Hi I just received my my first Pimax headset, an 8kx. Id like advice and links, on what I should do next with set up and optimization. Im first interested in playing Half Life Alyx and Asseto Corsa. I want the best visuals and frame rate possible on my 3080 ti with ryzen 5800x and 32 gb 3600 ram. I have the index controllers and base stations. Im intersted in fixed foveated rendering that isnt really noticable to increase performance. And I want the best resolution possible in the center of my vision. One specific question I had was what custom resolution should I set in asseto corsa content manager, for best resolution possible. I prefer videos over text instructions, if possible. Im really excited to try this headset for the first time, coming from an Oculus Quest 2. Thanks 
You’re pretty close to my PC. I have a 3080 Ti with a Ryzen 5900X.
The Pitool settings I’ve settled on for Alyx and most games:
90Hz or 75Hz Native mode
Backlight: 100%
FOV: Large
Quality: 1.0
Fixed Foveated Rendering: Balanced
Parallel Projection: Off
Hidden area mask: On
Smart smoothing: Off
Compulsive smoothing: Off
Contrast: +1
Brightness: 0
SteamVR resolution: 100%
Half Life Alyx requires special settings in its launch parameters to work correctly on the 8KX without parallel projection enabled:
For Asseto Corsa, it doesn’t seem to matter what resolution you set in SteamVR or pitools. It run at the resolution it does regardless. It works and looks decent. Resolution could be higher while still keeping max frame rate, but I haven’t found any way to change it. Googling around has found everyone else having the same issue. But the resolution it’s locked at isn’t bad, so have fun!
Thanks. In content manager of Asseto Corsa it gives you the option to manually set the resolution. Have you tried this?
The thing is that VR mode was pretty obviously grafted onto AC as an afterthought. The configuration menu only sort of supports it. The resolutions you can set concern the monitor, not VR.
Also you can’t control AC entirely from within VR. Each time you go back to the pits, you have to use the desktop. The VR support works well once you’re driving the car, but otherwise the experience is pretty clunky.
I love AC with my 8kx 
I have steamvr supersampling set to 100%.
I have either Pitool set to 1.25 and Large fov OR pitool set to 1.5 (looks great) and Normal fov.
60hz refresh rate, my fps just about matches this.
I play pc2 and ams2 too but these need parallel projections enabled whereas AC doesn’t.
Oh ok thanks. Also my entire vision in the headset is blurry. Like looking at the real world without my glasses. My quest 2 pcvr wasnt like that, it was very clear. Ive tried the whole range of manual IPD adjustment and nothing fixed it. Ive also tried the different recommended quality settings without change. Its so bad, that games like pavlov online are are unplayable, becasue I cant see the other players before they shoot me. Do you have any idea how to fix this? or is this normal with the 8kx?
My initial experience with the 8KX was like that, too. Early on, the display looked pretty bad. Lots of blurriness and distortion. However, I’d researched Pimax a lot before buying one, and I knew going into it that the 8KX was finnicky and hard to setup well. Even with that expectation, my initial experiences were bad enough that I did give up at one point. A friend told me about how he’d hated his Pimax for the first couple of weeks until he finally got it dialed in and convinced me to try again. And I’m glad I did. When I got over the hump, the 8KX became amazing.
On other VR headsets like the Quest 2 and Index (both of which I also own), you have to position the headset correctly on your face in order to have a sharp image. And you have to have the IPD set correctly (well, as close as the Quest 2’s 3 fixed positions can get anyway). What you’re doing is getting your eyeballs into the sweet spots of the lenses so that the lens geometry works correctly as intended. But you only have to get it correct left and right, and up and down. You don’t need to worry about how close your eyes are to the lenses. The display is still sharp whether your eyes are near or far. The Index even has a knob that lets you rack the lenses forward and back in order to get as close as possible to maximize the FOV, but the displays stay sharp throughout its range of movement.
Not so with the Pimax 8KX. Those super wide angle, canted lenses only work correctly with your eyes at a specific distance from the lenses. And the range is quite narrow. To put it another way, your eyes have to be positioned correctly within all three axis, not just two axis.
It would be very convenient if the Pimax 8KX had the lens distance adjustment mechanism that the Index has. The 8KX needs it much more! The only way to adjust it on the 8KX is to vary the thickness of the facial gasket padding.
Pimax offers their facial gaskets in two thicknesses: 11mm and 15mm. Neither of these work for me. 11mm is too close, and 15mm is too far. I used double sided velcro tape to effectively add a spacer to the 11mm which got me to an in between distance. And then suddenly the lens geometry started working correctly for me, and the displays became sharp across most of their FOV only getting blurry and minor distortion at the extreme edges on Large FOV mode.
