Pimax US Roadshow: 🛑 4. Austin!


Discuss Roadshow once Event Live. Impressions will copied to Announcement Topic for easy reading.

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Is anybody going to this show? Im 6 hours away and thinking about making the trek. However Im worried that the Crystal in the Demo will be significantly different that the one at release. :thinking:

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@PimaxUSA can likely answer on some level the current stage the US is demoing. Whike I think they will use feedback to make some more refinements. It is humble opinion if changes are made they will only be positive ones due to Roadshow feedback.

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Thats true. Im worried about ordering the darn thing and the getting the dreaded eye strain, Kevin said that these displays are less canted than the older headset. If I see the eye strain maybe just maybe they can make changes before release. It seems that out of all the employees at Pimax, beta testers, nobody has issues with the eye strain. I sold my XTAL to a buddy that has no issues with eye strain on any of his Pimaxes or the XTAL

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If you can go I would recommending giving it a test and wait. @Djonko based on Xtal/Pimax discussions has mentioned iirc Marek or one of his team discussing that Wide FoV hmds typically use a short focal distance? so Folks whom are Far sighted may experience Eye strain. That being said in theory you should be able to increase Focal length with spacers.

I don’t recall if you were on the forum when @lukeb experimented with washers 1.0mm and 1.5mm on his p4k. The result he had posted is that it improved his Eyestrain. As the p4k was designed with a shorter focus to allow myopic to normal vision use without glasses.

Similarly I recall a KS backer also popped the lenses out and also put a spacer in his 5k+? Do not recall the backer off hand but there should be posts on both mods somewhere in the forum.

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Yes. I had the issue with blurry screen on the P4K. Im farsighted, well, i use reading glasses. The only vr headset I have ever needed to use reading glasses was the P4K. I just velcrowed my reading glasses frame and lens over the P4K’s lenses worked like a charm. When I would view the P4K without my reading glasses, I could not see the pixels clearly, but with every other headset (many of them) I can always see the pixels very clearly with no reading glasses, I always thought that was strange.

All the wide FOV readsets I tried, I could see good in the foreground but would get slightly crosseyed when viewing background, I could make adjustments to ipd offsets then it would be the opposite, good in the background and crosseyed in the foreground, If I set it setting for a “middle ground”. then forground and background were slightly crosseyed.

Now the XTAL had a diopter adjustment that moved the lenses farther or closer to the displays. I really thought that was going to be my “fix”, I mean I fiddled with the dipoter setting and IPD and IPD SW offsets for hours. I made very detailed notes of where I got best and worst results. But it was futile. I really wanted to keep that XTAL 8K unit. I did sell it to a friend so its still in the family, LOL.

Then there was the issue with the PImax wide FOV headsets where peeps with low IPD would get a blurry image, thats where the Extreme IPD mod came in. THe damn lens didnt really get close enough together to provide the displayed IPD, man that was a mess. Im glad I only did it once and would ever advise it,lol.

I did hear one Crystal reviewer say he had the forground background crosseyedness issue, uuugh.

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It would be interesting to learn how much canting as you saud @PimaxUSA mentioned there is less canting. Iirc Index has 10° or 5° per side. Maybe Kevin can look into getying permission to have this detail released as @risa2000 's hmdq tool will collect this data once users use it.

So possibly if the index works well for you it is possible the Crystal might. Likely best as with any new hmd design to purchase from a Channel with an easy return policy if the hmd is found to be incompatible with a consumer.

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Great Advice! Yes the Index was a good headset for me, the image seemed natural as it should.

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Index has canted optics but I believe the majority of users use it in “parallel projection” mode (which is default). If Valve did not leave an option there for setting Index into the “native mode” then we (and hmdq) would not have been any wiser.

We have seen on Pimax that implementing the canted optics (and then the canted rendering processing) is a tricky task which may not end up as expected. Index’ 5° canting is insignificant and there is almost no difference in the two modes thanks to that.
If Crystal has some canting and is using the same optics design as the previous Pimax models, we can be at square one again.

