Some very quick first impressions and that’s without experimenting with Super-sampling. RTX 2080 Ti i9 9900K user here.
Ok, I have a horrible vertical line in my headset in the left eye which hopefully I’ll get fixed or replaced (support have been pretty poor so far but seems like a lack of experience in understanding which department deals with WMR headsets) but despite that.
Wow, just wow. One word…“clarity”.
More words.
Very nice headset all-round. Reasonably comfy but that cable is awful. I mean really bad and terribly distracting. Needs to be fixed to something to not become a hindrance. Headphones feel cheap, lack decent low frequency representation. The red smear is not very good when you abnormally move your head from side to side fast. Very noticeable on bright backgrounds. In normal usage situations you won’t notice it as much but it is there as a distracting visual artifact that would be better if not so present. SDE is so minimal that it’s almost gone but not quite - Odyssey+ was champion before but not now, and the sharper image makes all the difference over the O+ too soft visuals. It’s the finest mesh like silk. Mura is there too for sure such as looking at the bright sky you will notice it quite a bit.
Headset is rather comfortable though (aside from that horrible cable) and the slight flip-up is nice to seal you into darkness very well.
GAMES:
Fallout 4 VR - Holy crap. Now this is how it’s meant to be seen. Mindblowing, and I rarely use such hyperbolic phrases. Up close detail you’ll see the textures as you would playing on a monitor. Distance details are just perfect now. NO MORE BLUR you can easily define medium range and long range objects which gives the game a complete overhaul on the visuals. Wonderful and if you’re a FO4VR fan then nothing beats this crisp display. Period.
PCARS 2 - Ok I struggled a little to find the right sweetspot and keep it there. But once there this is it guys. The game just looks like it’s meant to be on this headset. Nice details on the track and close up cars. Distant cars also look much better, they still can get fuzzy but none of that blur you might be used to. This is pretty awesome now and just looks great.
SLR APP/Movie viewing - Nice sharp visuals but you are restricted to the quality of the source material. The SLR thumbnails look fantastically crisp and the videos great. I ran a 4K gameplay video from one of my recordings and it looks really nice, so much clearer than any other VR headset. So if you have 4K movies then they are going to shine on this headset. I tried some older 1080p 3D movies but they didn’t look much different to other headsets.
Desktop - wow now this is really nice. You can actually work with this now. Comfortably. See all the text and no shimmer or SDE to mess up your view. Really workable as an alternative to a monitor now. Nice vibrant colours and good contrast. I do notice what seems to be a fixed foveted rendering technique though where the center focus is incredibly sharp and when you move your eyes and head to another part of the screen it seems to catch up and then focus really sharp.I think HP talked about this with the way the screens are calibrated.
Elite Dangerous: OK you’re still getting these LCD blacks but the text readability is fantastic now without a shadow of a doubt. No distorted letters even in the info pane which has the smallest text it’s easy to read, no leaning in. I just docked with one of the space stations and whilst there is still some shimmer on some finer lines/edges (there’s a technical name for that which escapes me) it’s nice a crisp and looks like a space station rather than a blurry mess of lights and protracting parts. Really clean. Upon entering the opening into the docking area…mind-blown! I really loved the extended FOV of the Pimax 8K in Elite D, made it feel more real, but I think I would sacrifice that for this wonderful clarity. I’ll say it again if Pimax 8K X delivers the FOV and the same clarity then wowsers. I’m not holding my breath though, focusing on the here and now.
Even with the negatives, I can see this being a really great headset for the VR connoisseur. I am wondering how close the Pimax 8KX can match this as its increased FOV will stretch the pixel density. Either way, £600 well spent thus far and I will no doubt get lots of use from this headset and sadly the Pimax 8K will get boxed. Quest/Reverb combo for the win here for anyone serious about VR.
