Quick Impressions: 8kx & iRacing

[rsbell]

Just received the 8kx this afternoon. I am a pre-order from 10-30-19.

A little background on me:

I have owned a Vive, Vive Pro, Odyssey, Index, Quest, KS 5k+ (bought it from KS backer), 5k+ V2, 5k+ XR, and 8k+. My gaming machine is an i9-10900k, 2080ti FE (both mildly OC’d), 32GB 4800 RAM, 2TB NVME drive.

All this, and I exclusively play iRacing. That’s all I use the machine for.

I love the 5k+. Returned the XR (too much SDE and very dim). I’m not a fan of the 8k+ as I could never get it to look very sharp. I did EVERYTHING on the ‘How to make it sharp” thread, and the image was always soft. Sure, the 5k+ has some SDE, but otherwise it has been my favorite HMD so far.

8kx Arrived today. I opened it up and put it on. The MAS was terrible. It doesn’t fit my head at all. The strap itself doesn’t swivel down far enough to allow the back of the strap to reach the back of my head. If I pulled the back down far enough, the bottom of the HMD would tilt up leaving a .5 inch gap. The back of the strap looks like it’s designed to kind of cup the back of your head, but the hinges don’t let the strap swivel enough for the back of the strap to get low enough on the back of your head to hold the HMD secure. I took apart the hinge thinking there must be some adjustment or something, but there isn’t. The MAS is basically unusable, at least for me. Not a good start.

Swapped out the 8k+ for the 8kx on my driving rig. Easy swap, and I especially like that it doesn’t need a power supply. The first thing that came onscreen was the Pimax Experience screen (I’m beta testing).

Gorgeous.

Every letter was clear and completely readable. It was nothing short of stunning. Absolutely beautiful and crystal clear.

Then I noticed sparkles everywhere. I reseated the cable but to no avail.

Then I realized that I was using a display port extension on the 8k+, so I bypassed the the extension and tried again. No sparkles-only tack-sharp image quality. It looked like I was looking at a 4K monitor.

So I booted up iRacing to try it out.

The sound on the SMAS is terrible. Just not good at all. I turned up the volume both in-game on my computer but nothing helped. I tweaked Voicemeeter as welI, but nothing helped. I plugged in some decent headphones to check if I could get away with using only one plug (the MAS uses a 3.5mm plug on each side of the HMD), and, fortunately, one plug worked perfectly fine and provided stereo audio.

I have the Vive DAS on my 8k+ and 5k+, so I pulled it off the 8k+ and replaced the SMAS on the 8kx. The DAS fit perfectly, and the audio was good.

Re-booted iRacing. The image was nothing short of incredible. The spec map on my Skippy glowed. I could see things I’ve never seen before, both in cockpit and at distance. Everything was incredibly sharp. I can see a VERY slight SDE in the sky, but it’s minimal, and didn’t break the immersion for me at all. No SDE anywhere else.

I sat there in awe in the pit at Zandvoort (this week’s Skippy track) just looking around. I was hoping the 8kx would be a step up in clarity, but this was so much better than I had hoped for. I didn’t touch the SteamVR settings.

Also, I only use Normal FOV. There is no distortion that I could see, although I might be so used to using the 8k+ and 5k+ that I’ve adjusted to it and just don’t see it anymore. Or it doesn’t exist. I didn’t try Large FOV, so I’ve got nothing to add there.

I took the car out for some laps, and was blown away by how much better I could see braking and turn in points. The tachometer was crystal clear. I oversteered into the grass, and I marveled at how clear the grass was on my front tires. Driving was so much easier now that everything is so much clearer-no guessing at exactly where a braking point or apex is.

All numbers and text everywhere were extremely clear and readable. That includes gauges, signs, meters and timers onscreen-everything. I could see fences clearly that I didn’t even know were there.

