I agree that it shouldn’t be so hard. I’m just speculating on why it is.
I can easily imagine scenarios where the unfinished software side leads to a lot of unknowns for the English speaking Pimax crew. We don’t know how long it takes them to get an answer when requesting clarification internally. There may also be cultural barriers affecting the communication they do receive.
That’s not meant to excuse the present reality. Things need to get better for Pimax to step up as a serious player in the VR world. I sincerely hope that they do.
Well, if nothing else, we can always imagine it not impossible that this thread may have prompted an internal discussion on the issue, within Pimax, looking over aspects of truthfulness and liabilites. I figure were such a discussion taking place, it might take a few days – and then some more time might be needed, to prepare public messaging and corrections, should such action be decided on.
Well, how about starting off with some more news and reports from the tester to get things back on track? Including a rather interesting one about the FoV.
So, they did not show their exact settings or what degree they offset it, but the tester said that they played around with the software IPD offsets and ended up getting these results in Risa’s tool
H 109.74 V 93.77 Diagnal 119.29 overlap 77.71
They also said that after this and playing around with the face foam’s fit/moving it around, they said that they were getting around 102 horizontal visible to them in TestHMD. I asked about vertical, but he didn’t give me a number, stating that the vertical FoV let him see a lot more below his eyes than he could above them, so sounds like TestHMD wouldn’t quite give the right impression there. These(That is, what he visibly saw) are ridiculously higher numbers than he initially reported and a few degrees higher than he reported getting without any face foam. That cost to stereo overlap though is… Not good, very not good. It does make me a bit uncertain on if the lenses were truly wrong, but I still find the whole thing perplexing as while I could totally believe people at the roadshows wouldn’t notice a couple degrees less than the Index, I can’t believe they wouldn’t notice an over 20 degree and 30 degree difference. It could perhaps be that this person just has a particularly bad faceshape for VR and we only have a sample size of 1 for TestHMD, and maybe the lenses are scuffed, so I’m focusing more on the Risa2000 numbers, since those are less subjective. I distinctly remember some buzz around the VP2’s FoV at its launch cause one reviewer seemed to have a very poor faceshape for it’s design and got low FoV, so could perhaps be a similar case here until we get a greater sample size on the visible FoV to the end user.
Oh, and to break from the FoV briefly, they said the inside-out tracking was fine and they “used it a lot”. Compared it to the Pico 4 and sounded like it was about on par. Described it as fine for most games, but obviously, LH is still more accurate with better volume.
So, that’s pretty much equal horizontal and vertical per-eye FOV, which strikes me as a likely situation.
I guess with a negative offset, your frustum would skew for a wider FOV, as you look out toward the sides through the lens, whilst sacrificing stereo overlap – as long as the lens spacing is adjusted to match the rendered projection… Obviously, when this is the case, one is no longer aligned with the lens axis (EDIT: …which is optically sub-optimal).
Has this tester tried without parallel projections? -It would be interesting to see some non-zero view rotation numbers, which would also give a hint about what the lens c-c spacing should optimally be, for a given combination of user IPD and eye relief…
EDIT: More FOV downward could be either a deliberate downward bias to the frustum shape, or the HMD worn tilted downwards, in which case the facial interface could use some padding at the cheekbones (unless the user chooses to favour seeing more ground than sky) – the fact that previous numbers have identical top and bottom values points to the latter.
It is, but I should clarify. I was referring to the initial results of the tester’s VISIBLE FoV, which was like 86/78 or something? That was completely stock with no software IPD offset or fiddling with the face gasket. I would assume those would be the conditions most people would experience it in. Sorry for the confusion.
That surely has to be the 42PPD lenses then. Like I can understand the 103 each way being a memory discrepancy but 86/78 is literally unusable for actual immersive experiences. No one would mistake that for even a Quest 1 level FOV.
I think the idea was to watch movies with those lenses. For that such FoV is actually perfect. Much bigger than that and you get the effect of sitting in the cinema too close to the screen.
Ah yeah, I can see the benefit there and for monitor replacement. I just know for sure that I did not see an FOV that low, there would be no mistaking it.
