i5 8600K @4.6GB
16GB Ram
m.2 SSD drives
1080ti
Pitool version .183
Bear in mind this is just my first few hours playing around with it, will have another go at it tomorrow night.
First impressions vs my current Oculus Rift @ 1.6 SS
SDE - much better than Oculus Rift, although it’s still noticeable in certain circumstances (i.e. jumping in ED when you stare at the light at the centre of the jump portal you can see a fine mesh or the pixel pattern, still a lot better than the rift though)
Clarity - default out of the box not great, but with pitool and steamvr tweaks, as well as playing around in game there are sweet spots to be found. I’ve found in game gfx settings need to be as high as you can possibly go to get the best results.
Colours and Blacks - not as good as rift but play around with brightness and the clarity tweaks seem to help a little too
Comfort - weirdly I found the 8K headstrap quite comfortable, although it didn’t seem to stay in the same position all the time. Looking forward to the improved strap with headphones.
Issues so far:
Lighthouse tracking: Can’t get lighthouse tracking working, lighthouse recognised and working in both SteamVr and PiTool and I’ve tried everything in the wiki short of a windows reinstall but no joy, when I start steamvr I get compositor not running error -203. Fixes for that don’t seem to work either.
IPD adjustment - I really need to figure this out, it might be part of the blurriness issue I’m getting, can’t get it to feel just right.
Wobble/World Movement - With no basestation tracking HMD Gyros only (it’s like the acceleration is miscalculating), if i move my head left, it’s like the world in front of me jumps to the right, up/down etc. The world doesn’t seem to be static. This is very distracting sometimes, but at other times when I’m just concentrating fully on the game I don’t notice it so much. This is not just a small movement, it is very noticeable. I’m going to do a support call on Saturday to sort this out
You should be able to see more detail with the 8K but you should expect to see some slight blur (from upscaling). If it appears that the Rift is clearer, then you probably need to adjust the placement/IPD of the headset.
Got mine today and I have to say I had a better experience. Downloaded 181_95, ran the installer, plugged everything in and it worked. Lighthouses got recognised, controllers paired and I was in a Ferrari at Spa within 20 minutes.
There was a firmware update last week for the lighthouses, don’t know if that or the different Pitool driver makes a difference? Regarding your experience without the lighthouses, I was trying a back to back comparison where I was using the Vive then shut down Steam VR, started Pitool and the 8K and then Steam VR again. It couldn’t connect to the lighthouses at this time so was only on gyros, which isn’t a concern but turning my head the VR world stayed still but moving was tracked exactly by the scene which leads me to believe you may have a driver issue. I haven’t tried checking for firmware updates and I would guess you are on the same version as me. Do you get correct tracking in the Pitool planet VR scene?
The colours may not be quite so vivid but the SDE is slightly better than the Vive Pro I tried from memory and certainly better than my Vive. The FOV is amazing, can’t believe how much more natural it feels.
I’m getting support on Saturday. My wife won’t let me take time off work (and tbh we have auditors in so not really convenient).
The wobble is very obvious, even in the PiTool planet VR scene. If I move my head the world moves quicker in the opposite direction as if the acceleration of my head is being reported incorrectly by the gyros (if that makes sense)
Run PiTool Render high - Run SteamVR Video Render on Auto and App Render on 100% and see how it goes.
Seems clearer with higher PiTool Render settings.
You could also play around with SteamVR settings to get a multiple of 1440 on the Vertical resolution i.e. 2880 or if your GPU/CPU can handle it 5760.
Try with AA but depends on what apps you are testing. New PiTool on its way soon (I hope).
No, I’ve been using a Rift. I got a single lighthouse from ebay for use with the 8k as most of my gaming is seated. To be honest having used it without lighthouses last night, if I can sort the wobble out I’m not sure what benefit LH tracking will bring me.
Made a little progress tonight, but my GPU won’t go above 90% usage whatever I do.
Elite Dangerous - everything on ultra looks brilliant
PC2 - I tried lots of different settings, the only thing that improve clarity was in the in game super sampling multiplier, I moved this up to 1.7, everything on high, still just under 90% GPU usage…
Tried different combos of PiTool 1, 1.25 and 1.5, then adjusted the steamVr sliders to get as close as possible to the 1440 multiples. Nothing really seemed to make much difference to be honest.
That’s not really an indicator of a problem per se; 90% usage could for instance mean your GPU simply doesn’t need to run at full utilisation to render what has been requested, or it could mean that your GPU doesn’t have the power to render what has been requested and so it has fallen back to something within its power “budget”, as it were. I.e. dropped to lower frame rates, essentially.
Should be rare to see flat 100% GPU usage in frame-limited scenarios for this reason; the GPU will always either have too much work to do, or not enough. This situation changes when you throw technologies like Brainwarp into the mix, of course.
I think my 8K is going to arrive on Friday. I haven’t gotten a notice from Pimax yet (no surprise), but according to UPS My Choice, I have a 6.6 lb package on the way (shipped from Latham, NY). I’m not expecting anything else, but it’s possible that my wife ordered something. Fingers crossed!
