Request: 110-120hz without upscaling on normal fov mode for 8KX

Pimax should look at normal fov mode on 8kx because 110-120hz without upscaling might be possible on the 8KX by reducing FOV to normal mode, the same way the 5K+ has 120hz and 144hz ??

The lesser refresh rates are also more easy to maintain on the normal fov mode as well.

@PimaxQuorra @apple

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Hello,

Thank you for the feedback sir.
Not sure we are able to achieve the 110-120Hz while running under normal FOV mode. But will pass along to our R&D department to examine.

Sincerely.

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If you can’t get 110hz or 120hz in Normal Fov mode on the 8KX without upscaling, then surely you can in Small fov or potato fov modes @PimaxQuorra @apple

Even the 90hz on normal fov is more easy to run and maintain in more demanding applications so development should definitely go to normal fov mode and see if it’s possible.

good point, the hz is the only thing that stoping me buying the 8kx. 90hz is not enough in competition games imo, and i’m not sure that current 114hz is enough too. if 8k+ had more than 110hz i would go for it but flag ships headsets are all about image quality :confused:

if we have the possibility to downscale the graphisms and run 120/144hz at normal fov it would be perfect. The 144hz feature on 5k+ was a great feature i really miss it.

Afaik they went down from 120/118 Hz to 114 Hz because the panels in some headsets (including mine) couldn’t cope with the higher frequencies. So 114 Hz might be a physical limit of the hardware. But perhaps 114 Hz with normal/small fov would still work?
In any case, 90 Hz is a big step forward!

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GGood to know. Yes of course 90hz is better than 75hz i agreed of course. But i have no rtx 3k and even with it, currently i can feel the difference between 90hz of the reverb g2 and 120/144hz of 5k+. Just want to say to pimax to not forget this department it’s a game changer for some people :slight_smile:

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This should definitely be possible @PimaxQuorra in a smaller fov setting, the Quest 2 is 1920x2160 and it has an experimental 120hz mode which is/was being worked on.

Unless as @NoamLoop says theres a hardware limitation, in which case 110hz or 114hz should still be possible.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s possible, due to hardware limitations.

My understanding is that for smaller FOV modes, the outer (black) data still needs to be sent. That eats bandwidth, so higher frequency framerates aren’t available. The decoder chip would need to accept a smaller image size and display it to a portion of the display (sort of like picture-in-picture). I don’t think the chip can do that.

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Tell to R&D to consider a 120 hz mode using a little more compression

This mode should have the target to give better or equivalent visuals than Upscaled mode, but without issues and should be valid for all FOV of Pimax 8K X.

When they have made it put silently at the place of Upscaled Mode

Then @PimaxQuorra there is another thing i asked many times:

Think someone playing FS2020 . The framerate is not high because FS2020 is a heavy game, settings are not optimized and the PC is not fast enough. If you understand this : it has sense to eliminate compression to make a “Flight simulator mode ultra clear” for the best visual

Please pass the information to R&D .
Belongs To them the task to calculate the frequency rate possible for this mode
This is a special mode : I suggest only one FOV
To have success:
Do not print the frame rate inside pitool .
Do not communicate the frame rate on Pimax forums
so Pimaxers will not be influenced when they try it.

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@Zen
Woah, greedy much? :wink:

Seriously Native 90Hz is already a lot to be getting over just one DisplayPort cable under current specifications.

Good analysis, I agree. Might be more likely to get 114Hz than 120Hz.

Not necessarily, and I highly doubt anything as processing intensive as ‘picture-in-picture’ would be required. I think we just don’t really know what is possible.

I agree. There’s no need to decode 2 image streams. What I meant was that in order to implement this feature would be to take a lower res image (less than 4K, say 1440p) and shrink it to fit the appropriate FOV area, while leaving the remainder black.

I think it’s unlikely that the chip Pimax is using has that ability. If it did, I think Pimax would offer the “upscaled” @ 114 Hz res to be sized to Normal or Small FOV.

If both vertical and horizontal dimensions are to shrink, with scaling, yes, that might require more processing. However, if some areas are just not included, particularly if only the horizontal FOV is changed, I think the onboard chip may be able to handle that for two reasons.

First, a lot of headsets have different aspect ratios, and it makes sense that the panel driving circuitry would be generic enough to accommodate a variety of such modes without wasting DisplayPort bandwidth. The relevant chip could well be an industry standard DisplayPort to LVDS deserializer chip, that outputs a stream of raw bits which are ultimately fed to the active matrix panel perhaps largely unchanged from there.

Second, in my experience, the Pimax 5k+ seems to reduce FOV at very high refresh rates, or at least sometimes seems to be more reliable at high refresh rates if FOV is reduced. Also, PiTool often seems to change my FOV without asking after I try to change the refresh rate.

Overall, I think something like a 114Hz native mode at Small/Potato FOV might be possible IF the GPU DisplayPort circuitry can support suitable modes.

As it is, Pimax talk about ‘working with NVIDIA’, and the need for new drivers, suggests to me that the Pimax Vision 8kX might just have needed an entirely new non-standard DisplayPort mode added to get to 90Hz native.

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Ok, I am blind. Bummer.

