Pitool Beta v1.0.1.271 Discussion

298m firmware, Native at 90hz, i9 10900k + 3090 FE. Lowering the brightness seems to help but ruins the experience at 60% brightness

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Now is the m298 firmware the one released in April or the recent 298 engineering release?

Is Smart Smoothing and FFR off?

Yeah that is very low on brightness.

Both off and yes the m298 firmware that came out in July

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I have 2 other monitors plugged into my 3090 FE. Would that matter? Also the usb is in a usb 2.0 port

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I Don’t think the extra monitor should create an issue. But worth eliminating it as a possibility.

The Usb also shouldn’t affect it. Though a usb3 might be better overall.

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i have this too sometimes… But its strange after a minute or so it seems to go away…

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Lucky you lol. I have to bring my brightness all the way down to 60% just to remove some of the ghosting. I’m assuming it’s something that can be fixed via software

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Have you found a solution to this? I get ghosting with any brightness over 60% on my 8kx, regardless of what hz i’m running on.

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No, under 90hz the ghosting is much more noticeable say compared to 75hz under certain environments like, pimax experience, with fast head movements.

I haven’t found a solution to it, maybe it’s the limitation of 8kx.

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I’m seeing a new behavior in 271 that I definitely did not see in older versions (remember, I skipped many versions, I think I went all the way from 254 to 271, something like that).

I used to be able to play Skyrim VR with PP ON and Motion Smoothing ON without any perceivable quality difference. It was just as sharp and clear with both these options on as with them off, expect for maybe just a slightly softer image with PP ON (even with all other settings the same), which I understand is normal with PP.

However, in this version if PP and Motion Smoothing are both on the image quality is terrible - it’s a night and day difference, with everything going very blurry (no other settings changed). It’s as if these two features are incompatible with each other, at least in Skyrim VR.

I sure hope this can be fixed. I’ve finally upgraded to a 3080 Ti (tip: Micro Center sometimes has graphics cards for sale at MSRP if you walk in; 1 per household) and actually have the power to drive Skyrim VR in Wide FOV at very high resolutions even with PP ON, but not at 90fps, PP just takes too much power. But I can easily hit and maintain well over 45fps, but with 271 I can’t do it due to this PP conflict with Motion Smoothing. Frustrating for sure!

(Speaking of which, PP is such a performance killer. I’ve got one, just one, game to date that I’ve been able to play without PP, and that’s AC (not ACC). Is there anything at all that Pimax will ever be able to do to reduce the overhead of PP or to limit the number of titles that require it?)

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Not really. The overhead is due to many extra pixels being rendered, which is unavoidable (since the solution is angling the viewport, eg the non-PP case). The developer of the game engine must implement the fix. Basically, PP is a hack to fix the lack of angled viewport support in games.

There is one thing you can do to reduce the overhead: Reduce your FOV. PP requires progressively larger numbers of pixels for wider FOVs. I’ve mostly been using Small FOV for that reason.

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I expect the vast majority of Pimax owners bought the Pimax, however, to use Wide FOV settings. Otherwise you have an array of vastly cheaper HMDs available, and they keep getting closer and closer in terms of clarity (the new Valve Index is pretty good and the entire kit is $999). FOV is the thing setting Pimax apart from everyone else, so IMHO they would make it priority #1 that the FOV can actually be, you know, USED.

That said, with my new AMD CPU and a 3080Ti I can finally make use of Wide FOV in many more cases already, depending on my usage scenario. In AC I’m up to 1.5 quality in PiTool (SS in Steam does not work in AC for me, but PiTool quality does), and hopefully Skyrim VR will eventually work IF Pimax fixes my aforementioned bug between PP and Motion Smoothing in that title. Dirt Rally 2.0 also runs plenty fast enough even with PP to use Wide FOV and a high SS (I’m around 1.20 in that title IIRC). On the other hand, in PCars2 I can finally use Normal FOV, that title just has the worst performance imaginable.

But ultimately, that PP<->Motion Smoothing bug in Skyrim VR is going to be a killer for me; I’ll have to remain at Normal FOV or I’ll have to reduce the resolution way too much. If Pimax fixes that I’ll be able to play Skyrim VR at very high resolutions in wide FOV and with PP on, at 45fps with smoothing.

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We continue to try to improve PP and reach out to companies to optimize their titles to eliminate the need for PP. Some have indeed made many positive changes that affect our headsets and we will not stop reaching out to developers and work with them as much as possible.

Here is a helpful link:
In this google docs they try to document what titles need PP - you can check it out here:

In the list there are 198 games don’t need PP and 78 that require it.

Popular games like DCS, iRacing, HL:Alyx, No Man’s Sky etc. don’t need PP. Many of the games that DO require it have a high frame rate anyway like Beat Sabre so it can be enabled most of the time with little or no problems.

