Is VR dead?

[RCHeliguy]

'But, as mentioned, the clear, consistently colored screens were HUGELY noticeable, and the FOV was just such a good-feeling quality of life upgrade. Now that I've had a night to sleep on things, I find myself craving the 8KX hardcore while playing today on my reverb. I done messed up and tasted (currently) unobtainable glory and now I don't wanna go back xD"

What am I missing?

You are missing the "I Hate Pimax" filter.


However there may one hole in the idea that these are future proofed. What I was reading was that the reason the 8KX runs at a higher frame rate in the uprez mode is because they are on the hairy edge of the bandwidth that the DP 1.4 connection is able to handle. So the only reason the frame rate drops for native mode is that there is no room to send native resolution any faster.

So right now the 8KX is butting up against the DP 1.4 spec. The DP 2.0 specification was released last summer, so no video cards currently support it.

What this means is that the minute NVidia releases a 3080Ti which will likely support DP 2.0 that Pimax will be able to release a new 8KX + that using the DP 2.0 specification and can run at higher frame rates limited by the GPU and not the connection specification.

You might not care about being limited to 75Hz or 80Hz depending, but given these will be released in 3 months (or so) and likely a new NVidia card will having DP2.0 will be released by Fall with TRIPLE the current bandwidth, there will probably be new Pimax headsets that can run faster frame rates shortly after that.

I think the 8KX may be a premature release of a product. I also suspect that many other main stream vendors are waiting for DP 2.0 before releasing the next batch of VR headsets.

 

[david92tm]

Problem of VR is high demanding GPU-CPU

 

[Deleted member 197115]

You are missing the "I Hate Pimax" filter.

Which part of "looks promising, but not Earth shattering" says "I hate Pimax".
Same pixel density as HP Reverb, clarity is on par too, far away from what Pimax employee tried to show on that video.
Some improvement here and there. Revolutionary? No, not in my book, especially not for $2K.
My personal opinion, feel free to disagree.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I have maintained up until now that VR headsets could only have one of the following:

Wide FOV ( Pimax / Xtal )
High Resolution ( Reverb )
High framerate ( Index )

Pimax has managed to get 2 out of 3 so that is a pretty big deal, although they are running right on the hairy edge of both bandwidth and GPU/CPU power given current drivers and software.

Once DP 2.0 is out AND GPU's are more powerful and possibly the next generation CPU's are here, we should be able to get all 3.

For many people having Reverb resolution and Pimax FOV is earth shattering. If they don't care about frame rates, this is what they have been dreaming of.

 

[o Tiger Feet o]

Now this is (potentially) earth shattering....

 

[RCHeliguy]

That better be AR. It would be dangerous as hell for VR.

 

[anton_Chez]

Future proof talk is pointless. Barely anyone jumps on new stuff as soon as it's released. There's no guarantee that any VR player is pushing out anything like the 8KX. The bandwidth thing is also kind of pointless. We're banging up against GPU limits even when a new gen is released this year for something like an 8KX. It's awesome that the frame rate thing can be side stepped with a change in mode. You're still getting the best of EVERY headset in one package even if you can't (for multiple reasons) run then all simultaneously. Want hz? Run upscale for a better index. Want FOV? Smash that thing on large and experience VR like nowhere else. Want clarity? Run native and PRAY your 20/3080ti/Big Navi can actually get to the 75/80hz it's capable of, while escaping less than Oculus levels of FOV of the Reverb.

Pretty future proof to me considering many people own multiples of these headsets and still have something coming out that's going to smash them all.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The 8KX IS an 8K+ with the flick of a switch.

So it's now AND future proof.

The only reason I mentioned future proof is that you did.

I'm not denying that it is a very impressive headset that squeezes the most it can out of current technology. I'm just saying it is anchored in current technology and won't scale the way it could have when the 3080Ti's get here, so I don't see it as being future proof, but rather constrained. If it supported DP 2.0 then I wouldn't consider it constrained. It would have the ability to reach its full potential when the next GPU's arrive.

I'm also not suggesting there is any "right time" to buy a VR headset since they are pretty well disposable.

However since they are disposable and the 8KX is constrained out of the box, there is a good argument that the 8KX is a bit of a money grab and the 8K+ with upscale mode is how everyone will run the 8KX anyway.

 

[anton_Chez]

How so? The 8KX IS the 8K+ with the ability to further increase detail with the right power delivered to it. The DP cable is a non issue, as no other headset even comes close to maxing it out. So, the one that does is worse than the ones that don't have the specs to push the bandwidth to its limit?

It makes no sense at all. The headset is 2 in 1. It caters for the now, and it will cater for the future if and when people are willing to upgrade their graphics cards. Why are people not screaming that 4K monitors rarely if ever offer high refresh rate solutions? Because they know they have about zero chance of powering it to it's fullest 'potential' even if it was able to. The 8KX is no different.

Crying that a native 4K virtual reality headset cannot reach warp speed in refresh rate is sort of like crying that a Ferrari is too expensive when you need a lease to own a Ford Focus. The result is you're never getting that Ferrari.

