[Personal opinion] The 5K+ is not better than the 8K. The problem is that the 8K is below the expectations and I think Pimax can correct its blurryness by software

Pimax 8K Series
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Presentation (you can omit it and go directly to the points and the conclusion)

Hello everyone,

I am new to this forum, although I have been following this project for about 2 years. Since that time I searched Google for the possible existence of an HMD with a 4K screen. I discovered that there was already one and it was called Pimax 4K. After a lot of research I realized the number of followers behind it and I was following the improvements and modifications made in it both the company and users at the software and lens level. When I first heard about StarVR, the first headset with 5K horizontal resolution thanks to its extreme FOV similar to that of human vision, but this was a very early prototype, not to mention that its progress has been kept very secret in several stages of its development until now that it is practically finished. Not long after, I learned about the existence of Pimax 8K and the success of its Kickstarter campaign. It was love at first sight. Since then I follow this forum and all its publications ± interesting at a technological level and general information. I have to admit that I did not know anything about VR and I have learned a lot from VR in general and from screens, lens and pixel types and distributions. What has led me to finally register in this forum is to try to create a serious and absent publication of haters, trolls and people who comment without having read a single comment, which is the cause of hundreds of repeated comments and questions already answered previously. And for all that I have been able to see and read from tests and reviews, what has remained ± clear is the following:

Main points

  • We already know about the type of screens of the 2 HMDs, their pixel arrangement and their contrast levels and blacks (8K better blacks and better color fidelity, Pimax 5K better “sharpness” by the native resolution of the input signal and panels)

  • For the information for some people that are repeated in the comments making this forum tired at this point, both have the distortion in the outer and inner edges of the lenses, which I think is difficult to solve by software given its degree/level of distortion, because for nothing this is slight. This and the “black dots” can not be solved with a 2080Ti or a 5280Ti. It’s a physical issue of the lens and I doubt they can make some lenses that solve it for now and at this point.

  • I also see it complicated that they can fix the level of blacks in the 5K without interfering in the overall brightness of the panel. I think it’s a matter of the technologies that use the one or the other.

  • What I do worry about is the 8K blur, having enough pixels to look equal, if not better, than the 5K, maybe a bit worse, but in no way as exaggerated as in this 8K. Blame the scaler or whatever (I’m not an expert on scalers), but I bought a Samsung TV 7 series 40-inch 2018 and the quality of scaling from 1080p resolution is amazing, I can not say if it looks the same or better than native resolution in a panel 1080i but not worse. There are several theories of why this blur, of which I am more convinced is the persistence of pixels and X colour that show when they should show Y or N colour. Look at the numbers of the instruments on the airplane and the white background what I do know is that it should be possible to fix it with software, it is a bad management of the image in terms of representation or re-interpretation of the pixels on screen from a source of lower resolution.
    Yes it is true that you can not compare what we will see with our eyes at an optimal distance from the lenses and the screens with some photos and videos with a zoom level of 300% since our eyes could not see the pixels. If so, we would not need microscopes.
    A silly example would be to analyse our arm with a zoom level of 1000x and see the cells, or even the atoms. It’s stupid! At the end this is not what we see when we look at our arm only using our eyes.

Conclusion:

I firmly believe that we should focus on solving these problems in the image of the 8K since it is the flagship that gives name to the Kickstarter project and the others (5K and 8K-X are other alternatives, both cheaper and more expensive), since that the 5K has already been completely refined at the hardware level and the 8K does not need it because of the margin it has with its 4K screens. Once solved this point they will be able to focus in the 8K-X of which its base is the 8K.
I do not think at all that people choose the 8K because it is more “soft” the image, because it looks worse than expected and can be improved, I think, relatively easily by software, or those who recommend “to death” the 5K for its sharpness of image with respect to 8K (@mixedrealityTV). But people, if it has SDE and its panels offer less contrast, less black levels and less fidelity of colours. What I would have to worry about is that the 8K is improved to a decent level, that for something is the star and it can eat the 5K as it should be from the beginning. A little bit of logic and coherence.

Well, said that, I hope I have not exceeded with this post, that is quite long, and that you know that the draft I wrote from a smartphone at 2:00 am yesterday with 2 canutes and 2 cocktails waiting to get up at 9:00 to see the MotoGP or F1 race and you can imagine the effort and the desire that I had to leave this written to go to sleep and that I did not forget.

I hope this post makes a bit of summary and gives to understand what a person who has no idea of ​​RV can learn by reading (something that some do not deign to do) this forum and collect information of general interest and offer other points of view to try to improve this project, whose HMD 8K has absorbed me for years and I want to acquire once it goes out to the consumer market and that it eats all others, including 5K+. Enough of complaints, personal attacks (sjefdeklerk and Heliosurge) and absurd comments or trolls. Only intelligent discussions with the intention of improving this product, since once arrived at this point and all that the people of Pimax have achieved, their official beta testers and the willingness and interesting contributions of the people in general, would be a real shit that would stay half-way.

@deletedpimaxrep1, @PimaxVR @SweViver, @VoodooDE, @Pumcy, @Cdaked, @oscar_rov, @Dr.Cube

Thank you for taking the time to read this extensive text.

PD: Sorry for the use of a translator but I don’t speak/write English very well, and it has helped me to express myself in a meaningful way in this long text. I hope it is understood minimally, because I have corrected it as well as I could once translated.

