Help me decide - must be an Elite Dangerous player

I’m currently set to get the 5K+ and I don’t have much time to possibly change my mind back to the 8K (backer # 31xx). If you have a headset or you’ve tried both and you’re an ED player, I would love to hear what you have to say.

I like the 8K for better blacks and colors, less blockiness (smoother image). I need the text to be easily readable in ED and I don’t care if it’s a little blurry.

If you meet the criteria, I’d love to have your input and comments.

  • I own both a 5K+ and an 8K and I prefer to play ED on my 8K.
  • I own both a 5K+ and an 8K and I prefer to play ED on my 5K+.
  • I have tried both head sets and would prefer to play ED on an 8K.
  • I have tried both head sets and would prefer to play ED on a 5K+.
  • I have not tried them both in ED, but I like to click on polls. :crazy_face:

0 voters

If you have used BOTH headsets to play/demo ED, which would you recommend for ED?

  • I would recommend an 8K.
  • I would recommend a 5K+.
  • I don’t know why I feel compelled to click on polls. :laughing:

0 voters

Thank you!

4 Likes

I’m in the same boat as you but I’m changing to the 5k+. I just imagine the 5k+ is going to be obviously more sharp and clear. Seems like this is the consensus from the reviews. I already own 4 and the 5k+ definitely won’t be my last HMD.

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Im convinced the contenders are so close I would hardly be able to tell the difference without instant A/B swapping. So I’m fine with the 5k+ that is easier to drive and costs less. In another 1-2 years time sth better will show up anyways…

2 Likes

According to the attendees at the Chicago meet-up, everyone preferred the 5K+ in a head-to-head comparison in Elite Dangerous…

“We spent about 1-2 hours with elite on the guy’s 2080ti rig just optimizing it for the 8k. At the end of the night we brought the 5k+ over (kept same settings) Everyone agreed it was way better on 5k+.”

…and here’s the link:
https://community.openmr.ai/t/my-opinion-about-sde-both-8k-and-5k-mr-uu/11630/76?u=neal_white_iii

2 Likes

(Also still waiting)

It really sounds like a “choose your poison” kind of situation. Between light leak- and balance levels, annoying dot pattern, and, above all, reports indicating a staggering display panel failure rate, I am most certainly apprehensive about my choice of the 5k+: Even if my device exhibits no dead pixels or edge bleed on arrival; How well will it hold up after a month or two?

On the other hand; In Elite in particular, I have personally constantly strongly been favouring sharpness and detail over many other matters, and given what little proper technical information we have, the notion many have, that there would be more resolution potential for the 8k, from optimisations, etc, is just plain delusion – the whole scaler thing (EDIT: Looks to me that was a bad decision), together with the (EDIT: …apparent…) pentile-ish nature of the displays, makes such impossible.

At any rate: Like Mazi, I am thinking of this particular family of Pimax devices as a brief stepping stone to the next big thing, whenever that comes along… :7

After ED3.3’s new colour grading (EDIT: …which seems to my eyes to be 98% of the new “lighting” system), I could use some blue-ish tint anyway, to dampen the new bright yellow-green appearence of our galaxy, that has kind of turned into the “urine-y way”. :stuck_out_tongue:

5 Likes

I have 5k plus and Today I appled tone mapping from Dr Kaii profiler. The one I like the most is called “Realistic Very Dark tone mapping by Dr Kaii” It really helps with black colors and improved saturation on this device . I like ED VR again with my Pimax.

Edit this is not valid. Works in beta but since 3.3 apear Dr Kaii disabled that feature in ED Profiler…

5 Likes

Aha. Thanks! I usually avoid tampering with modding that alters the “art style” of games, but might try that. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Yeah, so I’m with Mr White on my ability to keep swapping sides on this one. In the end, I hope to get the 5k+. The main reason I’m going for the 5k+ is the wobble that people associate with the 8k.

Personally, the static VR space that’s created by the Vive and Rift have always amazed me - and use it as a selling point when remarking to new friends trying my HMDs - and I predict I will in fact see the wobble in the 8k.

I feel that everything else, that being colours, brightness, contrast, SDE and all the things compared, will be secondary if the VR space moves with my head.

I may change again, but for me that’s what I have broken it down to - No matter what it looks like, I can likely adjust, but if the VR space wobbles it’s effectively broken and disconnected from me

(1800-or so hours in ED, across three accounts, approximately 1700 of those in VR)

Edit: I’ll also note this - I have taken it on board that either Pimax headset will not be my final HMD in the near future. That is, I expect the next iteration of Vive/Steam, Rift, Xtal or whatever that comes out in 2019-2020 will be the next headset I buy, and hopefully THAT headset will have the screens we all want. Until then, the extra FOV from the Pimax will be an enjoyable step in the right direction VR is taking, and it’ll also be another piece for my growing VR collection)

4 Likes

I just spend a bit of time hanging in space in the 8k (the drivers for my hotas is broken and i don’t trust myself to dock without it)

I found that with the graphic set to VR Ultra all the text in the cockpit was readable from a normal seated distance without having to lean closer.

