AMAZING IMMERSION with right IPD/PiTool Settings

Pimax Hardware P2: 8kX
1

Hi folks!

I already gave some hints before on how to set IPD before and what helped me to enjoy my 8kx after frustrations at the beginning and remive eye strain. . Even with my settings the image was quite clear and sharp I just couldn’t help feeling “something” is still off. The image was kind of 3d and my eyes didn’t feel any strain anymore but I was still somehow lacking sensation of absolute presence and immersion and I wasn’t sure why that is or if this can be improved. As it turned out, my offset settings were quite right but for the “focal” distance at about 3meters, which I set it to on “Virtual desktop”. AND THIS IS WRONG!

After having readjust those offset settings (especially HORIZONTAL ones) everything now feels so right and real and after about 4-5 years of my VR experience with all kind of VR headsets (starting with oculus DK1) I feel being TRULLY immersed and almost had tears of joy feeling but also tears of frustration to have played all those games without proper settings. This was THE GREATEST WOW VR MOMENT I EVER HAD! Imagine me giggling and smiling all over my face for last two days starting all the games I already enjoyed but actually never was trully immersed in! And that is what I wish you will be, too!

Therefore I want to share with you what I did and how I did.

  1. I started free(!) Steam game “Aircar”. Even without proper setting this flying game/demo/scene looks really cool! But more important, this scenery gives you all you need to check if your IPD settings are/feel right, and that are many objects at different virtual distances that are rather easy to estimate and also the height as you are flying around.

  2. Fly in your aircar outside the garage. With only your dominant eye (mine is left) opened fixate some building at some far distance you can estimate/expect it to be in real life and make sure it is about the center of your vision. Let ot be something at 100—200 meters away. Try to imagine where you would look at and focus(!) at at that building in real life and keep your focus/ “focal plane” at that distance. If this building feels of the center adjust the horizontal offset for that eye accordingly.

  3. Now open your other eye while still keeping focus on that “focal plane” and set that other horizontal offset until the image/building/object is as clear as possible. For me it felt rather strange at the beginning as all this years I was obviously used to look/focus at about 3 meters. continuously opening an closing that second eye to check if both images overlap as much as possible might help.

  4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for objects at different distances always asking yourself, what is the distance you would look at the very same object in real life and force yourself to focus at that distance and than adjust horiz. offset until all those objects at different distances feel as they really are at those distances.

  5. adjusting horizontal offsets by looking/focusing at some virtual objects off center can also help!

  6. Vertical offset might further optimize the overlapping and therefore clarity of the image.

If you set it right you should be able to look at any object in VR as you would in real life and it should be clear while no eye strains and also feeling all the distances and heights are “real”.

Just for comparison:
With my true IPD of 60.5 (left eye 30.0, right eye 30.5) my 8kx is set on lowest mechanical setting possible. Before my new settings I had it set (WRONG) to:
Horizontal offset:
left 0.2
right 1.4

vertical offset:
left 3.0
right 3.3

Now set to:
horizontal offset
left - 2.7
right 3.2

vertical offset
left 3.0
right 3.3

This makes me believe all other headsets without ability to adjust the images to one individually forces you to focus you at certain distance and either you are lucky one, it is right setting for you yand you feel immersed or you don’t but just feel something is off even if you have perfectly clear image and no eye strain. This also would explain why we believed we have to look crosseyed but inverted to look through sweet spot of the lenses. Now the overall image looks even sharper and clearer to me!

For me, this shows just how crucial this settings are and to just how important it is for pimax to release/integrate a functioning IPD adjustment tool in PiTool/ Pimax Experience more than anything else! I feel sorry for all the guys and gals that sold their headsets to early because if that.

I know and hope most of you guys already had those settings right one way or another but I also hope this might help those who still struggle and miss. It was worth writing this down if I could help even one of you.

THX AGAIN AT ALL THE PIMAX ENGINEERS AND PROGRAMMERS for giving us such a great headset and even more giving us the possibility to adjust it with software to suit us individually. I don’t know about any other headset with such possibilities.

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Congratulations!

I must however ask you to be extra specific if you will. Would you say that it’s perfect? 100%? Or is there some kind of something that’s still a tad bit off? I mean, I’ve greatly improved my experience by testing and tweaking for many hours but I can’t get that last tiny little feeling of cross-eyedness gone.

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Can you clarify what you mean? You can’t change the distance of objects in real life just by looking at them. Do you mean focus? Like if an object is too close to you, you don’t focus your eye on it?

