Purchase advice: Pimax 5K XR vs Reverb vs Index

[seikdel]

Howdy Folks. Been flying since BS1 days. Currently fly with TM Warthog, Saitek Combat Plus pedals, and TM Cougar MFDs (used to have the TM Cougar, regret selling it, should've put Hall sensors in it). My cheap Shimian 2560x1440 monitor just died (waiting on new PCB via aliexpress, wish me luck), so I'm looking into this VR that's all the craze these days.

 

I picked up a cheap cardboard-ish headset for my iPhone XS; bar napkin math indicates an OLED display at roughly at 1120x1125 per eye, obviously not in any way optimized for VR. I know this isn't equatable to an actual VR headset, but I will say that I love the depth perception so far, even if cockpit displays are unreadable.

 

My specs are also not up to VR snuff yet. I'm running an i5-3570k with 32GB of DDR2 at 1333MHz with a GTX 1060 6GB. Not beautiful, but workable for my old 2560x1440 setup. I'm looking at goggles that I can use for the next few months. At that point, I deploy for awhile, which means no sims but plenty of time to save up for some new hardware (chiefly a GPU).

 

So what are y'all's thoughts on the Pimax 5K XR vs the HP Reverb vs the Valve Index? Here's what I've garnered so far:

 

Pimax 5K XR

 

• Glorious FOV (170° horizontal!)
  
  • PPD 12-21ish per wikipedia (assuming the range is horizontal vs vertical?)
    

   

  [*]2x2560x1440 OLED displays (gotta love dynamic contrast ratio)

  [*]Headphones+microphone

  [*]$900

  • Also needs steam base station? (necessary for tracking?)
    

   

 

 

Valve Index

 

• Beautiful FOV (130° FOV)
  
  • PPD 11
    

   

  [*]2x1440x1600 LCD displays ("ultra-low persistence global backlight illumination" FWIW)

  [*]Headphones+microphone

  [*]$500 for headset

  • +$149 for base station (necessary for tracking?)
    

   

HP Reverb

 

• FOV 114° (is this good enough?)
  
  • PPD 19
    

   

  [*]2x2160x2160 LCD displays

  • No IPD adjustment!? Is this a deal-breaker?
    

   

  [*]Microphone+removable headphones

  [*]$650

  • No base station!
    

   

 

I come to you folks because DCS is going to be the primary use of this headset.

 

• Which of these do you have experience with and what do you think?
  
  • Bonus points if you've used 2-3 of these
    

   

  [*]Is base station tracking an improvement over opentrack? I'm considering actually getting a trackIR clip if I can't afford a base station or 2

  [*]What do you think of the contrast ratio between the LCDs and the OLED in the Pimax?

  • How big of a deal would that be for night missions?
    

   

  [*]How much of an improvement over my iPhone XS setup will this be? (I'm hoping massive, but I'm worried it'll only be a moderate improvement)

  [*]Do I finally have to make the jump from Windows 7 to 10?

  [*]What other wisdom do you have?

Edit: Reverb IPD, Windows version

Edited April 22, 2020 by seikdel

[Svsmokey]

Currently , a better choice for a low-end system would be the Rift S , which you may be able to run run only at minimum settings .

Edited April 22, 2020 by Svsmokey

[seikdel]

Even if I cut the resolution down 50% while saving up for a new GPU?

 

On a related note, how much difference would you anticipate between Ivy Bridge and, say, a Coffee Lake CPU? I obviously haven't bought a CPU in a few years and I'm unclear on how big of a difference the generation advances make to DCS.

[Svsmokey]

Even if I cut the resolution down 50% while saving up for a new GPU?

 

On a related note, how much difference would you anticipate between Ivy Bridge and, say, a Coffee Lake CPU? I obviously haven't bought a CPU in a few years and I'm unclear on how big of a difference the generation advances make to DCS.

 

I can't imagine that cutting resolution that much would give an acceptable result .

 

Between ipc and turbo clock speeds , i would expect 25%+ better performance with i5 Coffee Lake cpu comparison only . More for an I7 . Memory clocks are also much higher with later gens as well .

 

The $600 or so you would save relative to Pimax vs Rift S would go a long way towards a 9600k build . A lot less hassle , too ! The S is essentially plug and play , while all the other headsets you listed will require a lot of tweaking , as well as more gpu horsepower .

Lack of ipd adjustment is only an issue if yours is outside of the 60-70 range or so .