On the other hand, you might just have a defective unit. Or perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the 8KX, but your face shape, eye depth, etc means correct positioning is not achievable. One of the challenges of working with Pimax is that these conditions are hard to differentiate. There are multiple possible causes of a blurry display, and that’s what a lot of people are going to experience the first time they try a Pimax.
Try taking off the facial gasket and just holding the 8KX up to each eye individually without letting it touch your face. Find if there’s a position for each eye where the display becomes sharp and undistorted. That’s the position you’re going for. Then the challenge is adjusting things to get the 8KX to sit on your face with the facial gasket installed such that it gets your eyes into those positions relative to the lenses under normal use.
Ok thanks so much for your detailed advice. I will try that
How common is it for people to set above 1.0 in Pitool & what benefit is there?
Wow your pc is literally the exact same as mine except I have a 2080Ti. (I’m wondering if its worth the upgrade)
As a virgin Pimax owner firstly “WELCOME”
Secondly, no matter what if at first you don’t succeed , try different face foams and if you experience mild distortion don’t freak out once you dial it in the distortion goes away. I have Zero distortion.
The IPD reported on the pimax does not necessarily reflect real life. You will probably need to adjust it based on feeling.
HLA has a command line you need to add to allow for running without the need for parallel projections which will maximize your framerate.
You should use the Pimax Experience checkbox in pitool as it will configure alot of stuff for you to ensure steamVR doesnt mess with your settings.
I think a few users change pitool quality setting, 1.25 in pitool is just like changing steamvr resolution to 125%, it just supersamples, makes the graphics more crisp.
Is there a benefit to going
pitool 1.25 steam 100
vs
pitool 1.0 steam 125?
I would think allowing steam to control it woukd be easier to take advantage of game specific settings
idk if setting the res in 1 is better than the other, would need to experiment.
Pitool allows u to set res (“quality”) on a per game basis like steamvr. Doing it with steamvr allows finer control of supersampling i.e. 1 or 2% increments/decrements whereas pitool only does it in multiples (or just 1) of 25% chunks.
Yeah i know but launching from pitool everytime just kind of… you know…sucks.
Both pitool and steam settings are just mixing to decide the actual rendering resolution. It doesn’t matter which one or if it’s a combination of both. The only thing that seems to matter is the actual rendering resolution it arrives at as result. This resolution is what is displayed in SteamVR settings.
Note that “pitool 1.25 steam 100” will not arrive at the same resolution as “pitool 1.0 steam 125”. The pitool setting is a scale value for width and height dimensions, while the SteamVR setting works in terms of pixel count. So the former will increase pixel count by 56% while the latter will increase pixel count by 25%.
If you did “pitool 1.0 steam 156” that would be equivalent to “pitool 1.25 steam 100”.
As you mention, I personally think it’s best to leave pitool at 1.0 and just use SteamVR to control the rendering resolution. Primarily because the SteamVR resolution can be changed on the fly while changing pitool quality requires restarting software to take effect. Also because of the per game settings (though pitool actually also has this ability but only when pitool is used as the launcher). SteamVR’s control of rendering resolution is also much finer grained and easier to control because FPS varies with the pixel count relatively linearly.
I just discovered that the reason everything is blurry is because my ipd is much smaller than the headsets smallest limit. My ipd is 64 and the smallest of headset is 68. When I close one eye and move the headset directly over the other eye, the image becomes crystal clear. Im really upset about this, but hopefully I can successfully do the idp mod, to bring it down to 65 ipd. Though that mod requires allot of risky work on the headset.
The headset’s adjustment range should be ~60-70mm.
Perhaps you mean your IPD is 54? Because if it’s 64, it’s dead average and every VR headset will support it.
I measured between the center rings of the lens. Not based on what the headset reads on the screen. On the the lowest possible setting, i measured 71mm between the lens center rings. The distance between my pupils is 64mm. Online some people are measuring as low as 68mm between the lenses, thats why I put that measurement. Here are some reddit threads on this issue and the mod.
The IPD is the distance between your pupils, not the distance between the centers of the lenses. The displays on the 8KX are canted.
My own IPD is 67mm, and the lenses work for me with IPD set at 67mm, and there’s actually lots of adjustment range left to bring the lenses closer to each other.
Just saying you might want to research more and consider other options before performing surgery on your 8KX as that is a rather extreme option.