Short 8K+ review with Skyrim and DCS

Pimax Hardware P2: 8k(+)
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After testing my new 8K+ for a few days, here is my short review:
As a backer I have been using my 5k+ for a year now and I am quite satisfied with the headset. However, the still visible SDE still bothered me.
System: I7-9700k @4900Hz, GTX 1080 TI, 32 GB RAM, Pitool 255

So far I have tried Skyrim and DCS World.
Skyrim:
I used the same settings as with my 5k+ and was a little disappointed. The picture quality wasn’t really much better except the SDE was of course hardly visible. With the 5k+ I had to activate TAA in Skyrim because otherwise the flickering was very annoying. With the 8k+ I deactivated TAA and here the flickering was much less. Then I set SS in Pitool to 1.5 (SteamVR 80%) and PP off. The difference was like day and night: Super sharp picture without aliasing. Simply fantastic. I can hardly imagine that the 8Kx could be even better here. Also runs smoothly with 45 fps
But I have to evaluate the black values negatively. In dark caves the LCD glows grey. I even find it a bit worse than on the 5K+.

DCS World:
Yes DCS is a special case. Here you have to find a compromise between picture quality and playable FPS. I found the SDE in DCS on my 5K+ to be very annoying, and the aliasing is also very annoying. With the 8K+ the SDE is much better but still visible (in the sky or clouds) but I don’t find that annoying anymore. Unfortunately the flickering could not be fought successfully by increasing the resolution. Now I use 2x MSAA (ingame) and in the NVIDIA driver settings “Enhance Application Settings” “Transparency” to “2x Supersampling”. However, with these settings I can only reach 36 fps. I definitely need a RTX 3080!. If someone found good settings here I would be glad about a comment.
Here I can imagine that the 8Kx brings a significant improvement in DCS compared to the 8K+.

In summary, I am very satisfied with the 8K+. So far I have not found any dead pixels or other errors. It’s a great headset for mainstream games like Skyrim or Fallout but for Sims like DCS or PC2 the 8KX could be the better choice

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i also didnt like the blacks and contrast off the 8kplus,dont you have that haze(dirty lens) look if you take a look at a bright white sky?Maybe its the scaler or just the panels(i dont hope so because then my 8kx will have this too)

On the index it you dont have this(or maybe a very little but i couldnt see it)

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no, I haven’t noticed that before. Could it be that light enters the heatset from the side and is reflected on the lens?

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hello,no it was some kind of grain(murra or how do you call that?) i had that on the 5kplus too…

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No, I haven’t noticed that yet.

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Maybe it’s a head shape thing

The distance between eye and lens.

I find it super important to get a clean clear image with pimax 5k+.

Have you try to increase or decrease the distance with abit of DIY to the padding?

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Its a headshape thing,i cant get close enough to the lenses.
Two off my family members have the same.

They all said,how can you play like this.!.
Just to try,i removed the comfort kit to come closer to the lenses.
They all said thats the way it should be!

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Oh no, really? The comfort kit adds distance to the lenses?

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For me it does,but i dont know if its the same for you.Everybody has a different faceshape.

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How are other games running withPitool 1.5 and SteamVR 80%? I guess that will be quite a high demand for graphic card.

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Yes the distance between the eyes and lenses is incresed compared to the 5k+. but with the 5k+ I used a thicker pad because the distance was so small that I touched the lenses with my eyelashes. The distance at 8k+ fits better for me.
@yanfeng: I’ve only tried the two games so far. I am currently busy in DCS learning the Ka-50. The clear picture of the 8k+ helps to read the switches better.
But if you don’t need PP in Pitool you can use the better performance to increase the resolution

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But a pitty,now they made it unusable for other people…
Why o why pimax didnt you think abou this? @SweViver @PimaxUSA

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The team did make that cowling completely interchangeable. So far the update is overwhelmingly successful and at CES there was not one negative comment about it. However, there is still the original version and because it can be swapped we can continue to innovate that piece.

Cool thing is new versions can be swapped with those who have previous models.

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@GerVR I am actually using the 8kX. The difference in Virtual Desktop and sim apps like DCS World, is truly amazing, and everyone who tries it agrees. The ‘chunkiness’ of the 8k+ goes away entirely. For me, it is enough to make flight sim comfortable as it should be.

Because the 8kX requires less supersampling, it also requires significantly less graphics hardware to achieve comparable results. CPU side is more of an issue for DCS World.

I also put together somewhat extensive spreadsheets to calculate ideal VR settings, especially for Pimax headsets.

Please watch.

Spreadsheet link here.

https://community.openmr.ai/t/pitool-steamvr-application-resolution-spreadsheets-project-extendedinterface/25414

Everything, even NVIDIA settings are included.

Now, specifically regarding what you have posted, but only specifically for DCS World (as I don’t play Skyrim currently)…

You do not need a RTX 3080 to get full quality. However, a RTX 2080 Ti top-binned card is advisable. If you have not already, get the ‘overclocking’ program, set +100MHz core clock, and +1000MHz memory clock - these are very conservative settings that should easily work.

An i9-9900k or very close helps too.

For the 8k+ or 5k+, both, try these settings, from my spreadsheet.
PiTool Refresh Rate 72Hz or 64Hz
PiTool Render Quality 1.75
PiTool Parallel Projections OFF (close one eye if you use zoom)
SteamVR Settings > Video > Custom Resolution 2272
SteamVR Settings > Applications > [App] > Custom Resolution 2272
DCS World Pixel Density 1.2

The Total rendered Super Resolution (what I call TotalSR) should be 2.310 .

If that does not perform well enough, bump DCS World Pixel Density down to 1.0, a TotalSR of 1.925 .

Flickering… depending on what you are referring to, there may or may not be a solution. Refresh rate may help, as may Hidden Area Mask. The latest OpenBeta of DCS World does fix a particularly severe flickering glitch with dynamic weather, water, and sunlight.

EDIT: Also use version .254 of PiTool.

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thx for the reply,

i realy hope there comes a option for a comfort kit wich let us come closer to the lenses…
Two in my family had the same problem as me…

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@mirage335 : thank you very much. You must be mathew, right? I will try that out. My short review might read a bit negative regarding DCS but I want to emphasize that the improvement of the SDE improves the picture significantly. So in the end only the flickering has to be minimized. The bottom line is that the 8k+ is a great headset.

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In the mean time: Any chance we could see some CAD and/or .stl files of the cowling, for the tinkerers among us? :7

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careful looking for it, once you see it , you can’t unsee it.

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Yup, that’s me, ‘Matthew’. I would have thought reciting a GitHub link with “mirage335” in it on the camera would have made that clear enough, but I am still a bit new at the whole deal of getting stuff like this ‘published’. :wink:

I didn’t take your review regarding DCS and the 8k+ as negative at all, I thought it was honest and accurate. Your opinion agrees well my writeups of DCS World, PavlovVR, and similar things so far - the Pimax Vision 8kX is compelling for seated stuff (especially flight sim using avionics never made for VR), but the 8k+ is more adequate for roomscale.

And the Pimax Vision 8kX is indeed at least as much of a step up for DCS World as you might expect. In fact, probably even more so, since you are only running the 8k+ with a 1080 TI, and that headset actually needs much more (supersampled) total rendered resolution to look its best.

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True. I had to increase my face-pad thickness by ~3 mm, so that my eyelashes don’t touch the lenses. That might be the reason why I don’t see any Pimax distortion.

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