I have all graphics settings on “high”, and the FPS was locked on74/75. Zandvoort might be a low graphics track, I don’t know, but it was glorious. I would run the 8k+ at 90 FPS, and the 5k+ at 110, and I was a bit worried that 75 wouldn’t cut it for iRacing. It’s just not an issue. 75 looks fine and is perfectly playable.

So:

• The visuals are next-level. Nothing compares.
• The MAS is poorly designed. It might be ok if the hinges allowed for the strap to come down further on the back of my head, but as it is it’s unusable for me.
• MAS audio is also terrible.
• DAS fits perfectly, and the audio is great.
• I ordered the DMAS, and the audio might be great on that, but since the MAS doesn’t fit my head, I won’t be able to use it.
• How are the blacks in ED? Not a clue.

Final thought: Pimax absolutely killed it visually for my use-case: sim racing. Nothing that I’ve tried even comes close (no, haven’t tried the G2). The clarity is stunning. I imagine Virtual Desktop would be completely usable. I will fire up DCS at some point to try it out, but I have every reason to believe it will be incredible. MAS? Can’t believe how bad it fits.

The 8kx is absolutely worth the wait.

Hope this helps.

[samyrden]

So stoked to get an 8KX hooked up to my sim rig. Thanks for taking the time to post!!

[Fresco]

Great right up and thank you for sharing, awesome to here that you were able to get the 8kX looking stunning. It sounds like the Pimax Experience helped get things rolling I’ll now look forward to trying it hopefully soon myself with my 8kX.

This kind of review is what many have been waiting for. Now it should be getting interesting.

[chompy]

Thanks for your review. I also am IRacing only, and coming from a Rift CV1 i’m really looking forward to getting my X. Hoping my RTX2080 / ryzen 3700x machine is up to the job.

[NextGenVR]

Is the monthly membership for iRacing really worth it when they are so many other VR racing games that don’t require monthly payment?

[cazman321]

I had to go check out iRacing too with my X. Open wheelers look great now since the detail is great everywhere. The FINGERPRINTS on the M8 GTE screens freaked me out, they looked so real. This was while looking at my car in the pits with the screens off. Pretty crazy they actually added fingerprints!

I’ve taken a bit of a break from iRacing for a while (first season without getting any full participation credits since I started buying content). iRacing requires so much time for practice that I got a bit burnt out. Practicing for an hour or two (or three) only to still be 2-3 seconds behind the top drivers per lap is pretty disheartening. There was a month where I’d practice 3+ hours before a race every week, and I actually won every time (got 2nd once) in the Skip Barbers, so it’s really about me putting the time in, which again, gets me burnt out.

Now with the 8KX, I think I’m going to hop back in next season, especially for the TCR sprint races, maybe also the Ferrari sprint too since that’s coming back. The Index had a weird swimmy picture that made my eyes feel weird when I took the headset off, only in iRacing…that may be part of why I stopped too.

I’m hoping the Project Cars 3 bugs get fixed soon because multiplayer looks more fun without getting too much damage/requiring too much practice. I don’t really care about realism, just want a good race.

[cazman321]

Depends on what you want to do. If you like doing laps on your own, or just racing against AI, then iRacing is not for you. iRacing is the most populated multiplayer racing game out there. It also has the most respectful drivers, since behaving against the code will get you suspended. The competition is fierce, you can’t just go in blindly expecting to do well.

I didn’t “get” circuit racing, driving around the track over and over, until I tried iRacing against REAL people. I was hooked after my first race. DiRT Rally in VR made me get a wheel, so naturally I tried other single player driving demos…and didn’t care much about them until iRacing. That’s probably because I like competitive games in general.

[rsbell]

I think you’ll be fine.

[rsbell]

At any given time, there are between 5,000 and 15,000 people on the service. If you want to race against other people, no sim has the sheer number of people to race against.

Plus it’s pretty cool being able to race against so many professional drivers. I’ve personally been in races with too many to remember, but I do remember Dale Earnhardt, Jr., Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, etc.