Pimax VR HMD review NDA embargo lifts: not great news for sim racers

[Mascot]

Testers are now allowed to release reviews of the final hardware, and while the Pimax units are undoubtedly a step forward for VR (higher resolution, wider FoV), the bad news seems to be that they're likely to struggle to provide adequate framerates in sim racing (even with powerful 8700k/1080ti combos). Doubts also remain about the effectiveness of Pimax's reprojection/ASW solution.

Assetto Corsa benchmarks at about 1hr 15 mins timestamp:

More reviews:

Foveated rendering can't come quickly enough, it seems.
The wider FoV for better peripheral vision in sim racing is was what got me excited about the Pimax in the first place, but it seems like PC hardware might need a couple more generations to adequately power the displays (or HMD tech needs to find efficiency solutions) before sim racing can truly benefit from this. Maybe one card per eye is required?

Anyone here backing the Pimax Kickstarter or getting ready to preorder?

 

[RobertR1]

SDE comparison

5k+ with a higher FOV will be amazing. Imainge even looking around in the cockpit of the cars with that clarity or being able to read the LCD of the RSR!

 

[Mascot]

SDE comparison

5k+ with a higher FOV will be amazing. Imainge even looking around in the cockpit of the cars with that clarity or being able to read the LCD of the RSR!

Yeah, the 5k+ seems to be the clear winner. Why would anyone keep their 8k pledge now?

 

[anton_Chez]

The SDE effect is slightly less noticeable on the 8K, I can definitely see that. The thing is, to me, if I cannot run the thing, what's the point? I am with Mascot now in saying that spending even a little time with the Rift coming off of a screen, you get used to the SDE to the point that you don't even notice it anymore. With an SS value of around 1.5 the image cleans up enough to help hide it, to me anyway. What does need improving, however, is exactly what the 5K+ will dominate in. That's the little text, the dials, the fine details of the cockpit and the dash that you actually get to make use of when in VR. Every car has it's own Motec for the most part (depending on the age of the car and also the sim you're driving it in) and it's amazing to be able to flick through the display and check the status of your vehicle, lap times, relatives and so on. I love it. That's probably the main reason I'm choosing the 5K over the 8K, of course with the performance requirements taken into account as well. I was so ready to pull the trigger on the 5K at pledge time, but the way they sold it, it made no sense to me because it wasn't like I was trying to save 100 bucks. I wanted the better HMD and I felt that the way they were describing the way the screens worked (which we now see is exactly what I was thinking in the first place) sounded like the 5K was the go.

I was also weary of performance issues back then, another reason why I was happy to settle for the 5K. Now it's all come full circle and exactly what I thought a year ago has happened.

The NUMBER ONE thing you need in VR is a smooth and consistent frame rate. For sim racing anyway. If I get that with a wider FOV and slightly better image with a MASSIVE improvement to text and fine details I'll be more than happy. I can't believe how sick the dials look in those screens though. They will look even better in real time.

 

[Steve D]

I'm with @anton_Chez and @Mascot on the SDE front. When I'm out on an actual track, my crash helmet restricts peripheral vision anyway and so moving 'the old noggin' is par for the course and good practice. As a result I've never felt the Rift's SDE restrictive and thought the narrow field of view didn't do a bad job of representing real world conditions anyway and therefore adding to immersion. Saying that I only use VR for racing sims and nothing else.

That near detail from the 5K+ though is very impressive indeed and would be very welcome. But that's not enough for me as I can live with what I'm getting at the moment, which is serviceable in the main. For me personally I want better clarity and detail in the distance, allowing me to spot apexes and braking points earlier and to work out what those in front of me are doing and having those extra nano-seconds to react. When that's offered and frame rates still remain high and consistent, that's the day I'll jump away from the CV1. At the moment I'm 100% happy with the Rift, (in conjunction with my oc'd 8700k and 1080Ti it has to be said) having become completely used to it after the initial shock of moving from triple monitor resolution and high, rock solid FPS. I don't want to make the mistake I made when the Vive Pro launched, having been caught caught up in the hype and hoping it would give me better clarity near and far, even if my expectations weren't set that high. I returned it a week later as it simply wasn't worth the money and I could see very little fidelity gain, if any, over the Rift with my SS settings at 1.7 - 1.9 depending on sim.