I’ll ask next time I see them. I, and several others, have been asking for quite a bit due to how information starved we’ve been about the Crystal, so trying not to overwhelm them with constant requests that’re time consuming. I only know they’ve shown the resolution with PP on/off and not the FoV numbers.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’ll effect too much, since the Index only trades 1 vertical for 1 horizontal with PP on and most Pimax HMDs don’t change much to speak of on the FoV. Though, checking over things on Risa, I see that the 8k+ has a pretty staggering 8 degree change on vertical FOV between PP being on and off in some modes. So, it may not be impossible there’s some extreme change.
Apologies @Atmos think have cleansed the unnecessary drama from your topic. I have set the topic to slow mode until 8:00am Friday to help ensure your topic is not contaminated further.
I’m undecided about going ahead with my Crystal purchase atm. This fov discrepancy hasn’t helped but it’s mainly because Pimax support have told me that if i have dead pixel(s) they won’t swap the hmd without photos and videos of it. I cannot do this (photos/videos).
My mobile phone is old and the camera is poor quality, i had a Varjo Aero with a dead pixel and couldn’t take pictures of it, tried for ages. I’m not buying a new phone just to take a photo. Varjo replaced my Aero without photos/video. I don’t see the problem of them (Pimax) just checking themselves for dead pixels once they get the hmd back, wouldn’t they do this anyway?
Almost certainly I won’t be buying from Pimax. Maybe I will once Crystals are sold from Amazon for the excellent return policy.
While I generally get your point, wouldn‘t that become less of an issue with a super high resolution HMD like the Aero or Crystal? I was pretty annoyed when I got me a nice 43“, 4K monitor and 2 months later I noticed that thrips had crept in and now I have some 6 or 7 of them stuck in between the screen cover and displays. And they are of course not just covering one single pixel. So that‘s annoying but I manage to ignore it normal use.
So with a single dead pixel I would probably be relaxed, only if it more than say 3-4 or they cluster that I would complain.
Another sentiment echoing that the FoV felt rather wide, at least for what it was, and this is somebody who’s used the 8k X before as well. And, in particular, yet more glowing praise for the vertical FoV feeling just gigantic.
Really would like to see what their numbers end up. Especially because this one is being shipped directly from CES and so it has to have the correct lenses.
If their measured numbers end up being similarly small, this is gonna be one hell of a selling point for the placebo of aspheric lenses at least, that’s for sure.
Yeah, I guess an 8K X with aspheric lenses would feel like 360 vision haha.
I am wondering what other youtubers will be dropping reviews soon. So far I know of 2 that have at least got tracking numbers, they are in Europe. I think this will be the make or break moment for many in terms of deciding to bite the bullet. Pimax is taking a risk with having an unfinished product (at least in terms of feature set) reach reviewer’s hands as the initial reviews are the ones that stick and keep appearing for years when you search for that product. So hopefully it can be good enough with what’s there to wow people and win them over. I think standalone not being present will be relatively fine, ET being missing is a big one though but if the experience as a more standard PCVR headset holds up then it can only get better from there.
I suppose those with pre-orders, even us testers, might get to see a review or two before finally committing to the purchase, so that will be nice.
This is the approach Pimax has chosen repeatedly and I guess they are okay with it, negative review fallout and all. I just hope it is a conscious decision and they are not completely surprised time and again that users give negative reviews if some of the features you advertised don’t work at all or well.
Yeah, maybe they just don’t see an issue as they have been successful to date. I suppose if they were to wait for everything to be ready it would be possibly next year before anything released and that would probably be financially unfeasible.
I think part of it is they want to stay relevant and give the impression that any day now (soon™) they’ll have a ready product. Let’s keep those potential buyers pulling the carriage by holding a carrot above their heads.
If they were to say nothing since Nov 2, 2022 and just do the CES2023 even, it may have been better.
Given the state of the product at a lot of the roadshows, the lens mix-ups (which still seem to be plaguing them til this day), the controller issues, the missing features… Well. I really don’t think it did them a lot of favors except to generate hype and try to spin it as positive as they could.
But reality is different.
There needs to be independent reviews of the CURRENT state of the product and what they have left to do to meet their advertised specs, as well as complete/test the remaining missing features.
*I’m thumbing down my own post just so I can be the first one to do it!
*I’m thumbing down my own post just so I can be the first one to do it! 