Pretty great except for the Color

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I finally got a 5K plus… the good:

  • PiTool works well and covers every little thing I could think of
  • I have a fancy desktop with a 2080 ti and everything runs like butter at the max without smoothing or FR
  • Comfort is great for me personally out of the box
  • The FOV is awesome, obviously, distortions aren’t too bad
  • IPD adjustment is great – love the easy software slider for that extra inch or so

The bad:

  • Good god the color…

I have an Odyssey+ and it’s really night and day flipping to something like Skyrim for example…
Not even talking about the big SDE difference (not a huge deal for me) – it’s just sooo washed out.

I really appreciate all the Brightness / Contrast sliders (though a little confusing as there are 2 brightness settings)

Is it really good for some games? Maybe it’s just Skyrim – which admittedly has a huge mix of daylight and dungeon that demands high contrast…

The color kills any immersion I could get out of the FOV.

Any suggestions? What’s worked for people? Specific games?

Should I be doing something different with the contrast / brightness sliders / drop down?

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Interested to see if you get it to where you are happy with the colors.

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For darker games like Elite Dangerous, Skyrim and even some Assetto Corsa tracks (with darker look), I set contrast +2 and brightness -1.

I also recommend Pitool 129 beta and not 132.

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I had the same reaction when I got my 5K Plus and loaded Skyrim. The color was terrible and I’m quite surprised you don’t hear more people complaining about this. Like you, it blew the immersion and realism.

For me, I decided to buy the Pimax 5K BE version that has a different panel. Now Skyrim looks awesome! The color and black levels are now similar to my Vive Pro (or at least close enough that I don’t notice a big difference).

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@dogbite After more playing around, here’s what I found:

  • Yes the beta weirdly seemed to look better for some reason, and less bugs around localization too (?)

Not sure if I’m just imagining it, but the 29 version did seem better.

  • I tried that approach to contrast – more like +2 and -1 than the 4 or 5 to 0 or 1 that I’d been using earlier (too extreme) and it does work better

Skyrim still looks like sh*t because of the dungeons / sky… but I found some games that looked decent, including Project Cars 2 and Nature Treks VR

The screen is still markedly worse than the O+ across the board, but now the color is good enough to not be super jarring

@bwinters89 I’ve considered that, but have heard it has really extreme SDE and mediocre other colors… what’s your take on it?

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I’m not @bwinters89 obviously, but someone who just swapped the XR for a 5k+ (still waiting for the delivery of 5k+ so undoubtedly there’s going to be drawbacks to experience)

so maybe you’d like another opinion :

The SDE annoyed me too much personally. The fact that reds were so uh, sparse in the distance - you know how the pentile matrix works right? There is no detail possible in the midrange thanks to that display. It really bugged me how it seemed like I was looking through a security shutter, and reds plus blues were getting half the action of greens…

On the good side the colour pop and black level was fantastic. I bet that I will miss it. I changed my mind about swapping around a dozen times before I settled, knowing you can’t have it all atm in one HMD. But I think I made the right choice in the end because the array bugged me too much, and that even 5k+ display despite the weaker colours and blacks is just crisper and easier to live with. Maybe. I’ll tell you if I desperately regret my decision later lol

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@TZC Yeah that’s what I was worried about after seeing some of Tyriel Wood’s latest screen test videos

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It’s all relative to experience and preference I suppose and we both only experienced half so far. Pity there’s no chain stores we could go try out pimax headsets in, instead of splashing out 800 odd to try them :smiley:

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Set the display back-light level to low if you haven’t already.
Personally I use +3 contrast and -2 brightness each eye but admittedly I haven’t tries it with Skyrim.

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If you ask me, Sweviver (and to an extent the other two Pimax youtubbers) seem overly positive. They severely gloss over or ignore issues like how glitchy the software is, how many games don’t work, how many times you’ll be rebooting, and the poor blacks and color on the standard panels, not to mention the cord being too short to suspend on the ceiling (without putting your computer up on the wall), among other issues. Now that Pimax is on Amazon, I’m sure people will start hearing the many issues with Pimax. That said, when it works, it’s amazing, so I hope they keep working to fix the bugs.

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How do I change the backlight level? I couldn’t find that setting

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It is just the brightness level in the HMD menu above render quality in pitool

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Oh I wondered what that was… I’ll try that, thanks

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Lowering the backlight did help a bit, nothing crazy, but it’s something.

I found that going a few days on only the Pimax I generally adapted to the worse screen, and I got it to a decent place when I’m out of the dungeons (tbh the Odyssey+ has huge black smear, so it’s not like it’s perfect down there either)

I do notice + enjoy the extra detail clarity when looking into the distance.

Then I tried my Ody+ again… and such mixed feelings lol. On the one hand – yes the color was still obviously better, but I’d got used to the FOV so now it felt like I was looking through a tube…

I think the general solution is just “only use 1 HMD at a time” as you adapt to whatever it is

God I can’t wait for Pimax to nail their OLED with decent SDE…

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Exactly… Haven’t looked back since getting the 5K+. Only thing I miss is ease of use. There’s still too many quirks with drivers/services/PiTool to make it a “clean” experience.

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Yeah WMR shines in this area – having to reboot 3 times out of the blue ain’t fun

But overall I can tell the tool had come a looong way from early reports, and always worked for me in < 5 mins so overall I don’t fault it too much

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