Pimax 5K+ spotted after a 16 month hiberation.... First impressions

Well, it's here. The Pimax 5K+ headset I backed on Kickstarter in October 2017 has finally made it from the depths of hell and everywhere else in between to my house in Australia. What a ride it's been.

To start, the box is fairly nice, nothing too fancy but definitely of Rift quality, nothing flimsy or cheap. The smell is actually like a brand new paid of shoes! I'd say that's the padding. Anyway who cares about the box, hey?

Upon fitting the strap, I was horrified at the comfort. Only after I messed around with it a little bit did I feel I could actually make it work. It's not as intuitive as the Rift but it's workable for me at least. One thing that's immediately struck me is I've nearly got my nose poking through the lenses from the inside out. My face is literally ON the lenses. We are going to have to order custom cushions. It's insane that they've left this unaddressed. I think additional face cushions are a stretch goal reward but I've not see them being any different to the standard one. We need thicker pads, Pimax. I have a small face and a not so overly large nose and I'm struggling. If it turns out my IPD is able to have the lenses moved to the outside of the headset I might just get away with it.

The strap does tighten on your face pretty well. I did not expect that based on other feedback. It's not ski mask type like the Rift but it does have the ability to stick to my face and feel pressure so there's some modular possibilities there especially for larger faces that won't need to tighten the straps as much. Between the side and top strap you should be able to get the HMD sitting nice and flat on your face without any tilting at least while sitting down.

I've yet to power it on so I'll go and do that now. One thing you'll notice is you need an additional power point for this. It comes with an external power source that plugs into the PC side of the cable. It isn't recognised by the PC unless you power it on.
 
Right guys, hoping to have my rig setup for the first time this weekend, got lots to do, but think I should be able to get it all installed and up and running.

I’ve got lots of tinkering to do as this is a completely new build and I’m coming from and Xbox, so expecting some technical challenges. I will need to setup things such as my Heusinkveld pedals and OSW on top of game settings, Pimax settings etc.

So I was hoping someone on here could give me a helping hand on where to start with the Pimax.

I will initially only be racing on AC. My PC specs are very powerful, i9, 2080ti graphic card. So hoping this should make things a little easier.

If anyone can recommend AC settings, what mods are recommended and PiTool settings, that will be superb. If I don’t get it perfect initially I’m not too concerned (I’m expecting a huge jump coming from the Xbox anyway), I just want to get racing ASAP without spending hours trying to figure out how do get the Pimax working to some sort of usability.

Cheers

Mark
 
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Thanks mate. Any mods you’d recommend before I start?

I don't run any graphics mods. The game looks great on its own in the Pimax. As good as the graphics mods are, they go through a lot of updates and keeping up with them was just too much work for. To each his own though.

What I do run is car radar which can be downloaded off here to give you an onscreen visual of cars around your in close racing. The other one being ProTyres which gives you more detail as to the state and health of your tires. Both can be downloaded from here.
 
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Get content manager for AC. It can auto update the shader mod now, then grab Sol from racedepartment or from the discord. After that maybe the AC Legends pack if you are partial to the old GP Legends cars.

Otherwise just tracks n things. Personally I think the shader mod and sol are essential and I wouldnt drive without them. I don't get why you would need car radar when you have the highest FOV headset and you can just look around with your face (immersion breaking as well) but then I don't run any HUD for immersion reasons..
 
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Hey speaking of those mods, is there ANY decent fuel usage app for AC? I am sick of having to manually work out fuel usage with number of laps, vs how much I put in the tank and that stupid little fuel icon in the corner. I want something that gives me fuel usage per lap. Probably lost a place tonight at least because I was stuck filling fuel I didn't end up needing.
 
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Hey speaking of those mods, is there ANY decent fuel usage app for AC? I am sick of having to manually work out fuel usage with number of laps, vs how much I put in the tank and that stupid little fuel icon in the corner. I want something that gives me fuel usage per lap. Probably lost a place tonight at least because I was stuck filling fuel I didn't end up needing.

https://www.racedepartment.com/downloads/sidekick.11007/
 
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Sidekick is awesome, @anton_Chez . Can't believe you've not been using it..!
It's the only thing I (somewhat reluctantly) allow in my HUD. I've no idea how some people race in VR with multiple immersion-breaking HUD apps littering the screen, especially radar apps when Crew Chief's spotter is so damn good.
To each their own though - I'm not sitting in judgment!
;)
 
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I bought the 14mm and 6mm pack. 14mm is perfect for me but I used another piece to cover the nose bridge gap. 6mm piece still in tact, for now. They are awesome not only for giving your eyes more space but since they aren't foam directly soaking up your sweat, they stay super clean while racing. If you take it off and put it on again, a quick wipe and it's good as new.
 
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Anton and Robert or anyone else with a Pimax, can I ask you what kind of load your are getting on your CPU's in game running your Pimax 5K+ ?

Also can you say what else you have running along with it? SFX-100, SimHub, and specific games.

I know AC is supposed to be a CPU hog for AI's, so examples in Dirt Rally, PC2 and other titles would be cool too. Thanks for any information you can share. I'm thinking of an intermediate update for my system and wondering if an i7-9700K would do it, or if an i9-9900K would have any impact on VR.
 
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I just recently upgraded from a 6600K to a 9600K. I don't know for sure if it's made a massive difference as I've only done one race with it with stock content. But it was with 27 real drivers in VR and the experience was absolutely perfect. For me. I'll need to test it with a full grid of real people on a server with the V8Corsa mod on a mod track to really test out if it's made the difference I was hoping for, but so far, it's been really good.

I was running fpsVR while driving and I was getting anywhere between 25 - 40% CPU usage. While driving the mods online with the 6600K I was getting 90%+ CPU usage and the experience was very sub par. I don't understand why the CPU is hammered so much by being online but it was making it hard to race especially when I knew that it wasn't like that offline.

On the server last night, it might have been my best racing experience I've ever had. 45hz smoothed LOCKED and around 20M pixels per eye being rendered (equal to around 200 - 250% SS on the SteamVR slider). I'm not sure if it was actually hitting a wall and just not rendering that amount of pixels and that's why the frames were still really good, but the main thing is the overall image appeared perfect.

I doubt that going from an i5 to an i7 is going to make a difference at all for VR. The good thing is the new i5's now have 6 cores instead of the old ones that had 4 so it helps to make up some of the difference anyway. I've read people upgrading from i5 to the i7 and they haven't seen a tangible increase in performance, when searching whether it was worthwhile for me to upgrade to a new gen CPU. I mean bare minimum I have received 400Mhz on the core in clock speed, so there's that. I only thought about upgrading when I saw such a high CPU usage online and knew that it wasn't that bad offline.
 
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Glad to hear you saw solid improvements and especially that you are seeing the best experience that you have had to date! That's great to hear.

It got itchy and jumped the shark with what will probably be overkill components. I'm hoping to get rid of any bottlenecks in my system. Fingers crossed.
 
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