Related posts:

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I can’t bring myself to read a full wall of text. Please provide a 1-2 sentence summary of what you want.

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Bumped your user level up. Well said; worth the read! :beers::sunglasses::+1::sparkles:

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The Title is the highlight. :beers::sunglasses::+1::sparkles:

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Very interesting read, and a damn good translator you used too!

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Understood, I’ll edit it when I have more time but it will be difficult to summarize

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You can read the points and the paragraph below. The initial part is a little presentation that you can omit

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Welcome to the forum, this is a madhouse.

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Thank you. I have spent a lot of time correcting the text, but not so much time to write it

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Hi, if you summarize it, don’t replace what you have written. Place the summary at the end of the post, and just after the greeting, say to go to the end of the post for a summary.

e.g.

Hello everyone,

See summary at the end of this post :slight_smile:
…
wall of text (good read)
…

Summary

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I agree with several points you made in your post, but I do not agree with the title of your post:
The 5K+ is not better than the 8K. The problem is that the 8K is below the expectations and I think Pimax can correct its blurryness by software

Since I have already replied to the similar posts from other people - something you wrote, you found tiresome on this forum - but committed the same thing.
If you are interested, here is a discussion about 8K panel, and some suggestions what could be done about it if the assumptions in the thread (and there are quite a few) about the hardware are true. It also explains why it is like that now.

http://community.openmr.ai/t/getting-the-most-out-of-a-g-rb-half-4k-panel/8696

Concerning your last bullet

If you refer to the famous macroscopic shots of IL2 cockpit @SweViver did in his 5K+ vs 8K comparison video, I have also written the explanation here on the forum (for another user who asked the same thing) here:
http://community.openmr.ai/t/pimax-makes-beat-saber-more-fun-to-play/8823/81

The way the image is processed/displayed on 8K currently leads to the degraded image. If it could be corrected (some proposals are in the first link), it would require quite significant change in the headset behavior (basically everything would have to be changed) and would also require hardware support from involved components (the display driver and the upscaler).

Yes, 8K does not live up to the expectations, but 5K+ is as good as it gets with current tech and they will be close to each other, even if 8K used full RGB stripe panel, the preferences will be individual.

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I wouldn’t bother summarizing, unless you really want to. It’s not really that much to read, and your contribution time is better spent on other threads/posts :slight_smile:

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The problem is that a lot of interesting reading is in comments to a publication that talk about other topics. Sometimes it is difficult to find it and what I have tried is to combine what I could in a publication.
I have tried to focus on the 8K fuzziness and that is what we should try to solve instead of having to change to 5K+, since the flagship is 8K and “theoretically” should have more image quality than the 5K+. Now, as I mentioned, I do not know if it’s because of the hardware (scaler, screens …) or how the pixels are shown once they are rescaled and shown on the screens. By this I say that “I believe” that it should be possible to solve by software.
But if I’m wrong, I am wrong.

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And what I have tried in this publication mentioning testers and some users with interesting comments (I forgot to mention it to you, too) is also mentioning the Pimax team so that this information reaches them quickly. One thing that I missed is the mentions to the Pimax team in many of these comments with interesting and relevant information.
That is, create a new starting point for these discussions grouped in the same post, without nonsense in between.
I have included these 2 articles that you mention and others that have more or less relationship with what I speak. What I intend is to unify everything.

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I think that the best way of manage all this problem… is that Pimax explain what will happen with Pimax 8k. 5K+ is better? How is that possible if the 8K is more expensive and “superior”. @PimaxVR need to explain what is the “pros” of the 8K. Why we have to paid more for it, and if it will have solutions and improvements in the future, that costs this extra price.

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One more thing…

If 8K and 5K+ has similar amount of differents pros/cons… why 8K is more expensive?

8K must have the same cost of 5K+, if it isn’t clearly (haha) better.

And then… a 8K+ with a 100$ of increment.

Or… explain that 8K can be easily a 8K+.

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I very much agree with you. There is a lot of information missing from Pimax on the current status of their 2 HMDs, the improvements they are making and what we can expect from their final version in a future.

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8K should be more expensive because the panels will be more expensive and it might one more chip (the scaler). I think there’s room for both HMD and it’s okay that the 8K is less sharp. Survey after survey shows 50% of time spent on ALL gaming devices (playstations, gaming computers, Oculus Gos, etc) are on videos and otherwise casual / passive experiences. The 8K is well suited for this from what I can gather.

I think it’s awesome that Pimax:
A) Decided not to hold back the 5K when they sourced the smaller panels.
B) Gave everyone the option to choose which they’d prefer.

That the pros and cons were left to YouTubers contributed to bunch of confusion and frustration. But I, for one, wouldn’t put any stock in manufacturer claims until we got independent reviews anyway…

But yeah… the 5K+ needs a better color profile / tuning, and the 8K can definitely use a pre-downscale sharpening filter (driven by a slider).

Edit: Thanks for the post and the clarification (also, sorry for being lazy on a Sunday).

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Simple more qhd panels available in the market vs 4k panels. Supply & demand. He only said 5k+ has best clarity.

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I see your point,

But in this case, they find a way to achieve better quality with less expensive materials.

But… now they have a problem… the name of their Kickstarter is 8K! And not 5K+.

They are maintaining then 8K only to satisfy people? Or 8K is the real flagship? We only paid for more expensive materials and not more quality?

Snif… we need to know to decide.

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