May be we can see Knuckles EV2 in next 2 weeks (official video is launched right now)

The topic said that it will have joystick. I am suspect that it will have both trackpad and joystick or not.

Climbey dev on Knuckles EV2 (new h/w revision): "I should be able to post a picture…when I get them in [the next 2 weeks or so]. It has a joystick, among other things.

this info come from
https://twitter.com/TheShadowBrain/status/1009028505869406208

And I read the news from
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comments/8skaxl/climbey_dev_on_knuckles_ev2_new_hw_revision_i/?st=JINHENWZ&sh=610d015a

3 Likes

Wow that’s nice !
Good news for all the Backers who weren’t confident enough to back the Pimax Knuckles !

3 Likes

Must say my cautious optimism for the near future of VR input has cooled off quite a bit now, when Valve have let themselves be bullied into adding more junk onto Knuckles.

2 Likes

What junk are you talking about ? :hushed:

Specifically for this time around: Room was made on one of the controllers for a thumbstick.

More generally: Anything that unduly abstracts interaction, i.e. anything peripheral-wise that makes me not reach out a finger to press an elevator button in the virtual world, but instead press a button on a handheld controller, in order to actuate that in-world button “by wire”.

Knuckles started out on the right track. Their bodies were made capacitively sensitive in zones, so that they can to a degree detect how far each finger wraps it, and were strapped to your hands, ostensibly beginning to allow for somewhat natural-ish object manipulation, and at long last allowing you to let go of the devices, albeit none of this anywhere near the dexterity of a data glove. While the general widget paradigm of the Vive wands was retained, it was kept at least a little bit spartan and simple in layout, with the trackpad having been considerably reduced in size, and made deeper, with a single button to either side of it, shrinking the face of the interaction surface, and thus leaving more space for one’s hand. :7

A very vocal cadre of people have long demanded thumbsticks for the purpose of moving around in games, though, because that is what they are used to using with game consoles, and they have apparently finally got their will: Recent sketches show a thumbstick added to the consequently slightly enlarged right side of the right hand controller, while an “A” and a “B” button crowd the opposite side, in a familiar configuration. Already too compromising minimalism being shouldered out of the way by thing-o-mah-bob inflation, or gizmo creep, or whatever one might call it. :7

Now; I do not have an answer as to how we are to locomote in virtual space (generally - for specific purposes different solutions suit), but I do know one thing, and that is that we (people) are not this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/97rcsonn2.jpg

The problem is that now that the backstriving greebles are included as standard, they will (will) be used as standard, instead of new and better, and more natural interaction methods being tried,

Thankfully new configurable input frameworks will at least make it possible to remap as one desire, but the fundamental problem remains.

Note that my complaints above do not include things like steering wheels, or HOTAS, which directly represent corresponding devices in-game.

4 Likes

Knuckles have been in development forever. Like you said, it is not a step forwards for VR as a whole but it is for Vive users who have been waiting while all the Rift users show off. Personally I do not think it is a standard design, it is still a stop-gap until somebody designs something better. We have gloves, we have just your hands with Leap motion so people are trying to come up with better VR interaction. Room scale hand tracking will come at some point too.

It will be interesting to see if these extra busy knuckle controllers are an improvement over the aging Rift Touch controllers.

Edit:
What I would prefer is that VR standards are established and supported by everybody so that peripherals like this are not tied into one platform. I can use a mouse on a Mac, a PC, my TV and probably other devices too. I wish the same for VR so peripheral advances happen quicker.

1 Like

They do look like something that would work well as thumbstick and trackpad combo

1 Like

show trackpad

show pickup

show capsense

demo trailer

Let check official news here

@deletedpimaxrep1

3 Likes

I personally don’t think Touch has anything over the Vive wands, actually. I find them equally awkward to hold and use (including the grip button and he capacitive bits, as well as the sticks), and the supposed ergonomics are all but lost on me – maybe I have strangely-proportioned hands. :7

I fully agree about your comment about a standard input API enabling control method agnosticism - it is a long standing wish, and do have hope for OpenXR.

Like it or not, though; Stunting standards do arise, no matter how temporary they are. I have still not forgiven Oculus for launching with an X-Box controller. Developers had been asking for something VR-dedicated that they could rely on every user to have, right since the Rift Kickstarter closed, without hearing anything in response – they ended up developing for gamepads because this pretty much forced them to – not the other way around around, as some will claim, and this remained the severely limiting lowest common denominator for far too long.

(Hmm, think I’m done forum-barfing for tonight - a migraine appears to be coming on; My fovea seems to have checked out for the night, and I can barely see what I’m typing. :7)

(EDIT: Let’s see how long my eyes last… :stuck_out_tongue: …so there were still two developers, though, who tried running Kickstarters on games for the upcoming DK1, together with the Razer Hydra, which was what was available in the form of motion conbtrols at the time. Of these, The Gallery did end up reaching their goal, and after many false starts got a much changed game out, and Loading Human finally could make their game, despite the Kickstarter being unsuccessful, with a little help from Sony. :7)

4 Likes

Who wants knuckles or even Pimax controllers if you have leap motion and captogloves?

