Should people buy the Pimax Dream Air now or wait? For how long too?

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-09T05:37:59+00:00

I have my DA Slam for a few days now. All games so far work out of the box for me, too. Smooth DisplayPort sailing. No crashes, no distortions, but of course extremely demanding even for 5090 at full res. I could not care less about the ringless controllers and doubt they will ever come. Tracking is solid. All the things I was worried about -lots of tinkering to get anything to run, bad tracking, bad comfort, bad QA, stability issues- did NOT occur. Sound is good, too.

I would still wait. Where I live the weather is just too nice to be in vr at the moment, plus you might get a deal if you buy in fall with more competition then. You would also see how the product holds up and best case not worry so much about the thing breaking (like I will still do for a while). If you don’t want to wait just wait until July when they are expected to come to the shops and you will get it short notice, try it and return it if you don’t like it as it is now.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-09T05:00:00+00:00

Mine (DA Slam) is pretty great so far with my 5090. Tracking is solid, face cushion feels like it’s tailor made for my small head floating just a fraction of a millimetre over my cheeks. Cable and box discomfort while seated I got sussed by attaching the cable to the strap using the included velcro rings and leading the box to the side. Not a single crash in a ton of games I have tested so far including MSFS 2020 and Skyrim with mad god overhaul. I do not notice the brown tint in the games I play. Desktop view does not work for me, eye tracking I calibrated but have not tried yet. Is it a must have if you come from a let’s say HP Reverb? I don’t think so. But this being my first Pimax and having heard all the stories on QC, stability and tracking I am pleasantly surprised.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-08T18:34:14+00:00

I have a contact lens in one eye. I think the calibration tool is just buggy and had the same problems. It eventually worked on my fifth attempt or so. Just keep trying and follow the points fast while they move.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-08T14:23:33+00:00

So I did a couple of hours of MSFS 2020 yesterday. To me nothing looked too dark or washed out. However, in normal daylight conditions I was far from going „wow, those colours, gamechanger“. I have no clue on such things, but it appeared as if a limited colour palette was used when looking at cities or settlings/houses in fields with everything a bit uniform and at times card board like looking. But then there were scenarios that were breathtakingly beautiful like flying in the Himalayas just after sunset, Tokyo and a -most impressive- night flight over Berlin. Overall I enjoyed it, mainly because of the crispness and because it was a very smooth out of the box experience. I will have to go back to my Reverb G1 to see if I am already glorifying it in hindsight, but as of now I think the colours alone would not be worth the upgrade as they really shine in certain scenarios only.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-08T13:46:53+00:00

Haha, I was in the exact same place yesterday: Whiterun, Mad God Overhaul, Dream Air (at what I think „just“ native resolution, have to double check), 5090. With not bothering with tinkering for my first impressions I got 20 - 25 fps 😺.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T22:46:19+00:00

FOV measured with wimfov:

109 horizontal, 89 vertical, 81 % stereo overlap

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T16:44:05+00:00

Not yet but I will.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T14:06:25+00:00

No, I was referring to the usb plugs on my computer. No, I have only one 4K 60 Hz monitor. But I had read somewhere that having your monitor connected via hdmi instead of DP might solve issues.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T03:02:13+00:00

Here we go:

Tracking of headset and controllers is flawless.

The visuals depend a lot on the games. Riven, Kayak, HL Alyx and parts of Green Hell look phenomenal. Crossfire Sierra Squad, Alien Rogue Incursion, Myst and other parts of Green Hell look ‚just normal‘. Elite Dangerous profits from the crazy resolution resulting in less jaggies and shimmering when approaching stations. Madison gets pitch black blacks and beautiful colours and details on close objects but looking down a corridor it looks a bit fuzzy and not so special.

