Promising a VR future with peripheral vision and no motion sickness, proven Kickstarter campaigner Pimax look set to trounce its $200,000 goal.

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In 2016 Chinese company Pimax (pronounced pie-max) unleashed its Pimax 4K VR headset on the world. A world’s first, according to the company, the headset challenged the dominance of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive with a low price and, arguably, better tech.

Of course, that’s only half the story. And while the screens inside the 4K VR headset add up to, naturally, 4K (3840×2160 pixels to the Rift and Vive’s 2160×1200), the headset currently languishes on the pages of bargain webstores.

You can’t begrudge Pimax on its ambition however. Not least when it turns out that the company is back, and with a new headset that blows the company’s last clear out of the water.

Dubbed the 8K VR, this new virtual reality headset doubles the resolution of its older brethren. For the 8K VR, Pimax is dedicating a 4K display for each eye. Yikes.

That works out to roughly 16.5-million pixels sat on your face. And while its Kickstarter investments don’t quite reach that high, according to Kicktraq analytics site Pimax is on track to clear $3.5-million by the time the campaign shutters on Friday.

The benefits of doing so are pretty straightforward though. Instead of shrinking that extra screen real estate into a similar form factor and field of view to previous headsets, the folks at Pimax instead extend the screen outwards somewhat.

In addition to giving users in-VR peripheral vision through 200 degrees field-of-view, it has the benefit of reducing the “screen door effect” — a main cause of motion sickness in VR attributable to being able to discern the layers of pixels.

It seems like it could be a watershed moment for VR. User testimonials pretty universally claim they couldn’t go back to the narrower field of view offered by the likes of Oculus and Vive. We take this with a pinch of salt, but it does sound rather promising.

8K VR: What Else?

Currently, we see little to pull the rug out from under the feet of this one. As the project has blown from stretch goal to stretch goal, the project has expanded in scope addressing missing features that naysayers might once have cast at it.

A common complaint with Pimax’s previous headset was the lack of full positional tracking. The 4K headset only uses gyroscopic sensors to translate users’ movement to the game. Essentially, only three degrees of freedom — looking around the room from a fixed point.

For the 8K VR, Pimax promise both inside-out and external positional tracking. The former through a module, the latter via headset tracking base stations. This doesn’t necessarily mean Pimax’s own base stations, too. The company claims the positional tracking ‘Lighthouses’ for HTC’s Vive headset also work. As will all other official Vive accessories.

And this leads to possibly the most interesting aspect of Pimax’s 8K VR. The entire design appears modular and open, with the company claiming the opening of its software and hardware development kits to encourage both content and accessory creation from both professional companies and DIY-ers alike.

Currently Pimax itself has, by way of stretch goals and proof-of-concept designs, created eye-tracking modules, a wireless dongle, hand motion tracking and cooling fan mods.

As ever we advise caution when considering backing a Kickstarter campaign. There are always positive signs and red flags to watch for. But if you think Pimax’s 8K VR headset is up your alley, you best act quick. The campaign ends November 2nd, 6.02PM CET (1.02PM EST).