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The Pimax 8K MEGA Thread - First Reviews Now live

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
I've been on the fence about this and have some reservations about build quality and performance under heavy load, but for me the positives outweigh the negatives and I guess many others feel the same way. Now I never backed the Rift during its Kickstarter campaign (unfortunately) but I assume the feeling is similar where you're helping to forge the future of VR in some way, or at least like to think so. I consider myself an enthusiast and not the majority, therefore what's another £600 to experience the latest  in VR. Sadly, having Samsung not release the Odyssey here in the UK left me with an itchy wallet finger, a void that needed filling and with GO not releasing until next year either I thought the Pimax 8K will scratch the itch and might just prove to be pretty good too. I'm excited for it.

There is always going to be skepticism and no doubt a number of people will suggest I am backing a paperweight but, that's ok it's fully understandable to have those feelings and that prediction is always a possibility. But... if someone doesn't take the risk and we all play it safe, how can VR move forwards - I guess we've already taken risks with past VR investments in some way or another including with the Rift. I've never claimed any loyalty to anyone having owned The Gear VR (still have that knocking around somewhere) DK2, Vive, Rift, PSVR and come next year Pimax will be added to the list. However, I am interested like many of you agreed in the poll we did here a while back that certain things were important to improve on what we have now and it seems the Pimax 8K is offering some of those things on paper. 

I think once you can look past the silly marketing name (8K) and the hammerhead shark design and focus on what's inside, this HMD offers something many claimed they would like in the past but are not prepared to trust Pimax to deliver. I think a number of people would rather wait for a more established company (like Oculus) to offer a similar experience further down the line. All very understandable. But I am impatient, and whilst I use my Rift quite often I want more of what VR can offer sooner rather than later. 

So, (and the main reason for this post) is come Feb 2018 some point in 2018 I will gladly post impressions and comparisons without hyperbole and answer questions any of you might have. That said, I expect many others at the time will post their impressions also so there should be plenty of opinions going around from various sources.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
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kojack
MVP
MVP
The rift has a native resolution of 2160x1200 (or 1080x1200x2, both have the same pixel count).

Pixel density isn't a direct multiple of this. 1.0 doesn't mean 2160x1200 and 2.0 doesn't mean 4320x2400.
Pixel density is the desired ratio of texels to pixels in the centre of each eye after the post processing distortion phase. Due to the barrel distortion done in the distortion phase, you need to have a higher resolution (centre pixels are bulged larger than outer pixels).

To achieve 1:1 ratio of rendered texels to panel pixels (this is pixel density 1.0), you need to render at 1.23 times the native res. (DK2 lenses needed 1.5 times, DK1 was around 1.7 I think)
So setting the density to 1.0 means your game is really rendering at 2664x1586 (the panel is of course still 2160x1200).
Pixel density 2.0 means two full texels (per axis) per panel pixel in the centre of your eye, which means the game is rendering at 5328x3172.  Get out your calculator and you'll see that 5328x3172 is 16,900,416.

So when it comes to performance, the Pimax 8K X sounds like it will require extreme hardware. But anybody who can run a rift game at density 2.0 is already doing a bigger GPU hit.

Potential vertex pipeline hit due to wide fov, however, is a discussion for another time (I'm at work).

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

Zenbane
MVP
MVP


But... if someone doesn't take the risk and we all play it safe, how can VR move forwards



Innovation has occurred since the dawn of man... without Kickstarter being around. In fact, Kickstarter only works because someone invented the Internet. And it didn't take a Kickstarter campaign to do it: all that was required was hard work and dedication.

I wish you the best with your investment; but to me the best way to take risk is to be part of the innovation directly -  behind-the-scenes putting in blood, sweat, and tears. Kickstarter feels far more about a marketing campaign than true sacrifice. Sending a check isn't taking a risk. Much like paying a Church won't guarantee a place in Heaven.

Wmacky
Protege
Can the controllers, and trackers be bought separately so that less initial risk is taken if nothing ships? Did you get the full package?

kzintzi
Trustee

snowdog said:

Will be interested to see what you think about it. I don't think you've taken too much of a risk because they delivered on their first Kickstarter with their first generation headset.

