Elite Dangerous Pimax 5K+ benchmarks with 1080ti

[TorTorden_VR]

As for trouble shooting tips,

I have been tinkering with pc's for nearly 30 years.
When guys working tech support, need tech support, they call me .

I have been through it all three times over last night and this is not in a particular order, various USB ports, including my inateck usb3 expansion card, updated drivers, tried the other dp ports either works flawlessly for my monitor, lifeless on the 5k+.

Removed all overclocks, rebooted umphteen times, and re-installed Pitool on several occasions.

Not once has I gotten more than a second's flicker of light out of the right panel.

At this point I'm rather despondent, not so much in anything particular I guess I somewhat deep down wanted this to be awesome.

And the cabin, AC fan broke on the car as well yesterday, it's currently -5c and the windshield fogs over in about two minutes, just adding to the fun and my current mindset.

It's mostly just the panels not turning on at all, I could see the HMD tracking in the steam vr mirror when I tested that.

In my guess apart from some severely corrupted firmware or something this is a hardware issue, or completely broken cable.

I'l fire off a support request with Pimax when I can get around to it.

 

[Herbrand]

Sorry to hear this! Hope they'll be able to sort it for you, from what I hear they are not too fussy about sending out replacements.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Sorry to hear this! Hope they'll be able to sort it for you, from what I hear they are not too fussy about sending out replacements.

Yeah here's hoping.
Luckily I'm getting more patient in my middle age
And as a Kickstarter backer I'm not at all surprised there more issues than a regular production batch.
I pledged fully prepared to practically being a beta tester.



At least they had solved the import issue.
Another one from my country received his with the declared value of £1200.
but since Norway isn't in the Eu we don't pay VAT centrally but as the package goes over the border so he got a bill for vat of nearly £450.

He is getting a refund easily enough, but that's a bureaucratic rig-a-morole nobody enjoys.

 

[erbse-1]

Thank you for the detailed benchmarking. My pimax8k arrived a week ago. I have noticed that this massive downsampling with large FOV is due to the enabled parallel projection. In games where you can disable it, the big FOV works.

What amazed me the most is the fact that 42 fps + are as fluid as my lenovo explorer with motion smoothing.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Genuinely sorry to hear that Tor, you must be really gutted after all the suspense of waiting for it to turn up and being excited to try it out. I know i would be.

Hope it gets sorted fast for you mate [up]

 

[Desert63]

On the Rift you could use OculusDebugTool . On Steam fpsVR is good.

fpsVR is excellent.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Genuinely sorry to hear that Tor, you must be really gutted after all the suspense of waiting for it to turn up and being excited to try it out. I know i would be.

Hope it gets sorted fast for you mate [up]

In contact with support so I'm sure something comes of it, will just take time.
For now I'm distracting myself with the arrival of the potentially new co-pilot.

A six month old, shelter rescue Tomcat that arrived yesterday.

 

[Vtskr]

Results are pretty depressing.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Results are pretty depressing.

Yeah, its unplayable for me in the 5k+ so i use my Vive Pro. Its the compatibility with parallel projections that really hurts your ability to make frame time even with small FOV.

I should mention that "unplayable" for me is anything less than 90fps with Steam resolution at 100% and Pitool at 1x with Normal FOV. I disable all smoothing in Steam and Pimax and leave the panel refresh rate at 90hz.

Back in the day i could tolerate ASW as it was pretty good but the Steam and Pitool equivalents are sub par in comparison so they are a no go for me. I have also tried at 72hz but dont like it at all.

 

[Vtskr]

Yea. After initial "WOW" after flying in pimax 5k i returned back to Vive PRO. Because for me its all about 90 fps too

 

[Desert63]

Thank you for the detailed benchmarking. My pimax8k arrived a week ago. I have noticed that this massive downsampling with large FOV is due to the enabled parallel projection. In games where you can disable it, the big FOV works.

What amazed me the most is the fact that 42 fps + are as fluid as my lenovo explorer with motion smoothing.

On a thread with someone that is clearly highly technical, this headset appears wanting. But I cant figure out the above comment. My take is this is a positive comment? That your reduced frames of 42, are still smooth? Were you being positive here about your perception of the headset?

My questions on this headset are the same on all headsets / what is technical and what is perception? Put 2 people on ED VR for the 1st time with reduced frame rates and one will say they don't like it and cant play, another will say they are not sure they notice because they are overwhelmed with how amazing it is. Sometimes that wears off, sometimes that doesn't. After the 3.3 upgrade my FPS dropped on my headset and I am disappointed by that. However when I end up at a damaged nav beacon with a dozen circulating baddies and I am winged up with a friend - it could not be more fun. Yes, the drop in FPS is noticeable and may throw my game off a bit, so I would hesitate to do that in open, but its sure fun against NPCs. We have done it every night this week.

So I get the technical limits quite well - and those are important discussion as there is a point where VR is simply not workable for anyone.
But who loves their PIMAX? I need justification to spend more money I don't have

 

[VR Mr Teatime]

Regardless of the framerate I would not go back to my Rift, given the choice and even if my 8K failed I would rather buy another one, than go back.

I've been thinking about this recently and I think its because when I first got the 8K, I was expecting the same level of "wow" factor I had when I first went into the Rift and that didn't happen. That's probably because the biggest impact initially, as most point out in VR, is that sense of "being in" your ship, not just looking at it. You of course get that with the 8K/5K+, but you already have that if you come from a previous gen headset, so that big impact is missing because you already had it.

However, the better resolution and especially the increased field of view has crept up on me and when I recently A/B'ed the Pimax with the Rift, I was surprised at the difference and how much of a downgrade the Rift now is. The closest analogy is probably playing 1080p/1440p and going to a triple screen setup or maybe 4K - you have a clear and sharp image in all of those, but triplescreen gives better sense of presence and situational awareness and 4K is obviously sharper with more detail visible.

