pymax then so these guys are actually a pretty new company based out of china
and they are making some very bold claims
so they boast that their vr headset i've got a
prototype of it right here delivers dramatically better field of view and
resolution compared to competing solutions from big name companies like
oculus and htc and they actually flew
all the way out to my studio here in vancouver to have me try it but my bs
detector started going off pretty hardcore when i realized that they were
calling the two 4k displays one for each
eye 8k that is at best a little misleading
but i mean i'm already in at work on my
sunday due to some scheduling challenges so
what the hey why don't we check it out
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well this bag broke okay
i guess we don't get another shot at this then um
so right here in my hands i've got what they're calling emphasis on their
calling because i don't necessarily agree what they're calling the pimax 8
k the resolution that it's running at here
is 3840 by 2160 per
eye so in order to achieve that
well they had to put some pretty different hardware in here although
there's really not much point um showing it to you because the finished version
of the pi max 8k is actually going to have one usb 3 this one has a usb 3 and
a usb 2 and it's going to have a single displayport 1.4
this guy is using dual hdmis and then because we're using a laptop for the
demo uh an HDMI to mini DisplayPort
adapter to drive the displays while the displays themselves run at
3840x2160 the way that we're actually driving this
is with two 2560x1440
signals that are being upscaled if you
want to run them at native resolution you are actually going to need a higher
end product called the pimax 8k x
and you're going to need a pretty banging computer because running two
displays at 4k is not exactly straightforward especially if you factor
in that they gotta run at 90 hertz if you
want the kind of fluidity that well you're gonna want if you are
playing games in vr now size-wise this thing is really big
it's like kinda chunky looking but the good news is that when you're gaming in
vr you're obviously not looking at yourself so all that really means is
that your your wife or your boyfriend or whoever's watching you play vr gets to
watch you look like even more of an idiot but weight wise it's actually not bad
you still got that tether drag but the distribution of weight is
actually pretty solid i got to give them credit for that
now tracking is handled with these laser trackers along the outside right now
they don't look like anything special but this is pretty early going
and this is pretty cool so they're gonna ship they have a complete kit that ships
with lighthouses but if you already have an htc vive you can actually use your
existing htc lighthouses and just plug
and play and then that's also true
of any vive controllers so those are
intercompatible with a pimax headset whether you go with the 8k the 8k x or
the lower end 5k now that's not to say that they don't
strive to build their own controller so this
is actually a prototype version of their controller it seems to bear a lot of
resemblance to the htc controller but check this out
somebody dropped it at an earlier demo this whole thing has been fairly well
used so hey intercompatibility is still pretty cool the the rep was able to run
to the store buy a couple of these and then bring them over here for the demo
so experience wise because it uses the lighthouses you can do a seated vr
experience or you can do a room scale vr experience the maximum distance is about
the same as the vive so you can do a play area about
well this big i think it's a five meter
distance uh between the two lighthouses
brutally i can't say i'm too disappointed that i'm going to be using vive controllers today um
this is a prototype but they've got a lot of work to do here
so this touch pad has to be matte there's no way that they
they can ship it with a glossy surface like this and the tactility of the
buttons i'll give them credit it's lighter than the vive controller so
that's good but the tactile feel of the buttons has a long way to go especially
this trigger down here so hopefully these are all things they can
get resolved one bonus though is hey type c charging so that's good this is
what they're planning to ship but i would consider this to be kind of the base model because part of their whole
concept is having a modular design for this product so you could add like
a scent module you could add support for prescription built-in lenses
um you could add freaking what else they got they're
claiming that they can do wireless transmission though they sure as heck
won't be doing that at full resolution um there's there's a cooling fan module
planned apparently that would be pretty trippy oh and there
it is it is it's running
oh no they weren't kidding about the field of view it's all the way from
about i mean i can't see what i'm doing but from about here to about here
and then from like here to here and we've got another hilariously
yes this thing is definitely a prototype in case you were wondering
revelation here um the controllers are not running
wirelessly yet that will happen this is only prototype
two i think out of like i think they're gonna do they're
planning four prototypes at least before they actually deliver this thing
feel like uh freaking you know
i don't know i don't watch movies so i have a hard
time doing like movie references okay yes i know i'm mirroring the
display i'm gonna try and get away with it steamvr give me a break here
okay so man this is going to be hard to
to not walk too far uh
okay i think i need to adjust my inter-pupillary distance here because
this is clearly not correct
it's clear that they have some work to do
with respect to making the flat displays
appear a little bit more natural as you move your head around
