Today I am taking a drive in American Truck Simulator and talking about the new Pimax 8KX. First off, I can’t thank the Pimax team enough for bringing me out to CES 2020 and then also letting me bring home one of the 8KX V5 production samples that we were using for the demos in the booth.
Flash forward a few weeks and I have now been using the Pimax 8KX now for pretty much as my daily driver for VR gaming and so far I have to say the experience has been good. This headset is a step up from any other VR headset I have seen to date… Including the XTAL demo that I received at CES. The clarity and lack of perceivable SDE in the screen and optics of the Pimax 8KX combined with the Wide FOV produces the most realistic and lifelike images I have seen in VR yet!
The build quality is also vastly improved over any other Pimax headset I have personally seen. The outer casing is rubberized and feels much tougher than my 5K+ did. Also on a personal note, I very much like the fact that the Chevron on the front was changed to metallic silver… This combined with the deep blue color and solid feel of the housing make the 8KX look and feel like a very premium VR headset!
Another great addition IMHO was the new Comfort Kit. The large brow pad and very soft foam combine nicely with the wider top strap and rigidity of the MAS to allow me to ratchet the headset to a good tightness that doesn’t feel like it is pressing into my face but also stays in place with fast movement. I feel like I can play for much longer periods of time now with this new comfort kit installed.
As for the MAS, the one on the production unit that I am using is not the final version but already shows great promise! It is nice and Rigid and does a good job of holding the HMD in place. The speakers are where it falls flat but again this is not the final version and I was told that this would be changed in the units that were shipped. Don’t get me wrong, the sound that I am hearing from this pre-production MAS is not bad and is even better than the Rift S or Quest at this stage but it does not compare to what the Valve Index off ear speakers can do.
The last thing I will comment on is performance… So far for me with the 8KX it has actually been pretty good. This is refreshing to me since I am running this on a rig that is technically below the min spec listed for this headset. Currently I am running this on an I7 7700K, Zotac GTX 1080ti Amp Extreme, 16Gb 3200mhz ram. I am happy to report that by just turning down the graphics detail in some games I have been able to run the 8KX in the native mode with no issues. I have also tried the scaler mode and this made it very similar to my 5K+ in terms of performance but I have to say… The graphics still looks amazingly sharp to me! With my current hardware setup I might find that I will be using this mode often until I can upgrade.
Overall I am very pleased with the experience I get from the 8KX. This is for sure a headset that I could finally consider to be a true VR 2.0 device! I just don’t see any consumer VR headset coming even close to what Pimax has created for a while. Thanks for watching the video if you did or for reading this wall of text… And stay tuned for more 8KX content in the upcoming weeks and months. Please let me know in the comments below if there are any suggestions for things you all would like to see me cover in this headset. []-)
Please try a work out game that makes you sweat - the comfort kit looks terrible for working out as it stops evaporative cooling / sweating on a large area of the forehead.
We developed a special Comfort Kit polyurethane cover for that very purpose, we showed 2 variants of that as well at CES right along side the soft foam version.
So far there are 3 different face pads you can use on the comfort kit and the soft one is the most popular so that is the one that is included.
Sounds great Kevin, I would propose that in the future, make them as optional accessories that you can “tick off” when purchasing an 8KX and 8K+
I would have loved to have had alternatives along with my 8KX upgrade order
One of my most beloved games. Thank you for this test
I think the best result is achieved by raising the r_manual_stereo_buffer_scale value a lot in config.cfg (e.g. 2.0) and lowering the scaling value in the game (e.g. 50% or 25%) depending on your hardware configuration
Making a serious comparison is hard, because I don’t know the final render target after the in-game internal scale, but I feel like I have more fps at the same visual quality.
Can you pretty please do some Elite Dangerois gameplay. You mentioned it in this video
Can I suggest doing a quick run through. Inside the station. Orbit a planet, Asteroid belt. How does the star field look etc. Lots of people want this for ED. Cheers!
Better than the 5K+ for sure… Still using the -2 / +1 trick in Pitool to make it better though. I played Elite Dangerous in it last night and for the first time since my DK2, I finally felt that Space looked good again!
I have played around with it both ways and didn’t notice a difference. I will try to remember to look for it the next time I use this setting and report back.
Just getting over a rager of a cold but as soon as I am back to full strength I will for sure be doing that… In fact I am planning to restart the VR fitness series I ran on my channel last year where I lost 40 pounds and I’m hoping to start that up again soon so if nothing else, I’m sure I will be using this headset then and will make sure to take note of it.
Yep… Euro and American truck sim have been some of my go to games for presence and immersion since back in the DK2 days. Thanks for the settings… I will give this a try! []-)
I will for sure do Elite soon as it is the one VR game I always seem to return to! Admittedly it has been far too long since I played it on the channel but I did fire it up in the 8KX last night and OH WOW… this was the first time I can remember being blown away by it since seeing it back in the DK2 days. The colors are much better with the 8KX and by using the -2 contrast and +1 brightness trick in the Pitool space just looked great! The blacks were deep enough and the star field and nebulae in the distance looked correct! Also the increased resolution and wider FOV really helped with the feeling of the scale of everything… Flying through the mail slot was almost frightening the first time I did it and I am an experienced Elite pilot. Anyway… rest assured if Elite is your game of choice then the 8KX is gonna be a great choice of headset… I couldn’t imagine playing it any other way now!!! Also stay tuned as I’m hoping to have an Elite video or live steam up soon. []-)
Interesting. I mostly play Elite D and I use +2 contrast and -2 brightness on my 8K and I think that looks great. I may have to experiment with your settings.
