Should I Upgrade Pitools and HMD Firmware?

Hi, is there any advantage for me to upgrade Pitools and Hmd firmware? I am currently using Pitools V 1.0.1.271 and firmware V 2.1.255.298. My HMD is an 8KX running at 90 mhz. I’m pretty happy the way everything is working, I mostly just fly DCS. My cpu is an I9-9920x and my gpu is 3090, both slightly overclocked, and I have 64 GB ram. Windows 10. I have read about people having a multitude of problems upgrading. I don’t know if Pimax has the problems ironed out or not. If I could get a performance boost I would be inclined to upgrade. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
mozz

In my XP stick with 271 with fw 298. Ever since I made the mistake of installing pitool 274 that auto updated to fw 299 initially couldn’t get 8kX to connect to pitool.

So downgraded to pitool 271 no change. Manually reflashed 298.

8kX connects to pitool but crashes SteamVR disabling Addons. Have to re enable the addons several times. Kill pitool and eventually SteamVR will work. But have to do this dance everytime the pc is booted.

@neal_white_iii I believe reported similar on his 2080. I have a 1080ti.

You might be okay and maybe not.

Waiting in a response from pimax as it seens the 299FW leaves part of itself after reflashing 298. Never had this issue prior to the auto update.

Have asked them how to perform a clean firmware reflash to eliminate whatever 299 has left behind.

@PimaxQuorra

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at time… hmm, never touch a running system :wink:

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Indeed and why forced updates should not have been implemented.

Normally pimax has not been a problem to roll back to a stable working version.

My computer was offline when I installed 274 so the 299 Firmware was pre packaged in the install. Had I been aware of that the headset would not have been plugged in. And I would have deleted/replaced the bad Firmware.

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I suggest using 120hz instead of 90hz. For some reason my Pimax 5k super produces some lagging effects when moving around. 120hz reduce the effect a lot. I think it might also applies to 8kx.
And yeah, don’t update it if everything works and you don’t need anything in the new firmware.

120hz at the native resolution of 8kx will only be technically possible in forthcomming years.

Unfortunately I had similar experience like Heliosurge. For the record:
i7-8700x, Geforce 1080Ti, Win10, 8kX from backer/preorder (so early model).

After update to Pitool1.0.1.275 & firmware 299 (flashed with success) I got 10600 unable to connect and could not resolve it.

So I filed support ticket - this is quite cumbersome with lot of mandatory fields some not easy to get (eg date of purchase I was searching for it in old mail for some time).

Once ticket was in I actually had very good experience with Pimax support - responses within 1-2 days, which is pretty good considering different time zones. Also English was good and to the point, not the vague guessing game I remember from years ago. First we tried re-flashing with DFU but did not help. Then they send me Pitool 271 install link and some DEBUG 296 firmware which I installed & re-flashed today and so far everything seems to be working fine. So I will see as I run it some more but so far seems good. So with support - good job Pimax!

In the meantime I tried old backer 5k+ again (worked also with Pitool 275) and was surprised how good it actually is. Lower res/more SDE than 8kX and unfortunately mine has bad audiojack. But everything else was better - comfort (even with strap), comfortable lenses (which I can’t get right in 8kX no matter what), less distortions. I will probably stick with 8kX for now but even if I had to return to 5k+ it would not be bad as I was afraid of, in some ways (esp. comfort for both wearing and eyes) it would even be improvement.

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That is awesome. Hopefully they can fix future firmwares by going back to earlier Firmware to see what went wrong.

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downgrading the headset usually was no problem, manually set it in dfu mode and flash the firmware needed (well you need to have the right/old firmware file) and as long as you dont use the newer pitool version forcing a update there should be no problem with a forced update of the headset

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That is normally true. But 299 left something after reverting to 298. As McUh and Neal also experienced problems after the downgrade.

In theory one might be able to install a newer pitool as long as headset is not connected to pc & one deletes the included firmware file in dfudrivers sub folder and then block pitool in Firewall.

Someone told me that the problem is that some file(s) were changed to be read-only by the PiTool installer and that was the source of the issue. I wasn’t given the specifics and I might have mangled that description. He said that a fresh install of Windows fixed the problem for him. I decided to live with the situation, rather than reinstall Win10.

Sorry to hijack this thread a little- I have the latest firmware and PiTools iterations and 90 hz mode blinks or flashes every second or so. What versions of firmware and pitools do I need to go back to?
Thanks guys

The answer is what variant of the 299 firmware do you need. Open a ticket with Pimax support to get the right one.

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