I'm going to wait and see what Oculus come up with in 2019/2020 before I get my second generation headset I think, and I might even wait a year after it's released to take advantage of any inevitable price cuts.


going to do likewise - the wife is already looking at me sideways coz of what the Rift cost me when I was bleeding edge :smiley:
Though you are more than slightly incoherent, I agree with you Madam,
a plum is a terrible thing to do to a nostril.

Protocol7
Heroic Explorer
I am glad there are impatient people like you! Eagerly awaiting your review.

Tom's Hardware got to use a prototype of the so-called 8K, they seem reasonably pleased with what they saw. Supposedly there was no perceptible SDE and no weird FOV stretching, the Pimax rep claimed SteamVR was doing the FOV natively and they mentioned a new improved prototype will be at New York VR Expo.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/pimax-8k-vr-headset-trial,35745.html

If it's true then it seems Pimax is actually fixing the problems with their design.

kojack
MVP
MVP
They might be using an updated demo. Until recently, OpenVR didn't support eyes that aren't aiming the same direction. With standard rendering, it's impossible to have 200 degrees with directly forward facing eyes, because one side clipping plane would be going forwards and one would be going backwards. You need the eyes to aim outwards to cover that fov. OpenVR had no support for that, and no OpenVR games would be able to do it (since OpenVR never gave them per eye orientation). It's now added, but games need to be updated to get that data.

Half assing early demos by using stretched OpenVR was a really bad idea. They should have had custom demos from the beginning that did things correctly.

Hehe, there was another chinese VR headset that was using a demo I wrote as part of their campaign. They offered me a free headset, but I didn't take them up on it. I wonder what ever happened to them? I can't even remember it's name.

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

Zenbane
MVP
MVP

kojack said:

Until recently, OpenVR didn't support eyes that aren't aiming the same direction




lol - wha??



kojack
MVP
MVP
Kind of. 🙂

The pimax screens aren't coplanar, they are angled. But OpenVR assumed all screens (and therefore the projection onto them) were coplanar. So they didn't tell the game which direction a camera should be aimed to match each screen, it would just be the orientation of the whole headset.
But they added IVRServerDriverHost::TrackedDeviceDisplayTransformUpdated which gives the full transform of each eye. This lets you do either:
- support pimax correctly
- make the world's first chameleon simulator

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

Siilk
Adventurer

kojack said:

- make the world's first chameleon simulator



Ok, now I'm interested.

Shadowmask72
Honored Visionary
@Zenbaneator. Of course I agree there are people innovating behind the scenes without  investment or need for public funding. But I think with the rise of things like Kickstarter it provides a much greater incentive to see things through especially for smaller companies or individuals. It can remove the need to then pitch an idea to another company/bank to get funding. It offers some commitment from the general public that the ideas being worked on have potential to be a tangible product. It perhaps strokes the ego a little of those creating giving them a greater sense of accomplishment for their efforts before releasing a product.  I think this is a good thing even if the conduit is laced in potential for disaster (for those funding).

As we all know though and through personal experience or otherwise things can go sour so it's not all smelling of roses. Events can turn out to be quite a nasty process whether that's creators taking the money and spending it all on cocaine and hookers. Or failing to deliver the product on time and when it does arrive is not as described or is simply shit!

That said, I believe in this instance Pimax are likely using Kickstarter as a marketing tool more than an actual need (someone mentioned a pre-order scheme which sounds about right). I mean, look at their measly $200,000 initial funding goal. I believe that decision was purely tactical especially when compared to their lofty stretch goal targets figures. 

I fully understand the skepticism towards Pimax and Kickstarter, but where's the fun if there is no risk!  And if those words do come back to haunt me, then so be it.  :'(

And that potato gif.  Where on earth do you dig up such things? (not forgetting the delightful pencil face). Forget Masters of the Universe, Masters of the Internet is more fitting if we're calling a spade a spade.


System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.