I got my 8kx about 4 weeks ago and this is my first HMD. I did watch tons of videos and reviews, mostly between the Index and 8kx. I received the Valve Index about a week ago. I have tried my best to enjoy the 8kx but there is always something that gets in the way. The Index on the other hand has been much more enjoyable so unless something changes fast I’m returning the 8kx tomorrow, and yes, I’m still looking for a good reason to keep it.
Things I like vs the Index.
FOV is great, I use it on normal.
More comfortable fit, the Index presses to hard on the sides of my head but it has gotten better with more use.
The clarity although not by much. I really thought the 8kx would be much more clear.
Things that drive me crazy.
Stuttering and/or ghosting.
I have a Threadripper 2950x and a 2080 ti, 32 mb ram.
Playing DCS I would do fly by’s using the P51 and the ground objects would go by jittery if that makes sense. I tried many different settings and when I did get it cleared up and running smooth is was like playing in the Index with a little more FOV.
On the right side of the Pimax I could see objects disappear when getting close to the edge of FOV. Only on the right side. Some times the screen would stutter.
I actually could not see a big difference in Half Life Alyx. Again thats playing with all kinds of settings in Steam and the PiTool.
75hz sucks. I really didn’t think it would bother me but the Index is so smooth compared to the Pimax. Playing DCS is so much more enjoyable on the Index.
There is just to much wrong with the 8kx/PiTool for me to justify the 800 dollar difference between headsets. Like I mentioned I really really want to enjoy this headset but so far the Index has been way more enjoyable.
The games I play are Beat Saber, Boneworks, Half Life Alyx, Saints and Sinners and DCS.
I really feel if Pimax could hit the 90hz mark in native resolution this just might be a keeper. I’ll pick up one if they do hit that mark. Until then I’ve been very happy with the Index.
Sounds like you didn’t optimize steamvr for the 8kx. The easiest way is to install pimax expirience and under advance you can set those settings. Nativ 4k vs 1600x1400…you can easy tell the difference. Pimax is trying its best to get higher hz on native mode. Take a look on Youtube pimax expirience.
I also had the Index before getting my 8kx and the improved image quality of the 8kx was easily apparent for me. Not even close really. The only thing that the Index had over the 8kx for me was sound quality. The other thing was that I could drive it more easily with my 1080ti, but that was to be expected. I sold my Index and haven’t missed it one bit.
With a RTX 2080 and 8K-X I get a great experience in DCS.
Try Pimax Experience software - Drop the per eye render Resolution down to low 2K’s with med DCS settings. See how you go. For me, clear as and smooth even over cities.
So you say you have done some tweaking and have some experience with the Index. Also, I am guessing your IPD is reasonable for the 8kX to accommodate. Still, I recommend you set Render Quality 1.25, SteamVR resolution to 2400v, and DCS World Pixel Density to 1.2.
Where the 8kX is really amazing is for the extra clarity and FOV in applications like DCS World or Virtual Desktop. At roomscale, the difference in resolution between the Index and 8kX is harder to discern.
At least with maps other than Caucasus, the CPU will be a limiting factor. Between that and the wider FOV of the 8kX requiring more rendered pixels, it will be hard to avoid some Smart Smoothing with DCS World.
Refresh rate bothers some people much more than others. Myself, I have found 60Hz preferable, so the CPU/GPU can render with even more supersampling.
You guys have helped tons. A big thank you. I moved the DCS visuals to medium and the DCS pixel density to 1.2. I turned off grass since this is a flight sim and don’t plan on spending a lot of time looking at grass. I put the render quality to 1.25. Those suggestions by you guys bumped up the graphics and smoothness and DCS was very enjoyable and clear. I then tried to put FFR to conservative and bumped up the render quality to 1.5. It played very nicely again and I didn’t see the blocky pixels from FFR. I might leave it there for now.
Again thank you all for your help, I need I was missing something, well a few things heh.
You all have a blessed day
Please see this spreadsheet for strongly recommended DCS World video quality settings. A lot of these are major, like MSAA 2x is of huge benefit, while MSAA 4x is of little and about 10x worse performance impact. NVIDIA control panel setting recommendations are also included, and are appropriate for basically everything.
DCS World is very equally CPU/GPU bound. FFR costs 3ms CPU time, to save 3ms GPU time. This already does more harm than good in most cases, and will get worse as single-threaded CPU performance does not improve much, while GPU performance does.
Render quality 1.25 is wise to overcome SteamVR’s blur filter. Above that, and SteamVR’s video resolution must be reduced sharply, causing it to undersample. This is not a very balanced way to do things, and just wastes performance.
MSAA is worse performance wise to bumping up SS per eye render resolution.
If you have to go low res per eye and need AA then FXAA is the route to take.
Upping PiTool Render will increase the sweet spot of the 8K-X or any other Pimax headset. You just have to adjust the render res to what works well with your system whist maintaining crispness of image and colours.
My MSAA experience in Il2 and DCS is that it blurs the image and I much prefer to up SS instead. The setting in Nvidia Control Panel 3D settings that made a good difference for me was turning on Sharpening (setting at the top) and setting it to 1.
Faf around with too many settings there and you end up going backwards in performance and quality.
A lot of objects ‘shimmer’ in a pixelated way in DCS World, even up to prohibitive supersampling settings. MSAA 2x prevents that with only a minor performance impact.
I ended up sending the 8Kx back and kept the Valve Index. The 800 dollar price difference just didn’t make sense to me and the 75hz just didn’t do it. The sweet spot on the Valve seems much bigger. I have to spend another 120 bucks for sound. Then add in another 150 bucks for a longer cable. Now I’m up to around 1000 dollar difference.
I’m still keeping an eye open and will probably get another 8kx when/if they can get 90hz and fix some of those other issues.
