Pimax 8k turned up in the mail today without warning.
Quick impressions- Set up was a breeze. No hassles, ran through the processes and was up and running in no time. Lighthouses and controllers connected with no issues.
Played a little War Thunder and Onward, mucked around in Steam VR Home.
SDE is still there but way better than my Vive. Colours are good, black levels are fine. Edge distortion is there if you look, doesn’t bother me. FOV rocks.
Still early days, lots of tweaking to do, but I’m happy so far.
I hope to write something a little more in depth soon.
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Nice, arrived the same week as mine did up in Auckland, no backing number too huh?
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Not much tweaking to do. Leave SteamVR Video and App at 100% and control Resolution Render Target from PiTool. Also find best image quality for me comes at 64Hz.
Enjoy.
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Can you explain?
…
Just in my couple months of testing, if you set the Hz from default of 80 to 64 and using PiTool’s Render Slider leaving SteamVR alone - you get the best image quality. This in colour and contrast as well as clarity.
The setting is found in PiTool under “Brainwarp” in Settings. The render slider is found under HMD in PiTool Settings.
Anyway, you’ll find Pimax headsets don’t need to run at 80+ Hz to deliver a smooth VR experience and do it with as little as 32Hz and above. Really it is when it falls under 30 you notice unless you have hyper sensitive eyes. I for instance find fluorescent lighting to be extremely annoying on my eyes due to the flicker but I have no issues with the 8K headset at lower frame rates.
The reason your qualilty goes up is because of Steam’s auto-SS. Since you are rendering fewer frames the leftover GPU power can be used to increase your supersampling (which makes it look better).
It is all subjective. Some people are much more sensitive.
The reason you really start to notice it under 32 fps is that BrainWarp turns off (it only works if the fps is more than half the refresh rate, in this case 64 Hz). Also, BrainWarp is only an approximation of 64 Hz and won’t actually be as good (ie tracking, etc).
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I was thinking about the upscaler doing a better job at 64Hz than 80.
If either of you guys are in Auckland would you be interested in getting together and comparing the 8k vs 5K+? I’m semi curious what the experience is like between distortion and SDE between the two.
AFAIK the upscaler isn’t really a very smart device. It just does some basic math on all the pixels to generate some new pixels in between all the old pixels (aka upscaling).
It takes a fixed amount of time for the operation to be completed and the upscaler will behave properly as long as you wait at least that long before sending the next frame.
For example, if the upscaler takes 10ms to perform the operation, then it can process up to 100 frames every second. As such, 90fps/72fps/64fps would all behave the same but 120fps would fail.
Did you have to do a firmware update with the 8K? I’m hoping when I get mine it will already have firmware updated…
Honeybadger2000 I’m about an hour south of Hamilton.
Hmm - where do I start??
Do you suffer from reading comprehension issues?
Did you not notice where I stated my SteamVR Video Setting was 100%?
To do that I have to over ride the SteamVR Video Auto Setting do I not??
Does this not then stop SteamVR from automatically changing SS???
Did I mention Using Smart Smoothing in Brain Warp when stating that smoothness in frames is taking place at above 32fps/Hz??
There is of course SteamVR smoothing at play here and it works well but PiTool Smart Smoothing under Brainwarp is left off as for titles which require Parallel Projection Compatibility do not do well with it on (produces small amounts of image warping from one eye to the other either in bright lit scenes or with constant rendered fast movement).
I have spent nigh on 100+ hours testing all manner of setting combinations of the Pimax 8K headset and to save a new owner the joy of faffing about to get decent visual quality I gave some suggested settings of which SteamVR VIDEO and APP settings set to 100% and then Target Render Resolution settings to be controlled from PiTool instead.
That 64Hz on the 8K gives the most detail, colour gamut and contrast on the 8K panels compared to 72 and 80Hz. As to the reason why, I do not know, maybe the 4K panels are over clocked at higher speeds leading to image degradation or at 64Hz the Scaler Chip in the headset is not doing anything as there is not need to compress the signal down to pump through the Display Port 1.4 interface you you are not having the signal downsampled to 1440p and then scaled back up to 4K at the headset which is what is needed at 72 and 80Hz.
There is noticeable difference especially with framed objects with vertical structures be it a flag pole or a wooden framed makeshift control tower. One can also make out text at distance easier at 64Hz.
This from someone who works in digital publishing as a Graphic Designer and Digital Printer specialising on large format photography and medical imagery. Feel free to try your fav title with the settings as suggested but then changing the Hz in PiTool to compare. All other settings the same though. Just remember for any Brainwarp function change (of which Hz is under) to exit PiTool and restart it for changes to take and check that the Hz is what you set it before launching SteamVR then your VR App.
Presumptions should be left at the door when replying to people on this board. It is tiresome and confusing to the newer members of whom people who have extensive experience are trying to help.
Thanks.
Yeah that’s probably a bit on the far side to easily be able to have a meetup lol. Still good to compare notes regardless since we are limited down here a little bit with shipping VR covers and whatnot!
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I have noticed though that with Hz changes, the Headset goes through a screen boot process. Hence my wondering about the changes with regards to the upscaler. Pimax are a bit quiet with regards to this and a few other things but hey, at the res I want to use - it’s not like I’m pumping out high frame rates anyway so 64Hz is fine by me.
Anything around 40+ is quite a decent seated VR experience on this headset (without Brainwarp - Smart Smoothing as tested in Il2 BoS and Assetto Corsa). 
To be fair, you mentioned that you had set the SteamVR settings in a previous post (aka not the one I was replying to) but I probably should have caught that.
No, you didn’t mention whether or not you were using PiTool’s Smart Smoothing. It appeared that you were, since the point you were referring to (32fps) is the same as the point at which PiTool’s Smart Smoothing kicks in (1/2refresh rate = 1/264 = 32fps).
IIRC the whole reason they implemented PiTool Smart Smoothing is that SteamVR’s version wouldn’t work for the Pimax. In that case, the only thing I know of that would cause the effect you are seeing (32fps cutoff) would be that the PiTool Smart Smoothing is kicking in.
I can certainly appreciate you helping out new users. They definitely need it.
In regards to presumptions, the options are:
- Ask for clarification on any missing information and hope they get back to you in a timely manner.
- Make the presumptive statement but reference the uncertainty.
- Make the presumptive statement without any reference to the uncertainty.
The missing information in this case was:
- SteamVR auto-SS on/off (I missed your previous post)
- Brainwarp on/off (you didn’t say)
The phrase “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.” but it looks like this time I caught a goose. 
I will admit that I took option 3 in this case when I should have taken option 2 (ie using more indeterminate phrasing, such as “probably”) and apologize for any confusion that resulted from that.
The overclocking sounds like the most likely culprit to me. IIRC the reason we had issues with “black dots” was that the deviation in panel behaviour was larger than expected when overclocking and that for some panels it was a trade-off between “black dot visibility” and good colors.
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