First Pimax review

[Hellcat]

It's with another flight sim ....

Posted over on the IL2 Forum ....guy just got his pimax 5K and flew some quick sorties ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okey Gentlemen, a few words how I feel Pimax 5k plus with IL 2 Box. But its only inital impressions without solid messing around with settings. So nothing is set in stone yet

 

The good :

-sense of presence in 3D dimmension munch deeper that in my gen1 ( Vive , tested also Oculus , PSVR)

I was flying in P47 on Kuban map between canions and mountais and due to wide fov , better resolutions, rgb strip and IMHO better scale factor I was able manouver munch easest than at my OG Vive . Also becouse of thouse factors I can locate and target ground units or objects easer !

In this heaset the sense of distance is much more pronounced.

I was tested that on normal Fov mode ( around 150 horizontally) and small FOV mode ( around 125 horiontally) Even on small Fov I wasnt missed peripheral vision . It was still good enough.

- Zero goodrays and tiny SDE - which dont bother me at all.

I didnt played yet on MP servers with Pimax becouse need stabilize FPS first but this headset seems to give us nice advantage during combat missions.

 

The mixed:

My Vive with "Gearvr lens mod" combining with Steam VR video render settings at 340 % gives me munch crisper image . Pimax lenses are quite good but cant compete with gearvr lenses. I have this feeling that I'm watching over the windows with kind of thin foil on it. But definitly better that orginal Vive lenses or Oculus lenses. Edit : might be wrong here and lenses are great but strong exagerated LCD backlighting gives that effects.

Didnt find proper settings for 90 fps yet. The problem is if you want have sharp image you need to running this game around 4000x3000 pixels per eye.

On small FOV mode ( still good for me) my higher FPS was around 75 ~80 fps on Kuban map and around 50 near ground level.

On normall mode - my overall fps was lower , around 66 fps and 49 near ground. Initall test was done with medium textures settings and AA 2x , HDR off, distance view set 70 km.

 

Definitly BAD

Colors - not even bad blacks, but this fraeaking fuc...g LCD backlight ruin my imerssions. I'm used to vivid colors of my Vive and 4k AOC MVA - 10bit monitors.

All colurs in P5k + are bleached /faded. I know that this is very subjective but I can't

deceive my mind if blue summer sky is not really blue but greyish and yellow sun is not really yellow and this dirty grass which should be beautyfully green in summer or spring...

Geometry distortion - there is still something wrong when you moving your head left- right or even up/down (less), its very noticable on briefing screen and less during flight ( barelly) and not noticable with low FOV mode

 

Conclussion Pimax promised color temp/saturation and brightness slider in PiTool, but those folks promising a lot and make only 50 % of promisses.

I will play a few months at Pimax 5k+ but If they do not fix above ( backlight /distortions) than definitly I will looking for better HMD with AMOLEDs screens - meybe Pimax 5k be or new not announced yet Valve hmd - leaked specs looks fine for me .

 

Yeah for 500 $ which I spent a year ago it was/is good deal. I still don't see nothing better on the market . Odyssey+ = problems with steam VR ( bad support) , tiny FOV, and not so crisp image. SDE tricks is not for me , prefer native resolutions with sharp image.

Edited December 19, 2018 by Hellcat

[imacken]

Hmm, interesting. I'm hanging on to my Vive Pro till we see a lot more reviews of the Pimax 5k+.

[Phantom88]

Thank You for sharing this here,:thumbup: