially on the high-end  side of Virtual Reality. Today, VR headsets with ultra-high  resolutions, innovative panel technology, way more sophisticated lens optics, as well  as standalone features enables a whole new experience with vastly improved image quality,  that simply immerse

s you like never before. I can admit that while the previous  generations of VR headsets were kind of capable for watching movies, there were  still lots of technical limitations that made VR users hesitant to use their  headsets as home cinema equipment. Many enthusiasts, myself included,  felt that the overall image quality just wasn’t good enough. And that  was because of multiple factors. Back then, the VR headsets had quite a poor  color reproduction, washed out black levels and most import

antly, a too low display  resolution introducing various flaws, such as the well-known screen-door  effect, or a pixel grid across the view. A lot of the deal-breaking factors  were also caused by the early-day optical lens technology that suffered  from screen reflections and glare, possible distortions and  lack of edge-to-edge clarity. Having a 100-inch big cinema  screen in front of you while watching movies is indeed an amazing experience, but not so much when the image quality barely  reac

hes or even matches your old bedroom TV. A few years ago, high quality 4K content just  didn’t look anything like 4K when viewed in VR. Imagine watching a dark scene  in a movie having distracting, heavy reflections across your entire view. You are constantly seeing a noticeable  pixel matrix across your cinema screen. You are also seeing kind of a  blurry view in your peripheral, that makes everything outside of your center  spot just not sharp, or even distinguishable. Then add more flaws such

as  low image peak brightness, visible Mura effect and black levels that makes  all black environment look kind of greyish. Just a year ago, this was how you could summarize  the experience of watching movies in VR. In fact, when it comes to many mainstream  VR headsets available as of now, especially the standalone alternatives, many of them  suffer from these weaknesses still today. Luckily, the latest high-end oriented  VR headsets such as the Pimax Crystal, for instance, basically  eliminat

es most of these issues. And that is, by by providing top-of-the-line  image quality thanks to the combination of innovative lens design and some  of the best displays available. And this is what I mean by saying that  the latest VR technology is finally mature enough to deliver a true  cinematic movie experience in VR. Sure, there are dozens and dozens  of different VR headsets out there, made by many different brands. Some of  the standalone ones are also lighter, smaller in size, more comfort

able maybe  and more versatile than Pimax Crystal. Today there are tons of people out there  daily enjoying movies and series on their Quest 2 and 3 or Pico 4 – both in standalone  mode and by streaming the image from a PC. These headsets are cheaper and therefore  more accessible to the mainstream audience. For the average VR user, these headsets  are a no-brainer to purchase, of course. But how about if you are a true movie enthusiast? Kind of the pixel-peeping geek, just like me,  never getti

ng satisfied with the image quality. Maybe an enthusiast who used to spend  big money dedicating an entire room in your home, turning it into a home theater. What if you are the person that tend to  never watch any movies or series outside of your 100-inch projector screen  or your massive QLED or OLED TV? Well, in that case, you need a  VR headset that can deliver - or surpass - the experience you  normally are used to by now. Yes, I am a big VR enthusiast, and in my opinion, image quality is t

he main factor to  even bother watching a movie in VR. For me, the level of image quality, sharpness and clarity in VR has to be  extremely high for it to be satisfactory. Especially if I´m supposed to move  my cinematic experience away from my current 65-inch 4K HDR OLED TV and put  the content onto a virtual screen in VR. How could I even justify sitting here at home, watching a movie in VR, if the overall  image quality looks better on my TV? Then why even bother? Well... sure, it’s one thing

if you are  on the road, when travelling for instance. Killing time on a 10-hour flight maybe, or  just sitting on the bus on your way to work. In that case, almost any standalone VR headset will do the job to display a  movie or series on a virtual screen. But in most cases, or statistically, people tend to mostly watch their  movies and series while being at home. And let’s be honest now, home  is the place where the high-end movie experience happens these days,  more so than in a cinema, at

least. Now, here is where a high-end PCVR headset  like the Pimax Crystal comes into play. Thanks to Crystal’s custom Aspheric glass lenses, the VR image is sharp across your view,  basically all the way to the edges. That ensures that the corners of your movie  screen stay sharp, and you can now easily spot details and read the subtitles by just  moving your eyes, instead of moving your head around from side to side, because that’s what  people do a lot when watching movies in VR. The optics de

