Pimax Play v1.33.01

[Calvin.Pimax]

Pimax Play v1.33.01

Download:  
https://dlappstore.pimax.com/release/play/PimaxPlaySetup_Release_toC_V1.33.01.01.05_202409271439.exe

Release Notes: 
This version is compatible with all Pimax headsets, except for the 4K.

General:

• Added native OpenXR support
• Introduced Crystal Light upscale mode (Lab Feature).
• Fixed several Japanese translation issues.
• Fixed link to Steam installation guide.
• Fixed inconsistent character limits for registration and login email fields, ensuring a uniform restriction standard.
• Optimized tracking algorithm to reduce CPU usage.

Crystal Light:
Firmware: 1.0.10

• Added 90Hz upscale mode for Crystal Light.
• Improved tracking stability and quality for Crystal Light.

Edited September 30, 2024 by Calvin.Pimax

[Nodak]

Title is mistaken, it's actually version 1.33.01 your getting from the link.

[[31st] Bubba]

Pimax Crystal Light + OpenXR not showing anything in the HMD. On the monitor I do see that the tracking is working though. Bug in DCS?

[mbucchia]

14 hours ago, [31st] Bubba said:

Pimax Crystal Light + OpenXR not showing anything in the HMD. On the monitor I do see that the tracking is working though. Bug in DCS?

My best bet is you have OpenXR Toolkit installed, and Pimax enabled quad views by default. OpenXR Toolkit + quad views at runtime level => black screen, not supported. 

[Dangerzone]

1 hour ago, mbucchia said:

My best bet is you have OpenXR Toolkit installed, and Pimax enabled quad views by default. OpenXR Toolkit + quad views at runtime level => black screen, not supported. 

Just wondering, are you saying we can’t use quad views anymore? Or just not with OpenXR toolkit? I haven’t updated yet but are hesitant incase I can’t roll back. Quad views has literally saved DCS for me and if this won’t work with the new version, I’d want to know that the Pimax software does all quad views does first. 

Edited September 28, 2024 by Dangerzone

[mbucchia]

OpenXR Toolkit was never compatible with quad views in general. It "worked" when using quad views implemented as an API layer, because that allowed OpenXR Toolkit to see stereo instead of quad views. Doing that is impossible when using quad views implemented inside the OpenXR runtime directly. 

The only way to have quad views and OpenXR Toolkit at the same time is to use the quad views API layer instead of the implementation inside the OpenXR runtime.

 

I also highly recommend to stop using OpenXR Toolkit in general. 

Edited September 28, 2024 by mbucchia

[Dangerzone]

Aah. So we’re can still use quad views, just not the OXRTK? Sweet. Thanks!

[mbucchia]

Here is a series of diagrams explaining things:

null

[cellinsky]

Thanks for this. Still confused. What is the current state when using only Pimaxplay as a runtime with openx and quadviews on? My DCS 2D-screen shows 4 screens. Ingame I cant seems to see any difference. Does it use quadviews at all? Do I need QFVR to run? I have a Pimax Light. 

[WipeUout]

Dear @mbucchia, I am confused too.  

After installing Pimax Play 1.33, I only uninstalled PimaxXR and started DCS.  DCS would start but just the mirror image working, nothing in the HMD.  

Then I uninstalled Quadviews and re-installed it, started DCS and all good.  Tried to open OXRTK in game and it worked, CAS still being applied as before, all good.

What I understand is that in order to have OXRTK working, you still need to have Quadviews 1.1.3 installed to be in this situation:

If I remove Quadviews 1.1.3 and want Quadviews to work at API level, I will need to remove OXRTK as well.  Is that the case?

I really like using OXRTK for CAS as it is the most performing way to sharpen, any other way is increasing GPU frametime.

Edited September 28, 2024 by WipeUout
Typo

[mbucchia]

7 hours ago, WipeUout said:

If I remove Quadviews 1.1.3 and want Quadviews to work at API level, I will need to remove OXRTK as well.  Is that the case

Yes.

