Hands-on: Pimax “8K” Has Come a Long Way but There’s Still Real Kinks to Iron Out

and the VIVE wasn’t an unfinished buggy product at release?

or only play Subnautica

Those are some pretty inspirational words and I agree.

No that isn’t true. Do you actually do any hardware design? I have worked a number of companies that have created custom PLA to perform functions that don’t exist and then have the logic created into a chip. And frankly to say to say there is no rocket science to be solved here is a little naive. There is still new chemical processes to improve display performance, interface chips to handle the higher bandwidth without requiring essentially two screens independently tethered together and better techniques improving DOF.

Finally when the majority of the VR industry uses pixels per eye or angular PPI, 8K is very much misleading, leading some people to speculate on some type of magic to make this visible to each eye. Specifications and standards are important and we are now are far enough along that we can pretty much do this. In fact, if you read their specifications, the do show the resolution per eye. In my opinion if their only goal was to create a headset that claim has a horizontal resolution of 8K (7680 but who’s counting) than yes you are right, even though the whole experience maybe mediocre just like their 4K model at the end of 2016.

I am not meaning this to become a war of words. Since you understand the engineering side of this, I was merely stating that the “rocket science” in this is not done. Also, it does not matter what you say in the fine print, there goal was to be known as the first 8K VR headset, never mind as you have stated this is only in the number of physical pixels, which in itself could be an advantage but as Ben said in hands-on, a number of factor mire this advantage.
Also, doesn’t it make you wonder why you have to wait 5+ months? I think (but have not validated) that is due to component delay like probably another LCD panel or HDMI/SDI-to-MIPI chip to bring it to this spec. But frankly, from everything I know about display panels of this size I don’t know if they are even getting past 70Hz. Hard to tell unless you know exactly who makes the panel or have the equipment to measure the light off the panel. Which, I am assuming no one has had one long enough to run these test on. One other solution, which is used by Sony, is to put two 1920X2160 3″ panels like those used in the Microsoft headset on the same substrate allowing you to get past the size limitation yet still provide same number of MIPI channels (8). If this is the reason, than this would truly be innovative & keep the cost down.

Can’t agree more JustNiz and found this out too in 2016 with Toshiba’s chip. I firmly believe it is in the LCD panels though and agree they pushed the specs and electrically they may work, but if they actually measured illumination rise & fall times they were getting nowhere close to 90Hz, let alone 80Hz. As mentioned, it would be interesting to take calibrated light sensor to it to see what it actually refreshes at. It might be worse than that. It also makes me wonder if they just thought they could just say it is running a xx , but now that users(or those with a ton experience like Ben) know what a 90Hz refresh feels like, they couldn’t get past that. In the end, it will not only be the off-the-shelf components, but the fact the tried to make superior performance claims with low lying fruit/components pushed to their limits. This won’t end well. But like I said, this is not the first time the made superior performance claims and fell short. I actually have their 4K hardware that I have taken apart that shows they used similar techniques to make bold claims.

On that note, I don’t believe the StarVR runs at 90Hz either, one of the reason they are pairing up with IMAX and other filmed based venues. It should also be remembered this unit cost I think around $3500 (even with Acer’s help), which is another reason you don’t see it advertised. So what makes it more? I think the 2560×1440 panels are AMOLED and they had a custom designed Fresnel lens made for it, which I read an article that early prototypes used Luxexcel 3D printed lens tech. But to me that isn’t enough, which is why I guess everyone is going crazy for the Pimax 8K,

> Facebook holds all the answers,
I doubt that Facebook actually even owns a controlling interest in Oculus anymore. After Zenimax won the $500 million court case against Oculus you can bet Zuckerberg paid them with all the Oculus stock he could get his hands on before giving them any actual cash. I’d be surprised if he doesn’t just want out of VR by now. JudEven Karmack apparently doesn’t have anything to do with Oculus anymore except in name, he seems to be spending all his time on Armadillo Aerospace now.

I’m totally with you. I bought then returned fallout4VR mostly for that reason alone. The whole game is predicated on you being able to visually identify stuff more than 10 feet away. Well, that and Bethesda releasing the game with totally not-working scopes (which bitterly is the only thing the game has that could provide some kind of workaround for the distance issue).

Who give a shit when they ship? They promised a January ship. And they’re not even close to being done. So when someone promised something and doesn’t deliver that means their promises didn’t pan out. So what in my original statement isn’t true? I’ll be on my VR while you and other Pimax backers wank each other. You should really try VR it’s amazing.