I’m using a 4k monitor for normal gaming . If I swop it out for a 1080p or try lower the rez on mine . Will it improve the pimax . I’m thinking the pc won’t have to work as hard ??? This mite be a stupid question lol
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Thats an interesting question:
Normally pimax + steam render the images in the resolution you defined and you will see the actual value when you check “manual override” in steam vr video settings.
The rendered image is just mirrored to the monitor.
But the mirroring can affect perfornance, more or less depends on the game you play…
Finally somebody addressing this. I have always wondered that since some games “mirror”(but just one image) image to monitor, its robbing performance from the headset. I run a 1080ti so I really havent had an issue with HMD fps but now that were moving into more demanding HMD like 5k+ and 8k. I am wondering if this could be robbing a few fps??
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Would be interesting- if it is truly mirrored then it will just output one eye in addition to the monitor - so no new rendering should be done - but I have no idea about scaling and the like . I remember that @SweViver has mentioned the impact but I am not sure of the numbers anymore
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Most of the time, the game window mirrors the view from one eye only. Reducing the resolution of that window to lowest (only possible with Unity games) will give u a slight performance boost. Hold SHIFT or CTRL while starting a unity game and a settings window shows up. If its possible to turn off the mirror in-game window, do so and u might get a few extra fps.
Opening up Steam VR mirror view can affect the performance much more though, so dont have it on while playing unless u really need it. Same for recording the mirror view with OBS OpenVR plugin.
Btw im using 4K monitor. Makes no difference if i switch desktop resolution to 1080p.
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Cool , much thanks for clearing that up 
This is exactly the kind of stuff where I’d wish you do videos about, like how to opitmize performance in VR but on a global approach not necessarily per game. Didn’t know about the Ctrl Shift thing for example. I fetched some hints here and there deeply hidden in your videos like some nvidia SystemPannel stuff and they were all helpfull, was not that much into the sims topic though.
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Problem is that its different for almost every game(engine).
Like in subnautica you can switch the 2d resolution to 640x480 to gain a few FPS.
Would it be worth it if Pimax would include an option in pitool to switch on/off a on desktop mirroring?
Like in Raceroom I can turn on and off a mirror in an .ini.
And as Long as Pimax does not give us this option we could make a thread where we post our findings for every game…