7 hours ago, WipeUout said:

really like using OXRTK for CAS as it is the most performing way to sharpen

QVFR included built-in CAS, so there was no need for OXRTK. I believe the Pimax implementation is the same (looking last night, they are simply using my code). Might need to confirm with them.

[Dangerzone]

OK - so I've given this a go. I was using 72hz refresh prior to trying this out. 

Switching to 90hz (both 90hz straight, and 90hz upscaling) creates stutters/jerking when moving my head left to right and back again. (Probably 3 jerks from left to right, and the same going back) - when on the homescreen (Pimax "moon surface").

I experienced minor jerking in 72hz, but nothing like what I'm seeing in 90hz. I don't think this is an upscaling thing, as this occurs with 90hz no upscaling too.

I'm not sure if this is tracking related, or rendering. I tried changing room lighting freq from Automatic to both 60 and 50hz - no difference. GPU was running fairly cool at the time - not showing any signs of high workload (which I wouldn't expect on the home screen). I'm running a 4090 on a 13900kf). I tried with motion smoothing both on and offline, but this made no difference. 

In game in DCS - I noticed the same jerking. I'm aware that DCS also has it's own stuttering issues at the moment, so it's hard to know for sure whether it's DCS or the 90hz that's causing this, but given that it's happening on the native homscreen moon surface as well with such a high-spec'd rig, either I have some settings wrong, or there's something else going on. 

I noticed after installing the update, quadviews no longer worked for me. (I no longer had the focalspot / foviated rendering respected on OpenXR applications). Thankfully just reinstalling (choosing REPAIR) on Quadviews fixed this up nice and easy. (I didn't need to touch OpenXRTK, or Quadviews Companion). 

I tested a little more with 90hz upscaling (ignoring the jerking), and the biggest problem with this will be writing/text. I went from the nice crisp sharp lines on the MFD's and cockpit labels to going back to being 'soft' again - almost like I was using my old Reverb. Even running quadviews with 160% upscaling of the resolution in the focused part was still too soft for my liking. I guess this is to be expected with lower rending and then upscaling with text.

Stuttering/Jerking aside - I can see 90hz upscaling being effective in games such as Halflife Alyx, etc where most is graphic textures, etc, or for people who are willing to sacrifice clear text for better performance - but for me - at least in flight simulators where I'm reading labels on cockpits and text in MFD's, CNI's, etc - it seems that the 90hz upscaling is going to be a miss. 

Maybe if they're able to implement something in the future similar to quadviews companion where they have native resolution (or even super-sampled) in the center, and the resolution dropped with upscaling down at the edges more it might be better, but having it through the entire display leaving soft labels after experiencing the sharp images I've now grown used to with the Crystal - I'll be giving the upscaling a miss for now.

Eager though to find out how other people's experiences go, or if others have experienced the same stuttering in the homescreen, and found a solution?

 

[WipeUout]

Using Quadviews (mbuccia's app) after a re-install is as it was before native openXR support built-in Pimax play. 

I tried to use the integrated Quadviews in Pimax play (you have to remove mbuccia'a app and OXRTK) and it did not give any good result.  I did not find a way to tweek settings other than the three options within Pimax Play ''Game'' stettings (perf, balance, quality).  If there is a way to set things up such as size of fixed_area, resolution etc, then it could improve but for now, did not see this, anyone has an idea?

For now, I re-installed OXRTK and Quaviews 1.1.3, this is still providing the best results.  Got rid of PimaxXR and this is the only benefit so far.  

[maxTRX]

My short non scientific review:   I tried Pimax Quadviews - meh,   Upscale to 90Hz - meh,     went back to regular 90Hz.   OpenXR looked a tiny bit softer (as Dangerzone described) then SteamVR.

I'm still playing racing sim only so... no stutters, hickups or crashes.

[Keith Briscoe]

Misery loves company... gosh I really want / wanted to love my PCL but I have struggled with it.  Then the latest news of 90hz upscaling, integrated this and that.  Hope returns, but seems the community is not yet convinced based on trials and visuals.

