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That would be amazing for both this and homefront so I can check them on my 8k too, thank you so much!
Well FOV is extremely important for VR, and really welcomed for any game or app included 180 vids, or Vorpx. It adds a huge layer of immersion, since current 100 FOV headsets feel like looking through a scuba mask. Once you’ve tried Pimax high FOV, it’s really hard to go back.
However 5k/8k FOV have a few issues. First, they have 3 levels of FOV, low/mid/high. High has a very noticiable distortion on the sides (like a glass border reflection), mid is currently almost invisible but can be noticed, and low is distortion free. The good thing is that low FOV is still much bigger than every other HMD in the market, and it’s completely distortion free, besides it’s actually very easy to adapt to the distortion with time, it like using glasses, the first day you notice the border all the time, in a week you completely forget about it.
The thing is for your use case, you won’t take much advantage of high FOV, since Vorpx FOV is determined by the games FOV options, which normally don’t have over 90-100 FOV. The second issue is that high FOV has higher requirements, so you’ll need a great computer to make a game work on high FOV with Vorpx. The 3rd issue is that Pimax by itself requires a more powerful computer than average, since it has such high pixel panels and FOV, it needs to push a ton of pixels, so a great computer is required. Add to that the parallel projections feature of Pimax, that has a 30% performance hit since canted screens require a software adjustment, and has to be turned on in almost every game or app.
However currently Pimax has done a great job improving performance with a feature called Brainwarp that’s similar to ASW on Oculus and similar solutions on Steam and WMR, together with the option to lower refresh rate to 60hz and lower FOV, it’s actually very usable in many cases.
Also just like 3d vision, to render a game in 3D it hits half the performance of 2d in many cases, and also that for games to look great they need heavy supersampling (I run vorpx vames at 2529×1572 DSR resolution, or 2400p internal Vorpx resolution for them to look good), so add these to the mix, you get a ton of performance hits from every corner.
In my case (intel i5 4670k, 1080ti) with a Pimax 8k, at low FOV, 60hz and Brainwarp on, I can play many games in fullVR mode and real 3D (called geometry 3d or geo3d in Vorpx), but most of them are old. Games that work well in terms of performance for me are for example Bioshock 1/2, Dark Messiah, Half Life 2, Borderlands 1 GOT enhanced, Amnesia, Bulletstorm, Duke Nukem Forever, Firewatch, Metro 2033 Redux, Fallout New Vegas, The Stanley Parable to name a few. Still several games, even old, have mid-low performance like Dishonored, TESO or Shadow Warrior 1. Still those that work are absolutely incredible and really feel like you’re inside the game.
However Vorpx has a home theater mode, that it basically creates a floating virtual screen, and in that case performance is way less important. In full VR mode, low fps will hit your brain hard, since any slow down can make you sick, but in virtual theater mode or floating screen mode, you can play at lower fps just fine, like it was a real monitor or projector. Another thing to have into account is that if you don’t have good VR legs (have your brain trained to detach virtual movement from real movement), you can get really sick with Vorpx when your brain tries to understand why it’s moving (virtual reality) but you’re actually not moving in the real world. It get’s time to get used to it, and it’s even harder with Vorpx since real games move you at very high speeds that your brain takes time to get used to.
So for example, games like Witcher 3 or Batman Arkham Knight are perfectly playable in Vorpx theater mode at 30-40 fps in full real 3D, both reasonably demanding games, however games like TESO can melt your brain in FullVR since they have a hard time hitting 60 fps in real 3d, so head movement and game movement aren’t completely in sync.
Also since Pimax has such a huge FOV, the pixels need to fill a much higher screen size, so even having two 2k screens (5k) or two 4k screens (8k) doesn’t mean it looks a lot better than normal HMDs, and they are comparable to Index in the case of 5k, and close to Reverb in the case of 8K afaik in terms of image quality/SDE.
That’s why I said that for your use case, probably Rift S, Reverb or Odyssey Plus are the best devices. Only VR games really take advantage of the huge FOV of Pimax, but you’re not interested in VR gaming that much as far as I can see.
So for me, I’d put it like this:
1) Rift S for a really good rounded device both for VR and 3d/vorpx/video at a good price, but Facebook walled garden market.
2) Vive Pro for a slightly better, more expensive experience compared to Rift S.
3) Reverb for a extremely good 3d/Vorpx/video experience, average VR experience at a high price, but hardware issues.
4) Pimax for the ultimate VR experience, but very high price, very high requirements, it’s not sold with either controllers and tracking LHs, so you need to get them from elsewhere.
5) Samsung Galaxy Plus: Best entry device that can be found for 300-400 for the full VR kit, very similar image quality to Rift S ( http://360rumors.com/samsung-odyssey-plus-vs-oculus-rift-s-299-399-budget-high-resolution-vr-headsets/ ), average VR experience. The good thing is that it has high availability, and Samsung has a great return policy, so if you don’t like it, they’ll take it back, no question asked in almost all cases.
6) Index: The best case overall VR experience without any compromises, but high price, low availabilty.My take on VR headsets in 2019:
Original Vive: Better avoid, just like you mention, terrible SDE and low res, you really don’t want to play in VR or 3D with this at this point.
Original Oculus: Similar issues to Vive, plus it’s now discontinued by Oculus, so better avoid.
