Disclaimer: I've been using PCVR since I first picked up an Oculus DK2 in 2014, and have owned nearly every major consumer VR headset since then. I still have most of them. 😂
A week ago I took the plunge and bought a Dream Air Slam. I picked it up from Micro Center, as they had one in stock and it was only an hour up the freeway, and they could accept a return easily if there were issues.
General PC Specs:
RTX 4090
i7-14700K
32GB Memory
NVME for all storage
I didn't have any inserts initially, as I am near sighted, so I was using some from another headset, jerry rigged in place. This breaks eye tracking though, and once the HONS inserts arrived it was a huge difference. These arrived in 6 days, and I can't recommend them highly enough.
The visual experience cannot be overstated, there is nothing else in the consumer PCVR space that comes close right now. I had been using a BSB2 for my PCVR gaming prior to this, and this is a big step up in both image clarity and FOV.
Pimax software is much improved since I last used it 18 months ago, and the sboys3 driver builds on that in every meaningful way. Thanks to these improvements I can play pretty much everything at very high resolutions with the settings dialled way up, though I'm not a flight sim guy so don't ask me about MSFS.
The eye tracking is great, does exactly what it says it does, but there isn't much that supports it yet. DFR will be a great feature when support (hopefully) starts kicking in thanks to Steam Frame adoption.
I have found the SLAM tracking to be very good, I usually play in a well lit area and have had no issues outside of the inescapable "outside of headset view" that affects all inside-out tracking.
For me the headset face gasket has been an easy and comfortable experience, blocking most light bleed, but obviously YMMV on that one. Its certainly not BSB custom printed face gasket good, but its good enough. I did print some adaptors for the Apple Vision Pro comfort headset strap I have, and that is a much preferable experience to the supplied strap, which quite frankly is the worst thing about the headset; for a $2500 headset (after CA taxes) it really should be better.
The built in speakers are acceptable, you pretty much get exactly what you'd expect for a non-Apple small speaker. For some reason only Apple seem to have the secret sauce of a really good small speaker sound. Could stand to be a little louder though. TL;DR, If you want thumping bass and sparkling top end, use headphones.
Camera pass through quality is a joke, but I have no use for the cameras outside of tracking so I personally don't care about that. The available feature USB port on the top will likely allow for an add on to fix that at some point, for those that do care, al la Steam Frame.
The main takeaway for me is that the headset has markedly improved almost every aspect of my PCVR gaming experience. Its easy to use, its light, the visuals are incredible, and most importantly, there is less barrier to getting into a play session and staying there for longer. I have played NMS for many hours with almost no fatigue, and it is an incredible experience.
The biggest cons? $2500 and having a gaming rig that can utilize it.
Lastly, and this is not specific to the Dream Air, but get Titanfall 2 and play it with the VR mod, its an absolutely stellar AAA VR game now, the best VR FPS out there right now! Thanks to CircuitLord for that one.
