Nice comparison
3 Likes
I agree to most she said, although I disagree about the resolution. I’d probably need to do more A/B comparison to really compare the ‘sharpness’ but in gaming I almost never notice any pixel patterns/SDE with the index, while the blocky pixel pattern of the 5k+ is annoying at times. So it definitely feels that the pixels on the index are smaller.
What do you guys think @TrevorVR and @anton_Chez ?
Also I feel that the index has better colors.
2 Likes
Hard to see the pixel pattern on the Index, only when you look at a uniform color eg sky and while moving your head its visible, JUST.
It looks like that yes.
And blacks, definately.
Only thing that Pimax is currently better than Index is the FOV. That said the FOV on Index is enough for me though.
Put the Index on 144hz and since the SteamVR extrapolation works so well force 72 FPS (motion smoothing) on, that way you can up the SS to make the games very sharp and super smooth.
7 Likes
I just found the setting in steam to lower the brightness in the index, much better for dark games.
3 Likes
The image is far clearer on the Index at LOWER SS settings, which is huge given the lower FOV already doesn’t require as much pixels as Pimax even at Small. So you get a bigger impact on clarity when you even slightly increase the SS value. The SDE for me is non existent for the most part but even on Pimax it was pretty good. The comfort is out of the league of the Pimax in pretty much every way. I’ve barely touched it out of the box and been able to run 90 min race sessions without any issues to comfort.
2 Likes
How about lenses comparison, godrays/ glare , sweetspot / crisp area without blur ? I heard that Pimax also wins in this category …
The glare is definitely there in both HMD’s, slightly less on Pimax but you can tilt the Index quite easily while still being in a sweet spot and remove over half of it, at least. I found this last night doing night racing in ACC. At first it was a little distracting but I guess it was me getting used to the dark as much as anything else as well. Adjusting the headset on your face can improve / worsen the glare so it depends how you have it sitting naturally how affected you’re going to be by it.
I don’t see much blur with the Index in the parts that matter, right in front of your view and moving eyes around is still pretty good too. Sweet spot definitely a little bigger than Pimax but they are both fairly good to me as well so no massive winner here. No distortion at all that I can see on Index so that’s a plus.
Biggest win for Index for sim racers is low cost of pixels for comparable / better image quality to the 5K+ and then the ability to run higher more stable frame rates because of it. Also, no PiTool to mess about with which is another layer of hassle and as far as 180 goes I am glad to be rid of it. You don’t get as many options on SteamVR with the Index but it’s only because of massive shortcomings out of the box with the Pimax that you even need the options in PiTool to begin with.
2 Likes
Yes the glare is pretty bad in the Index, Pimax wins this category. Sweetspot is huge and theres no distortion, a little blur in the edges.
3 Likes
Cancel, thought you might mean FOV but realised latest PiTool version 
1 Like
I just finished doing some more A/B-ing. Previously I couldn’t understand that some people said that the 5k+ was sharper, because I always saw more pixel pattern on the 5k+, so I figured that meant the Index would have smaller pixels and thus be sharper. But after more A/B-ing I understand it now. The Pimax 5k+ actually IS slightly sharper. What happens here is that the Index has a diffusion filter (as we saw in the teardown), so that’s why you don’t notice the pixel pattern on the Index, it works really well. However it does make things SLIGHTLY more blurry. But it works really well because it does what it should do without making things so blurry as in the Odyssey+.
Furthermore I felt the same again: the Pimax FoV is really cool but when you put on the Index again, you feel so much more presence in the Virtual World, everything comes much more alive.
1 Like
Thanks that’s very interesting. I haven’t seen the Index teardown, so didn’t know it had a diffusion filter and would explain the lower SDE mentioned by several people above.
Sounds like Valve took a look at existing HMDs and improved most features a little bit resulting in a product better than its individual parts. Where as Pimax took FOV and maxed it.
I’ve noticed most YouTube VR creators I watch seem to use the Index as their go to HMD. I have a Vive, Pimax & Quest. For me personally I don’t think I could justify another HMD yet but will be keeping a close eye on the next gen Index 
1 Like