Our time in theBlue was spent in the Abyss scene, where you visit the bottom of the ocean to see the bio luminous creatures that live down there. The scene starts off in the pitch black, which allowed us to see how well the LCD panel handles dark scenes. The custom LCD panel shouldn’t be as good as an AMOLED display at producing black, but it did better than we would have expected. The dark scenes were sufficiently dark to make the Abyss scene convincing. We were also quite impressed with the contrast levels of the panels. theBlue is always a neat experience, but that game really didn’t do any justice to the Pimax headset’s wide field of view.
Fruit Ninja gave us a better perspective of the color reproduction of the custom displays and what the wide field of view really has to offer. The colors were vibrant, and the whole scene was bright, and the extra viewable area gave us a significant advantage in the game. Normally, when you play Fruit Ninja, you must turn your head from side to side to see all the fruit flying in the air. With the Pimax 8K headset, everything was within view at all times.
Next we fired up Bigscreen beta. We wanted to try that experience to see how text would appear with the Pimax 8K. We expected incredible clarity in the menu systems and the 2D desktop window, but we were somewhat let down. The two 4K panels should theoretically produce crisp text, but alas, it was still a blurry mess. We’ve never seen another virtual theater with such a crisp movie screen, though.
We’ve seen a lot of discussion online about the image in the Pimax headset being stretched, with people suggesting that games are rendered at the same FOV as the Vive and then stretched. We did not observe such characteristics, and the Pimax representative told us that SteamVR handles the native FOV of the headset.
Has text readability been improved in the last version?
We’ve read reports online from people who have tried the Pimax 8K prototype and suggested that SDE is still a concern. In our experience, the Pimax 8K headset doesn’t suffer from SDE at all, and we looked hard to try to perceive any hint of the subpixel grids. We also queried a few other people who tried the headset, and no one we spoke to at Immersed had any concerns about screen door effect.
So many good reviews, i will increase my meds, just in case
If the text blurriness is because of the IPD misadjustment, we should see even greater testimonials. And of course the 8k-X will be supreme in text reproduction.
Could possibly be the way BigScreenBeta was rendering I’ve found there are great differences in how games and apps render having both the Vive and Rift since launch. Pimax may want to try Virtual Desktop to see if there is any difference. I found the desktop apps equally, not blurry, but not sharp as a monitor in my rift and vive.
“During our time with the headset, the screen went dead on us a handful of times. We’re not sure what caused the problem”
"The prototype that we tried featured a soft foam cushion with cloth
backing, and it seems like Pimax plans to stick with that design. We
made a comment about the foam getting sweaty after intense use, and the
company rep said that additional foam cushions would be available. We
would still prefer to see something like a leather-wrapped cover for the
production model. " @Matthew.Xu
Pimax could improve the quality of it, please.
Can you guys clarify something, are the 8k and 8kx using the same panels? And why the 8k could not be able to turn off the upscaler and displays images rendered at the full resolution of the panels?
now I’m wonder if my vr cover 6mm foam replacement for Vive will fit somehow… even if I have to cut a bit its better to have leather touching face than sweaty nasty foam.
The 8K will always have up-scaling because it would require 2 display port connections in order to provide native 4K to each eye (which is why there is an 8K and an 8K X). AFAIK, the bandwidth (the amount of data that can be transferred) over a single display port cable is simply too high to provide enough data to fill both displays at native 4K (which is why the HMD features a hardware level upscaler in the first place).
Essentially, the 8K was designed in the way it was to allow for less powerful graphics cards to use this product. Instead of needing a top of the line GPU, you can use one that’s a bit older/less powerful. If you want full 4K for each eye, the only solution is to buy an 8K X (and you very well may need SLI GTX 1080 Ti’s or something of equal/greater power to even run it, which is out of the question for the average consumer).
@brian91292 It’s not quite true about 2 single DP cables . Don’t forget about brainwarp tech. So you only sending 1x 4k at the time over cable. And Pimax already mention on this forum that they are checking possibility of using only 1 DP for X version and upgrading Pimax 8k to to native input 4k per eye in the future…
@brian91292 is right. The bandwidth required to feed two 4K panels is higher than one DP can provide. Brainwarp is the way the images are rendered (and displayed) but it does not change the required bandwidth. It still remains to be 2x 4K resolution @ 90 FPS.
With the text in Bigscreen should drasticly better in the new prototype. The prototype at Immersed is the old model without the ipd adjustment.
Without the ipd adjustment fine details will have blurring as the convergence of the 2 images is not going to have perfect alignment if user ipd doesn’t match. We should have confirmation on this once reviews are in from the US tour this week.
The problem to get native 4k per eye as your saying & possibly have the upscaler you would need to wait for the full commercial release of the 8k-X.
Something the team might be able to do for 8k-X might be a linkbox of sorts to combine 2 dp outputs to 1 single or dual extender outputs. Maybe even after they have explored it might be able to create & offer a linkbox with upscaler built in.
Now with a question someone had about a kit to upgrade the 5k to 8k. I recall PiMax mentioning to send them your 5k in & they would upgrade it to the 8k (for a fee for sure). So with that it is likely that they will offer the same for 8k to 8k-X.
Also @LoneTech would having a box that uses dual dp in to single out work to extend range? Have box have 2DP in, 2 Usb-C in 1DP out & 2usb. 3.0/C out. Work to extend range?
Maybe even have it compatable with Hdmi converter adapters as input.
As a different sku an optional 5k model could add an upscaler add support for cards like 1060/970 cards.
Hi @Heliosurge
We’ve noticed that some people recently talked about upgrading 8k to 8kX, but we can’t provide it now. We may offer such a solution in the future, only to provide our kickstarter users. Think of it as a reward for our backers activities. Thank you
its better to have leather touching face than sweaty nasty foam.
