Most studios fairly recently upgraded their rigs and the last few months you can really start to notice some scenes that are much sharper than previous ones. This seems to have taken a while to perfect though as the new camera tech is apparently more difficult to use which can lead to shots being out of focus etc. Still when it works it's a night and day difference. Kind of like going from VHS to DVD imo.
I'll trade in my 8kx for a 12k as well if Pimax delivers on its promises. Personally I suspect the eye tracking and better lenses might do even more for the image quality than the resolution (especially with 8k scenes). Because let's face it, the sweet spot in combination with FOV of all current vr headsets is still not great even for the 8kx (from binocular solutions like the quest to an unsharp image in your perhipials with the 8kx). The eye tracking should allow for dynamic lens distortion profiles that could in theory alleviate some of that. It will also allow apps like here sphere to fix parralax issues not based on approximations but on what you're actually looking at.
Then there is the increased field of view of the 12k which is actually still important. Especially the vertical FOV (looking down for obvious reasons 🙂 and binocular overlap (the binocular overlap is the part of the image that both eyes can see and is closely related to the 3D effect we experience). For instance, I watched a regular movie in my 8kx last night and even though it's really cool to have this massive screen it's still barely comfortable. You'll quickly become aware of the two black borders next to your nose (edges of the lens even on minimal IPD). It's actually kinda similar to holding a pen on each side of your nose. You can still see but your brain has to ignore the obstructed part of your view and fill in the blanks. I'll be curious to find out how much of an additional improvement we can expect on these areas besides the resolution bumb alone.
We'll also soon see the launch of the rtx4000 line of cards which will likely feature h266 hardware decoding. It would suprise me if 16k video would not be supported for this codec but who knows.
Hopefully we'll see a new Gen of camera's that support 12k 60fps in the not so distant future to capitalise on all that as well. The fm duo 12k already supports it at 30fps so I don't think this is that unrealistic.
The next couple of months will be exiting times in terms of new hardware and innovation that's for sure.
