Hello, I’d like to know if Pimax 8K can play Blu-ray 3D movies,
connected to a common Blu-ray player made to output to a 3D TV set;
connected to a computer that reads Blu-ray 3D disks and plays the movie through software.
I’m not interested in a “virtual cinema experience” where you rotate your head in a room with seats eating virtual popcorns, only in two separate images each sent to the corresponding eye for three-dimensional vision.
If not, this would be a nice feature, since as far as I know no VR viewer currently does it without tricks and hacks.
As far as we know the pimax is basically just a steamvr headset, they havent mentioned anything about producing media software specifically for this headset. I don’t see how you could do what you are asking with content that is narrow fov for a 200 fov headset.
The Pimax takes two stereo images, provided by another device, and displays them on its two screens. If the other device is a computer, e.g. running a videogame, the software - the game - provides an output that the Pimax accepts as input. I suppose that a suitable (software) movie player could be developed for the Pimax.
If the other device were a Blu-ray player, made for a 3D TV set, a hardware converter would be likely needed.
Unless compatibility is intrinsic in HDMI format, which I don’t know.
Both you and neal_white_iii mention fov as an issue. I didn’t see a Pimax other than in pictures, thus I don’t know how it works and how the image is displayed to the eyes. I see two angled sides that presumably host the screens but suppose that, optically, the two images must be presented on the same plane to get stereo vision. If this assumption were true, through the lenses I could see two rectangle pictures as portions of the screens, or even as the whole screens.
A 3D movie consists of two pictures, one per eye. Two 4K displays are redundant for a current 3D bluray, which picture is 1080, but image could be upscaled and sent to each display. in this case there should be no black bars.
Probably you want to say that in this case the two pictures wouldn’t be correctly aligned for the eyes, since the Pimax is designed to provide a 200° field of view. So I ask you a question: when you play a game, what do you see in each display? Is the picture deformed to cover such a wide field?
As an alternative, a movie - which picture represents a narrower fov - would take a subset of the available screen space, and here’s the bars you mentioned.
It’s a pity that none of the exiisting viewers allows watching movies from Blu-ray discs, directly or through a player . Such an option would provide a cheaper and more immersive alternative to 3D TV sets that are still expensive.
Surely. To watch normal, 2D blu-rays I use the Leawo player. I tried VLC plus some libraries but it plays some movies only. I read those libraires has been updated but can’t currently test them as my OS crashed, now I’m writing with a system that’s not powerful enough.
For 3D movies, on their site Toshiba provides a blu-ray player for download. Since they made some laptop models with 3D screens, I suppose that their player could play 3D blu-rays.
Pimax 8K is a VR headset that requires a PC with drivers that can get it working, just like WMR, Rift and Vive. Its not just a dual monitor. So you can definitely not connect it to any blu ray player.
I have not tried full blu-ray disks/images yet but I will, probably with the PowerDVD with VR support. Quite an expensive app though…
Ripped SBS or O/U videos works with most VR video players, on all current VR headsets.
the overlap is not 100% so no that wouldn’t work, as you already point out it would not be aligned correctly
the answer to your question about when you play a game is that the game in VR uses each eye as a “camera” so for example each eye in the pimax is around 150 degrees FOV so the left eye is rendered completely separately to the right, but yes the picture is also “warped” to account for optics… you can either think of VR in the pimax 8k as being 4k+4k at 90fps, or each eye being 4K but being rendered at 180fps and then displayed simultaneously at 90fps
3D bluray was never designed with VR headsets in mind, trying to cludge 3D bluray in to a headset is not going to be pretty, movies need to be filmed/mastered with VR180 in mind to make it watchable in a headset, as sweviver points out there are a couple of VR players that will allow you to watch 3D movies in VR, but they aren’t any better than watching 3D movies on a TV (which is to say not great)
I’m already doing that on my Pimax 4K.
What you need is:
Two commercial elements (you have to pay for):
Some software I won’t link here since it’s illegal in some countries to remove the 3D Blu-Ray protection.
VorpX drivers.
And some freeware too:
Media Player Classic - Home Cinema.
LAV video/audio codecs.
MadVR codec.
Watching a REAL 3D movie like Avatar on a VR headset and giant screen is an experience you can’t describe. It’s fabulous. It’ll be the first thing I’ll be doing with my 8K.
unfortunaly i have to admitt that after lots of testing power dvd does the job best when it is about simply playing hi res 3d blu-rays. playing untouched blu-rays on pc is btw incredibly demanding and somehow powerdvd is the real deal in this particular case…
insane pricetag though. you should definitely try before buy
„wrong“…that’s not much of a comprehensible statement, but I‘m not implying that I indeed may be wrong.
I use mpc/madvr/svp combo myself for almost any case but I found that for strange reasons powerdvd got me the most fluid and seemingly less demanding results when playing untouched. Blu-rays are very heavily protected even simple stuff like picture zoom. Having a 21:9 monitor I often get the problem that if the blu-ray is widescreen as well, the picture is zoomed out, showing black bars on every side although it should fit. This is a common and well know problem though even with netflix and youtube…
Fortunaly I‘ve found a workaround mod to fix this problem with powerdvd. Since the zoom in is protected within most blu-rays this is also the reason why powerdvd comes in handy. Unfortunaly I have found no realiable solution with mpc for this issue (zoom greyed out), besides I feel that power dvd has a better knack of dealing with untouched without stuttering.
I‘d appreciate if you take your time and prove me „wrong“ instead the way you did. I‘m very thankful for every suggestion since all I know is based on the experience, try and errors I had so far (kinda lot though) Or are you implying the the copy protection eats up most of the performance? and you may get better results with mpc (which I’d prefer if possible) with an addon that is less demanding than power DVD? @Wildcopper
Good point, this helps me to understand better what it can and cannot do.
I still have to grasp how SBS works. E.g. in this gameplay
images are shrinked and a bit warped: how do they work in a smartphone based viewer?
In a true 3D viewer connected to a computer, does the player program (PowerDVD, VLC, MPC-HC etc.) split the two images and process each one to get a natural view?
However Wildcopper says yes. If I have understood, the two screen don’t overlap completely, like our eyes’ fields of view. But if the aim is to reproduce human vision, the overlap angle should be wide enough to contain enough pixels to accommodate an undeformed 1920x1080 rectangle.
