I originally said i thought I noticed a slight increase in depth perception. That prelim testing was while wearing glasses and I now feel the effect was a misaligned sweet spot adjustment on my head.
I spent quite some time in ALYX today, at the start of level 2. This time I wore contact lenses and jumped back and forth between turning this on and off several times. I compared what i could see clearly in various textures, the writing at on things at the same distance, the grain of various materials, etc.
I could not detect any difference.
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I tested this again with just making a +2 offset with FPSVR and this time I did not get any eyestrain but I did notice that the world scale seems more accurate in games now. I especially noticed this in Alyx. Before I always felt like the combine enemies all looked too big after I killed them. While moving around and shooting at me they looked fine but when I got closer to them after they were dead the bodies always looked a bit too large too me. After making this change they appear to be a more correct size to me. There might also be a slight increase in 3d effect but the world scale is the thing that I can definitely feel an improvement on.
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I played with it for quite some time and can confirm there is no difference in my case. I do have eye strain an tried from one spectrum to the otther. I also restarted Steam VR after each adjustment just in case this was necessary. Bummer 
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There is a difference, I have a script which performs the mouse clicks to exit iRacing. Without the IPD adjustment the cursor positions I have in the script are spot on, with the adjustment one of them is just outside one of the controls horizontally.
It is changing something.
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I have been testing this the past few days(wanted to make sure it wasnât a placebo effect), and this is a night and day difference for me. I have always been making adjustments while playing, and I no longer need to do that. This also seems to fix most of the distortions(objects moving from center to peripheral). Iâm just upset this wasnât discovered a year ago.
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Sounds great, just a few questions.
What have you set the Hardware IPD dial to ? your own measured IPD ?
What have you set the Software IPD in fpsvr to ? your own measured IPD ?
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I have adjusted this IPD offset in the fpsVR settings from my desktop and from in my HMD as well. I have taken the scale +50 and -50 (yes extreme adjustments) but I see no difference. Am I doing something wrong?? I would really like to get this to work or Im gonna have to sell my 8KX 
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Not sure if this was directed towards me? I use text/sharp lines and close one eye at a time and average out what looks best. IIRC Pimax values donât match real IPD, so I use what looks best with this method.
Iâm wondering if your settings file isnât allowing edits? I once tried adjusting the IPD offset far enough to align parallel projections(stereo overlap depth was negatively affected), so it should be noticeable at extremes.
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Iâm a great believer in the âplacebo effectâ but, so far, Iâm thinking that this is actually working for me. Definitely backwards, tho. I have a narrow ipd and have the mechanical set as far down as it will go and itâs not quite enough: using fpsVR, Iâve gone up to +2.5 and may go to +3, and Iâll be danged if it hasnât improved things!
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Our eyes do an amazing job of adjusting: the only way that Iâve come up with to actually see a difference is to look at a smallish object 3-5 meters away, close one eye and then the other and repeat this fairly quickly. Basically, youâre blinking each eye alternately. If the ipd is off, you should notice that the object in one eye is left (or right) of the object seen by the other eye. They should both appear in approximately the same spot for both eyes.
Try it without anything so extreme and see if you can notice any difference in the object positioning. If you canât, set everything back to default and adjust the mechanical ipd and see if you can tell a difference. If you canât tell the difference there, either, then you either have something wrong or are still missing it.
The other thought on this is that the distance from your eyes is wrong and you need a thicker face pad. I had that problem. Leaving everything at default, set the mechanical ipd for approximately what you are measured at and then pull the headset away from your face. If everything seems to get more clear, then you need more padding. Get the padding set first, then dial in the ipd.
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Yes this is exactly what I had to do with the Pimax IPD software adjustment. Im low IPD too, like 59 but to bring it into near focus I was bumping the Pitool IPD offset like +3
I tried all 3 face pads, I spent a great deal of time with each face pad meticulously trying to dial in a good setting. With all the face pads I could get really close but there is just something (minor eye strain) that I cant âdial outâ.
Would you know how to make changes in the âsetting filesâ to allow the fpsVR IPD adjustment to take effect, Anybody?? Thanks
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Thatâs because Pimax probably screwed up on the placement of the lenses. They should be near next to each other to prevent seeing overlapping at a near eyes distance. If you place your eyes closer to the lenses, it helps a bit but thatâs as far as you can go. Each eye should be able to have 170 degrees field of view, it is only the bridge of our nose in real life that prevent an eye from seeing directly across the entire field. I donât think software can solve this problemâŚitâs the hardware placement of the lenses or just the type of lenses theyâre using where two lenses become one by stretching.
