Backer Pimax 5k+ received 25/2 review

Reviews
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Hi all,

TLDR; For my first headset the 5k+ more then fulfilled my needs and although I still have some issues (e.g. sparkles, no base/controllers), they are not bad enough for me to drop it all together.

Index:

  1. Arrival: first gen , no cracks for now
  2. Setup and first test: .91, Sparkles problem,
  3. First use Steam VR: Xbox or PS controllers barely work in steamvr,
  4. Sound problem: solved by using other/correct usb port, but why is possible quality only 16 bit?
  5. Playing first game and search for games: EVERSPACE, enemy tags <> location of enemies, Tried War Thunder but didnā€™t work even with parallel projections.
  6. Taking a break and testing something out: Computer restart needed to change pimax_default.jpg, error in pictures while booting HMD
  7. Restarting search for content for non base station and/or vive controllers: Installing Oculus games not seen in pitool + fix, going Oculus software is xbox controller friendly
  8. Didnā€™t do yet
  9. Conclusion

Arrival
I am backer #7106 from Belgium, I received my headset on monday 25/02 (DD/MM for all those American weirdos out there). At the moment of opening the box it was immediately clear that I have a first gen hmd. You can guess that from seeing all the posts about cracks I was afraid I will have to RMA it very soon.

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Setup and first test
HMD firmware 2.1.255.183
Gigabyte Z370 Aorus gaming 7
Intel(R) Coreā„¢ i7-8700K CPU @ 3.70GHz (12 CPUs), ~3.7GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Steam vr SS = 100% manual
FOV = normal
ā€¦

As an ITā€™er the setup wasnā€™t that hard. I installed the pitool (.91) and then connected the cables to the video card and a usb port lastly the power. Starting up the HMD without any problems. First time putting on the HMD directly noticed I will have to be watchful since I have glasses and my eyes/glasses are really close to the glasses. Using the straps and putting on the HMD I saw pimax home for the first time.

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Enjoying the look I sadly immediately noticed the sparkles. Which are indeed very visible, I will put in a support request for a new cable. Thinking about that from my technical point of view having 1 cable with video & audio & power combined requires very good insulation. I mean the EMI should be pretty high.

First use steamvr
I am a VR noob so you can understand that I do not have any base stations or controllers from Oculus or Vive. And no I do not want to spend the money to buy second-hands. At this point I already started trying to use steam vr and the tutorial which by the way isnā€™t supported with an xbox or ps controller, even after activating the controllers in big picture mode you barely can use controllers in steam VR.
Sound (problem)
In the tutorial I noticed that I did not have any sound from the HMD. Trying to see what the problems was I started playing around with the settings hearing a few seconds of sound every time I changed the settings. Long story short the problem was with the USB port I used:

I used the red one at first which is a sleep/charge usb port. Switching to a 3.1 usb port (blue) I had correct audio. Fixing that I do have a question what is the use of the audio port if the quality which you can send to it is only 16 bitā€¦? I will change the audio output to my standard headset outputs.

Playing first game and search for games
After getting the audio to work I started looking for things to doā€¦ remember: I only have xbox controller or ps4 controllerā€¦ I had supported a kickstarter game which provides a VR mode EVERSPACE. Tried it with the xbox controller worked fine but I am a ps player so I retried with my ps controller and this doesnā€™t really work very well right stick seems stuck the way I pushed it last. Anyways it was cool but had to lower the settings of the game to have it run a bit smoother. I did have a problem where I was looking at an enemy ship right in front of me while the ā€˜lock-onā€™ was saying it was somewhere elseā€¦ Anyways failing hard at this game decided to find other stuff to test in VR. At this time I started to try to use the big picture from steam to find and play games in VR. This went on for like half a day in total tried several games like War Thunder which well didnā€™t work very well since the view was really distorted even with ā€œparallel projectionsā€ activated.

Taking a break and testing something out
So I realized that I would have some recording of the sparkles and I also wanted to check out if I had faulty pixels. To do this I replaced the pimax_default.jpg restarting the HMD, pitool did nothing I had to restart my computer to see the different pimax default screen. Doing this for 3 pictures:

  • complete black : identify the sparkles, this was hard maybe we should gather tips on how to record this problem I had the patience for this video
  • complete white: identify broken pixels (not one to be seen luckily)
  • The ipd picture provided on the forum. I sadly donā€™t know my IPD and canā€™t really see when it is good How does that even work for people with glasses?

While doing that I noticed that while booting up it takes some time for the pimax to get the picture right for example the ipd picture:

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Seconds later:
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Even with the white picture I had the same phenomenon (the black line):

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Restarting search for content for non base station and/or vive controllers
Seeing that on the forum also Oculus users where playing their games I was interested in trying some oculus software. Installing the Oculus home and the Revive tool I didnā€™t see the Oculus games showing up in the pitool. Back to the forums I found the solution reinstalling the pitool which fixed it. Trying the same apps I got in SteamVR suddenly I could easily use them with my controller. So I was happy even got to play Luckyā€™s tale which is cute enough as a tryout game. I will probably play Oculus games till the other items arrive.

Didnā€™t do yet

  • Change FOV
  • Change SS SteamVR
  • See difference with parallel projectionsā€¦
  • some other stuff?

Conclusion
I had to take a day off to play around with the HMD, in the end, worth it since I havenā€™t hadden a chance to boot it up since then. Iā€™m happy that I do not see cracks atm. So coming up I will:

  • Make a support ticket for a new cable.
  • Find some other oculus games
  • Find some real VR movie style stuff which is playable (like the deo vr demo stuff)

Heh this became a bit longer then expected. Anyways I have a cold so nothing will happen anymore tonight. I hope I didnā€™t make too many mistakes in the language/sentences. Iā€™ve tried to make it a bit readable by partitioning the whole text.

Best regards and good night.

ps. Any errors in the text or questions I will check this post tomorrow.
ps2. Iā€™ll be happy if the forum doesnā€™t fail to in posting something this big :slight_smile:

@anon74848233 : I canā€™t create an account ā€¦ any advice?

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