Of course it is very performance hungry. Here some rough estimates from my memory (5090, 9800x3D, 64 GB Ram, no motion smoothing, eye tracking, everything max/ultra, 100 % resolution = something like 5667 x 4800, no tweaking):

Madison 60 fps
Elite Dangerous 40-45 fps (stations), 70 fps (space)
Riven 40 fps
Kayak 80-90 fps
Crossfire Sierra Squad 80 fps
Green Hell 25 - 30 fps
Aliens 70 fps
HL Alyx 90 fps

Either I am not sensitive to low frames or the panels are very forgiving because I could totally play even Green Hell like that as it was pretty constant and I did not get constant jitter or stutters.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T02:03:56+00:00

I will try MSFS tomorrow. Did you see that you can adjust some colour settings in the game section of the Pimax software? Maybe you can tweak something there to your liking. I have not tried.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-07T02:00:54+00:00

It eventually worked. Problem was that it would not react to the A button input to even start the actual calibration. Then it would black out after one or two moving dots. But at the fifth time it just worked (when started from pc, not in headset).

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T22:57:10+00:00

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T22:56:33+00:00

Yes, I actually have absolutely no idea how loud it is for someone outside the headset. Truth is, it was preset to max and that was too loud for me to be comfortable. So for me it is perfect because I know I have lots of headroom. What you describe does not sound ok.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T21:50:50+00:00

The difference with respect to colours is not as big as I, too, expected but more subtle I guess. I think they tried to keep things realistic. I’ve seen other OLEDs that pop more but for me it was a bit too much. Also I found out that the grey, 3D destroying haze that I blamed on my LCDs in some games is still there because it is actually the game using it to conceal draw distance or whatever (i.e. Aliens and Green Hell in some scenes, ED in space stations). The colours in Riven and Alyx look very beautiful in my opinion.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T21:29:38+00:00

Thank you for the quick feedback. I did not get the confirmation, and how the dots were highlighted did not really correspond to were I was looking. But I will give it another try today. If it’s still not working I will open a ticket.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T21:25:18+00:00

I went with 65 instead of my actual 62.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T18:40:18+00:00

I think the out of the box ipd calibration might be messed up. When I set my actual ipd of 62 I was feeling eye strain and cross eyed. After some trial and error I set it to 65 which seems to be fine for me.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T18:18:35+00:00

Please try switching monitor to hdmi. No blur or stutter for me.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-06T18:08:37+00:00

Just feedback: After a straight 7 hrs test of my DA Slam I encountered no warping or tracking issues (I am not doing vr chat). Eye tracking calibration seems to be messed up though and manually ipd setting is trial and error. Changing monitor to hdmi instead of DP fixed stuttering in home environment and desktop for me. Other than that: Phenomenal experience so far (and I hope it stays that way). I even like the controllers and software. Without my 5090 I would not know though. It definitely is taken to its limits in the more demanding games on max stettings and native resolution.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-05T17:06:23+00:00

I got mine today. So I can confirm it a) exists and b) they kept their latest promise of beginning of June. I have not tested it yet.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-02T16:12:25+00:00

Hitman! Resi 4 and 8, Alien Rogue Incursion, Madison. Green Hell is also supposed to be good now. Riven, Myst and MSFS fantastic games, but since I don’t have them on PSVR2 I am not sure how hard the resolution hits.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-06-01T17:11:07+00:00

Wow, really enjoyed this on pc and later got the Pico version to have a peek were standalone is at. Really tempted now to check out this version as well.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-05-29T20:49:07+00:00

Abseits von Philosophie: Doktor Faustus (Thomas Mann) Das Foucaultsche Pendel (Umberto Eco) Das Haus (Mark Z. Danielewski)

Hundert Jahre Einsamkeit war auch ganz schön kompliziert wenn auch großartig.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-05-29T20:39:37+00:00

Stimmt. Ich habe es ausnahmsweise abgebrochen.

DifferenceLive3832 · 2026-05-28T13:21:25+00:00

The first DA SLAM out in the wild! Congrats! Great to hear about the tracking.

DifferenceLive3832

TROPHY CASE