This is my entry for the contest and entered into its own post as per request.
Original Review:
-Pros and cons.
Some pros:
- This is the first hmd that is designed for virtual reality users, not people new to vr.
- It fixes a fundamental problem I dealt with for years now, the claustrophobic sensory deprivation of low field of vision.
- Pimax could have released this headset over a year earlier than it did. They heard the community say it needed tons of quality refinements, and a miracle in itself, we have a company that went the distance and improved their product exponentially better than its original design. Actions speak louder than words and while early on words weren’t their forte (translation can sometimes be an issue), their actions demonstrated how impressive and adaptive the company is. Love is a verb.
- It’s not an oculus vs steamvr company. It’s compatible with everything.
- We wouldn’t have a high fov headset without pimax. They’re the only company that cares about the people who actually use vr.
- They’re not afraid of unorthodox and abstract ideas (brainwarp). It’s an ambitious goal to do some of the ideas they have, but they still share these interesting concepts with us.
- They already have tons of experience operating under critical conditions. Not many companies have that kind of experience and operate 24/7 on easy street.
- I haven’t once used my low fov hmd since I got my 5k+.
Cons/needs work
- Achieving what huge companies do with software is a strong challenge.
- Shipping early on was extremely difficult for both the backer and pimax.
- Some user experience software issues may take time to become a more streamlined experience if you play more than one game in a play session. (Changing to parallel projections and restarting pitool and steamvr etc)
- People aren’t aware that switching vr hmd’s who are long time users are basically trading in one reality for another. The experience is very different and a bit new.
- Early reviews are misleading. ‘The field of view effect’ is more complex than one might expect. We, as humans, are already adapted to natural wide field of view, but expect that same concept to be experienced in vr innately as a “wow factor”. Wide field of view is a “wow enabler”. It will take already impactful game experiences and make them much better.
How does FOV immerse me more in games?
FOV removes distractions. It delivers MORE of the worlds of virtual reality, and removes another layer of separation from the virtual world: unnatural black borders. And That is the ultimate goal of vr. To fix where traditional gaming failed in degrees of separation of the game world. This is the next step in immersion. And my experience has been that as time goes on with my use, I’ve come to appreciate it more as vr has become more of a portal to game developers imagination than ever before.
How does resolution allow me to read text clearer?
I’ve found that virtual desktop capture applications run fairly to very performance friendly and allow for immense super sampling. The combination of three things: the lowest sde, the highest in game resolution and highest super sampling values make text legibility viable for larger format screens. I’ve enjoyed using virtual desktops to 100 percent mod skyrim vr…in vr. Sometimes ill drop into bigscreen beta and sit in the back row and enjoy a movie while I mod skyrim lol.
Design:
Another first for pcvr, pimax’s lighting is great and matching my computers lighting, fairly common in gaming pc’s if not all of them. Nice move 
The headset itself is decently light and definitely improved upon the vive.
Wearing experience:
As soon as I attached my vive DAS, 6mm memory foam facepad, and purchased an Apache DAS strap, i will say the thing feels like a 360 degree head pillow. So wonderful here. Highly recommend the Apache adjunctive das strap. I really like it so much.
Image quality:
Apps like bigscreen beta, went from being kind of a fun little distraction are now an outright imax experience, except in some aspects, superior to a refractive projected image, which has natural bloom and light diffusion issues, where as pimax big screen does not. Also pimax will have a sharper image due to the fact a movie theater projected image is fundamentally inferior.
Once again what higher resolution is- is not a “wow factor”, but a “wow enabler”. If your playing high quality games, they just got a whole lot more impressive thanks to these screens.
Performance:
Better than I expected. Many times theres workarounds to play the games you love.
I play the forest vr, payday 2 vr, and modded skyrim a lot. With tons of mods mostly at 90 fps. Anything involved with achieving performance requires tweaking, so of course your going to want to research what works, and thats what i’m always doing.
I use:
Process lasso to manage priority, dedicate threads or whole cores, prevent identical processes from running etc.
Nvidia control panel to create game profiles for my games. Non unity and unreal games benefit twice as much from this.
Higher clock speeds.
I do wish I could play fallout but I just cant achieve 90fps.
I have a 1080ti, so I’m sure someone else needs it more than I do. I definitely will take this opportunity to mention about the quirks of switching [virtual] realities, and what pimax’s grandslam features do: remove entities between you and the gameworld, and and enable games to be more effective at touching you and visa versa.
Cheers!
