So got my Pimax 5K+ yesterday. Have an O+ for movies and games that don’t need the FoV.
Despite basically no communication from pimax, and some kind of mix up on the FedEx side, I did get a relatively pristine box from FedEx, with $25 customs fees, so that was good.
The Good:
Stable headset tracking sensors, no drift, no issues.
Wow, those lenses are amazingly nice, no godrays, very good horizontal sweetspot.
Incredible clarity, just really sharp compared to the O+.
In my case, no visibile major issues with the screens, no bleeds, no issues.
Incredibly light HMD, which is great for it’s size.
FoV on medium is more than enough for me, really immersive.
The Medium:
Vertical sweet spot is not nearly as good. Everything remains sharp only if the HMD is at just the right height.
Incredibly strong chemical smells from the packing materials/boxes. I hope they dissipate soon.
Software worked first try, but also doesn’t work perfectly, have to restart the HMD a lot in conjunction with SteamVR.
Comfort of the head-strap is wanting.
More SDE than I’m used to with the O+, but it’s pretty acceptable.
Lots of aliasing with it’s sharp resolution. Hopefully fixable on the software side.
Materials used (perhaps to save the weight) definitely don’t feel very ‘premium’ - buttons on the HMD, foam, etc.
My power adapter seems fine… but others have had some quality control issues over time with the stock one, so we’ll see.
The Bad:
People like me waiting on controllers/lighthouses have an expensive HMD paperweight for a while.
Communication and delivery is not what you would expect from a manufacturer producing the numbers of units that Pimax has.
Eyestrain.
Thoughts:
So I will say, I’m very happy to have backed. I really need my LH and controllers though, since I can’t really do much with the HMD alone. Loading into worlds that take advantage of the wider FoV was something else, I can tell it’ll be really great, even if I couldn’t play games (or even start many) without controllers. I’m definitely one of the lucky ones for whom colour/black levels and to a lesser extent even SDE doesn’t bother me much once I’m in a game.
I will make a note on eyestrain, as I’ve seen other mention that. My IPD is 65. At 65, it’s the pimax is most comfortable, but the inner overlapping part of the vision is slightly blurry, as is the outside. If I make the IPD larger on the HMD, I can tell it’s straining my eyes some, but the outer distortions almost disappear and I feel like the picture is more clear; however, then moving the IPD in to where it’s too narrow, I see the opposite. The inner overlapped part of the picture gets clearer, I feel slightly strained (crosseyed), but the outer parts get more blurry. I feel like this may just be a reality of having this much horizontal FoV, the middle setting is best and you get small strain looking inward and outward, but have a nice wide sweetspot in the middle - but you still feel some eye strain, because the outside and inside are forcing your eyes to do something unnatural, and are definitely not as sharp as the central areas your eyes look at.
The software has improved a lot since release, but it definitely needs to be polished more for wide market consumer adoption, and it needs to be a little more robust in terms of fixing itself if something causes an issue so that it just keeps working - nobody wants to be constantly restarting HMDs or software to make things work.
And with that, the HMD is repacked away until I get my controllers and LH 2.0 gear from Pimax.
in the mean time. Once i get Inet hooked up will likely explore Driver4vr with xb 360 kinect. Have ps3 cameras so just need Move controllers but might be able to hack something to use instead.