What They Say
Toms Hardware took a look at the Pimax ‘5K’ Super (2560 x 1440 per eye) VR headset which supports up to 180Hz. Pimax 5K Super VR Launch (But it’s not 5K)
The Pimax Vision 5K Super is touted as being the first VR headset to support 180 Hz displays. Coupled with the ultrawide form factor with dual 1440p panels, and this device begins to sound too good to be true. Well, it turns out that the specs kind of are.
The blog highlighted this because one of the features of the Pimax headsets has been the wide field of view, but this is downgraded as refresh rates go up. The blog also found a bug that stopped it enjoying the widest FOV. The site said:
Curiously, according to SteamVR, the horizontal resolution of Normal FOV at 160 Hz is narrower than the Small FOV setting at 90 Hz. At 90 Hz, you get 3,080 horizontal pixels. At 120 Hz, you get 3,108 pixels. At 144 Hz, it drops to 2,752 pixels, and at 160 Hz you get only 2,168 horizontal pixels.
(these must be the total number of pixels across both eyes)
The site was not impressed with the brightness of the images presented, nor with the colour performance. It also saw some artefacts.
In testing, the site found itself getting a higher score on games with the higher refresh.
The headset is available in the EU at €627, but is €1,154 with controllers and SteamVR base stations.
What We Think
Ah, compromises! In his talk the other day, Mark Zuckerberg talked about the challenges of dealing with all this data and the FOV/refresh rate trade-off in this headset are an example of the challenges of dealing with high bitrates for VR displays with higher resolution. Of course, Moore’s Law does help, but will take some time. (BR)
