So as they say don’t jump up & down because it’s not what one wants to hear.
Sure please do! but you are taking words from him that he replied to me, it gets very foggy this way and it gets off topic also. He can speak for him self, that is wat i meant. I rather like he replies himself.
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Yeah I guess it’s very subjective. I don’t really care about the headphones or mic so to me Pimax is already Gen2. I feel like from where we started with consumer VR the Vive Pro is Gen1.5 and could have been 2 if they’d have attempted to increase the FOV even a little bit.
The tech is moving so fast. I can remember people laughing at the idea of having these headsets be wireless just a couple of years ago.
For me at the Vive launch i was expecting Gen 2 to be -
Wide FOV
Wireless
Body Tracking
Higher Resolution
But then we got wireless and body trackers for the Vive so the line is very blurry now 
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I do agree wide FoV is a gen2 feature as is hi-res. But we do expect more. Pimax has also nailed a good mic that doesn’t suck. After Sony released the psvr with that humanized headmount, rubber band head mounts seem wrong.
Pimax should simply make the deluxe headmount standard with the elastic as a backup/preference.
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When you say “humanized headmount” do you mean the halo kind? Or did PSVR get another version? I really didn’t like that design. I feel like I can’t get close enough to the lenses, where as with the elastic or Vive deluxe strap I can have the HMD pushed snuggly against my face.
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It is the next consumer release of upgraded core VR hardware. In my opinion.
Higher resolution, Lower SDE, Nearly double the Field of View.
Just those three things for a consumer device are probably on the most wanted list of current VR users which would give it a next generation classification. Other futuristic things like foveated rendering, eye tracking, finger tracking, GIGA rays, body tracking etc are technologies in progress that are yet to be proved.
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I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here.
Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t receive compensation for work I do for a website as a freelance writer? You do realize that’s how writers make a living, right?
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There should have always been two pages.
Tom’s Hardware is a US website. The UK version copies our articles and republishes the ones that are relevant to the UK. There seems to be a problem with the site, which we’re just learning about now. The people in charge have been notified. I have no idea when it will be fixed.
In the mean time, please refer to the US site to settle disputes.
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Well, that was not my point. I’m not trying to defend that Pimax is a 2nd gen headset, which depending on who you ask I think it is a heavily subjective perception.
My question is that if the argument is that you only have to take into account what’s available to you right now, not adding to the math future promises about technology, then why add gen 2 speculation tech not available right now for consumer to measure the actual value of a given headset.
Not trying to whine about the review, just want to understand the thinking behind it, because it could be seen as if there is some kind of double standard to measure.
Also, if you ask me as an individual what makes 2nd gen for me, well Wide FOV is one of the features, and you can’t buy a wide FOV headset today, not even StarVR atm (not even at 4000$), and that the tech already existed for a few years, doesn’t make it less exciting for me, Pimax is the first to market to have that feature, which in perspective to available headsets is a great step forward if you ask me.
All brands have tech in the lab that is ahead of what’s available, sure it is not new as a concept, but yes in pushing it to a consumer unit. Foreseeable technology is in marketing strategies now, so we wouldn’t be excited for anything then when it comes to our mortal user hands.
By the same argument, people can’t find revolutionary Face ID in the iPhone X, because Face identification tracking technology was available years ago, as if pushing it into a consumer device for the first time didn’t make it less exciting or bringing real time ray tracing to “consumer” cards is anything revolutionary because, well it is a well known rendering technology since years.
I think I get your point, but maybe a better approach would have been to fully value what the headset brings to the market in perspective to available headsets, but advising the consumer that maybe in a year or two that features could be widely available in other headsets, perfecting their application without current performance bottlenecks.
Again, not trying to diss your review, just trying to fully capture the thinking behind some points.
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@Pumcy: I guess part of the discussion is what we consider to be a second generation VR headset. The agrument about the ultra-wide FoV being available on the StarVR is a bit lame though, because we are talking of consumer VR, and in this area it was not available. Who knows what for other dedicated comemrcial or military headsets may be out there featuring stuff we all dream of - we wouldn’t want to say that what-ever happens in consumer VR in the coming 10 years is not next gen, because some military tech headset for 12,000$ had it already.
But on the general consideration of a second gen headset, I would classify it as one which brings about it improvements which in total are considered to be substantial enough to not just constitute a nice bump in specs which you will perhaps go for, perhaps not.
If I use this measuring stick, the Vive Pro and Samsung come up short because they mainly offer a bit better resolution & SDE.
