Receive my Pimax 8kx a week ago

Pimax Hardware Pimax Discussion
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#1

I don’t think I’m real swift with this but here it goes.

I received my 8kx 2 days ago didn’t have a lot of time to mess with it when and nothing was in the box but the headset - no paperwork, nothing to wipe the lenses, nothing.

When I first plugged it in I updated the firmware. Pitool was already up to date. Couldn’t wait to see this clarity. Put it on and tried my favorite game skyrim vr with over 400 mods. No clarity, looked way worse than my 5k+. Also my vram was at 7.6 . I couldn’t believe it was this poor of a quality image. Messed around with the resolution for a while and still the image sucked. It was late so would try next day.

On the 2nd day I don’t know what happened but the clarity was there and I have no idea how it happened. Went into Skyrim and it was gorgeous. Still high vram usage but I dropped the number of mods down and got the vram down to about 7 and it was working very well. Stopped to eat dinner and came back to the game and everything changed, vram was at 7.7 and the mask kept cutting off and on about every 5 to 20 seconds. Went to the vanilla skyrim and same problem.

Decided to play half life Alyx and it first came in very clear for about 2 minutes. Then the graphics went to very low res. Kicked the res up to high then ultra to no avail. Went to big screen and picture came in pretty good but would hmd would cut off and on about every 30 to 60 seconds. Found the plug was loose (for the 2nd time , the 1st time was when I first started). I don’t know what is causing these problems but I’ll remove my extension cables and try again later today.

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#2

Sounds like a unique situation, and that loose cable must mean there is something going on there but seems weird you get res problems instead of complete blackouts

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#3

before the first use of your X, has you steamVr and Pitool complete deinstalled?!
Otherwise the old values of your previous HMD are still stored.

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#4

Why would that be a problem anyway? PiTool should create a settings profile for each individual device it gets connected to. I mean, they must switch headsets themselves all the time too, right? They’re not stupid, right?

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#5

I found that my packet had slipped behind the glued-down package insert. Shake the box or rip up the insert and you should find a small square packet with instructions and a cleaning cloth.

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#6

you never know what an old pitool version will leave in the bowels of the registry.

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#7

Thanks for the input everyone I’ll try later on today

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#8

Yes I think you should do that at first. :+1:

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#9

Did you set maxRecommendedResolution to 16384 in the SteamVR config file? And have you tried moving the headset lower down on your nose or other orientations? It takes a while to find the sweetspot.

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#10

I haven’t experienced an issue with switching 5k+ and og 8k. But it could be a consideration to check to eliminate a possibility.

@Phillybump have you ran @BNP’s tool to ensure steamvr settings file has the needed changes? (Easier than manually setting this; resets at times with steamvr updares).

HL:Akyx needs certain settings tweaks to turn off auto-resolution settings @NextGenVR has a guide to play without pp.

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#11

my guess is your video card is overheating causing steam to automatically lower your settings

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#12

Also just turn off auto resolution in steamvr if you haven’t, manually set to 100% and verify the resolution per eye makes sense. it’s an utter pain with every HMD, but especially pimax.

As others said, try taking off your extension cables. With my 5k+ I used to have issues with the screen turning off after ~30 minutes of gameplay. HMD would track, but no display. That was a USB issue for sure.

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#13

Hey Thall, When you say, “verify the resolution per eye makes sense”, what specifically do you mean?

#14

just that you aren’t ending up with something ridiculously big or small, like 8k per eye

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#15

My 2080 super is well below overheating but thanks for the thought. By the way I did have to tear my whole box open to find the lens cleaner and the instructions but they were in there. And I will check these other suggestions as soon as I get a chance

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#16

I’m not sure what the proper 8kx resolutions are per eye, but its easiest to do this without parallel projections on. If you open steamVR supersample settings it reports the resolution per eye along with a general SS% slider. In automatic mode it does this for you, which you do not want.

There is some super sampling performed by default that puts the render resolution above the panel resolution. On the vive this was 1.4x, but it is not the same for the 8kx or 5k+, as this depends on the distortion correction needed for a clear image (image to HMD is distorted opposite the distortion of the lenses to compensate for the lens. Due to the edges of the image being compressed in the geometry transform applied to the game image, we need supersampling to bring back fine details.)

Though I cant find the recommended steamVR numbers for the 8kx, it should be rendering above 4k per eye at 100% steamvr resolution.

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#17

Something I don’t really understand is the day I said I had the best picture out of the 8kx when I first turned on my TV which is a monitor but it’s a TV monitor its had this beautiful blue hue on it in the picture was sharp and clear that was the same day my 8kx had a beautiful resolution on it but since then it hasn’t been the same

#18

This part stuck out to me. The random nature of your ordeal very much sounds like it is SNR related. There are a lot of factors that effect this and if the signal is low even moving around can effect it.

I suggest removing the extensions and also changing the DP port on your video card can help. A ferrite nodule can reduce the noise and therefore improve the SNR (but not increase the signal itself).

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#19

Have you tried updating the SteamVR settings again?

IIRC SteamVR calculates your GPUSpeed every time you open SteamVR and stores the value. It then takes the average of the last 10 calucated values to determine some other setting (which affects how good the image looks).

After you open SteamVR several times the values get updated and your image starts to look bad again. Running the script updates all 10 values again so the image will look good.

The Pimax Experience (aka VR Experience) has most/all of the scripts functionality built-in, so the settings get updated every time you open it and the image doesn’t gradually degrade.

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#20

Thank you again I will check and see if the resolution changed back to its normal

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