Btw, last time I played Skyrim it was widest fov and without PP but it’s been a while. Maybe updates or plug-ins caused it to be required again. I would add FSR has been reported to work great with Skyrim so you might also give that a shot!

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I did too. However, I’m pragmatic enough, so that I’m willing to “make do” until I can get a better graphics card. For now, I’m stuck with a 2080.

It does depend on the game, though. I can easily use Normal FOV for less demanding games, like Half Life: Alyx. It’s the PP requirement that makes so many games unplayable with wider FOVs.

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Man, for me everything works in Skyrim. The only pp=off problem are loading screens, I ignore that, and play it pp=off. Also Pimax foveated rendering works here excellent, and AMD openvr solution also. Skyrim has one of the best performance of all vr games, especially without heavy mods.

PS; Motion smoothing sometimes start artefacts, then you need to restart game & pitool.

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Have you tried Skyrim without PP? I never use PP with it and the only issue I’ve seen is with the loading screen.

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Yeah, I know a lot of people say that, but there are definitely issues with Skyrim without PP. There are problems with shadows, and occasionally with lighting, especially as the objects in question get closer to the edge of vision. Then there is the water issue as well (very slight mismatch between where the water should be and actually IS, only at certain angles). I will say they are very minor, enough to the point that many don’t even notice them, and I’ve often tried to get used to them as Skyrim VR’s performance without PP is indeed fantastic. Unfortunately for me I’m one of those people who notices things like this immediately and I just can’t un-notice them. The instant a shadow isn’t laying at the correct depth (bridge into Riverwood has this issues quite noticeably) or a light-source isn’t right all my attention is drawn to it. I’m also one of those people who absolutely can’t stand watching 4x3 video incorrectly stretched to 16x9 (poorly setup sports bars, anyone, anyone?) and I’ve seriously sat there and talked with people who literally can’t even see the problem. I don’t mean they are ignoring it or don’t care, they actually can’t tell that everything on the screen is in the incorrect aspect ratio. They can’t see it. Weird. I can also tell, instantly, if I’ve accidentally walked into a movie theatre that’s still using those old 2K digital projectors. So, so blurry.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to test if the problem with PP<->Motion Smoothing is on my end, short of swapping in a completely clean boot drive for testing purposes. I suppose, maybe, it’s a three-way incompatibility between current Nvidia drivers and PP+Motion smoothing. That’s getting really hard to test for at that point though.

Definitely was not an issue with earlier versions of Pitool, but realistically several things have been upgraded in relatively short order. Still, everything else works just like it should, it’s just those two setting, when applied together, that create the issue (hence my initial thought that it’s a Pitool issue).

I too, tend to notice artifacts that don’t bother others, like TV aspect ratio or aliasing. Motion Smoothing bothers me too, at least in the games I play, so I turn it off. In your situation, you need to find a solution you can live with (until it gets fixed). My suggestion would be to try using Normal FOV, instead of Wide, or lower some other settings which don’t bother you as much.

The FSR mod works really well in Skyrim - on the github they even have some very nice side by side images you can compare.

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Maybe I’ll give that a try. It will be akin to the way I’m currently playing Cyberpunk 2077; on my 1080p 3D display using SuperDepth3D I’m upscaling whatever DLSS “Quality” mode is actually rendering at to 2560x1440, which is then downsampling back to my 1080p display. Sounds insane but it gives much better quality than spitting 1080p directly to the display.

I was eventually able to get used to motion smoothing. At first it made slightly ill (TVs set to produce fake frames - a large part of what’s known as ‘the soap opera effect’ will also do this to me). It took me a long time, but I eventually trained myself to be able to play games with motion smoothing on. I will say that I like the way vorpX handles motion-smoothing the best. It’s very brute force I think; no blurring or smearing. I think it simply doubles exactly what was in the prior frame or something. The result is that it works really well in most situations but causes a distinct ‘ghosting’ on fast rotation. Still, way better than the queasy-making motion smoothing that SteamVR and Pimax use, IMHO. No weird bits of images distorting or anything like that.

I pounded away at this problem again today for a while, and it’s also not the FPSVR overlay causing it, or an ENB or any settings in the Nvidia control panel (set Skyrim VR back to defaults). It also happens no matter which form of SS I choose; Pitool, in-game, or Steam SS values; so it’s not a conflict with a particular form of Super Sampling. I’m very curious to know if anyone else has this problem. If so, I’ll stop trying to solve it on my end! It’s easy to reproduce. Set Wide FOV and then set PP and motion smoothing ON. Then just choose a Steam SS for Skyrim VR that’s right on the edge of 90fps (or 72 or whatever your refresh is), so that you can easily move about and watch your frame rate throb between 90 and 45. You should see a massive quality difference in Skyrim VR if you are getting the same problem I am. It should immediately sharpen up when you hit 90fps, and then look like you’ve suddenly put on an original Oculus Rift when you switch to 45fps.

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