By the way, how many games are using DX12 and real time ray tracing these days? How many perform better when not using those things? They've been a selling point for years now and a fraction of the market acutally attempts to take advantage of it. By the time DP 2.0 becomes widely adopted, the 8KX will be a distant memory.

 

[RCHeliguy]

The bottom line is that the extra few hundred is no big deal in this price range, so why not?

For me running at 75Hz is a deal breaker, so I have very different feelings about the value proposition of running the 8KX in native mode buys you. I don't like running 80 fps. I like 90 fps, and prefer 120 fps.

Since you have no issue with running at lower fps, than you see the value proposition very differently than I do.

I think this is a situation were we just have different priorities.

On the plus side Pimax has worked on comfort, audio, and bringing the weight down, so the overall experience should have improved quite a bit.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

So 75hz in native mode is due to DP 1 bandwidth limitation?
Seems like even for 75hz you need DP 1.4a, which GPUs support that standards, RTX only?

Pimax - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pimax Vision 8K X[edit]
The Pimax Vision 8K X is a variant of the Pimax 8K that solves the cable bandwidth limitation by using the highest data transmission mode with HBC with Displayport 1.4a, thus allowing native 4K resolution per eye, without the visual compromise from upscaling a 5K signal. The total native resolution of a Pimax 8kX is 7680x2160, which should help reduce screen door effect.[

 

[Deleted member 197115]

So 75hz in native mode is due to DP 1 bandwidth limitation?
Seems like even for 75hz you need DP 1.4a, which GPUs support that standards, RTX only?

Pimax - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Yep, Turing only

 

[BrunoBæ]

Personal Im still watching the evolution of VR from the fence - but have allready decided that in about a year I will bite the bullet and...

But conserning the Pimax 8KX and the others (8K and Index and...) then I want to ask a question:
If money/price was no issue (although limited to the price of 8KX as absolute max) what VR kit would you buy when the 8KX are ready to sell?

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Personal Im still watching the evolution of VR from the fence - but have allready decided that in about a year I will bite the bullet and...

But conserning the Pimax 8KX and the others (8K and Index and...) then I want to ask a question:
If money/price was no issue (although limited to the price of 8KX as absolute max) what VR kit would you buy when the 8KX are ready to sell?

If I were buying, I'd get 8k+, it is more practical for use with today's hardware and $300 cheaper. I personally don't see 8KX as future proof or practical device, but that's me, I am sure for some it's a new holly grail.
Still hope Samsung drops something new around this year. That would be my number one choice.

 

[BrunoBæ]

OK. But that does mean that among all the VR kits that is (somewhat) for sale today and is inside a reasonable wealthy persons economical reach either the Pimax 8K or the 8KX is considered the "best".

I have to say that personally I would probably go for the 8KX because I would hope that when the DP bandwidth limitation thing is solved then then there will be a Pimax upd so the 8KX will be able to run at 90hz native.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

We are not sure about the best. Pimax fell out of favor for a reason.
It does indeed look good on paper and initial impressions look good too, but if you check Pimax track record, things were not that peachy, hope that changed and quality and support improved.
If you indeed sitting on the fence for another year as you said, I wouldn't worry much about this mid gen upgrade. If VR does not die completely, we will have much better headsets by that time.

 

[BrunoBæ]

Hehe Im tempted to make a bet with you that a year from now there is still no better than the 8KX - if it is ever launched for real in the promissed quality.
But I dare not.

 

[RCHeliguy]

FWIW, I've done more testing with VRSS in iRacing and it is the BOMB!!!!!
Everything looks smooth and clean. Loving it!!!!

 

[Bjarne Hansen]

Hehe Im tempted to make a bet with you that a year from now there is still no better than the 8KX - if it is ever launched for real in the promised quality.
But I dare not.

Have only tried a 5k+ Pimax and it was great with the larger FOV.
But the company are promising too much that they do not deliver.
The in-house room scale tracking still not finished/after ~3 years
The Eye tracking still promised as an add option since forever and while it was shown on CES 2019. It is not available to purchase.
Software are a little mickey mouse.
Wish Pimax would concentrate on fewer headsets, lower the price by mass production and up the quality of the headsets.
I do believe it is the company that leads the way in VR, but it is also a company that is hard to trust!

 

[RCHeliguy]

Betting that an unreleased product will not be surpassed in the next year is a real crap shoot.

There really is no telling what is in the pipeline right now and it's possible that new features like VRSS will help some of these headsets quite a bit. The Pimax could be configured to undersample across a wide FOV with VRSS in the center bringing the main focal area back up to sharp.

With regard to the Display Port bandwidth, there are potential software solutions. If the headset has enough processing bandwidth for a bit of decompression and there is room in the GPU to do some light compression, they could get around the bandwidth bottleneck.

I think NVidia is just starting to tap into the unused processing power of their RTX cards, so they may be able to squeeze more performance out of them over time.

There is a lot of unused processing power right now both on the CPU and GPU for VR gaming.

So depending on how holistically a VR Headset manufacturer is looking at things, they may be able to pull a rabbit out of a hat that we are not expecting.