So, Pimax just did a round of testing in San Francisco, CA and I was lucky enough to test drive the 8k unit for about 30 mins earlier today. I am not anywhere close to a reviewer but I’ll try to do my best answering a few of the most basic questions about the experience. Needless to say I’m not affiliated to Pimax in any way, I’m just a common citizen of the world.
The setup
The Pimax team had two base stations set on stands about 2 meters high. The headset was connected to a gaming laptop right in the center via 2 HDMI cables and 1 USB. There was also a single wired controller very similar in shape to the Oculus controllers. The laptop was running SteamVR. I was told this was the 8k unit (not 5k).
Putting it on…
The unit is surprisingly comfortable. It’s large and you’d think the extra screen would make it heavier than the 4k unit but I hardly noticed it. It’s worth noting that my unit did not have headphones attached to it so that could have helped. In terms of ergonomics it felt very similar to the Gear VR. The panel that goes on your face actually looked a lot like it too. The most annoying part were the 3 relatively heavy cables coming out of the unit, but I would assume that will be improved in the final unit. If the cable weight is improved I could see myself wearing it for long periods of time.
Hardware IPD?
The first thing that came to my mind was to adjust it so I asked for the promised hardware IPD. There wasn’t one. There was a knob on the right side of the unit (reachable with the unit on) and I was told that controls the IPD but only “when it’s connected to the software”. My guess is that this is perhaps a physical knob that controls the software IPD but I wasn’t sure. Turning it did nothing. I will trust that the Pimax team will add the real hardware IPD later on.
Visuals
Ok so now to the interesting part. How does the image look? I’ll try to break it up:
Resolution - My untrained eye believes that the resolution on each panel looked exactly the same as in the 4k panel. I was told this unit was running “native 4k upscaled to 8k”. I’m not sure how that’d work since the unit was connected via 2 HDMI cables and in my limited understanding I remember that native 4k couldn’t be done via HDMI and that’s why the 8k unit was supposed to use DisplayPort in the first place. But there were 2 HDMI cables so perhaps each cable transmits 1080p, which x2 would mean 2160p horizontally. And given that each panel upscales to 4k that’s how you get “native 4k (as in 2160p horizontal) upscaled to 8k (as in left upscaled to 4k + right upscaled to 4k)”. But that’s just my guess. Thus, overall I didn’t see improvement on the already great resolution that the Pimax 4k has.
Refresh rate - This is where it starts getting good. I was told the unit was running at 90Hz - my untrained eyes believe it was. The image seemed very responsive on the 3 games I tried even with fast head movements. Overall things seemed very smooth.
Ghosting - I could see very little ghosting. I have my shutters removed on the 4k unit so this could just be a result of me being used to more ghosting than others but I felt ghosting was not an issue. Or at least not noticeably bad.
Lenses - The new lenses are really great. I came in thinking the lenses would distort the image badly on the sides given the extended FOV but this was not the case at all. I even tried looking at text with my peripheral vision and was able to see the shape of the letters correctly. Godrays? Nope. Not at least while I tried it. The Pimax team did a great job here.
FOV and binocular overlap - If there is something that makes this an awesome product is the crazy FOV. If you want to get an idea of what area is visible put your to index fingers along the sides of your nose and squint about half way. The index fingers should give you an idea of the binocular overlap (which is a bit limited but not bad). It didn’t break the 3d effect for me. That said hardware IPD is still a must, specially with 2 panels. I really feel hardware IPD and the new lenses / FOV will make a compelling immersion experience. Miles away from Oculus / Rift.
Colors/Brightness - Didn’t see a noticeable improvement over the 4k. I was told the shutters were removed and I don’t know if the software blue light filter was enabled (which makes a big difference IMHO) but overall brightness and colors were about the same as the 4k (after tweaking brightness settings, that is).
Tracking / Controllers - Tracking was good but not exceptionally great. Sides movement and crouching worked as expected. Playing Fruit Ninja seemed accurate enough but I wouldn’t call it precise. Unfortunately I haven’t tried room scale tracking on the Vive / Rift so I can’t say how they compare. I do own a NoloVR set though and this felt a lot better. There were no glitches in my playtime other than when playing Project Cars which put me outside the car while driving 
The heavy wires on the headset and the wired controller did break the experience a bit though. The dev also made me try the 8k with a leap motion attached. I had never tried it, the experience was pretty surreal and the hand tracking was great.
Drifting - This is a hard one. The fact that I was constantly taking the headset off to talk, hand it to the devs, change games, etc means that I really didn’t spend a ton of time in a game to notice slow drift. The longest I spent actually playing was probably about 5 mins in Project Cars and I did not experience any drift then. That said, when switching games to project cars the headset did drift drastically, but once I was in the game the experience was fine. I did notice a ton of tracking sensors on the headset which probably helps.
Other questions
Price? They wouldn’t tell me.
When does kickstarter begin? Ditto
Will all Steam VR games work out of the box? Yes.
What about Oculus? Oculus games will work too.
What are the minimum specs to run this? Most things can run on a GTX 1070 plus a decent CPU but some games or configurations might require a 1080.
Will the controllers be wireless? Yes.
Overall, the headset felt like an improved version of the 4k. In terms of image - the expanded FOV and the lenses are great, the ghosting seems reduced and the refresh rate has improved significantly. All that, plus the minimal SDE that these panels already have and assuming hardware IPD is added will make this the best headset in the market by far. Colors and brightness could be improved. In terms of tracking and comfort - I believe the 8k is up to par with other products. I guess we’ll have to wait for the price but this was without a doubt the best VR experience I’ve had.
Hopefully this helps while we wait for other reviews. Feel free to drop additional questions.
