Worth upgrading? Quest 2 to quest 3 or Pimax Crystal for Elite Dangerous

[[GSV]Lemming]

So, I currently have a 10th gen i7, 3060Ti based pc that I game on. Currently on BG3, World of warships and then dip into other first person shooters and the PC does all I need it to do well on a big TV screen. No problem there.

My other vice is Elite dangerous on the screen, or in VR, on a Quest 2 and I absolutely love it in VR. Even mining is a joy, its just the whole immersion factor. My son recently bought a new alienware 4090 based machine and i am getting itchy palms too.

Has anyone upgraded from Quest 2 to 3, or Pimaz Crystal and plays Elite, was it a big change for you? I would love the text to be sharper ingame, its a little fuzzy. If I do upgrade the headset for this I assume I will need to go to a 4080 or better based PC to power it. I am only interested in PCVR, not bothered by standalone

Spending the money is not the issue, its whether its going to be worth it for the change in visual quality, will it be a striking change going to quest 3 or crystal displays? I woudl love to hear form people who have done it, especially if you are Elite dangerous players.

 

[wickfut]

I had a couple of Crystal headsets and I still have a Quest 3. I've tried Elite on both of them for a few hours each.

Crystal had a weird thing with chromatic aberration were it doubled the orbit lines to more like tram lines. 2x very distinct 1cm apart lines as it split the yellow colour into red/green on the black background. Not noticeable in other games. Just Elite?
Very sharp textures and very little aliasing due to the eye tracked foveated rendering, had to run it in mostly low/medium settings with FSR set to "Quality" to get it to run stable in space at 100% scaling (4300x5100 per eye 90hz)
The headset brightness made stars dazzle. The local dimming created grey bloom clouds around highlights and took a little bit of tweaking with the .ini file to reduce it to the point it didn't distract me too much. Overall it was nice but had issues.

Quest 3 compared to the Crystal looks too low res with aliasing. It's probably similar to your Quest 2 in everything but the lenses. I could play the game fine but I've had much better image sharpness and less jittery gaming experience with a Reverb G2. It was playable but not something I'd be happy with.

Difficult one. I wasn't happy with either playing Elite and I don't believe there's a standout currently sold headset which is suited to it. My current main headset is an Aero, which is basically a higher resolution reverb with better lenses. It's a little less sharp than a Crystal but doesn't suffer the weird lens doubling. Hopefully a 3000x3000 90hz OLED gets released sooner or later. I'm probably an over-fussy fncker though so take my view with a pinch of salt.

 

[bigmike20vt]

i dont have a quest 3 however I do have a quest 2 and a quest pro. the quest pro is significantly better than the quest 2 for pcvr

better resolution
better blacks
better colour reproduction
(slightly) larger FOV - i believe the quest 3 is better again.

mine isnt a quest 3 however i can only imagine you would have a significantly better experience with a Q3 over a Q2 - so long as your pc can run it.

Elite dangerous is so good in VR, its just a shame the developers do not seem to be interested in it.

 

[tangey]

I've played Elite on Q2, but got out of it a while ago, and have not tried it since on Q3, I think the learning curve to get back into it after a year would be quite steep, so I haven't bother. I probably will if I ever update my crappy graphics card.

However, text in general is sharper on the Q3 compared to the Q2, so I assume it will also be better on Elite. You should be able to peruse your cockpit better by moving your eyes instead of having to move your head on the Q2 to stay in the sweet spot. Also, I wonder is the much improved passthru good enough to enable reading where the best place is to bring the various mining elements from the online databases on your PC without having to remove the headset.

 

[lokiss]

One thing you'll apricate with the Crystal, the FOV. With cockpit and open screens presenting you with more of the skybox, everything is opened up more and a bit of a gamechanger. Id imagine that the cockpit in the Vulture really benefits from this, much like some of the big glass bottom open cockpits in MechWarrior 5 do.

Text won't be a problem, the in game is razor sharp. Never got beyond the hangar when i tried it so can't speak to most of the in game experience, as my hotas needed painfully remapping again.

Might give it a go tomorrow, I'm intrigued now i thought about the Vulture cockpit matching up to the Rifleman from MechWarrior.

 

[Ravenger]

The Q3 will be a massive upgrade from Q2. It's higher resolution, better contrast, bigger FOV, lenses clear from edge to edge so you don't have to move your head as much, and has a way better wireless chipset so wireless can look almost as good as wired.

 

[ShiWarrior]

Q3 over the Q2 and pico 4 (ive owned all 3)

 

[[GSV]Lemming]

Thanks for the replies all. Looks like I am still waiting for that next 'game changer' headset.

Starting to lean towards a Q3 as an interim purchase and see how it runs on current PC as a stop gap, and wait for the next headset. I really fancy the Crystal base don resolution and positive points from reviews, but it does seem to have issues that spoil it. As always, I just want something for lots of pennies I can plug in, set to max and it just works perfectly without faffing about!

 

[BigBANGtheory]

I went from the HTC Vive Pro2 (itself an upgrade from Quest2) to Crystal and yes the difference is really noticeable, in Elite what you'll see is the local dimming and the overall clarity being night and day difference.

Crystal with DMAS is the one to go for if you want the best audio/visual experience, if other factors are at play then yeah the Q3 has its merits like price, ease of use, weight, passthrough MR

This chap looked at both options for Elite worth a look I'd say, he seems to know his onions

https://www.youtube.com/@ImmersedRobot

 

[Ravenger]

It might be worth considering a Quest Pro as you can pick one up for about the same price as a Q3 new and even cheaper second hand, and that has way better colour gamut than the Q3, local dimming and for games that support it, eye tracking for foveated rendering.

I've played Elite on the Pro and it looks absolutely amazing. Ok it's not has high res as the Crystal or Q3, but a lot of simmers say the Pros colours and contrast make it better for PCVR.

 

[lokiss]

As i suspected, the vertical FOV really opens up the huge glass frontage of the Vulture. There no black border unless you're uncomfortably straining you're eyes to the fullest extreme. Elite added to the feel good pile, along with the likes of wingman, truck sim and mechwarrior that benefit hugely from having the extra.

Headed to a beacon to check on the performance with a ton of ships flying around with a few battles going on. I was preset on ultra, running on Open XR with the toolkit enabled with CAS at 100% at 3234x3826@90hz, local dimming and all that. Never dropped a frame bellow 90 in the middle of 6 ships having a pile on.

That said, if you're celling is a 4080 and you're on a 10th gen, perhaps i would shy away from the Crystal. You won't see that kind of performance without dialling it down and losing half the charm, the quest 3 will probably be you're better option.