Playing a bit with the settings I found that the text became even better with SS set to 1 and HMD Image Quality set to 2 it became better defined and even more readable.

I’m not sure what this means for the graphics on a station or even performance there but it didn’t feel like it hurt the cockpit quality.

1 Like

Imho all the „wobble“ talk is nonsense.

What is definitely true is that the 8k has less pictures it can display per second. And of course this leads to more „stutter“ if you look fast left/right and back. The same if you play racing games and look out of the left or right window of the car you are virtually sitting in.

So the experience of you fast turning the head and lot of movements in that area is smoother on the 5k.

Personally I never had any problem with it because it just looks the same on the 5k if your GPU can just deliver 80Hz (an assumption, we will see if this is true once we get the promised Hz settings in pitools).
So for me it is no different than a little more „stutter“ as if the GPU is struggling. But keep in mind, we are talking about 80Hz vs 90Hz and not 30-40is fps…

3 Likes

wobble is not stutter, its the whole picture moving with your headmovement in sync. but just a really tiny bit, normally nothing is moving

How can it be decisive if you have to test it with one eye in the headset and one eye out of the headset to see it. I suspect nobody would wear their HMD that way :joy:

It should be clear that the scaler of the 8k produces lag. But i doubt it is bigger than a few milliseconds. Maybe pimax could enlighten us? Some information in the specsheet of the scaler chip? So far i never felt any delay while using the HMD “normally”. Does anyone have a device to measure “motion to photon” time? In the CV1 times there once it was a big topic and a company even sold these devices…

And wobble for me means that something goes in one direction and then back in another one, alternating. So the perceived effect should be better called “delayed action” or SID, “scaler induced delay”? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

SID ha ha plop :tv::tv::tv::tv::tv:

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Ooh, blasphemy, can’t use SID, that acronym is taken by MOS Technology for their 6581/8580 chips! :grin::beers:

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@neal_white_iii elite trough the lens of the 8k, the best i have seen yet :slight_smile:
https://www.vrandfun.com/elite-dangerous-looks-like-pimax-8k-headset/

2 Likes

Text only looks really good in extreme lean forward positions. In upright position it starts to get blurry, especially on head shakes. So it might be the camera causing this, but I really hope to have a sharper and clearer text to read with my 5k+ as soon as it arrives…

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i believe it is the lens angle of the camara, he is correcting it i noticed.
Yes text will be even sharper on the 5k, but as the pixels are larger you will also notice the text is stacked up out of small blocks. I prefer the sollid look of the letters and not ultra sharp edges, others will prefer differently :slight_smile: I’m sure you will enjoy your 5k too
And this is with old pitools, with the new pitoolversion the 8k is getting closer to the 5k clarity.

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The text in elite is supposed to simulate a hologram so the edges of text are blurred anyway, the 8K will also add more to the blurred text due to the upscaler.

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Yes true, about the upscaler i don’t know. The 4k has very good clarity also and find it realy good with the 8k also after seeing it live, although for text i think the 5k will always be the winner due to the pixellayout more suitable for text

2 Likes

Update:

Content long time Elite Dangerous VR user, here, who has easily and happily transitioned into the using the Pimax 5k+

I get the colours/blacks issue all too well - I felt it when I started using my Rift more than my Vive - but here’s the thing, I put my Pimax 5k+ on and started playing, and without doing a direct comparison by swapping headsets and I found that the Pimax 5k+ doesn’t feel any great degree worse than the Rift, in regards to colours, brightness and blacks. In fact there’s seemingly less colour banding on the Pimax than the Rift - Elite deep space backdrop colours looks better to me in the 5k+ than in the Rift, and the same with station menus when docked - more banding in the menus edges where it fades in the Rift/Looks better in the Pimax. I use PiTools brightness on low. I’m sure if I did some headset swapping back and forth I’d find/see the issue more, but I don’t see why anyone would want to do that to themselves.

So, for me, I feel i made the correct choice. I like the sharp image, the pixel density and the FOV changes everything. The colours/blacks feel about the same as the rift, with less colour banding in deep space - nebula etc.

I’m sure either headset is great, but for me the 5K+ was the right move at this time. Or, at least, I have no conserns with my choice and have been happily cracking rocks in Elite since getting the Pimax 5k+

The wobble that @mixedrealityTV talks about in the 8K, I am certain I would detect based on all my previous experiences with VR. It was inadvertently the first thing I checked in the 5k+ - that is I used the gap around the nose to track real world objects as I moved my head. I did this with both my Vive and Rift when I bought them, before the 8k existed. I feel it’s something I would be sensitive to

My one negative point is I need to add more face cushion as the large lenses rest on on my big white westerner nose

9 Likes