I went back to my Reverb G2 the other day and I just cannot stress the satisfaction of 'it just works every time and in all circumstances' stability.  I know it's not perfect.  I remember what the PCL looked like.  But the crisp edge to edge visuals do not do me any good when I cannot count on floating/tracking issues and/or extra stutter AND most importantly game/headset crashes.  I nearly quit my ACC racing league last week, but I will race again this Thursday with G2 and hopeful (if not expecting) things to go very smoothly.

Will keep my PCL for a while, in its box, to see if something good/great/whatever happens.  But for now, I'll just go back to keeping my fingers crossed the WMR stays alive.

[Dangerzone]

6 hours ago, WipeUout said:

If there is a way to set things up such as size of fixed_area, resolution etc, then it could improve but for now, did not see this, anyone has an idea?

For now, I re-installed OXRTK and Quaviews 1.1.3, this is still providing the best results.  Got rid of PimaxXR and this is the only benefit so far.  

Firstly - I think this goes to show just how ahead of his time mbucchia was with his insight and development. One man, unpaid was able to produce something that gets the the most out of VR headsets far better than what the companies who design the headsets have achieved. 

Even without DFR - those other customizations options that he made available to us made the difference for me with the CL being a success vs a disappointment. I remember when I first finally go the Pimax working that I was underwhelmed by my experience. I wasn't getting what all the professional youtube reviewers were getting. 

But after installing Quadviews - that's when the wow factor came in. Pimax should really take onboard what he has done with Quadviews and include those settings in their own software as part of an 'advanced settings' section. 

The other thing I find interesting is that I can go up to 80% vertical space no problems in quadviews - supersampled at 160% with a 10% transition, and then 5% rendering for the edges in Quadviews and get incredible imaging, and superiour performance than the 'out of the box' experience with Pimax. It has me wondering if a bit of the rending that I'm doing is 'outside' of my view and it's chopping rendering that isn't required.
I'm flying around in DCS with settings up on high for almost everything, and able to run at 90fps with OXRTK reporting +99 GPU overhead still available! I don't care for the edges, so I leave them at 5% and they work fine. 

It surprises me when I read that people haven't noticed much difference with Quadviews. I wonder what I'm doing wrong (outside of Quadviews), or what they've done wrong inside of Quadviews settings. For me though, the 160% supersampling made a huge difference in quality. 

 

6 hours ago, WipeUout said:

Got rid of PimaxXR and this is the only benefit so far.  

Hmm... didn't realise that I could uninstall that now. I'll have to do that. One less bit of software inbetween the better. 

[Calvin.Pimax]

All the feedback will be reported back to the dev team, and they will work on the improvements. 

Thanks for the explanation from the legend @mbucchia!

[Johnny Dioxin]

I decided not to update - my sim is working well with the 30 version and I'm reluctant to possibly upset the apple cart with 33. I didn't use any extra apps like OpenXR Toolkit or PimaxXR and just flew via SteamVR and the experience was plenty good enough (lens problem excepted). Average 67fps with a low teens frametime is good enough just now.

[ldwater]

Yeah I'm the same, I'm keeping clear until these types of issues are resolved as I simply don't want the hassle of having to uninstall stuff to find the new stuff doesn't work and have to re-install it all over again.

I'm confused as to why XR toolkit wasn't also rolled into PLAY simply because a lot of the guides online for Pimax headsets include the XR toolkit, even if its just for the FFR option.

If XR toolkit doesn't work with new Pimax PLAY then it seems like a step backwards rather than forwards, for what is essentially to provide a 'bundled' install rather than installing separately.

I'd love to see improvements and new features added to PimaxXR and Quadviews rather than just adding them to PLAY install and then keep clear of them because they 'weren't written by us'

[Nodak]

The toolkit hasn't had any development in two years, parts of it are obsolete and end up doing harm via conflict.  For instance the NIS sharpening is already applied at 20% while NVIDIA has already implemented that feature directly in their control panel.  You can get some weird halo's having both on in certain games where you won't be able to see dots, and who's going to know this is happening?

