Seems like an important featurre, especially because I think it’s what shuts off the lighthouses. If not @deletedpimaxrep1 how does the pimax shut off lighthouses?
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Not only this, but can we have some confirmation on the lenght of the headset´s cable ?
I hope it have at least a good 3 meters.
Length has been stated as 5 Meters.
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I’m not sure that’s long enough. 
Seriously though, that is probably more than most need.
My lighthouse is in the wall, I don’t know how I will turn it off if the Bluetooth doesn’t.
That actually makes me wonder which version of Bluetooth they will be using?
@deletedpimaxrep1 would you be able to tell us?
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It’s working fine, remotely turnig on/off 2 lighthouses , 3rd one using with thrustmaster racing wheel
Yes, the break out box will look very sexy…like this
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@bacon please explain this feature @aesopfabled @Kopa referred, thanks.
I think this would be a deal breaker for me if it doesn’t come with one. If it doesn’t, is it possible to just plug the 8k into the vive breakout box?
It’s not possible as the Vive breakout box takes HDMI in, it’s crucial that PiMax has a breakout box, room scale VR is much harder without it, also the need to turn off the base stations wirelessly have to exist.
@aesopfabled @Kopa, sorry, I can’t find any HTC breakout box informations, could you share us the product picture. For HTC VIVE lighthouse What I saw is the user has to unplug the power.
@bacon Wirelessly turning off the base stations is a SteamVR feature and has been from the very start, very concerning if you don’t have this, we absolutely do not want to have to pull the plug on our base stations.
Even if the headset won’t have a physical breakout box, which would be really bad in my opinion, it still has to support basic SteamVR features such as this.
This is a drawing of the breakout box
A breakout box would indeed be a good accessory. The base station suspend feature is based on a fairly ordinary bluetooth module, you should be able to replace that with a usb dongle if you don’t already have bluetooth in a wifi card or similar, but that’s if the base stations themselves support this feature. If they’re Valve’s design, they should, as it’s the same way they do wireless firmware updates.
For the breakaway feature, you’d want something a little more complicated. It would include a DisplayPort retransmitter with its own equalizers to support the added cable on the PC side, and preferably use mini DisplayPort on at least one side (the Vive one does, as an alternative to the PC side HDMI) since that doesn’t have the retaining hooks the full size connector has. Also, 8K-X users would require double connections.
This module will be fairly costly, if done right. And if it isn’t done right it will harm signal integrity causing difficult to diagnose malfunctions. The functionality is similar to an active extender cable, but a quick lookup of those led to things based on scalers, which will not work with VR headsets due to restricted mode support. Also, large region setups will require completely different solutions such as VR backpacks.
yes, this box I know and we have a sample, it is a power supply for HMD, can’t control the basestation. but it seems not your displayed version.
It also has a Bluetooth receiver in it to communicate with light houses to shut them off and turn them on.
![http://www.thefavourboxshop.co.uk/ekmps/shops/favourboxshop/images/sexy-pink-favour-box-[2]-121-p.jpg](http://www.thefavourboxshop.co.uk/ekmps/shops/favourboxshop/images/sexy-pink-favour-box-%5B2%5D-121-p.jpg){kind=link}
Done well it could enhance the signal, perform antialiasing, and shut off or activate the lighthouses. Done poorly it will add horrible delay. It should also be noted that the breakout box is inexpensive, and protects the cord from ripping out of your graphics card and potentially damaging it.
Erm… antialiasing is one of those latency adding features that don’t actually improve the signal. The kind you could do on the image itself is FXAA style (but worse, since depth information is missing), which is infamous for blurring (it’s literally just guessing what sharpness doesn’t belong, and expect a scaler to reduce that guessing to “all”). The 8K already has a scaler, adding more in front will only cause cumulative artifacting. The GPU, meanwhile, can do all those algorithms at much smaller cost, as well as smarter ones; the issue is the bottleneck in transmitting to the 8K model.
The breakaway protection and cable extension are the main features here.
Linus tech tips found a post process aa cable that they said they’d never think but was actually excellent. Not only does the breakout box protect your gpu, but it also shuts down or turns. On your lighthouses.