I had lastly the chance of playing in a Index with 135hz. I cannot see a difference to 90 hz.

It is the same with 2d screens. I can cleary see the difference between 30hz and 60hz. I can notice a small improvement with 75hz. But higher than that, I can not note any difference at all. But I am extremly sensitive about resolution. Therefore the 8kx is a great choice for me. I can even say, that the 90hz make a small difference in VR. But higher than that… do I have problems with my eyes?

Definitely not a problem with your eyes.

As with most things, improvements in refresh rate also suffer from decreasing marginal returns and the susceptibility or sensitivity to refresh rates is a)highly subjective and b) differs greatly between age groups, genders, trained perception etc.

The Index doesn’t offer a 135hz mode, it offers 80hz, 90hz, 120hz and 144hz. I personally perceived a meaningful improvement from 80 to 90hz across the board, a noticable but not immense improvement from 90 to 120hz for experiences with very quick rotations (reduced ‘smear’) and no change at all going from 120 to 144hz.

The 60hz on the 8KX gives me a headache very quickly, the 75hz was ‘fine’ but the setp to 90hz was very noticable and showed me, that my personal ideal threshold for minimum refresh rate for VR is around 90hz/fps.

But again, this is highly subjective and a personal preference; I absolutely believe that for some users even 180hz+ can offer meaningful returns, just as they do for monitors.

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Of course I meant 144hz.

Yeah, 90 Hz seems to be a good sweetspot for me, too. 60Hz is for fast games too slow, but not for Microsoft Flight Simulator. There I can get around 35 fps and that is fine, though. But it is a slow game with slow movements normally, so that works. But anything faster, I prefer 90 hz, too.

But great to hear, that it is just my old eyes, that are too slow for 144hz.

I think “neal_white_III” has a valid point here! Your points can be implemented and taken care of in Software, as it is already done with the Distortion and Chroma correction. To adapt rendering to aspect ratios of displays or to a smaller part of the display (as done with Pimax large, normal, small and potato FOV) is also only a software function.

However, if the display processor can be configured to accept a smaller “physical” input resolution and use the reduced data load to increase refresh rate is a totally different discussion!

The old display processor of the 5k+ can obviously do this. But the new one in the 8KX and 8K Plus might not! Why would they not have implemented this already otherwise and struggle with 90 Hz full FOV for so long?

To make it clear: I don’t know if it is possible or not, but your assumptions and examples are not a valid prove!

I think the best way would be to download the tech spec and development documents for the chip used and point to the chapter where you find such features!

The only thing that might prove your point is the existence of the 5K Super! It has variable refresh rates dependent on the FOV! It might also use the same chip and board design, but I don’t know this!

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Why all the exclamation points? As you point out, this is all somewhat speculative.

However, I do know how these things work, as well as how people work. Do you have electronics design experience (serious question, I actually don’t know)?

On the hardware side, digital display chips are generic. To be able to support narrower panels - an industry requirement - the chip must be able to announce and pass through - without buffering - the stream of pixels. So the chip must be able to accommodate narrower displays. Only way I see this not being the case is the possibility of some more complicated software/microcode having been added with Display Stream Compression (DSC).

On the people side, when you have the potential to get full FOV at 90Hz, and you know it can work, and when you are working with companies like NVIDIA to make it work, then you keep working on that goal - you do NOT abandon an opportunity that might never happen again for some lesser project you may not be able to get the resources committed to (ie. by NVIDIA) to follow through on. Better to finish as planned if possible.

Please ignore the exclamation marks. Not intended to be a “shouting at your face” or anything like that. Maybe it is a German habit or just me.

I have a PhD in molecular biology, which clearly qualifies me for this discussion :wink:
More seriously: I am also working as lead project manager for the development of laboratory instruments since quite some time and development of electronics hardware, firmware, software is all part of it. We also develop our own HMIs/Computer Display Units. Aside from this, I am a hardware nerd since childhood.

This cleared, I do not know the facts but made my mind about this several times. Why did they not allow a native 90Hz or 110Hz refresh rate in normal or small FOV.

Explanations I found reasonable are either:

  1. Hardware issues (display processor not capable of the required feature). To my understanding the chip would need to be freely programable to be configured to see and render only certain pixels of the display and use specific refresh rates different from the existing standards given by the VESA consortium.

  2. Limit in knowledge (engineers at Pimax did not know how to implement it/are in learning phase with the new chip)

  3. No priority, no intention

As you pointed out, it could be that Pimax did not work on this as they went for the 90 Hz full FOV mode in corporation with nVidia as prio. The chip also has the scaler functionality directly implemented and they maybe thought this is sufficient for servicing higher refresh rates.

I personally think they lost some potential buyers by not providing this early in the release timeline.

I found the specific chip and downloaded some tech doc last year, but never found the time to really look into it.

To satisfy our curiosity it would be nice if someone from Pimax (PimaxUSA, SweViver or whoever knows) could help in understanding this.

Awesome, congratulations!

Really think this was it.

Supply for Pimax seems vastly more constrained than demand IMHO. From what I have discussed with other Pimax headset users, the price could not have been much higher. So the company’s long-term technology was probably far more important to Pimax, than adding more features right at product release. Plus, the headset was arguably long overdue.

Well done.

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