Hey Kevin! Didn’t know you visited the forums here. I just took a look back at the article and I take back that I said that you could have done a better job drawing contrasts:
we still maintain that the Vive Pro is a better-built device and a superior piece of equipment overall
the headset’s signature 200-degree FOV (for comparison, the Vive Pro has a 110-degree FOV).
Meanwhile, our HTC Vive and Vive Pro have taken far worse beatings, and their shells are doing just fine.
HTC asks for more for the Vive Pro ($799), but at least you get a comfortable, mechanically adjustable head strap with built-in headphones on a device that can take some abuse.
you still get a wider FOV with this setting than you do with a Vive or Rift.
I think that’s plenty of basis to justify why you prefer one over the other.
I haven’t had much hands-on time with the Vive Pro, so it’s difficult for me to draw the same parallels that you did, but coming from the OG Vive I have no temptation to try the Pro again.
Exactly what I think and in every tests or review I saw, because of the FOV everybody couldn’t go back to a Vive, Vive Pro, or Rift.
So first time I see such a decision… strange
Pimax straight up doesn’t use motion smoothing from SteamVR. Did that change? As far as I’ve been able to figure out, the fact that the PiTool render pipeline is so different means it doesn’t work. This is why Brainwarp has been so important. It has been one of the major reasons performance has been so rough. You never mention what PiTool version you used, which would also help.
As for the max resolution of SteamVR, you can read about it here: https://community.openmr.ai/t/how-to-exceed-the-maximum-resolution-of-4096px-imposed-by-steamvr/16067
Basically SteamVR has a resolution max set in the software, and you easily hit it on the Large FOV setting, which automatically degrades your quality by lowering the resolution and can lead to performance being better than what you get with the Normal FOV setting.
I think your review was an accurate reflection of what many of us have ourselves experienced and a 3.5/5 feels about right to me. At the bare minimum, you have a cracked headset, and that deserves to have a point deducted.
In the end the decision is going to be based on what one values individually in a headset; comfort and usability vs. field of view and resolution. For me, the usability and comfort is good enough and the FOV and resolution is a total game changer, so my Vive is collecting dust now.
I found your purpose-built drag car vs. muscle cars analogy illustrated this point successfully and I agree with your assessment that Pimax, “laser-focused on delivering ultrawide VR. But in doing so, it ignored important features…” Absolutely true.
Anyways, I appreciate you coming here to engage directly with your audience like this.
Gotta say to me at least the fov is not a big deal to go back to.
Some games you dont even really notice.
Large fov is nice but I can & do easily go back to my vive pro for some games, especially if i want wireless.
Hi kevin.
I think your review is pretty accurate & fair & i would agree with most of it.
I feel like at the moment i need both a vive pro & pimax so i can use each one for games which play to each of their strengths.
Any game which the pimax fails to impress on ie… some darker games, party style games, games which dont work very well or games where i want to pass the headset to friends to play.
I will use the vive pro.
Everything else, especially sim style games i use the pimax.
The way i feel at the moment, i wouldnt want to get rid of either headset as i feel to me they each have their uses
No worries. Sorry if i was snappy.
That is my mistake.
I read your reply wrong & thought it said “ok that is your opinion” where you actually said “ok thanks for your opinion”
Its sometimes hard in this forum to say anything negative without being pounced on lol.
Im just trying to be honest.
I still do use both hmd’s as i think they are both quite similar in quite a few ways but both have advantages over each other.
I definitely wouldnt want to go back to og vive though as that is a big ugly difference
Maybe you should try your beloved Vive Pro bevor you tell is not worth the upgrade…
Really man are you freaking serious? Go try the Vive directly after the large FOV of the Pimax and then think about your sentence.
If the people want an upgrade and want the best technically availble they should go for the Pimax. But sure this is not the end after the Pimax 5K+ comes the 8K-X or the XTAL or the Valve headset who knows…
Oh, btw, I thought it was really cool that you included your reaction to the 2nd Gen Leap Motion tracking module. That’s something I’m really looking forward to adding to my Pimax.
Great review @Pumcy! Although, I thought a little bit of tinkering with the quality settings to get a much better result wouldn’t have been unreasonable for most users.
Having said that, I like that it’s aimed at the general public and not VR purists with deep pockets.
No it uses it own solution. The fact that the journalists did not reach out to pimax about this and decided to post what he thought was correct definitely taint’s the quality of their review. Don’t think it would have been to hard to put factual information in the review.
I had no idea this was a thing.
That would explain the bizarre performance and quality behaviors.
The version number was supposed to be in the article. Pitool v1.0.1.95 is what I have installed right now. I don’t recall updating PiTool manually since doing the tests. I can’t seem to find the file I logged all my settings in to verify that that’s correct.
I’ve had plenty of time to go back and forth. I was one of the testers who got a Pimax 8K last summer, and I received my first 5K in September. The cord for that headset broke in October, so I went back to the Vive Pro until I received a replacement for the cable (and a production version of the 5K+) in December.
The review was completed from my end in early February, after which I have not had a lot of time for VR.
I stand by my opinion. I would not recommend that someone who has spent $800 on a Vive Pro go out and buy a Pimax 5K+. If you are shopping for a Vive Pro now, then you should look at the Pimax 5K+ as an option.
Unless you don’t have base stations yet, in which case go with the Vive Pro bundle instead of waiting for Pimax to get base stations in stock.
For that it simply comes down to time vs how much Tom’s Hardware compensates me for these reviews.
Just to compile the results that I did took me about 40 hours of time. If I were to spend a bunch of time for each game tinkering with the settings, it could easily add another 5 to 10 hours. I already worked for far less than minimum wage where I live, so there comes a point where it’s just not worth it to me to put in more effort.
I wish there were a better answer, but that’s simply the truth. I need to balance my time to ensure I make enough money to live without working ridiculous overtime hours.
I think it’s more indicative of the hardware to show what buyers can expect out of the box rather than what they can expect after researching and applying various methods of tweaking to wring every last drop of optimization out of it.
