SBoys3 Native SteamVR Driver is a community-made native SteamVR driver for Pimax VR headsets. It replaces the standard Pimax Play runtime and gives you direct, real-time control over your headset's FOV, distortion, resolution, and image quality — all without restarting SteamVR or your game.
Installation
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Extract the ZIP to a permanent location on your PC — for example
C:\Tools\CustomHeadsetOpenVR. Do not leave it in your Downloads folder, as the installer registers this path. -
Open the
CustomHeadsetGUIfolder and runcustom-headset-gui.exe. Consider creating a desktop shortcut for quick access.
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On first launch, go to the About tab and click Install Driver.
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Use the Launch Dream Air Headset button on the main page to start a session. Make sure the Enable Dream Air Driver checkbox directly below it is turned on.
Before You Launch — Pimax Play & Pimax Play EVO
Using Pimax Play
Every time your PC restarts, you must connect the headset through Pimax Play first. Due to current Pimax DRM requirements, the headset must be initialized by Pimax Play at least once after each system boot before the native driver can take over.
Once the native driver takes control, Pimax Play will disconnect from the headset. Minimize Pimax Play and leave it running in the background.
Additional notes:
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If the headset cable is disconnected during a session, SteamVR will remain running. After reconnecting the cable, the session will resume within a few seconds.
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You can restart the SteamVR compositor at any time from the About page without closing SteamVR.
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To switch back to the Pimax Play runtime, restart the service from within Pimax Play.
Using Pimax Play EVO
For users with access to Pimax Play EVO, a more streamlined option is available. Enable Open Port Mode in the client, import the Sboys3 Driver, and launch it directly from within Pimax Play EVO.
To switch back to the Pimax Play runtime, simply disable Open Port Mode.
Settings Reference
| Distortion Profile | Use the default profile for your headset. Do not use profiles intended for other headsets — they are built for different lenses and will cause heavy distortion. |
| IPD | This is the software IPD used by SteamVR's virtual cameras. Set it to match your physical IPD. Physical IPD can only be adjusted through Pimax Play, so do that before switching to this driver. |
| Max FOV (Horizontal / Vertical) | Crops the field of view in real-time. Useful for gaining performance — especially reducing vertical FOV in racing simulators — without restarting anything. |
| FOV Zoom / Distortion Zoom | Zooms the rendered image within the lens area. Useful for glasses wearers or different facial interfaces. Use both sliders together to fine-tune world scale and the rotational pivot. |
| Parallel Projection | Required for certain games with canted lenses. Unlike Pimax Play, which keeps this enabled at all times for headsets like Dream Air and Dream Air SE specifically, here you can toggle it only when needed. Leaving it off when not required saves GPU overhead. |
| Colour Tint (Hue, Saturation, Vibrance) | Standard image colour controls. The Vibrance slider is particularly effective — a value around 1.25 gives a noticeably brighter, punchier image without blowing out highlights. |
| Stationary Dimming | Automatically dims the Micro-OLED panels when the headset is not in motion. Configurable dimming speed, brightness floor, and recovery speed. Recommended to leave enabled as a burn-in precaution. |
| Hidden Area Mesh | Masks corners and edges outside the visible lens area to save GPU resources. Requires a compositor restart to take effect. |
| Black Level | Sets a minimum brightness floor for the panels. Anything above 0 prevents pixels from going completely black. Leave at 0 unless you have a specific reason to lift the black floor in very dark scenes. |
| Subpixel Shift | Adjusts subpixel alignment to reduce chromatic aberration around fine details and text, particularly in the peripheral view. The default value is already optimised for Pimax Micro-OLED panels — most users will never need to change this. |
| Distortion Mesh Resolution | Controls the detail level of the optical distortion correction mesh. The default value of 127 is already optimal and does not need to be changed. |
| FOV Burn-in Prevention | Slightly randomises the extreme edges of the FOV between sessions to prevent fixed burn-in patterns forming on the panel borders. Most relevant if you frequently crop the FOV using the sliders above. |
| Render Resolution Multipliers | Extends the resolution range beyond SteamVR's 20–500% slider, with independent control over horizontal and vertical axes. |
| Super Sample Filter Percent, Seconds from V-sync to Photons, Seconds from Photons to Vblank | These are advanced settings. We recommend leaving these settings at default values unless you're an advanced user. If tweaking them results in abnormal graphics, you can always revert to the default values. |
| Eye Rotation | Controls the toe-in/toe-out angle of each eye's viewpoint. The default is 2°. Setting it to 0° gives 100% binocular overlap. Increasing it beyond the default widens the FOV at the cost of overlap. Make small adjustments only — too much separation becomes uncomfortable quickly. |
| Disable Eye |
Blacks out one or both eyes. Mainly useful for per-eye sharpness testing.
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