Just joined this forum further to going to CES last week with the main purpose of trying out the 8KX in person and testing extensively. Was blown away by the fov, clarity, minimal/no distortions, barely perceptible if any sde, improved build quality and especially the comfort, so much so I ordered the 8KX but with the deluxe MAS as as much as pimax say they are still improving the standard MAS speakers they were underwhelming compared to the outstanding visuals… especially as a vr aviator I’m excited to get mine and hope the notorious customer service is also radically improved along with the 8KX product though I’m hoping after trying it that I won’t need to contact customer support… I’m glad the valve index went out of stock allowing me the time to get to CES in person, try the 8KX and have an informed decision about instead committing to the 8KX… Well done to pimax for winning the best in VR and AR award… Well deserved. All other hmds I saw at CES were underwhelming comparatively…I even on many levels prefer the 8KX to the XTAL (which of course is over 4 times the cost, even though of course not focused on the consumer or even enthusiast market)- I had more trouble focusing with the XTAL and the scale was way off with the XTAL (in DCS my pilot body, arms, legs and view in general was way smaller than natural for some reason) even though technically the XTAL is supposed to have even more clarity than the 8KX I didn’t notice
Welcome to the forum!
It’s sooo awesome to read 8KX impressions from folks that were at CES. Everyone is impressed, very impressed or simply had their mind blown.
I can’t wait to get my facehugging headcrab. Dayum!
Glad to see another person at the CES demo appreciates the Pimax 8kX for what it is. The optics are definitely far better for most users than the Index, as is the screen of course.
Thanks for Joining and sharing!
So since you are one of the few that is posting and I can ask, I’ll do just that
What demos did you try? How was your impression on colors, movement and distance sharpness?
I tried Boneworks, Aerofly fs 2 and DCS World…I can’t remember distance sharpness but the cockpit text and gauges were very clear and readable without having to lean in, since the sde was hardly visible (distance on all hmds are less clear than closer up objects but on this hmd with minimal sde they were the best I’ve seen)… Movement was smooth enough and colors were good (at least nothing I noticed to be bad or unrealistic)
That’s exciting then that the 8KX will also be able to keep up with the valve index in refresh rates too then… being able to run at higher refresh rates would be the only thing I’d miss about the index and 110/120hz will be enough for me as anything higher than that will likely be unnoticeable anyway…I must be honest though, I asked the pimax rep at CES to change the 8KX to upscaled 8K plus mode in DCS and the clarity in dcs was radically lower than expected… The cockpit gauges for me at least became much less readable- everything appeared much more pixelated. Maybe I was spoilt by the 4K per eye clarity/resolution and low sde in native 8KX mode but wasn’t expecting the upscaled mode to be that bad… seemed like HTC Vive/1st gen clarity to me but hopefully by accident it was lowered more than necessary for that mode in that instant… and don’t know if an 8KX running in upscaled 8K plus mode has identical visuals as an actual 8K plus natively or not… But if it was a true example of upscaled mode I won’t be using that much when I get my 8KX to be honest…I think I’d rather reduce the fov first to reduce demand on the GPU and/or get the eye tracker for foveated rendering to reduce GPU load that way… But trying the eye tracker at CES I could still see the pixelated lower resolution wherever I looked as well as the higher resolution parts which wasn’t what I was expecting (I thought wherever you looked would be the higher resolution and the peripheries only of where you look that naturally would be less in focus to your eye would be lower resolution only…
My understanding is that they should be nearly identical, except for the max refresh rate. Both models are likely to be using the same upscaler chip, which has been improved over the 8K (which uses an older chip).
Could have been that the swap to upscaling mode did not have good settings - @SweViver Said a restart of Steam is needed If I am not mistaken. so it will most likely appear to steam as another hmd which needs the settings to be made accordingly - at least that could be why it was maybe preceived worse besides the actual upscaling effect
What is the resolution the 8KX upscale mode is upscaling from exactly as even looking at the 8K plus specs it somewhat misleadingly only says the 8K plus’ resolution is 4K per eye but that’s after upscaling from what exact lower resolution (not listed in the product page)? (Wanting to know how it will compare to the index’s resolution at high refresh rates though since it’s stretched over a wider fov the same resolution on a pimax will look less clear compared to a regular hmd more standard rounded fixed fov so I’m hoping the lower resolution the 8KX in upscale mode upscales from is still considerably higher than the index’s standard resolution to at least match it in clarity)…
2560x1440, the same as the 5K+ and 8K. When the 8KX is in upscale mode, it should be showing the same image as the 8K+, because it’s almost certainly using the same upscaler chip and is using the same LCD panels. There are differences due to refresh rate, but that shouldn’t affect the image quality.
If both the 8K+ and 8KX were running in 1440p at 72 Hz (for movie viewing), the images should be absolutely identical.
…which is why I am utterly nonplussed by the promoting of the 8k+ as an option against the 8kX specifically for movie-watching; It is the framerate tradeoff of the X that is negligible for movies - not the resolution tradeoff of the +.
