Pitool is still causing serious lag spikes when I have it open. The only reason I care now is because I would like to be able to leave it open while running the new Pimax experience. Has anyone seen any solutions to the way Pitool causes lag spikes?
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@SweViver @Heliosurge @PimaxQuorra I would really appreciate your help guys, this issue has persisted for awhile now and with the Pimax experience out I would love to be able to leave Pitool open. But right now I have to go into task manager and close Pitool then start my games, otherwise all online games are unplayable.
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@Alex.liu can maybe look into it with the engineers. From what I recall I believe it is usually usb WiFi? As my Asus b450 wifi seems unaffected.
If it is a usb wifi adapter maybe a different usb port might help.
@PimaxQuorra and @SweViver can you look into what logs info might be needed by the engineer?
It might be helpful to file a Support Ticket requesting @Doman.Chen to have a Teamviewer session to collect more info.
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Maybe switch to Ethernet, or a GL-AR150 router as a WiFi-to-Ethernet adapter?
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Wifi to Ethernet is likely a consideration. I imagine there is a good reason for not having a direct wired to router/modem. Likely location and convenience related. (Hard yo convince say a spouse a hole and possibly visible wires is a good idea) 
However Pimax does need to get this figured out as well.
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No. Compensating for bad hardware must never be a developerās responsibility.
If anything, Pimax should just popup a warning if MAC address ranges, USB Controller, CPU, or GPU, matches anything remotely suspicious.
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I reported this problem years ago when I received my backer 5k+ but nothing was ever done about it and I always have to close PiTool if I want to use Wifi at a normal speed.
My Wifi adapter has been in 3 different USBs, always the same problem.
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Iām a bit confused. What bad hardware would they be compensating for?
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So I recently got a new pc. My last setup used my Netgear a7000 for wifi adapter, and my current setup is using PCIE wifi slot. I also have the capability to run āethernetā but this is really just a phone tether over usb. I will need to test the āethernetā phone tether to see if it has jitter too but Iām pretty sure the problem persisted there for me.
Thanks @Heliosurge I will try contacting Chen about all that.
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PC hardware - even stuff made for servers - often uses broken firmware/microcode/drivers/cores because it can be ālicensedā at a lower price than the stuff designed by people who actually did a complete job. Things like PCI-E errors causing SATA data corruption every few weeks result from this. After a while, the price of the good stuff goes down to compete again with the bad stuff. Meantime, we end up with tons of bad hardware installed everywhere.
Such junk is a mere artifact of artificial scarcity, and should frankly be made illegal as a matter of protecting consumers and the public interest in economic productivity.
Speaking ofā¦
Donāt use USB Ethernet. Unless the traffic also passes through a PCIE Ethernet port on the same machine that does checksumming properly, your TCP connections will mysteriously fail once every few minutes or hours. I have learned this the hard way.
Really weird problems happen because of this stupidity, and software developers cannot keep up with them.
That said, these problems originate in HDL code that describes the hardware, so arguably computer software is typically quite bad the world overā¦
Well if Pitool is the only thing interfering with the wifi are you saying the hmd is the issue?
So yes Pimax needs to look into this as nothing else is breaking his wifi. This is a pitool issue.
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Software = Pitool, once closed Wifi works as it should.
And lets be clear if the user is only exiting Pitool and not using the taskmanager to kill piservers and pilauncher this is Software as the pimax drivers are still running after pitool is exited.
Pitool was also reported at one time sending clicks over the internet.
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We donāt know that nothing else could break it. More precisely, we donāt know that any VR headset with similar CPU, GPU, USB3, DisplayPort, and perhaps other things, as well as related performance/bandwidth/latency requirements, could cause exactly the same problems.
I bet that if another 5 headsets like the Pimax Vision 8kX were on the market, half of them would have software at least some versions of which caused exactly the same problem.
Maybe PiTool could be better, maybe this is solvable. But I would not presume to suggest USB WiFi breakage issues should be a priority for PiTool bug fixing.
What I would do in this situation, is grab a GL-AR150 WiFi router, so the computer could use decent Ethernet instead.
The difficulty is this is not 8kX specific as it has been reported across multiple pimax headsets regarding Pitool. We would need to confirm that folks are not Killing Piservers and Pilauncher in the Taskmanager. It was also reported that Pitool was and maybe still is transmitting User Clicks?
And we do know many reported exiting pitool experienced better performances.
I do agree where possible generally best with wired Inet vs Wireless.
At present we only have some hypotheses that need to be proven true or untrue.
Which I am sure you would agree this needs a thorough investigation find the root cause.
On the bad this issue has been unresolved since 2018. With PE requiring Pitool it makes the urgency to get this sorted out.
Can you imagine the wireless module experiencing issues possibly on some setups? Look at the ET launch. Pimax needs all the wins it can achieve.