sign and the surface  layers of Pimax Crystal’s aspheric glass lenses also eliminate all  possible optical reflections. This means that dark movie scenes stay  dark as intended without reflections. Bright objects within pitch black environments never produce that distracting  glare or those God-rays anymore. With dual QLED panels boosting a  resolution of 2880x2880 pixels per eye, the screen-door effect – or the  pixel matrix - is completely gone. The sharpness and optical clarity  achieved fina

lly do justice to 1080p, or 4K or 8K content - or even  higher resolution movies. Not to mention the QLED color reproduction,  that significantly boosts the color range, creating vibrant colors while  keeping skin-tones natural. Black levels are also no longer an  issue with Pimax Crystal’s displays, that utilizes full array local dimming backlight. The displays are illuminated by thousands  of backlight-zones across the image. This allows the headset to turn off  backlight-zones behind objects

or environments that are supposed  to be black, while maintaining perfect highlights in bright areas  where it’s supposed to be bright. Additionally, this boosts the image contrast to  insane levels, making the image to literally pop. Thing is, you need to actually  experience a movie on the Pimax Crystal to really understand its advantages  and really see the difference for yourself. It’s hard to describe this by words and even  harder to showcase it in a YouTube video. Bottom line is that the

Pimax Crystal and its  crystal-clarity probably is your best choice when it comes to watching movies in VR, especially  if quality is your main or highest priority. And I think most people, who have ever  tried the Crystal, will agree here. OK, I know some of you may still ask the question:  why even bother watching movies in VR? Especially today when large screen QLED and OLED TVs are so  good, so accessible and now also relatively cheap. You see, watching movies in VR  is practically like goin

g to the cinema without even paying for the  ticket or even leaving your home. The nearly unlimited number of VR environments you can use in VR media players, will create  any kind of preferred atmosphere for you. With just a click of a button you  can spawn from a huge IMAX cinema to a cozy home theater room with  a huge screen in front of you. And you can do that alone, or together  with family members or friends online, virtually sitting next to each other in  a VR theater chatting and intera

cting. So far, we have only spoken about  traditional or regular 2D or “flat” movies. But there is way more video  content to enjoy in VR. How about watching a nice movie in three  dimensions with true stereoscopic 3D view and depth perception? Well, that’s  just one of the strengths of VR. Let’s face it, today you can barely find any  TV of any brand with the 3D feature included. 3DTVs and those polarized 3D glasses  are, for some reason, not sold anymore. If you ask me, 3D movies are  far from

being dead. In fact, many 3D creations or productions are still being  made with some of the best movies out there. For Instance, Avatar 2, released less than 2 years ago, is available in 3D Blu-Ray  format just like its predecessor. The Avatar movies are two of  the best 3D movies ever made, if you ask me. But if you don't go  to the cinema to see the 3D movies, or if you didn't keep your old 3D TV, you won't  be able to enjoy these movies in 3D anymore. Sure, there are still home cinema 3D pr

ojectors  out there, but these are pretty expensive. And not every person has the room to fit an 80-  or even 100-inch projection screen on a wall. Besides 3D, there’s also movie content with  180 and 360 degrees FOV, with or without 3D stereoscopic view, where you can simply look  around freely in VR thanks to the head tracking. This kind of videos are made for VR  headsets in the first place and the content’s resolution is all between  4K and 8K, sometimes even higher. To really benefit from s

uch high resolutions,  you need a VR headset with display panels that can render the image free of visible  pixels, just like the Pimax Crystal does. Oh and by the way. Did you know  that the adult entertainment industry is the biggest creator of  180-degrees FOV 3D video content? Well, that’s actually a fact! It might  be a sensitive topic to discuss here, but in my opinion it’s an important and  interesting part of the VR industry to mention. Let’s be honest here… 3D adult video content  is ex

tremely popular and widespread today. And even if we don’t want to admit it, many of  us do consume it – or at least have tested it. The huge library of 180-degree  3D adult movies has been rapidly growing the past 5-6 years and it’s  all thanks to the adaption of VR. Because whether you like adult entertainment  or not, a 180-degree capture in 3D brings the genre to a whole new level making it a  highly immersive VR experience. Trust me... Of course, we also have a wide range  of popular online

streaming services such as Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and many others. These can all be enjoyed in VR on a  big screen. And some of its content even supports 3D modes, as well  as 180- or 360-degrees FOV modes. Now when we know how Pimax Crystal and  VR as a whole enhances the experience of watching movies and series in VR, let  me show you a few ways on how to do so, with the use of a PCVR headset  such as the Pimax Crystal. As you may know, the Pimax Crystal  is not only a PCVR headset. It also i