1 Like

They need to be proven first but I’m with you on this

Me honestly. With movement and interaction as it us would prefer to have that additional control interface for the thumb than not.

I guess you don’t play games like Fallout, Skyrim etc… I have seen lots of complaints that the locomotion with the thumbpad was simply inconvenient when compared to the thumbstick locomotion control. I own both Rift & Vive and prefer the Touch a lot for the majority of applications - only where you actually wish to feel some clunky device in your hands I would prefer the Vive wands (holding a gun (e.g. Arizona), a racket (Eleven) or a club (Golf)).

As to the purity point - most of us need the controllers to do much more than only simulate their hands in VR. We need it to control the locomotion because we don’t have infinite space at home to walk the spaces of a Skyrim… that means that you will inevitably end up with less immersive controls on such a controller. Nothing you can really do about that at this stage - and if that is a fact of life, I do prefer it to be resolved in a more convincing, convenient manner.

Adding the thumbstick to the Knuckles controllers in my view is a clear improvement of the design.

I would double-check if that has not influenced your critical view of the Touch… I know a range of Vive owners who would like to swap for the Touch design although they otherwise will defend their Vive vigorously… and who are quite happy to see that they will likely get a further enhanced (sort of Touch 2.0) controller when the Knuckles are finally released…

There is a lot of innovation going on in VR at the moment, and companies should not shy away to learn from past mistakes and pick up what others did better. Valve is doing that and this will further VR as a whole, so I am quite happy with that.

And, by the way: if you consider how long Valve is playing around with the Knuckles controllers, it may help you understand why Oculus felt it could not get the Touch done in time for the launch. And indeed the devs need to get such input hardware some time in advance so it would have been difficult to implement it properly for the first few months after the launch of the Rift. This is where I actually am less optimistic about the Pimax controllers - they have a pretty tight development2release schedule and seeing how many iterations the big companies needed to be satisfied, there clearly is much more to consider than meets the eye.

1 Like

I have to say, I like the new Valve design. Having a thumb pad/button and a joystick seems like the best of both designs. I didn’t order any Pimax controllers, so I’ll likely get the Valve ones instead (at some point). Initially, I’ll mostly play Elite Dangerous and maybe Dirt Rally in VR.

3 Likes

I don’t know how anybody could chose the vive wands over the competition.
The only things they have going for them is perfect tracking & a well placed trigger (Not hard for that one)
Trackpads are god awful for free movement, don’t always respond & have a habbit of sticking.
The grip buttons are the least natural & most awkward buttons I have ever come across on a controller.
I think these valve controllers look great, as do the pimax ones, & im eager to get my hands on both.
I like my vive/ pro but I literally cannot wait to get either knuckles or pimax controllers, put my vive wands in a drawer & never use them again.

New video of unboxing and testing from dev.

Although the trackpad has much height than width, but it look the hand can touch around in the left and right.

I still suspect that pimax controller will be suppported all function of knuckle or not.

When user use the stick, it show that he is using trackpad too, so I think the stick and trackpad may use the same function of movement and I guess that the trackpad can’t be pressed because it look so flat (not sure). So knuckle will be different from windows mixed reality controller. So may pimax controller still can have only one stick or trackpad (but have both make more choice for user).

The trackpad of WMR can emulate the A/B button when using with revive, so knuckle may use those 2 button instead.

May pimax need more 1 button.
@deletedpimaxrep1

1 Like

I thought I was pretty clear that I did not write in favour of one over the other; What I am saying is that they are both terrible. Not everything has to be a fanbase war.

Nah, grudge is grudge, and had experience is had experience. I had high hopes for Touch after all the hype, but in the end never could find it anywhere near “natural-ish” (grip is bad enough: don’t get me started on the contrived-feeling gestures)… and here you are inevitably going to go right on to saying I am letting my disappointment (EDIT: …and “unrealistic expectations”) colour my impression unfairly. Well - whatever makes you feel good, I suppose.

What I didn’t come with, to touch (…or wands), is a history of console gaming, so I had never acquired a learned proclivity for gamepads – Neither the basic paradigm, nor any brand specific layout schemes. (To me, a joystick remains a tabletop device with one stick and a single button :7)

Y’know what: If we are going to locomote using sticks, I might prefer a single axis one - just for walking speed, with less of the sliding on ice,

…and as for the closing part… Just as I wrote: Some would try to twist things around. positional input was near top on the developer wishlist, ever since the (Rift) Kickstarter, and the only reason devs ended up reluctantly developing for non such, is that these wishes went unanswered. This is the order of causation - not the other way around. If Oculus were caught unprepared, by Valve, with regards to motion control, that is all on themselves.

I think maybe Pimax should focus on Pimax 8K and no time and no money on controllers.
See: Steam/valve makes controllers, but no headset. Still makes a difference.
If Pimax concentrates all efforts on headset = win! Make use of knuckles.
You cant beat Valve on this one?

The problem with that would be that people have already paid for pimax knuckle style controllers, though if they ended up just bundling the official knuckles instead of making there own that would be ok. I wonder how open their current design is to adding the pressure sensors for grip sensitivity.

1 Like

No way they would bundle those Valve controllers.

We should get Pimax’s controllers & whether we like them or not remains a mystery.