I finally got my Pimax 8k. Here are my thoughts!

Pimax 8K Series
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So the time finally came. My Pimax 8k arrived. I’m backer 1430. Purchased it off somebody’s Kickstarter pledge on the forums (They gave me the account). I was excited to try it out, so I moved my pc setup back into my vr room and set it up. When I first put it on, I instantly noticed the wide field of view. It was a pretty cool change coming from the Vive. Much wider. The screen door effect was also tiny. I didn’t really even think about it when I first put it on. That’s not to say it’s not there though. It definitively is. It’s just a lot smaller than the Vive screen door effect. I spent a while trying to get my ipd set correctly, but something just felt off.

The distortion was so strange. Oddly enough, the distortion at the edges wasn’t much of an issue. It was more of the scene itself being distorted. The world seemed to stretch in certain places when I moved my head. Not to mention I had this annoying effect where the lens borders were appearing in my vision as well. I tried and tried, but it didn’t go away. Thankfully, the brain does an okay job of filtering them out. Kind of like how your brain does to your nose (sorry for reminding you). Although I had the lens border issue on the Vive, it seems to be worse on the Pimax. I suspect this may be due to the Vives ability to reach lower ipd values than the Pimax.

After a while, I eventually got it to where the distortion was tolerable. I may have just gotten used to it. I started playing Beat Saber, and it lagged pretty bad. I eventually found that the super sampling was above 100% in the settings, so I turned it back to 100%. This definitively helped with performance.

I played Beat Saber again, and after a while I realized I had double vision with certain lighting effects. I went ahead and turned on parallel projections, restarted Pitool, and it still didn’t fix it. Okay, a little annoying but I can live with it. I played for a while and overall I’d say it was still a good experience. Even if there was some distortion and software issues, the increased pixel density was quite a bump over the Vive. In certain scenes, it really is hard to even see the screen door effect. A good example being the space home scene.

So what are my conclusions? It’s good. Did it blow my mind? Not really. Although, it still has the chance to do that. I really think the eye tracking module could be what turns the 8k from okay, to awesome. With real time distortion correction and automatic ipd detection, it could make the user experience a lot better. In my opinion, Pimax should certainly focus a lot of their development on real time distortion correction using the eye tracking. If they can implement it at the driver level, it’ll be a huge boost in the overall experience.

Sidenotes: I have a 1070 and a 7700k. Beat Saber actually ran really well after I turned off the super sampling. It seems as though parallel projections reduces image quality as well.

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When I first put the 5+ I also noticed the distortion on the top and bottom of the image . I played around with IPD settings and headset position and improved it quite a bit but it was still there . Now 2 days later I swear no matter how hard I look I just cannot see it anymore . So maybe like other users have said your brain just gets used to it .

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I got my 8K this evening (delivered at 8pm). It took me about an hour to get it running. Most of the problem was getting my base station configured. It was recognized the very first time and then it wasn’t and it took at least 30 min to get it recognized again (following steps in the wiki). I just kept repeating the suggested steps and on about the 5th retry it worked, although I don’t think I did anything different. It just seems very touchy (and yes my base station was ~2.5m from the headset.

I didn’t notice any dead or stuck pixels, nor did there seem to be any dust on the lenses, cable-related sparkling, or other defects. The SDE is definitely noticeable, especially when looking at text, but it didn’t really bother me. I didn’t notice any distortion either.

I played Elite Dangerous for about 3 hours, but the real wow moment was when I stood up and walked around the cockpit. It was gorgeous! I did not have any problem with nausea at all, even when I drove around in my SRV over bumpy terrain.

I’ll post a full account (later) of the various problems I encountered, as well as the good stuff.

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@anon74848233 please add to earlybackers

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There is a know issue with some blur effects in BS (https://community.openmr.ai/t/replied-beat-saber-issue/13651). The parallel projection however fixes it for me on my 5k+.

When you wrote you restarted PiTool after changing it to PP on (which, technically, you do not need to do) did you also restart the SteamVR and the game?

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@Fomatter exactly the same experience. Got the headset, tested and disappointed about the geometry distortion,ditched the headset, drank for two days, tested again and BOOM it’s gone!