So once again I'll wait for actual user-reviews and opinions from the sim-racing community and if they are positive then no doubt I will once again fall foul of @anton_Chez's 'Derren Brown' like ability to get me to willingly open my wallet without offering any resistance whatsoever!

 

[Mascot]

(in conjunction with my oc'd 8700k and 1080Ti it has to be said)

My 6600k/980Ti combo has been pretty great, letting me run high settings and 1.5 SS in vanilla Assetto Corsa with good-sized grids. I think it'll struggle with ACC though (and it already does need a slight tweak running night races with Ilja's shader mod), so I've had half an eye on upgrading to an 8700k and 1080Ti. It's not necessary as such, but then again, neither is most of my sim racing kit.
I need to exercise a little restraint, I think.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Do you have an Odyssey currently? How do you like it for simracing?

I'm itching to move off the rift and it looks like my only options are Odyssey or Pimax 5k+ dependent on the release date.

Love it, also there is Odyssey+ in work, you can wait for that one.

 

[vegaguy5555]

Popular opinion seems to favour the 5k+ over the 8k. Sharper image, deeper blacks, less of a performance hog. The extra resolution of the 8k might be better for sims though.

Can't we down sample with too much pixels instead of super sampling with not enough pixels?

 

[Mascot]

Love it, also there is Odyssey+ in work, you can wait for that one.

Resolution and FoV remain the same as the current Odyssey, but there might be tech in there to reduce SDE.

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/samsung-hmd-odyssey-plus-release-date-price-specs-3533320

 

[Furnace Inferno]

Can't we down sample with too much pixels instead of super sampling with not enough pixels?

You could but like with any display if you run below native resolution that’s not a direct multiple like 720p on a 1080p tv then things start getting blurry. So whilst you’d have minimal SDE it wouldn’t be as sharp.

 

[vegaguy5555]

you mean "upscaled to 8k" in the first sentence.

I dont think it could look worse than a native image on the 5K. The screens have the same physical dimensions. And the SDE improvement alone is a big quality jump regardless of aliasing.

Its a good point. We have to wait for more impressions.

Doesn't more pixels equal less aliasing no matter what sampling you're running? HD is actually quite good. It's the screen door which causes aliasing that's the problem because we are looking at the center of the HD screen with magnifying glasses. So we are throwing away a lot of screen because that's just how VR works. Its not the same as watching an HD TV across the your livingroom.

 

[RobertR1]

Doesn't more pixels equal less aliasing no matter what sampling you're running? HD is actually quite good. It's the screen door which causes aliasing that's the problem because we are looking at the center of the HD screen with magnifying glasses. So we are throwing away a lot of screen because that's just how VR works. Its not the same as watching an HD TV across the your livingroom.

SDE in VR seems to be relatively straight forward in that it’s reales to the pixel density of the lenses.

This makes sense if we take the Pimax as a perfect example. The 5k+ has great clarity and PQ over the 8k due to lack of scaling but the pixel density of the lenses of the 8k means the SDE effect is lowered regardless of anything the 5k+ does better.

 

[vegaguy5555]

So when is release?

 

[anton_Chez]

(in conjunction with my oc'd 8700k and 1080Ti it has to be said)

My 6600k/980Ti combo has been pretty great

OK, so here's a question. I am in the middle here. I have a 6600K running at 4.5Ghz, and a 1080Ti, that boosts to nearly 2Ghz. I was wondering today, would there be a benefit in me going for the i7 variant here, in regards to sim racing and even VR more specifically. I've always stuck with the i5 tier CPU's because they were always recommended for gaming and i7 pushed more as gaming with a bit of production work also.

Now I am on the fence of just upping the CPU as well to the more capable i7 but I am not sure if I'll see any benefit in what I want it for. Sure I could stream and maybe render some video but I don't want it for that. It would be nice to have someone that's made the jump specifically for what we do here. I'm going to do some searching tomorrow but first hand experience is a pretty good way to judge.

Can't we down sample with too much pixels instead of super sampling with not enough pixels?

You could, but image quality is obviously going to suffer. The question remains, by how much? Considering the 8K needs 150% more pixels rendered than the 5K+ to achieve an equal image, I'm not so sure that's a good idea with this headset.

