March 18, 2021 – Pimax, a virtual reality (VR) hardware manufacturer and provider of ultra-wide field of view (up to 200° diagonal) and high-resolution consumer VR devices, has announced that it has recently partnered with NVIDIA to achieve a 90Hz refresh rate breakthrough for native mode on its Pimax VISION 8K X VR headset.
Users with the company’s Vision 8K X device will now be able to enjoy native 4K per eye resolution at a 90Hz refresh rate (previously 75Hz). However, the updated refresh rate currently requires 8K X owners to be using an NVIDIA RTX 3070, RTX 3080 or RTX 3090 graphics card in order to activate the new refresh rate mode.
Users with compatible graphics cards will be able to download the free beta firmware and find a full list of supported GPU drivers here.
Previously, interface bandwidth limitations meant that rendering at native 4K per eye was only possible at 75Hz, according to Pimax. In order to solve these bandwidth limitations, Pimax’ R&D team partnered with NVIDIA engineers to optimize the interface for maximum throughput and efficiency. The company noted that with the new firmware update all other Pimax features will still remain intact, including the wide FoV and high resolution, but will now run at an updated 90Hz refresh rate.
Robin Weng, Pimax founder commented: “Partnering with NVIDIA has brought in new perspectives to the table for this project. As of now, once the firmware is upgraded, users running 8K X on a 30 series GPU will be able to have stable 90Hz on native mode. Our team is still testing and hopefully the refresh rate upgrade can be extended for the 8K X on additional GPUs in the future.”
For more information on Pimax and its ultra-wide FoV virtual reality headsets, please visit the company’s website.
Image credit: Pimax
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Sam Sprigg
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.