Congrats on finally getting the headset OP and @neal_white_iii :beers::+1:

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beside from having no problems with the cable it might be possible that you won’t see this at all on a 8k as every pixel/color is recalculated by the scaler and might be smoothed out?

just got the hmd, straped it on and thats it?
no added paddind, lower ipd or thicker over all foam (for higher eye-lens distance)

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See TrevorVR there is a solution to every VR problem. Just indulge enough that your real world begins to wobble than your virtual world we be wobble free.:laughing:

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Yes, there no noticeable distortion. I measured the pad thickness at the top (thickest part) and it was ~14mm. I saw distortion when I pulled the headset out (away from my face) and did see some distortion then, so I chose NOT to use a second facepad on top (even thought I bought one just-in-case). The lenses wear quite close to my face, but I was able to wear my small-framed “computer glasses”.

I did notice some tearing or wiggle, when I moved my head quickly to the left and right. That’s probably due to the low framerate. (I was in a station in ED.) I couldn’t figure out how to see the framerate, even though I have the VR FPS tool. I was too excited to play, so I didn’t spend much time trying to figure it out. The tearing didn’t bother me, during actual gameplay.

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Hi Neal are you happy with your 8k?

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Yes, I’m happy with my 8K. There were no obvious defects. The colors and black level seemed fine. There is noticeable color fringing when displaying thin lines (like orbit lines in Elite Dangerous) which is due to the “rainbow” LCD pixel arrangement and I could see the individual pixels whenever I looked at text, but I would not call in SDE.

During play, the visible pixels didn’t bother me, but the color fringing did. (Orange lines are red or green in alternating patterns.) I’ll try to get a photo later. I normally play with orbit lines off, so this is not a deal breaker, but if this bothers you, a 5K+ is probably a better choice, even though the larger pixels would be even more visible.

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ah thats good to hear and I also don’t use the orbit lines. There were reviews in the past i think from Sweviver where the color fringing seams to be a bit worse on the 5k. I did save the pictures on my harddrive somewhere, i have a look.

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Glad you got your headset and are enjoying it Neal, been a loooong time waiting huh

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I did find this from Sweviver’s 5k+ pic

luckystale
luckystale555×575 316 KB
i just cropped it. Are the yellow smudges like what you meant?

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The only time I turn them on is when I’m getting a neutron star boost. That’s quite often at the moment, since I’m headed towards the galactic core. I find the color fringes to be highly annoying, which is one of the reasons I considered getting the 5K+. However, the larger visible pixels on the 5K+ would probably bother me too, so I’m OK with my choice of headsets.

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So you don’t have the colorfringing on the dashboard? Maybe it is because of the fine lines then. I will check also when my 8k finally arrives, but a photo is interesting to see if you can do it :slight_smile:

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Sounds like the 8K has the same issue as the 5K. 1px horizontal or vertical lines are shifting colors.
Dunno why but my guess is that the eye is changing focus often and pixel density isn’t high enough.

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I’ve noticed slight color fringing on the letters. To some extent, it depends on the amount of super-sampling you have selected. The orbit lines have the most obvious issue and the moving vertical lines (when you’re in super-cruise) also show the fringing a lot, but they are on the sides (where it’s not as visible). The orbit lines are often right in front of you, so the artifacts are hard to ignore.

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if your glases fit in then you are not realy close to the lens, i even tried without any facepad as close as possible to the lens, that’s close :slight_smile:

i guess this enviroment (ED) is very forgiving in case of distorsions, mainly black/dark no so much even and stright patterns more like open space, try steam vr home, the room with its wooden floor panels is nice for finding the correct position as it shows problems very easy, also some people had to tilt the upper part of the hmd, seems to be very different for everyone (and will making proper face cuishon for everone a challenge for pimax)

no problems in the overlap area? most people seem to forget to mention the problems in that central area

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You’re correct about being in space, but I tested for distortions in the waiting area, which is a spaceship hanger (large room), next to an SRV (rover) and a ship. I also tested this on a planet surface.

It’s possible my face shape is particularly well-suited for the Pimax. I wear progressive multi-focal lenses in my regular glasses, so I may be more tolerant of distortion effects. Note that I tested with my computer/reading glasses, which have standard (non-progressive) lenses.

No, but my left eye has “issues”, so the overlap area will be dominated by my right eye and my ability to see depth is somewhat limited. I need to get new glasses, which will help in this regard. Even so, the environment of my ship’s cockpit felt very real and I got a good feeling of depth. One thing I noticed was that the starry background of space felt “too close”, instead of feeling like it was in the far distance.

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