Pimax VR 4K - Menu Issue - Please Help

[dburne]

There is a minor screen door effect in some circumstances, but I haven't noticed it much in DCS. Regarding the pixels, I would not say it is like looking at a monitor, but it is so immersive, you forget you are not actually in that sim world anyway! One thing I would add to that is that even with the IPD set correctly, the focus is sharp directly ahead, but a little blurry if you move your eyes left or right to look at something not in the middle of your view. It makes you turn your head directly in the direction of the thing you want in sharp focus (like a gauge). I didn't notice this when looking at the terrain, since apparently, you don't need to focus on every detail.

 

For sure, it's not perfect, but for me it is a way better overall experience than looking at a high quality monitor. If your goal is to see the sharpest picture, I would recommend a good monitor. If your goal is to feel like you're really in the airplane, this headset wins hands down.

 

:thumbup:

 

Congrats!

That pretty much reflects the experience I have had with the Rift as well.

There is nothing quite like VR that is for sure!

[Pinello]

Thanks, Kato!

[Bearfoot]

Thanks for your review!

 

I am new to VR, via the Oculus Rift, and am still within the return period, so am keenly interested in exploring alternatives before that return period is up!

 

So, the wow factor in VR is great and all, but that's going to fade as the brain adjusts to getting used to things. Conversely, going from a 4K monitor giving me 90-160 FPS to 1080×1200 at 45 FPS average will take some getting used to as the wow factor diminishes, not only from an emotional/aesthetic viewpoint, but a practical one: reading gauges, and, far, far, far, far, far more difficult, object spotting (ground as well as air).

 

In fact, object spotting right now SUCKS. If I know something (WW2 fighter-sized, for e.g.) is out there in a particular direction, I can maybe spot it 5 nm out. If I don't know where to look, fuggitabodit. Maybe I will get better over time, but right now, it's a major problem. I think this can be improved on the DCS side of things by a large amount, because I think target-spotting has always been one of the issues with DCS, but there is probably a practical limit with the resolution offered by VR.

 

So, in that respect, it seems like Pimax will be a huge advantage over OR/Vive.

 

On the other hand, I find that with the OR my situational awareness has GREATLY improved. I mean, I am like in another universe altogether where I actually understand where everything is around me, whether or not they are in my FOV or not. It really is transformative. Apart from the depth perception of VR (and thus, better intuitive judgement of moving object vectors in relation to yours), this is because of the one-to-one correspondence of the head movement and virtual movement, as well as the one-to-one correspondence of the head direction/vector and where you are looking in the virtual world. All of these are lacking with TrackIR, and that added layer of abstraction/mapping made things challenging (not saying that it cannot be overcome as one practices and learns to develop the right judgement/intuition).

 

If I am understanding things right, with the Pimax, while you of course retain the depth perception which will help with the SA, one thing you are losing is the 1-to-1 correspondence between head movement and angle and the virtual world head movement/angle. That is, this will be as bad as TrackIR in that respect.

 

Is that correct?

 

In which case, for ME, I think that I will have to balance the higher pixel resolution with this more than anything else ...

[kato217]

 

If I am understanding things right, with the Pimax, one thing you are losing is the 1-to-1 correspondence between head movement and angle and the virtual world head movement/angle. That is, this will be as bad as TrackIR in that respect.

 

Is that correct?

 

Not exactly - TLDR: the Pimax has 3DOF, and does track pitch, yaw and roll head movements 1 to 1. However, it does not track up/down (DCS z-axis), left/right (DCS y-axis), or forward back (DCS x-axis).

 

The Pimax has an internal gyro for head position, but does not have base stations to track position away from the original place that you spawn into the cockpit.

 

So, I can move my head 180 degrees to the left and see the aircraft tail just as if I were in an actual aircraft (1 to 1). I can also look all the way up and down 1 to 1, and roll works wherever I'm looking.

 

I cannot move horizontally left/right (e.g. to see around the HUD) or forward/back (e.g. to look around the canopy bow), nor vertically up/down (e.g. to get a better view over the nose). You could use the Rt-Ctrl + Rt-Shift + Keypad keys for those axes, but obviously that's not activated by head movement. If you want all 6DOF, you would need to use the TrackIR with it, but as you say, it cannot turn 180 degrees to look directly behind 1 to 1.