Oculus Rift S: Best value per dollar. Way better image quality than Oculus CV1, very cheap for a full VR kit, very easy to set up, works fine with Vorpx. It has a few problems though, track loss in some angles, need a well lighted room, not as high quality plastic as CV1, below average included audio (you can still use headphones though), and walled garden market by Facebook, but you can still use Steam games and apps.
Vive Pro: Nice option and currently can be found used at decent prices. Very good image quality and best tracking system in the market with lighthouses. HTC has awful support and warranty though.
HP Reverb: A Windows Mixed Reality device, and by far the best image quality with basically no sde and the best device for simulators / 180 movies / Vorpx / 3d playing. Still it has some issues that have to be ironed out like blinking image and other stuff, so check https://www.reddit.com/r/WindowsMR/ and do some research if interested. As a VR device it’s servicable, it has the worst tracking system of them all, it’s usable but not much more, and below par controllers. Since it has such a high resolution panels, it requires a more powerful computer than average.
Valve Index: Not yet released, but the safest option for a great upgrade with barely any compromises. Better screen than almost anything else but Pimax and Reverb, barely any sde, better fov than average, best tracking system on the market, the best controllers with full hand tracking, really comfortable, amazing audio and 120h/144hz mode for extra immersion. Also as a steamVR device Vorpx support is almost granted, the big con is price: $1000 for the full package, and it’s sold out until september.
Samsung Oddysey Plus: A good balance between quality and price. The screen has a special filter than almost removes all SDE, but it makes the image slightly blurry, still most people say it looks great. All the quirks of WMR device, but it has none of the issues of the Reverb like blinking image, and price is pretty good. Solid entry device for a full VR kit for the user than wants to play 3D, simulators, video playing and Vorpx over a high quality VR experience, which again is OK but not great.
Pimax: Two models, the 5k’ has amazing image clarity similar to Valve Index in terms of SDE and image quality, and also it adds huge FOV that greatly increases immersion. 8K model has a bit less clarity but improved screen door, so it’s the better option for Vorpx and 3d gaming. I have it and SDE is nearly imperceptable, and as the greatest SDE hater alive, it has become a non issue for me. The cons are price, since they are expensive, availability, high performance requirements so better have a good rig, and since Pimax is a chinese company, support could be better, but they are actually doing a decent job with it.
Suggested links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive
https://www.reddit.com/r/OculusVideo channels:
MRTV and sweviver have fantastic reviews of almst all devices, so check them out for very in depth info about all the devices.I tried the game with RJK_ profile and it worked great, but the full VR experience lacked a bit, mostly since the low FOV doesn’t help to create a good experience, and the 3d fov was maxed, so it created some issues on the sides of the screen.
The good thing is that as it was mentioned before, DCoTE Unofficial Patch has a FOV option, but it’s greyed out if you use the Steam version since Steam blocks the exe from being modified. I purchased the game from GOG which is on sale currently for 2,59 euro ( https://www.gog.com/game/call_of_cthulhu_dark_corners_of_the_earth ) and the unofficial patch works. I could set up 99 FOV instead of the default 55 fov, but it was a bit too much so I set it to 70, tweaked a bit the RJK_ profile and it works great.
Also the view was shaking a bit, so I suggest you turn sensitivity to 1 on the controller options and tweak Vorpx headtracking option instead, it makes the headtracking more solid.
One thing though is that you have to start a new game after changing the FOV, otherwise it doesn’t work. Also it fixes a few bugs like the wrong sky at the beginning and many more things, never finished the game before so this looks really promising.
By the way I tried to endorse RJK profile but it gave me a Unspecified Error:30010, weird.
It works like that, it’s really weird at the beginning but you get used to it, aiming with mouse is hard coded so vorpx can’t do anything about it. You can still control the look with the mouse, so aiming can be a mix of both, head looking and mouse pointing.
I agree with that, almost finished with Bioshock 1 by now, and broken shadows really blow up the ridiculous immersion that Vorpx can achieve, and sometimes they mess wirh your brain badly. You learn to ignore them / not look at them, but yeah they really hurt the experience and give the sense that in the end this is a hacked game after all.
So I don’t know if it’s the latest Vorpx version or the new stable Pitool version I’ve just installed ( https://forum.pimaxvr.com/t/pitool-1-0-1-132-stable-released/20176 ) , but I’m getting much better performance with Vorpx now on the Pimax 8k.
Previously these games worked fine but had some performance issues:
Portal
Stanley Parable
Bulletstorm
SingularityThey have improved a lot, Bulletstorm looks amazing at a ridiculously high res, Stanley Parable worked surprinsingly bad even with it’s basic graphics, now it works really well but I’m capped by limited 4:3 resolutions and higher internal Vorpx resolutions say they don’t work in my computer, also I had a ton of issues with Portal, and now it’s not buttery smooth yet but works a lot better and I consider it playable.
I’m downloading Bioshock Infinite now which had several issues before, can’t wait to see if it has improved now.
Also Return to Castle Wolfenstein had some weird geometry showing at the sides of the screen before mostly close to walls, it works a lot better now with the new Vorpx version and it shows very slightly if you force it and get too close to the walls, but 99% of the time it works fine now.
Ralf, I suggest you add the link to the latest stable version on the first post, or simply mention to download the latest pitool version available at https://pimaxvr.com/pages/pitool