I’m preparing for arrival of my unit , hopefully next batch. Can I use HTC Vive link box with Pimax 5k ?
Do we have any link box in Pimax package ? That might be somewhere answered but I missed that.
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The Vive linkbox won’t work as its HDMI and you require DP. You may be able to keep that connected if you want to use to turn off lighthouses but otherwise no use to extend the connection.
Pimax doesn’t have a linkbox, they did indicate early on that they would consider that in the future but nothing has been mentioned since.
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oki, next Q. Do I need to unpluged my Vive from GTX 1080 ti card and vive usb to get Pimax 5k to work ?
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I’ve not tried leaving it connected but you’re going need steamvr etc… to know which HMD you’re using and will want the controllers to be paired with the pimax. If two are connected at the same time I’m not sure what interesting issues will occur.
So my assumption is yes, unplug it!
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My plan was to do direct comaprison of picture quality without unpluging devices. But you might be right, most likely it wont work.
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I know people have got it working using virtual machines. But for standard PC setup the only thing I can think of to do a comparison is you might be able to do something that isn’t dependent on steamvr for the pimax. Like run an oculus app via pitool and a steamvr app. Bigscreen for example.
It might just need to be done in a certain order such as get vive working first, run steamvr, launching bigscreen, then power on pimax and run pitool and launch bigscreen there.
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Just tried a few things out of curiosity of what might work.
I can get the Vive going, and also the Pimax, however as soon as I launch something on the Pimax the Vive goes off and steamvr (non-beta) seems to hang. I tried 3 Oculus apps via PiTool and it even happens with the Pimax own VR-Home, so I assume it’s as soon as you initiate tracking it maybe shares some resource that steamvr uses and hangs it.
I’m also noticing the Pimax screens are flickering grey whilst my Vive is on, as soon as I unplug the Vive power the Pimax goes OK. If I hide the Vive under my desk (occluding the Vive sensors) it goes OK.
So definite interference or resource sharing even when steamvr isn’t running.
So conclusion is not to have both running at the same time, so far it seems you can get away powering them on/off individually and leaving USB/video connections in. I’ve not done anything with controllers during this test however.
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Thanks for testing this! I’m not surprised at the results, but thanks for checking it out!
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Interesting! Not what I hoped to read though… Has anybody sucessfully used a Pimax (e.g. 5k+) and a Vive on the same computer? Could imagine quite a number of Pimax owners are also Vive owners (probably most that didn’t order the “full” package?).
Of course only for simple games. But a multiplayer round of virtual table tennis or holoball might be more fun than one watching and only the other experiencing…
There’s probably too many shared resources to make it viable, namely steam and lighthouse tracking. So although the two can share the same lighthouses I suggest the best way is with 2x pc’s and the experimental way might be with Virtualization such as what LTT did here but I believe still requires 2 GPU’s and no doubt be some level of hit to overall performance anyway.
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Hm, little bit of a pity. Definitely won’t buy a second pc just for the rare occasions where this would be neat. Perhaps some games could explicitly support two HMDs (similar to how some games support dual monitors and dual controllers), so only one instance of the game has to run. Probably too small of a market though… Or does anybody know such a game?
The problem is less about the game and more about use of steam and steam lighthouse tracking, not searched but maybe there is someone out there written about how to use 2x vive’s on 1 pc and a workaround? but you would have better luck with a rift or wmr HMD that isn’t dependent on steam/steamvr. However that then brings up the issue of cross platform compatibility for Multiplayer and pc performance 