ncludes a standalone AIO, or All-In-One mode, similar to how the  Quest 2, Quest 3 and Pico 4 operates. In other words, running cordless and on  battery, viewing the content through the built-in VR interface powered by a Snapdragon  XR2 chipset, which the Pimax Crystal has. While the VR gaming library is still very sparse  on the standalone mode of Crystal, there are still plenty of applications you can use to watch movies  and series, both locally and by streaming online. Obviously, due to the

limitations of the  hardware, the standalone mode of Crystal does not run in native, or full resolution  of what the Crystal displays are capable of. Despite that, with the latest  updates of the Pimax Crystal, the standalone resolution is actually  surprisingly high, I must say. Best part is that while in standalone mode, you  get to keep almost all the benefits of Crystals advantages, such as great edge-to-edge clarity,  the popping colors, full array local dimming with true black levels, an i

mage free of screen-door  effect and totally free of glare and God-rays. Personally, I think that the Pimax Crystal’s  standalone mode is very capable of providing a great movie experience in VR, even if  I know that most people won’t buy the Pimax Crystal for this purpose alone. But  it’s a great bonus feature, nonetheless. So, let me first quickly show  you a few examples in standalone, before we move over to the PCVR mode. Let me just add that the quality of the recordings is not so great whe

n doing  them in standalone mode. It’s pretty difficult to even record the output  of what you are seeing in standalone mode. And the image comes out without the  distortion profile applied, so it looks like the image is a little bit distorted,  but that’s not how it looks in VR actually. Anyway... First off, there  is a built-in media player that supports most ordinary 2D movie video types. By transferring the files through  USB cable straight to the headset, you can watch them instantly by jus

t  accessing them from the File Manager. Well, this mode is quite limited, I must say. So, you will certainly want to use a  dedicated application for this purpose. The main one would be the Whirligig media player, which is in fact available to today directly  from the Pimax store in standalone mode. This application is well-known and has been around  for PCVR headsets through Steam for years now, so it’s pretty great that it has been ported for  standalone use and available in Pimax AIO mode. W

hirligig supports basically all video formats and  codecs available, including 3D side-by-side and 3D over-and-under videos, 180-degree panorama  videos, 360-degree video content and so on. The user interface is simple but really  great and handy. It’s easy to navigate with the Crystal controllers while also having  tons of options and customizations available. You can watch movies with subtitles, multiple  audio tracks, adjust 3D settings and Field of view. And the quality of high-resolution co

ntent  looks awesome indeed in the standalone mode. Now, while Pimax awaits more VR media players  and streaming services to be supported, there are many great Android media  players out there and most of them can easily be sideloaded to the Crystal by  connecting the headset though USB to your PC. We have VLC, we have MX Player,  XPlayer, Kodi and Plex and many others. As for streaming services, by sideloading YouTube, as well as a whole bunch of  other well-known options, you can stream your f

avorite content straight  into your standalone Crystal, wherever you are. Well… I know, the full potential of Pimax Crystal  can only be achieved when connecting it to a PC. After all, that’s why most of you are  buying this headset in the first place. PCVR mode lets you run the headset in its full  resolution and have various refresh rate options such as 120Hz, 90Hz, 72Hz which should match all  sorts of media content’s specific frame rate. Use 90 or 120Hz for 30 and  60 frames-per-second video

s, while the 72Hz mode is ideal for 24  frames-per-second movie- or film content. Probably the easiest way to enjoy  video content while in VR and being connected to your PC is to use any of the  available virtual desktop applications. These mirrors your PC monitor view inside  of VR. There are both free applications, as well as paid ones available. The majority of PCVR users already use  SteamVR, so you may already know that the SteamVR dashboard includes  a free virtual desktop feature. Althou

gh it’s a simple and not  so fancy or customizable option, it can actually be used to quickly get  started and watch any local files of 2D video content with any of the  media player PC applications. This way you can also enjoy most of the  streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube or Disney+ directly through the web browser on  your PC, while being in the virtual desktop mode. But have in mind that the stereoscopic  3D videos and 180- or 360-degree content are not supported using the  built-i