so right now there's a little bit of waviness
as you look from one side to another
there's a little bit of distortion and it is a little bit motion sickness
inducing but clearly they're not done yet and i
will say text is incredibly readable
compared to anything that i have tried before
all right so let's let's fire up a game shall we why don't
we do my first vr game
space pirate trainer
so this is what i initially set up my first time trying vr
in my uh in my computer room upstairs
the night before i had to bring the htc vive back to the office for luke to do
his review this was the game that i played when i set it up in my office
upstairs
oh that's my oh wow i've never seen this enemy before
what the heck so what it's like armored until it's like not armored or something or well
okay oh come on now
now i just want the high score on this uh setup here
so that everybody whoever does this demo can know
that i was better than them all right so i'm dead so initial impressions um i'm gonna try
it again in a minute without that secondary screen running because i know that that can
affect performance but what i will say right now is that
they have got some um
they have some motion tracking responsiveness stuff
to address because as someone who can comfortably play vr for over an hour
in games like hollow point running around jumping
i've been in for about five minutes so far and i'm already feeling nauseated
they're saying that they're planning to ship units early next year
i don't think they're going to hit that target and if they don't hit that target i don't necessarily think that's a bad
thing because i would rather that they spend a little bit more time on that
with that said they're moving in the right direction
in some ways the increased field of view
and the increased pixel density makes
for a very different experience i was pretty skeptical about 2560 by 1440
upscaled to 4k and for text i don't know
what the people talking about how you could use this at
the desktop or talking about like it's clearer but it's obviously upscaled so
for text i wouldn't recommend the non-x version or i just get the 5k and run
that at 5k natively but in games
there is virtually no screen door effect so they're using what they're calling a
c l p l display and i don't remember
what the clp stands for but the l at the end is liquid um and they're saying that
it's competitive with OLED in terms of the
pixel response times so that the smearing that you'll see in the image as
you move from side to side it is not and i don't know i don't know why they would
say that it's a very um
it's a very strange thing to say because
it's common knowledge that an OLED responds instantly while the best you
can do gray to gray with an lcd is
multiple milliseconds
with that said it is better than i thought it would be but right now it's
hard for me to say how much of the motion sickness is from that and how
much of it is from the actual motion delay when i'm moving around or moving
my hands now they told me that they haven't validated space pirate trainer
so the next game i'm going to try is one that i've spent a lot of time with and
one that they actually suggested and that is the lab
so here in longbow definitely enjoying the increased
peripheral vision so like
facing this way looking at the gate i can clearly see guys coming down the
steps towards the right approach also in a brightly colored scene like this i'm
not noticing any difference in pixel response times
to nearly the same degree that i did when i was in space pirate trainer where
everything that you're looking at is brightly colored objects on a black
backdrop which is typically a more difficult scenario
so i think i've narrowed down
where most of the motion sickness is coming from
um it seems to be mostly to do
with the slight distortion effect of the display because ultimately you're
looking at a flat display through a lens that is stretching it out into your
peripheral vision but it seems to be coming from the way
that the image distorts as i move around particularly when i look up and down
now they tell me
that the next version is going to have an updated lens
so i'm hoping that they can resolve everything that i'm experiencing today
but like anything that you'd be backing
on kickstarter based on an early prototype you can't take for granted that
anything will be any better than it was when they were initially pitching it
i will say this though again the field of view is incredible like i
actually feel like i'm standing in a plaza
instead of feeling like i'm looking at
a three-dimensional plaza that's like threw a pair of binoculars in front of
me and that effect is really cool
so impressions wise guys remember this is based on a
pre-production unit so take it for what it is right now they're asking for
4.99 for a pi max bare bones on their
kickstarter campaign so by bare bones i mean it is just the headset and they
assume that you already own vive controllers and vive lighthouses that
you'll continue to use then if you want the full package it's
eight hundred dollars for this one with the whole kit or a thousand dollars for
the pi max 8k x although that one is actually sold out at this time right now
even though that is actually quite a bit cheaper than the htc vive the rift at
400 bucks with sensors and with touch controllers
included is a more seamless experience for sure
with that said now that i've experienced what a next-gen resolution display is
like in vr i would have a very hard time recommending that you buy a current gen
vr experience because the increased immersion from the wider field of view
and the higher pixel density makes an enormous
difference and this was a pretty cool experience
even if i do feel a little nauseated right now i wish them the best of luck
on the next couple of iterations because i can see they're headed towards
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