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We need a āthorough investigationāā¦
- Why the performance the PiTool versions I have ācertifiedā is >10% better.
- Refresh - 60Hz for the PRODUCTION 8kX.
- Foam - Pimax has far better foam than ships with the PRODUCTION 8kX.
- SteamVR - This needs to go away, ASAP.
- Some other things I can think of.
Can you imagine the wireless module experiencing issues possibly on some setups?
Not more so than, for example, running some background software like (the unnecessary) Lenovo TrackPoint software causes massive performance issues. Very specific device, used with a specific set of other hardware and software.
We need wide test results on pitool perfornance across multiple hardware configs. However yes there is discrepancies with performance.
- Real Release notes will give needed info. Ie like when pimax changed the PiRender multiplier affects.
- Pimax has mentioned about dynamic settings. What is it specifically and this could be why you and others are finding decreases in perfornance or increases in older versions.
- Reported Bugs need to have updates. Is it still open or is a fix in testing or has it been resolved. Ie recently someone said that the No PP fix on Project Cars 2 was broken in newer pitool releases. If so it can be fixed and we all agree No PP fixes are highly important. Pimax needs to focus at times on bugs instead of bling features.
- Pimax Experience has real release notes; where as Pitool has minimal to none. Though has had some good notes in earlier releases.
Refresh rates that were there and ones that were said to be added needs to be complete.
Foams; this has been an issue with all pimax headsets. Donāt do a half job fix it across tge board and stop skimping. 2 foams with each headset a Thick and thin. With decent quality vs sweat bacteria sponges.
SteamVR? No other real Platform option except Oculus(no overlays - Closed; Valve at least gives to Opensource. Oculus canceled Linux support) and Android. OpenHmd is nowhere near there and True OpenVR isnāt either. So were stuck with OpenVR otherwise Viveport might have itās own non SteamVR platform(though likely closed minded like Oculus). Did I mention the original 3rd option failed?(OSVR).
Win95 had a great idea to clear Windows bloat reboot and Run Dos for many games. A VR specific reboot with folks only loading what is needed for Gaming with options to load extras one would choose. Clean background services. Just cleaning Windows specific bloat can do wonders.
Remember Nlite and Vlite to remaster your Windows Install?
I think we should let this topic return to the OPās issues now.
However, this, is just wrong.
You must either have a strange feeling of nostalgia, or a complete lack of experience. Win95 was the disaster that started it all, and every time MS tries something like this on the consumer side, they fail so badly, basically all the problems we have with VR real time performance relates to that.
Most of all, Win95 was when registry bloat became an issue. Every application querying the database many times per second, and queries getting slower the bigger the database became. It couldnāt handle having too many apps installed.
Server2003 was the only MS OS that wasnāt susceptible to this, and with Windows System Resource Manager, had the only effective control of memory/swap management as well. I bet you never even experienced that, but on Server2003, you could install as many apps as you liked, and Crysis would run smoother than it ever did on MSW7, Vista, etc.
Desktop-Preemptable Linux, with OpenHMD, might be workable. I can and may end up solving that problem myself.
Remember Nlite and Vlite to remaster your Windows Install?
I used those. They helped, but not as much as using Server2003 to begin with.
I think after having 2 setups that had USB and then PCIE for their setup we can say that there has to be some software issue with WiFi communication. Modern day it just isnāt feasible to expect people to have ethernet at the ready. I will be moving soon and will for sure be able to hardwire, but Iām a little curious as to why you are thinking it could be something besides Pitool. It is the Pitool exe, there is no question about it. Once I kill Pitool exe in task manager and leave the Pimax services running everything is great. I can even technically use PE to launch all my games still. But the moment I kill Pitool, PE notices right away. It just makes my experience that much more hollow.
I frickin LOVE my 5k+
Itās just, between my headset cracking itself apart, sometimes in ways that canāt even be glued, the constant niche game issues that take tons of tinkering, and now the persisting issue of Pitool causing like 3000 ping and jitter that could teach me to danceā¦ I just want some concentration on issues that have been communicated well enough before. I havenāt had a chance to communicate with the software guy yet, but I will soon.
But yes, @mirage335 Iām just confused as to why you think it could be something else besides Pitool?
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I think it is the interaction of PiTool, and something about your WiFi, chipset, etc. Something weird is going on here.
Also, I do not seem to be having these problems even using WiFi (when I take my machine to a dedicated VR space), though I use Ethernet most of the time, and when I really need WiFi, I do use things like GL-AR150 routers.
Like I stated earlier, junk hardware with bad internal software. Some very complex things get baked into silicon these days, and the slightest lack of due diligence can result in such serious problems for real-time or nearly so applications like VR.
A USB controller, or WiFi chip, is practically a piece of complex, buggy software, the gates and such being ācompiledā from HDL code. Doing things with timing that should be ordered some other way is not uncommon, and all sorts of race conditions can emerge.
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