I have a 4K monitor. I don't really need it, but you know, anton. So in the event that I want to gain back some frames, I can actually run things at 1440p pretty good. The image is almost indistinguishable from my native 1440p monitor I came from. That's the result of a good scaler. My 1440p monitor on the other hand, didn't handle 1080p so well (back in the day when the jump to 1440p was like moving to 4K now) and made the image a little blurrier than if the screen were running native. I only really play fighting games now outside of sim racing, so for me, high refresh is a waste because games are locked to 60hz anyway (not because of console, but because fighting game frame data assumes the games all run at 60hz) and most of them are not that intensive that I cannot run full 2160p.

The moral of the story, is that it depends on the individual hardware. Some will handle it well and others not so well. I'm sure we'll have people either rapped that the 8K can run less resolution and not look that bad, gaining back FPS, or spewing that they didn't go the 5K+ when they had the chance. I'll be selling one of my HMD's come Christmas time (provided I recieve my backer reward by then) I just don't know yet which one it will be.

 

[Mascot]

OK, so here's a question. I am in the middle here. I have a 6600K running at 4.5Ghz, and a 1080Ti, that boosts to nearly 2Ghz. I was wondering today, would there be a benefit in me going for the i7 variant here, in regards to sim racing and even VR more specifically. I've always stuck with the i5 tier CPU's because they were always recommended for gaming and i7 pushed more as gaming with a bit of production work also.

Now I am on the fence of just upping the CPU as well to the more capable i7 but I am not sure if I'll see any benefit in what I want it for. Sure I could stream and maybe render some video but I don't want it for that. It would be nice to have someone that's made the jump specifically for what we do here. I'm going to do some searching tomorrow but first hand experience is a pretty good way to judge.

I know naff-all about these types of things to be honest but my 6600k seems to be the bottleneck in my system, if the fact that it's consistently running at a higher percentage usage than my 980Ti is the way these things are judged. I really must have a go at overclocking it at some point but I just know it'll probably burst into flames, rip itself out of the case and do a poo on my pillow.

 

[Steve D]

I know naff-all about these types of things to be honest but my 6600k seems to be the bottleneck in my system, if the fact that it's consistently running at a higher percentage usage than my 980Ti is the way these things are judged. I really must have a go at overclocking it at some point but I just know it'll probably burst into flames, rip itself out of the case and do a poo on my pillow.

That I5 6600k is a cracking chipset mate, even today so there may be a fair bit more juice to be had. I'm no expert and keep my overclocking simple but if you haven't already done so and depending to some extent on the default set up state of your motherboard, you should be able to OC that 'mofo' (and still achieve good temps and excellent stability), to anything between 4.4 to 4.8 GHz (if lucky), set via CPU Clock Speed / Ratio, i.e 44, 45, 46, 47,48 etc and by using a safe CPU core voltage of between 1.335V-1.375V. You might also want to look at your memory profile settings (for example is XMP available to you?) but best bet is to keep it simple and take one step at a time.

There's plenty of good info available online or stick a post in the Computech section and ask for some advice as I'm sure plenty have tweaked that chipset because it was pretty straightforward to do so with some very significant results over base.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

This is quite alarming picture. With such low settings and resolution it can't hit 90fps on AC bench?
What's wrong?

These are my settings for Odyssey, I am using 250% SS which is 2 x 2253x2816, and it runs bench at constant 90fps without even breaking a sweat. 1080Ti with i7-5930K
Is it some software optimization problem?

 

[Dan Costa]

Its his GPU. His cpu isn't doing that great either.

here its doing better: jump to 2h02m

 

[Mascot]

What is Pimax's 'normal FoV' in actual degrees, horizontally and vertically, and how does it compare to the Rift?

 

[Dan Costa]

What is Pimax's 'normal FoV' in actual degrees, horizontally and vertically, and how does it compare to the Rift?

large = ~170º
normal = ~150º
small = ~120º

small is 10~20º bigger than the rift

 

[anton_Chez]

I know naff-all about these types of things to be honest but my 6600k seems to be the bottleneck in my system

Yeah I'm wondering if it's worth the upgrade. If it smooths out the experience in VR and also makes up for some of the poor optimisation in some of the mod tracks we run it would certainly be worth it to me. Also, even just for running AI cars while practicing it could prove beneficial. I'll have to find some comparisons and see.