[Keith Briscoe]

15 hours ago, Dangerzone said:

Firstly - I think this goes to show just how ahead of his time mbucchia was with his insight and development. One man, unpaid was able to produce something that gets the the most out of VR headsets far better than what the companies who design the headsets have achieved. 

Even without DFR - those other customizations options that he made available to us made the difference for me with the CL being a success vs a disappointment. I remember when I first finally go the Pimax working that I was underwhelmed by my experience. I wasn't getting what all the professional youtube reviewers were getting. 

But after installing Quadviews - that's when the wow factor came in. Pimax should really take onboard what he has done with Quadviews and include those settings in their own software as part of an 'advanced settings' section. 

The other thing I find interesting is that I can go up to 80% vertical space no problems in quadviews - supersampled at 160% with a 10% transition, and then 5% rendering for the edges in Quadviews and get incredible imaging, and superiour performance than the 'out of the box' experience with Pimax. It has me wondering if a bit of the rending that I'm doing is 'outside' of my view and it's chopping rendering that isn't required.
I'm flying around in DCS with settings up on high for almost everything, and able to run at 90fps with OXRTK reporting +99 GPU overhead still available! I don't care for the edges, so I leave them at 5% and they work fine. 

It surprises me when I read that people haven't noticed much difference with Quadviews. I wonder what I'm doing wrong (outside of Quadviews), or what they've done wrong inside of Quadviews settings. For me though, the 160% supersampling made a huge difference in quality. 

 

Hmm... didn't realise that I could uninstall that now. I'll have to do that. One less bit of software inbetween the better. 

@Dangerzone I follow almost everything you reference here - very helpful findings.  But what do you mean by the "supersampled at 160%" part?  is that the first slider for the resolution in the foveated region?
Thx

[Dangerzone]

9 hours ago, Nodak said:

The toolkit hasn't had any development in two years, parts of it are obsolete and end up doing harm via conflict.  For instance the NIS sharpening is already applied at 20% while NVIDIA has already implemented that feature directly in their control panel.  You can get some weird halo's having both on in certain games where you won't be able to see dots, and who's going to know this is happening?

About the only thing I still use the OXRTK for is to display the FPS rendered, along with the CPU and GPU overheads in VR. Just wondering what alternatives are available for this (in VR) if any?

9 hours ago, Keith Briscoe said:

@Dangerzone I follow almost everything you reference here - very helpful findings.  But what do you mean by the "supersampled at 160%" part?  is that the first slider for the resolution in the foveated region?
Thx

This setting here is what I'm referring to. I set this to 160%.

(Note the below is NOT my settings - I've just grabbed it from the net for reference - I don't have access to my gaming rig atm). And my apologies - I shoul dhave said Foveated resolution - I just couldn't recall what the actual title was.

[T24_Martin]

Hi, maybe I missed a point, but I don't get the Pimax Quad Views to work in DCS. I was using the Quad Views Companion, OpenXR Toolkit, PimaxXR and Quad Views Foveated 1.1.3. All was good. Then I uninstalled all these and just used Pimax OpenXR and Foveated Rendering in Pimax Play... Not working. I installed Quad Views Foveated 1.1.3 again, not working. I did several new installs of Pimax Play 1.33 and always calibrated the eye tracking, but there is no QV in DCS.

 

Any idea, what I am doing wrong or what I could try? I am a bit lost...

[Spud257]

Exactly the same here, it was working fine with the separate apps now no dfr in DCS. I don't know if its the DCS update or Pimax play or both.

[f14billy]

Make sure quad views is checked in the DCS VR Settings, it was disabled after the update and needed to be checked again and make sure the new eye tracking option underneath is unchecked. After reinstalling Pimax Play make sure quad views is also enabled there and reinstall quad views 1.1.3 (QV 1.13 is not necessary but it gives me better performance and I can customize the box size).

Edited October 1, 2024 by f14billy