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True which is why we would need more details on the level of Canting. For example it might not have much higher Canting than the Index. But no guarantee other factors as you mentioned could indeed be at square one.

With @stixvr he has found that the level of Canting on vith Pimax’s currently released hmds along with Xtal is unsuitable… However both have a high level of Canting that is similar.

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What is your IPD? Mine is pretty low at 58- I have to use the software IPD adjusters in Pitools to get a clear image with no double vision. That obviously did not work for you- and since it crosses multiple headset designs, I’m kind of at a loss as to what the solution might be. Clearly, there’s no point buying an expensive HMD just to see if it works! I also wear glasses for reading. My vision is 20/25 in one eye and about 20/30 in the other, and I’m able to use the 8KX with no corrective lenses. I did try my reading glasses, but they made it worse. Apparently the prescription that matters in VR is the one for perfect distance vision.
You’ve discussed this with your eye doctor?

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Mine is 60, it was measured center of pupil to center of pupil by my eye doc. Actually im 29 from center of nose to right pupil and 31 to center of nose to left pupil.

Weird thing is I use reading glasses but dont need them in any VR headset, well except for the old school Pimax 4k.

One of the issues I had besides eye strain with the wide FOV Pimax headsets, especially the 8KX, is that since my IPD is so low, my eyes are looking through the inner part of the lenses so you dont get a clear image of the lcd panels, its out of focus on this part of the lenses, manufacturing defect if you ask me. It doesnt matter of I adjust the IPD offset in the software, because Im still looking through the side of the lenses which are not in focus with the panels. So I took apart the entire headset and carved out some plastic that kept the actual lenses from coming closer together, I think I was able to move the lenses about another 4 or 5 mm, worked great, image was now in focus and crystal clear. Now I still had the eye strain but the mod I did was not to fix the eye strain but to fix the out of focus lenses. I wouldnt recommend this mod unless you have experience working on micro electronics.

Hoping that has been fixed with the Crystal and 12K wide FOV. Josh said that Pimax finally realized that 75% of Asia are nearsighted(or farsighted, cant remember) so they took this in consideration when building the Crystal. SO maybe this will help too. I cant beleive that they are just now figuring this out…but thats the Pimax way :face_exhaling:

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I do hope the 12k optics will get a serious, timely check-over, now that the “biased for nearsighted users” matter with the Crystal has been acknowledged, so that a repeat can be avoided.

I have long suspected that the 8kX has that exact issue, and that this is at least part of what makes it utterly useless to me - even with IPD range modding; When MRTV brought it up, with regard to the Crystal, it was like he was echoing what I have been saying about the 8kX… :stuck_out_tongue:

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It’s kind of the way of all pursuits that work on the leading edge of any technology. Along with the law of unintended consequences. Progress is never a straight line. As a guy with a narrower ipd than yours, I’m hoping we curve the line positively forward with the next Gen from Pimax.

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Meet us in Austin, Texas on Saturday 10th of December at the Four Seasons hotel, in the Shoal Creek meeting room !

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Enter the lobby elevator, go 1 floor below the lobby to the restaurant, then go to the shoal creek meeting room.

It’s got to be very low because I’m running games that require it on the 8KX without it enabled at the Roadshow. I’m not running it on anything. If anyone would like to test this for themselves we are at the shoal creek meeting room in the Four Seasons hotel. (1 floor below the lobby)

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Would it be possible to run Risa’s Hmdq program to get a hard value? At a guess by what your saying it is likely around or slightly more than the Index. I do understand if at this time this detail needs to be unavailable in case a change/adjustment becomes necessary prior to sales launch.

Additionally is the LA trip stop number 5 in the Crystal/Portal Roadshow?

Keep up the great work; the Roadshow imho from what I have read & observed is going great. Thank you for you and the teams efforts!

:pi_thumbsup:

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Hi,

As of now the Los Angeles event is set for Thursday Dec 15, from noon to 3pm.

The venue is Two Bit Circus in downtown LA, and it will be a joint event with Newegg and Qualcomm.

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