Free · Community-built · OpenXR toolkit

The Elhydro Custom FOV & Helmet Mod

What you saw in that thumbnail isn't a mod someone forgot to turn off. A real helmet visor around your vision that doesn't just look incredible in VR — it improves performance at the same time. Built entirely inside our Discord by Elhydro and ShenronZero, it's free, and by the end of this page you're going to want it running in your own headset.

Usage and copyright. The Elhydro Custom FOV & Helmet Mod, including the toolkit files, presets, calculators, helmet overlays and setup guides, is © 2026 Next Level Sim Gaming and its contributors. All rights reserved. It is free to download and use for your own personal use. You may not redistribute, re-upload, mirror or host any of its files, and you may not produce videos, streams, guides or any other content based on it without our express permission. To ask for permission, message us in the Discord. Permission can be withdrawn at any time.

Built by Elhydro (Discord Admin) and ShenronZero (Discord Mod) — two of the community's own, answering the questions everyone kept asking.

The problem it solves

Every headset — Crystal, Crystal Super, Dream Air, Dream Air SE — has a different sweet spot for crop and supersample. Get it wrong and you're either burning frames you didn't need to burn, or running a soft, blurry image when your GPU had headroom to spare the whole time.

As a group of VR enthusiasts, we'd been answering the same questions on repeat in the community Discord: what crop and supersample values should I actually be running, why does my headset look soft even on a high-end GPU, why am I leaving performance on the table.

Until now, the only way to know the right numbers was Elhydro's PrimaShock calculators — brilliant, but they're a spreadsheet. Pull it up, enter your headset, copy the numbers across, type them into the OpenXR toolkit by hand. It works. It's just not exactly a few clicks.

The fix: pick your headset, done

So the calculator got built straight into a custom OpenXR toolkit. Open it, pick your headset from the ELHYDRO Headset Profile list, and every value the spreadsheet used to make you work out by hand just appears — correct crop, correct resolution, supersample target calculated and applied automatically.

ELHYDRO MODE on. Pick the headset, everything else fills itself in.

Switch profile to Crystal Super 57 PPD and the supersampling scale updates with it.

Want to push it further, or pull it back for a specific sim? It's a slider, not a formula — including full advanced FOV control per eye if you want to hand-tune from the calculated baseline.

Performance and immersion — the same number

Here's where it comes together. The crop the toolkit applies isn't just trimming pixels off the edge of your view to save performance — it's cropping exactly to where a real helmet visor would sit. So the same math that hands your GPU its headroom back is also the shape of the helmet you're seeing. Performance and immersion aren't two separate settings here. They're the same number.

Sharpening's in there too, so you're not losing clarity while you're chasing frames.

OpenXR toolkit Performance tab with Upscaling/Sharpening set to CAS and Sharpness at 100 percent

CAS sharpening at 100% — full clarity without the extra render cost.

Appearance tab showing Helmet mode Auto FoV/PPD switched on and Depth map set to Smooth, with Scratched as the alternative

Helmet mode — Auto FoV/PPD — applies the same calculated FOV to the visor shape itself.

On-screen stat overlay reading improves performance on all Pimax VR headsets, over a Porsche 911 GT3 cockpit

Real headroom, not a marketing number — measured live in-headset.

On-screen stat overlay reading reduces VRAM usage, over trackside gameplay footage

Frees up VRAM you can then put straight back into supersampling.

The helmet visor, explained

Run it Smooth or Scratched depending on how you want the visor to look — either way it's applying the exact FOV math Elhydro's calculators were already telling you to use. You're just seeing it now instead of reading it off a spreadsheet. On the Dream Air SE specifically, this same fix also resolves the persistence / motion-blur issue some users have seen in the current Pimax Play OpenXR runtime.

Don't want the visor on screen at all? You don't need it — Helmet mode is a toggle, not a requirement. Everything above it still applies whether you're using the visor overlay or not.

Technical breakdown of the helmet visor depth map: original helmet PNG, colour-coded depth map, grayscale depth map, layer masks for shell, padding and visor surface, depth map overlay check, annotated depth zones, and recommended default offset values

How the visor overlay actually renders: a real depth map, not a flat 2D sticker over your view. Helmet shell and chin padding sit nearest the eye, the visor surface sits further back and holds the scratch detail, and each layer is masked and offset separately so the visor reads with real depth instead of looking pasted on.

$Helmet view in VR — a red-gloved hand on the wheel, framed by a real helmet visor overlay with visible edge and light refraction, at Monza$

Not a 2D overlay — a simulated depth helmet, scratches and light refraction included.

See it from the seat

Free, works across the Pimax lineup and beyond, built by the same community that's been answering these questions in the Discord for months. Here's what it actually looks like once you're in the car.

Panoz cockpit at Le Mans in Automobilista 2, using the Elhydro mod — AMS2 — the Panoz, new DLC the same week this was recorded. The most immersive lap we've shot on the channel.

Automobilista 2 by Reiza Studios, cockpit view at Le Mans with the grid ahead — Automobilista 2 — Reiza Studios. Dense trees, full grid, and the crop still holding steady.

Open-wheel cockpit view at Monza with Vodafone advertising boards — Monza — screaming engine, sharp mirrors, zero compromise on the visuals.

Formula car cockpit at Monaco with a CAS Sharpening caption on screen — Monaco — CAS sharpening pushed to 100. Sharp enough to pick out the grass.

Open-wheel cockpit view at Monza with a Dynamic Lighting caption on screen — Dynamic lighting, full headroom — this is what VR is supposed to look like.

GT car cockpit view with Extreme SimRacing trackside advertising boards, no helmet overlay — Helmet view switched off — the same automatic crop and sharpening, your choice either way.

Open-wheel cockpit view through the streets of Monaco with Petrobras advertising boards — Monaco again — tight, detailed, and still smooth as butter.

iRacing — and the Pimax discount

If you're an iRacing regular, this is the definitive way to run it — max quality, minimal crop, no Dynamic Foveated Rendering needed, and headroom left over even while recording in 4K at the same time. The Porsche 911 GT3 shot above at Suzuka was recorded with helmet view on, full stats on screen, and it's still as smooth as butter.

What's next

This isn't a one-off. More helmet overlays and improved supersampling features are already in development — this project is only the start. Full setup guides for AMS2, iRacing and AC Evo are pinned in the Discord toolkit channel, and updates land there first.

Join the Discord & grab the mod Watch the full video

The Elhydro Custom FOV & Helmet Mod is a free, community-built tool — there's nothing to buy on this page for it. The Pimax links above are separate affiliate links; if you buy through them I earn a commission at no extra cost to you, which is what funds the testing. It doesn't change what gets said about the hardware or the mod.