 

I imagine you can get 6DOF with the Vive and Oculus because they have base stations, but since I don't have either of those, I can't confirm that.

 

I have used it with the Track IR over-riding the Pimax gyros, but again, looking left/right is not 1 to 1.

 

I briefly tried to use the left/right/up/down/forwards/back of the TrackIR in combination with the pitch, yaw, and roll of the Pimax, but had no luck. I gave up when I remembered that the TrackIR would not continue to work when I turned my head to look directly behind with the Pimax.

 

Also, if your main task in life is trying to spot bad guys as far away as possible with labels turned off, I don't believe any headset would be optimal for that, and you might want to stick with a good monitor.

Edited March 30, 2017 by kato217
Fix typo

[Bearfoot]

Not exactly - TLDR: the Pimax has 3DOF, and does track pitch, yaw and roll head movements 1 to 1. However, it does not track up/down (DCS z-axis), left/right (DCS y-axis), or forward back (DCS x-axis).

 

The Pimax has an internal gyro for head position, but does not have base stations to track position away from the original place that you spawn into the cockpit.

 

So, I can move my head 180 degrees to the left and see the aircraft tail just as if I were in an actual aircraft (1 to 1). I can also look all the way up and down 1 to 1, and roll works wherever I'm looking.

 

I cannot move horizontally left/right (e.g. to see around the HUD) or forward/back (e.g. to look around the canopy bow), nor vertically up/down (e.g. to get a better view over the nose). You could use the Rt-Ctrl + Rt-Shift + Keypad keys for those axes, but obviously that's not activated by head movement. If you want all 6DOF, you would need to use the TrackIR with it, but as you say, it cannot turn 180 degrees to look directly behind 1 to 1.

 

I imagine you can get 6DOF with the Vive and Oculus because thay have base stations, but since I don't have either of those, I can't confirm that.

 

I have used it with the Track IR over-riding the Pimax gyros, but again, looking left/right is not 1 to 1.

 

I briefly tried to use the left/right/up/down/forwards/back of the TrackIR in combination with the pitch, yaw, and roll of the Pimax, but had no luck. I gave up when I remembered that the TrackIR would not continue to work when I turned my head to look directly behind with the Pimax.

 

Also, if your main task in life is trying to spot bad guys as far away as possible with labels turned off, I don't believe any headset would be optimal for that, and you might want to stick with a good monitor.

 

 

Thanks for such a solid response. Very informative, and appreciated! I guess it would be possible to get used to the restricted Pimax axes (just like any other system), but my feeling now is (without having tried it) that I am really liking the total aspect natural movement of the OR too much to give up. I might actually like that more than the 3D/depth perception effect! In fact, I think if I was stuck with a 2D screen w/o the depth perception etc., but had OR's head-tracking capability, I would not be too unhappy. (OT: goes to show where things could have gone if Natural Point had actually invested in developing the TrackIR technology instead of just sitting on their butts and guarding it).

 

As far as spotting --- not so much spotting objects as far away as possible, but rather spotting them at reasonable enough ranges to support realistic responses. What that is, I have no idea!

[wormeaten]

Here is cheep and not to complicated room scale positional tracking using PSmovrservice. Just for DCS could work even with single PS3 Eye camera but will be better with more. For seating sims such as DCS two PS3 cam and one PSmove controller are optimum so it is around 70$ if you are buying brand new components.

 

[Hermit713]

I have a hell of a time spotting planes myself and I am using a 1080 monitor....

I had a 1440 38inch ultra wide monitor... but I can't remember if it was better for spotting planes or not.

 

SO if Steam VR and the other one, induces stutter in crossfire/sli blows me away.....

If you have a VR hedset, one wants the best system available. Using 1 -card doesn't allow me to do that....

[wormeaten]

I have a hell of a time spotting planes myself and I am using a 1080 monitor....

I had a 1440 38inch ultra wide monitor... but I can't remember if it was better for spotting planes or not.

 

SO if Steam VR and the other one, induces stutter in crossfire/sli blows me away.....

If you have a VR hedset, one wants the best system available. Using 1 -card doesn't allow me to do that....