One experience I hadn't tried in VR until a week or so ago, was stopping the SRV on a planet (not a particularly scenic one at that, but it had some hills and a mountain or two visible in the distance) and getting up in the Pimax and stepping outside onto the surface. As the field of view is similar to either a full faced crash helmet or perhaps ski goggles the sense of standing there on an alien world was quite remarkable and close to the "wow" factor you get for the first time in your ship in VR. I also then tried the Rift and whilst the effect is there, the enclosed field of view means you lose that "I'm stood on a vast alien landscape/moonscape" effect. I feel I now have a partial glimpse of what it must have been like for Neil or Buzz, 50 years ago, although I appreciate that will have been way more extreme for them.

As for convincing you to buy one, I don't think that's possible, as similar to anything VR, you have to "be in it" to appreciate it and the Pimax is no different to the Rift in that respect, although the effect is more subtle than from no VR to VR.

If it helps, despite Pimax's current production ramp up and logistics issues, I'll be ordering another for Mrs Teatime soon. I'm just deciding whether to pre-order or just wait for Amazon to start stocking them.

Hope that helps.

 

[HeavyGroovez]

Regardless of the framerate I would not go back to my Rift, given the choice and even if my 8K failed I would rather buy another one, than go back.

I've been thinking about this recently and I think its because when I first got the 8K, I was expecting the same level of "wow" factor I had when I first went into the Rift and that didn't happen. That's probably because the biggest impact initially, as most point out in VR, is that sense of "being in" your ship, not just looking at it. You of course get that with the 8K/5K+, but you already have that if you come from a previous gen headset, so that big impact is missing because you already had it.

However, the better resolution and especially the increased field of view has crept up on me and when I recently A/B'ed the Pimax with the Rift, I was surprised at the difference and how much of a downgrade the Rift now is. The closest analogy is probably playing 1080p/1440p and going to a triple screen setup or maybe 4K - you have a clear and sharp image in all of those, but triplescreen gives better sense of presence and situational awareness and 4K is obviously sharper with more detail visible.

One experience I hadn't tried in VR until a week or so ago, was stopping the SRV on a planet (not a particularly scenic one at that, but it had some hills and a mountain or two visible in the distance) and getting up in the Pimax and stepping outside onto the surface. As the field of view is similar to either a full faced crash helmet or perhaps ski goggles the sense of standing there on an alien world was quite remarkable and close to the "wow" factor you get for the first time in your ship in VR. I also then tried the Rift and whilst the effect is there, the enclosed field of view means you lose that "I'm stood on a vast alien landscape/moonscape" effect. I feel I now have a partial glimpse of what it must have been like for Neil or Buzz, 50 years ago, although I appreciate that will have been way more extreme for them.

As for convincing you to buy one, I don't think that's possible, as similar to anything VR, you have to "be in it" to appreciate it and the Pimax is no different to the Rift in that respect, although the effect is more subtle than from no VR to VR.

If it helps, despite Pimax's current production ramp up and logistics issues, I'll be ordering another for Mrs Teatime soon. I'm just deciding whether to pre-order or just wait for Amazon to start stocking them.

Hope that helps.

Yeah, ultra wide takes a while to sink in. But when it does its hard to go back to the old skool HMDs.

 

[mp4x]

You guys tried Brainwarp yet? I posted about it in the Pimax thread, so if it's okay I'll just cut'n'paste here:

Brainwarp (Pimax's reprojection) is available in the beta version of Pitool, now. 5K PLUS: 90/72/64HZ. 8K: 80/72/64HZ link to Pimax forum announcement It works quite well in Elite. It jitters a bit here and there but for me it's stable enough to use. At 45/90fps it's smooth for me, somewhere between Vive and Oculus, but more towards Oculus as a scale how well it works. It's a beta, without a doubt, but it works better than expected and well enough to use from now until the next version of the Pitool comes out with an updated version of Brainwarp included. Foveated rendering apparently works for RTX cards, with people reporting back, but I haven't tried it yet and anyone who has spoken about it wasn;t playing Elite. Interesting, considering the Pimax eye tracking module that the backers get free, is not far off

Spoiler

[video=youtube;qjFiTMVtBHc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjFiTMVtBHc[/video]

 

[KRONFROMGALVATRON]

Great work on the benchmarking. Thanks for doing it. I have a 5k+ and am still dialing it in but overall I'm happy with it now that I've upgraded the strap and accepted I need to wear my contacts when using it.

 

[erbse-1]

My take is this is a positive comment? That your reduced frames of 42, are still smooth? Were you being positive here about your perception of the headset?

Yes, I meant positively.
The brainwarp works very well for me. I don't know if I use 72hz or 80 yet. With 36fps cutoff frequency you can set astonishingly high SEttings (1080ti owner).
I'm not sure yet what looks sharper: 40% steamSS/1.5x hmd quality or 100% steamSS/1.0x hmd quality.

Very annoying that since 2 weeks I can only do tutorial/test missions, also arena, but private/solo/open only get Crash to desktop.

 

[Vtskr]

Yes, I meant positively.
The brainwarp works very well for me. I don't know if I use 72hz or 80 yet. With 36fps cutoff frequency you can set astonishingly high SEttings (1080ti owner).
I'm not sure yet what looks sharper: 40% steamSS/1.5x hmd quality or 100% steamSS/1.0x hmd quality.

Very annoying that since 2 weeks I can only do tutorial/test missions, also arena, but private/solo/open only get Crash to desktop.

I'm pretty sure that less than 100% steamSS should be avoided at any cost. It's essentially resolution that is reported to game engine. So higher resolution = more details rendered by game engine.