n SteamVR virtual desktop. If you use a Pimax headset such as the  Crystal, there is an optional and free 3D front-end application you can download  and install through the Pimax PC Client, called “Pimax VR Experience” that also  has a built-in virtual desktop mode. It’s a software that I actually created a few years ago together with  Armin, a good friend of mine. Here, you can switch between backgrounds  and environments, customize the screen size and distance, adjust image preferences  and ev

en arrange multi-monitor setups. When it comes to VR media players and PCVR  media applications available on Steam, there are two main options  which are the most popular. That’s BigScreen Beta and Virtual Desktop. I guess everyone knows BigScreen Beta by now  and its definitely one of my favorite apps. First off, Bigscreen lets you use  your PC desktop in VR just like other virtual desktop apps, but it  does that so much better than most. It has dozens of great looking VR  environments and lots

of customization. The coolest part with BigScreen is that you  can watch movies, series or whatever – together with friends in a virtual movie theater,  thanks to the cross-platform multiplayer. You can simultaneously watch movies  with people from anywhere in the world, people you don’t even know, by sitting  next to them, just like in a real theatre. It allows you to host your own rooms, hangout  in social VR chat lobbies, participate in 3D Movie nights, you can create your own VR LAN  partie

s or public events and much, much more. It does support 3D movies but not  180- or 360-degree video content. My second favorite for PCVR virtual desktop  applications, is simply called Virtual Desktop. This is a PC desktop mirror application  combined with video player capabilities. It’s not a free application though, so you will  need to buy it from Steam. This application gives you full support 180- and 360-degree  content, 3D content and most file formats. It’s a very customizable software, 

almost a bit overwhelming at first, but that is a good thing for the  real enthusiast, if you ask me. Another VR media player that I have been  frequently using for 3D side-by-side and 180/360 degree video content, yes  including “that” kind of content, is a very small application on Steam  called “Simple VR Video Player”. It’s simple, extremely easy  to navigate and perfect for quick video sessions without much distractions. It does not include any VR environments, but you  can customize the su

rrounding backgrounds and what I love about this software the most, is that  it’s so minimalistic, simple and “just works”. It handles any 180- or 360-degree 3D  content I have tried, out of the box. There are of course image enhancements included, such as upscaling and anti-aliasing, but  mostly those enhancements are not even needed. You can find the application on  Steam, although it’s not free, I think it’s definitely worth to include  in your PCVR library of media apps. So, we did mention W

hirligig before  using Crystals standalone AIO mode, and originally this media player  was made for Steam and PCVR. Therefore, it is available on Steam as well,  definitely worth to pay a couple of dollars for. Including full support for 3D and 180/360 degree  videos plus a lot of customization available. One of the strengths of Whirligig is that it  actually supports Almalence through SteamVR. Almalence is a Digital Lens Plugin for VR headsets  with eye-tracking, such as the Pimax Crystal. This

awesome plugin uses eye-tracking to  perform lens corrections in real-time, which further improves the visual  clarity and sharpness in VR, as well as corrects other optical  properties such as the sweet spot. But I will save a deep-dive into  Almalence for another video. Lastly, I want to mention Skybox VR Video Player,  another alternative for watching movies in PCVR. It’s not a free application and  maybe not a must-have really, but something that makes it rather unique is the  ability to ac

tually recognize video type format. It will automatically play the movie  in 3D side-by-side, 3D over-and-under, 180- or 360-degree format or however it’s  supposed to be viewed in VR – by itself. Meaning that you don’t need to ever change  viewing mode manually with it. In fact, something you will need to do using the other VR  media players and applications I mentioned before. So all these media players are just a few  out of dozens and dozens of different media applications available for VR,

made  for watching movies and series in VR. You may have your own favorites  that I haven’t even mentioned today, but at least I shared the ones  I’m frequently using the most. Anyway. With those apps and with a  high-end Virtual Reality headset, such as the Pimax Crystal, you are definitely  set for an amazing experience that will, in many ways, outperform your home  cinema setup or your big OLED TV. For a VR enthusiast and a big movie fan,  this is finally the right time where VR can actually

be the main format  for watching movies and series, enjoying endless movie nights  alone or with your family in VR. With time, I think VR will  even get better of course. But as of today, I’m sure that the top-notch image quality and immersion achieved  with the Pimax Crystal specifically, will certainly exceed the expectations for  you and most other movie enthusiasts out there - myself included, of course. I hope you enjoyed this video and thank you so much for watching and we’ll  see each oth

er in the next one!