 

Looks like higher resolution on VR is less need for super sampling what is less hardware need.

Check videos I send on other VR thread.

[John Hargreaves]

I think that's a good point, so when the next gen of higher resolution sets come out, it might not be so hard to run them because we are already using supersampling and rendering more pixels anyway. If the number of pixels is higher and denser next time there will be less need for AA and SS, so performance could be on a par with what we have currently. We might even be able to read those dials and see the baddies coming.

[SkateZilla]

for 3DoF, it's a matter of getting used to only having head movement, like your strapped in tight.

[SinusoidDelta]

I think that's a good point, so when the next gen of higher resolution sets come out, it might not be so hard to run them because we are already using supersampling and rendering more pixels anyway. If the number of pixels is higher and denser next time there will be less need for AA and SS, so performance could be on a par with what we have currently. We might even be able to read those dials and see the baddies coming.

 

Also, if foveated rendering is introduced it will dramatically reduce GPU usage, possibly by ~40%.

https://community.arm.com/graphics/b/blog/posts/circuitvr-implementing-foveated-rendering-with-multiview-and-eye-tracking-on-gearvr

[John Hargreaves]

I had a Canon EOS 5 film SLR back in the early 90s which had eye controlled focus. It would fire infra-red laser beams or something into your eyes and 'learn' your retina pattern and you could accurately control where you wanted the focus to be. I actually liked it much better than the current predictive focus systems you get in the digital SLRs. Point of story: we had aspects of this technology in consumer products 25 years ago, so surely we must be on the verge of having it in VR.

 

 

Yes I know infra red laser beams aren't a real thing, but you get the idea.

[wormeaten]

It is already here just need to be implemented.

 

 

Also Nvidia and AMD have technology available to use SLI/CF GPU per eye.

Problems is more to implement that in software (Games) as well to VR developers. DCS don't have proper support for SLI/CF at all for example. Imagine to use 2 x RX 580 which will perform same as GTX 1080ti for a cost of GTX 1070.

 

There is also one other trick VR start to use this days. Basically they use something like to show frame only per eye to work just with half resolution. So picture reducing resolution in half because in every frame shoving picture just in one eye and as it is changed left right left right. As human eye is slower it is not recognized that on one eye is shown only every second image per eye. It is already in developing by Pimaks in 210 FOV 8K model and give good results.

[wormeaten]

Also Sony Xperis XZ Premium have 4K 5.5" 807PPI IPS display so it is much more advanced display than it is on Pimax 4K. So no Ghosting and higher possible refresh rate of screen. With new chip it is possible to connect it ower Display port not HDMI. So all needed technollogy is already there, some already for years, just need to be implemented.

[Thick8]

Has this issue been corrected yet? Has anyone setup their Monitor LUA and FOV in DCS?

I will have a Pimax next week to test and would like to try it out with DCS.

[VirusAM]

Mine arrived yesterday and i have not this problem...installed the piplay software and run dcs without any flaw...resolution much more better then the rift, no sde..as all you know it only lascks 6dof...but i will get nolo vr...after they released a specific release of piplay for nolo vr users seems that the first reviews are positive

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[SilentWarrior]

Mine arrived yesterday and i have not this problem...installed the piplay software and run dcs without any flaw...resolution much more better then the rift, no sde..as all you know it only lascks 6dof...but i will get nolo vr...after they released a specific release of piplay for nolo vr users seems that the first reviews are positive

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

Do you happen to own a TrackIr too? It could be used to "enhance" the experience.

 

I am really interested in VR but the lack of resolution has been putting me off. Tbh i never tried it but I dont want to be shelling out hundreds of dollars just to come to the conclusion that I cant use it or dont like it.

 

If you have time, can you post a detailed review of your experience with it and DCS?

 

I only really play DCS so, this would be for DCS only.

[wormeaten]

@SilentWarrior you are outdated. For Pimax you have cheep and easy solution which will not cost you more than 20$.

For directional tracking you are using Pimax gyro sensors and for positional tracking you are using simple DIY device made from LED light source and pingpong ball which simulate PSmove. Driver4VR is easy app and drivers to run such positional tracking on SteamVR.