The Pimaxes offer an even more increased resolution & clarity (5K+), even less noticable SDE & godrays, vastly improved sweetspot, and above all the dramatcially increased FoV (even if you better use the 150° option).
To me this package crosses the line of feeling substantial, a different experience.
Does this come at no price in terms of raw GPU perfomance required ? Of course not (the Vive Pro pushes systems too, right). But some of the testers proved that it can be put to work with an 1080Ti/2080 for many games, and once the know-how is out there as to how to tweak a given game, this is no longer rocket science.
Is it a polished, out of the box experience with no flaws - hell, no. But from what I remember from the V2 and read in the reports, the flaws are forgotten once you get immersed, just as we could immerse with the Vive & Rift and did not constantly only stare at the SDE and rip off the headset in disgust.
So once all is said & done, will the experience delivered by the headset remain more or less on par with the other competitors, say Vive (Pro), Rift, Samsung, or will it establish a new level of immersive experience ? That to me is the critical question.
If it is on another level, this makes it next gen for me. I am under the impression, that Pimax will deliver on that front.
If we had other headsets about to hit the market at consumer-level pricing which surpass the Pimaxes capabilities again, fine then add them to the discussion. But the mere fact that others are working on next gen headsets - why would that be relevant in our discussion if nothing is known yet ? Look at Abrash’s prediction update. It didn’t sound as if Oculus has any intention to release an insignificant update to the Rift - but the significant advancements only arrive in 2022. So for me it sounded pretty much as if he was subtlely letting us know to be prepared for another 4 years of wait for the successor. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they would bump the resolution in order to at least compete on the “very affordable” sector, but that wouldn’t push any limits at all, just be an attempt to not completely get left behind. However, irrespective of even better experiences coming in only 12 months or not - today the Pimaxes seem to set the standard.
It may not be VR 2.0 for the masses, but to the early adopters it may very well be the arrival of the substantial bump in overall performance we have been waiting for, with all the pain & cost early adopters are used to sustain in pursuit of the cutting edge. To them this could mark VR 2.0.
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Not at all,I was merely surprised by Poor quality of the review in general , GPU load Aside no comparisons about color ,black levels,SDE not even what resolution the headset renders at ,zero information Was this review for backers who already know all this stuff? It’s a sad thing when the main comparison of a headset comes down to a head strap .
No one has ever released a device with all those things. I would definitely say that would qualify as second gen.
Pimax is not the first to develop a headset with wide FOV 2.5K displays. It’s the first company to bring the price point down to a consumer attainable level, but at a cost. The rest of the device does not live up to the quality of first-gen headsets like the Vive and the Rift, and it lacks the types of improvements that the Vive Pro brought to the table as a Gen 1.5 device.
You guys are putting way too much stock in my opinion that Pimax shouldn’t label this a second-generation device. It’s just that, an opinion about their marketing.
The headset is fine, but it’s not better than a Vive or a Rift. It’s just different.
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What surprises me is that no distortion has been commented on.
@Pumcy, don’t you perceive any distortion at the edges or the “World Movement” effect?
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And those would be ? 
A nice improvement in resolution and SDE, but the Pimax goes beyond that. A tracking system improvement hardly any consumer will make use of ? The second camera ?!
I am really intruiged to learn about this…
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Well the microphone didn’t work for months so I guess that was an upgrade if you hate mouth breathers 
But yeah what else did it bring besides a slight resolution bump?
Is this what you thought your life would become growing up? Though something tells me you still are not quite grown up yet. Still, kinda…no, very, yes very pathetic.
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But it’s also very light, that is the goal of every headset
When the company selling you the device will work on a certain level of hardware, is should work on that hardware.
I did my review of the Rift with a barebones min-spec PC with a low-end i5 and a GTX 970 and every launch game ran just fine unless the specifications for the game suggested otherwise, like with Project Cars and Elite Dangerous.
That is not the case here. It may change over time with software improvements from Pimax, which is why I made sure the title said “Pre-Production” (which should tell readers that it’s not quite retail ready at this stage), but the performance numbers I saw suggest you won’t be able to play any game with the hardware that Pimax suggests. That absolutely plays into my opinion on the product, and I would think any reviewer would also consider those points and weigh their merit against the overall package.
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When your only argument against it is your gpu cant run it then you turn around and in the same breath say its not next gen you no longer have any clout as a tech reviewer. This whole article is a massive joke . Hes either getting paid off or needs to be fired because my 5 year old brother could make a better review of a product than this
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surely this is taking it a bit far. you dont think the resolution and fov make it better than og vive and rift?
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