In this video I will be providing a thorough review of the Pimax Sword Controllers! Pimax is still working on the software side to get the finger tracking functioning. Are these a serious competitor to the Index controllers? Watch the video to find out!
Your review is exactly as I suspected. I like everything about the controller design wise but “Trackpads gon’ be Trackpads” I guess.
Pretty much every game that uses a vive layout will need to be remapped to make the grip button make sense.
Most of your gripes with the trackpad are just the nature of trackpads though…they are inherently inaccurate for movement.
Too bad about the lack of joysticks and buttons.
No surprise here as well. As I expected. Looking at your thumb joint angle, I see potential RST in the future for large hands. As one with some minor arthritis, this is one of my quibbles with t-pads, but even more important,the accuracy.
Even with Index many large handed players, like myself, use booster grips. Index, also, can be difficult for finding the right position on the stick and buttons when the grip is too small for us. When someone gets around to making boosters for Sword it will be of some help to those having “piano playing” finger spread. This isn’t going to make IFT any more accurate for large hands. With boosters, I still can’t align all fingers simultaneously on my ICs.
You can drop the “A Serious Competitor to Index?” question as it is moot. It still sticks vs t-pads as a consumer preference and the devices aren’t in that same category. Once all is finished it should be a good upgrade for wand users.
Indeed some like sticks and some like tpad and some would prefer a mix
I surely loved the shout out for the event by Robert Picardo. To have The Dr. of Voyager fame and Dr. Woolsey from SG-1 shout it out is top notch. How did they swing that?
So I was thinking about something that @PimaxUSA said about why they couldn’t do the joystick and buttons.
Something about it being difficult / impossible because of SteamVR not making it easy to implement or requiring a special driver and specific game support.
But when I noticed that the 12K standalone had cobtrollers with buttons and a joystick. He said it was no problem because it had SLAM tracking.
What does the fack that it uses a difderent tracking system have to do with being able to add joystick support.
What is SLAM tracking?
Regarding needing a new driver to be written specifically for the sword with joysticks and buttons which would be similar to what Vive Cosmos did and had basically no gane support from devs.
But wont that be the exact same issue with the 12K quest style controllers as well?
I’m confused. Something isn’t adding up here.
This is SLAM
But yeah it doesn’t change the controller mapping issue. Games would indeed need to either directly support these 12k SLAM controllers or like the HTC Cosmos controllers would need to map to be seen as another Steamvr game supported controller.(As you mentioned). So guessing there hoping to drum up DeV support prior to release fir steamvr games, pimax platform and standalone. As he mentioned Qualcomm working with them on controllers Qualcomm might have a workaround.
@DaN67 ? I think it was is one of the developers of the open knuckles driver that even has a method for mapping finger tracking for projects like openvr gloves.
So what your saying is that the excuse we were given why the controllers were cancelled was just “spin” to buy them more time to figure it out by the time 12K is released?
That is the question. But seems quite possible.
Yeah it does change it as Qualcomm put a lot of effort into that.
What is “that”? SLAM? Button-Mapping/Remapping?
EDIT: Added Quotations.
So your using Qualcomm’s Driver for Steam. So is it doing like HTC Cosmos and emulating a Vive Wand for games that do not have native support for the Qualcomm SLAM Controllers Stick and such?
We know the Razer Hydra SteamVR driver is mapped to emulate Vive Wand trackpad with the joysticks.
Otherwise you need something like the driver @danwillm whom helped developed so it is seen as a Knuckles controller?
Has the Team looked into his opensource driver as it was confirmed no latency penalties and they have there own method for finger tracking translation.
Don’t you just love those informative responses? 
Yea , how does spatial tracking technique relate to button mapping.
Very vague…
I ordered a full 8K set (downgraded to 5k+) for the kickstarter… I got a set of base stations and a dodgy BDSM studded sex suit for my 5k but no controllers… Are people getting theirs yet?
Heres a clip to how controllers were handled by Pico. I’m suck of the excuse as to why Pimax couldn’t do the same.
I was actually expecting Pimax would have done exactly what Pico did.
It has 3 modes controlled by software.
Native mode as PimaxUSA says would be less supported.
Touch emulation where it shows as a oculus touch controller, unbeknownst to rhe game
Vive wand mode…which nobody would use .
It seems that we are getting less updates to pitool and firmwares lately, I feel like current hardware is taking a backseat and something like this should have been possible.
The 12K seems to have controllers similar to Pico and Pimax will likely “have” to take the pico approach anyway so …
Well we know pimax is not good at keeping focused on one project to completion. And has released things like the Eye Tracker in a broken state(notice ET was not listed as possible Mystery Box Item).
If pimax would focus on one project to completion we would have all kinds of cool things.
On the Controllers the KS used it Vive Wand Clone with a Stick and yet even with Open Drivers like the Razer Hydra for SteamVR. We have seen the Stick controller project shelved. Then a weak explanation that the 12k controllers work due to having there own driver… 
So why not create there own controller driver.
Plus the Open Index Controller Driver made to allow Hardware Devs to use as a means to map custom controllers to work in SteamVR.
OMG you’re right. But do you think it is because of
a. The cost?
b. Lack of confidence in the product
c. Hoping it will be quitely discontinued.
d. Or all of rhe above
Also, they have been soooper quiet about the Swords and I haven’t heard anyone outside of reviewers getting theirs. Something is up.
I Hope one day we can whom are waiting to receive can try these controllers for ourselves.
@PimaxQuorra can you comment on what @VoodooDE was told?
What is the status on Sword shipping as PimaxUSA stated on Reddit there are issues with shipping partner. Has this been resolved on Dec 11/12?