The FpsVR doesnât require any changes to affect Steamâs ipd settings. However this may not work for everyone.
The base instruction on FB said to set Mechanical Ipd to your ipd value and then adjust SteamVRâs ipd soft value to match. Default Steam Value being 63.
From tracking here and on Reddit for a few folks that have had Eyestrain have found it is helping out a fair bit; which suggests this is not a placebo effect.
I recall @Cdaked I believe had posted an Article about rendering a nose even in gen1 headsets.
Essentially we need some input from Pimax Hardware DeVs to test this as well.
Iâve tested the fpsvr IPD adjustment for more than a couple of days now.
Background info;
My measured IPD: 60
Set hardware IPD: 60
HMD: 8K X
Issue: Hard to focus both eyes (almost but not quite)
Software offset IPD by: fpsvr
This wasnât the case with my previous HMDs, Rift CV1, and 5K+.
First I adjusted the fpsvr IPD to -3mm which should be 60 in software IPD since Steam VR sets it to +3 by default. This is of course to match my actual IPD.
This made things a lot better as both my eyes were able to focus easier. I have kept these settings for a few days to see if it was a placebo and if the same problem creeps back later which didnât happen.
The next issue I noticed was that after I had both eyes focused all the time, I could see that the center side of my vision went out of focus earlier than the outer side of my vision when moving my eyes.
So recently I have my software IPD offset to -6mm for testing which means in total the IPD is now set to 57, although my actual IPD is 60.
I do not know if this is because my HMD at hand has the IPD wider than displayed with the hardware IPD dial, or Steam VR/fpsvrâs IPD offset is not accurate as indicated etc etc, but I think we could say that the IPD values should be considered more as a guideline and shouldnât be taken in face value.
Come to think of it, our eye distance from the lens should be different and the lens shapes are different between HMD models/brands, so even the engineers (including Steam VRâs ) shouldnât be able to give us a solid value. In any case, I feel a bit smarter now. =D
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I had an idea and Iâd like to hear opinions on it:
What do you think about the idea that the hardware ipd and the Pimax software are both adjusting the horizontal position of the right lens while the fpsVR is setting the horizontal position of the left lens?
Here are my thoughts on that:
- The sw IPD doesnât affect the position of the lens at all; it adjusts what is displayed on each panel.
- This theory can easily be tested by only looking through one lens and observing if hw and sw adjustments show any effect - they do and on both eyes.
What is getting more apparent though is the fact the although both settings are in sw, adjusting v IPD offset in PiTool shows entirely different results than adjusting via fpsVR.
The good is that we can now adjust IPD and IPD related settings in many different ways, allowing for the amount of fine-tuning apparently neccessary for a device that doesnât allow for an eye-relief mechanism and offers such a large FOV; this means that given a huge variance in face shapes there is a very narrow âperfect spotâ that each user has to find themselves.
Which is the bad. There are now way too many ways to go for trial and error without any understanding of what settings actually do, which is the results of a complete lack of technical documentation by Pimax. The only way to remedy this is an IPD wizard that clearly recommends adjustements along the lines of âif you see this, adjust thisâ. Which itself isnât possible to develop reliably without said technical documentation.
@SweViver and @arminelec would you care to chime in on how you guys actually intend to tackle this?
From a purely anecdotal standpoint and, as I described above, useless to any other userâs situation, I have a measured IPD of 67.9, have the 8KX set to a hw IPD of 63.4 (gives me the clearest pixel resolution on both eyes) and have set fpsVR IPD to +3 with no offset either v or h in PiTool; so far this has given me the clearest and least distorted image I have seen in any VR HMD to date.
BUT: any PiTool revision will most likely completely destroy that balance as has happened with the last few iterations. And as there is no measurement available to determine the exact distance of each lens to each eye and no way to actually adjust that distance in a controlled way, this will continue to be a tinker HMD.
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I thought that was obvious. Sorry.
To be more clear, Iâm suggesting that the mechanical ipd adjustment is moving the right lens. The Pimax software is moving the image on the right lens. My idea is that the fpsVR software is moving the image on the left lens. Not the actual lens. Only the mechanical ipd adjustment can do that.
Hey, How does one adjust SteamVRâs ipd soft. I thought that you were adjusting SteamVRâs soft value when you move the slider in the HMD(moving the physical lenses AND adjusting SteamVRâs ipd soft) ?? Well maybe not, not sure So since Im not seeing any effect with the fprVR ipd soft, you said we could adjust SteamVRâs ipd soft. Can you explain .thx!