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Hi! that was somewhat confusing at first as i set the horiz. offset much more divergent than before and still have no eyestrain and my vision is normal after taking the headset off. now i put 8kx and its immediately as I am in that VR scene without any need/feeling of my eyes having to adapt/adjust. For me it’s like day and night now comparing to like it is before immersionwise. It all relies on my subjective impression which feels natural now. At the moment it feels like 100% there - perspective/size/room scale/presence. Let’s see what pimax engineers might come up with in the future. Maybe some 0.05 steps gor even preciser adjustment? :laughing:

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sorry about my description, I was sure it might be confusing but it is somewhat hard for me to explain. It is like you focus on virtual object you know would be like 50 meters in front of you and therefor looking/focusing on it woulf make your eye be in certain spot. As for very near stuff (like gauges in cocpit) your eyes are more crossed and the more far away an object is, the more the eyes are in “neutral” position. I check this with more objects in between those two “extremes” by looking at the objects in the cockpit and than buildings in front. I especially look at some details on those builsings like edges two achieve as perfect alignment of left/right image as possible.

I just hope Pimax developes and integrates some guided but still reliable IPD tool for this ASAP.

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Yepp, such a tool will be great!
It is imho not easy to pretend to look at something at 50m distance and then 100m distance. And in my case the trouble starts with trying to close just one eye :wink:

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If you adjust offsets for different distances how do you decide which one to keep? You would end up having 3 different settings (far, middle, close)…right?

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my observation now is, if you look at something about 100meters far away and set the offset perfect to that (as your eyes cant get more divergent from some distance on, but don’t ask me what distance that would be) then even focusing on virtual objects near you should still look right! I think THAT is the magic and difficulty behind algorithms specially with canted displays.

So I advise you to look and set the offsets for the far first and use more near objects to check that settings and slightly adjust/optimize them by applying 0.1 steps - which I was doing with keyboard arrows in the pitool having it running in the background.

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When you say you adjust horizontal offset, do you mean the screen offset? Do you also adjust your ipd at the same time?

I think the main challenge I have with these guides is that I can’t tell much difference between one ipd setting to the other. I have 63 ipd and currently have it set to 61.8 which seems to give me a better 3D effect and no eye strain but the world scale seems bigger than normal and I get this overwhelming feeling when I look at Steam’s desktop view. All offsets are set to 0.

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for me I always had to go for the lowest MECHANICAL IPD before we had the option to adjust it in the software as for my low IPD of 60.5 which obviously can be compensated with horizontal offset since some time now. I stick to that mechanical setting. All the offsets I made are only in the pitool/software.
this is something I am curious about, how this could/will be reliably(!) done, as you need to make sure with mechanical IPD to first have your eyes physically behind the sweetspots of the lenses and than set the offset in the software to get all those distances/sharpness/dimensions right. :thinking:

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As I read those pimax IPD numbers aren’t precise. I would focus/look at something far away, than put the headset on and with mechanical IPD adjustment try to get both eyes in the sweetspot of the lenses (testing with only looking with one eye through at the time) and at least get your dominant eye in the sweetspot and the other eye as close to that as possible.

from that on I would use software offset adjustment: horizontal. first and vertical at the end to get the lines/dots/edges to overlap as much as possible and therefore the image as sharp as possible.

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yeah, keepimg/forcing eyes to stay at that position while putting the headset on and adjusting the offset IS the hardest part. :nerd_face:

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I hope someone understands what I mean and manages to set the headset the same way and writes about his/hers experience and helps with making my guide more understandable.

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@SweViver
As I assume you are an expert in adjusting the headset, could you please tell us what is your way step by step of setting it up for random person? because, you had to adjust it to all those folks on all the meetups and you also enjoy it with having (almost?) perfect adjusted IPD AND pefect 3d effect.
thx in advance!

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Might be helpful to buy an eye patch lol

Pimax should add a feature where we can turn off one eye of the display and switch back and forth that way. Perhaps in a setup wizard.

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At least I found out the source of the dizzyness with my new 8kX. With the thinner foam I had to reduce the IPD to 60mm to see sharp (my natural IPD is 64mm - with the old 8kX which had a thicker foam a hardware setting of 64mm was optimal). In order to counteract I now set the software IPD to +2 for both eyes (+4 was horrible). On first sight this was ok. But now I realized that I don’t get dizzy anymore when setting it back to 0, even though from the numbers this IPD should be much too small. Don’t understand why this is better. But still, the result counts. Will be interesting how it goes with the thicker 3rd party foam I ordered…

Perhaps Pimax could create a more sophisticated settings program that computes the optimal settings from frontal and from-the-side photos of the user. (The user could additionally hold a ruler up in the air for relations.) This could extract many more metrics besides IPD - exact eye positions, head shape etc. As a result, the application could tell which foam to use (from several that should be in the box for such an expensive headset where eye-lense distance is at the same time so crucial…). And automatically set up the various parameters as needed.
This could make a lot of a difference!

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When you adjust ipd, do you leave the aircar stationary? I imagine it would be a lot harder if the vehicle was moving.

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That would actually help me because I can’t close my right eye by itself. that is my dominant eye and for some reason I have never been able to close that eye. I can close my left eye easily. I have to use my finger to close my right eye

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One tip is to raise your eye brow in the eye you want to keep open and lower eye brow in eye you want to keep closed.

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Thank you for sharing your experience and your how-to!
@SweViver and I will begin designing, planning and working on it soon. It will take a lot of effort and time, yet we hope we can make a difference soon enough.

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