It depends. I think a lot of time a smart person already knows what the customer wants. For example NOBODY wants a HMD tracker that doesn’t work right, is slow, loses connection etc. NOBODY wants distortion around the edges, blurry display, etc etc etc. Pretty much all that was ‘discovered’ at CES was so trivial that anybody in their right mind could have figured it out. So yeah, to that ‘basic’ extend I certainly do agree. However for other things customer feedback can be extremely valuable
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I have been a part of 4 startups. 3 of them were very well funded, over 10 million. Only one of the 4 ventures was successful. I have had other experiences with small companies and large, a few in the process of building something new, but none that qualify as startups.
I was going to go into a long epistle about what I learned specifically from each instance, but I don’t want to bore all of us. All I think I want to say is if there was one thing I can take from that experience is that the success of the one was because the creators of the product (and everyone involved) had the least experience and the highest stakes. It also had the most successful backer: a multi-billion dollar Forbes 400 private corporation, where the founder was still the man in charge, 51% his stock and the rest amongst his employees. It was listed in the top 100 places to work more than a handful of times before the Founder passed away (mysteriously, I’ve often wondered if it was political, but I digress).
What I learned from that place, the first startup experience, was probably why the entire company was so successful. That maintaining a passion for the vision of the project is first and foremost. This was done by keeping an atmosphere of trust between management (the founders, funders in this case) and the people responsible for the project. Not that the management had to trust the crew, but that the crew had to be able to trust management. To be able to communicate everything Openly with management in order for management to provide everything, Including a Reasonable Amount of Time, to complete the tasklisk in order to meet a Passionate Goal. The atmosphere was one of failure after failure after failure, without fear that killed the passion and the ability to think endlessly for solutions to the problems that always arise when you’re in unexplored territory learning from scratch. It was very encouraging, even toasting a failed million dollar experiment, and Moving On … what did we learn. There is a difference between an employee that is allowed to hold on to his passion and runs as fast as possible at will at being the best, and one that is so stressed out and schedule-whipped that their brains lose focus enough that they no longer have bandwidth to solve passionate problems. This same corporations leadership had a habit of funding Olympic athletes.
I believe that Pimax was started by people that are passionate about VR. And skilled and mature enough to get to market already with something that has a better vision than Oculus Rift and the Vive. They are the ones who came up with the full field of vision HMD (and decided that it needed 8k pixels across to do it right, without a screen door). The vision is there. That is why I am here. I think it’s why you are too. I don’t think any pressure from external sources are going to improve the pace, because they have internal passion for a vision already … and pressure doesn’t help anyways … really not at all … it destroys abilities, not enhances.
What I can tell you about the other 3 experiences is that they could have just as easily succeeded, but the passion wasn’t allowed to be held by the crew. It was constantly usurped by the managers, the owners. The vision was clouded by people who didn’t need to dream about the project nightly. Eat, sleep, and dream.
Yes it’s stressful to hand over $700 or $1500 bucks and watch someone go off into the distance with it and not say much. But these guys have already hit one out of the park. No the 4k model isn’t perfect. The screens aren’t that great. The BE is really nice though, but I bet they could only get so many of those. And they Are made well. That’s all I needed to see to believe that the 8k is going to be the love child we all want to adore.
As part of these 4 startups, and having worked in manufacturing, research, and development, I know that the words they are choosing to describe their growing pains are genuine, straight out of the lexicons of those who are experimenting and doing it with the production line. They are not faking this. They are not that far away folks. They have said nothing wrong, many here just don’t understand what was said.
I am still fairly confident that Pimax will deliver.
Somebody said putting the customer first is the best management philosophy. I’m sorry, but not if you are on the production floor. You have to treat your employees like the most important customer. They can really screw you over if they are not happy customers. And you won’t even see it coming cause you’re not looking the right way.
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I see M1 (mass 1 I’d say, but could also mean market as you said) as release candidate in the software development.
This means they are moving from prototypes to pre-production units, and as in software where there could be more than 1 RC they can have more than 1 pre-production version (M1, M2, M3). I see this often in the hardware beta testing I’m participating in, I receive a 1st pre-production unit then after feedbacks have been collected and fix made accordingly I receive a 2nd version which is still pre-production and may still be improved even more when the company reaches the real mass production targetting the final consumer (sales). So this is like the feedback-refine cycle you mentionned for sw development.
I’m not worried about the fact they are shifting to M1 despite the flaws seen from the v5 prototype because I have already seen pre-production units with such critical flaws and still those were fixed for mass production.
What makes me worried about is how they will handle this final beta testing (beta testers choice and beta testing procedure) and in the first place if they even aknowledge all of the already known issues (for the latter we’ll see that if they discuss about those issues with us in the coming days as they are promising now).
About the beta testing procedure I have seen this getting more mature over years for the company I’m doing this for. It went from a messy feedback by email to a dedicated forum and now an initial stage where beta testers are separated from each other and are asked to fill a survey before reaching a second stage where they are allowed to discuss together in a private forum.
The latter is the most refined beta testing procedure I’ve seen as the producer can ask specific questions through the survey and do statistics without testers influencing each other in their feedback (the survey still also has a part for open feedback from the tester, and it is updatable survey, the testers can come back as many times as they want to refine/modify their answers/feedback).
I doubt pimax beta test will be that refined and that well organized but rather expect they will do a more basic beta test with feedback collected through emails or in a private forum which means testers may be influenced by feedbacks from other testers. If it is done by email then no influencing between testers but collecting feedbacks is more a mess, feedbacks can more easily get lost and it is more difficult to track reported issues and crosscheck reports from all the testers.
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Me too, I got the DK2 dev kit. Loved it.
Have I misunderstood you here? For Oculus, the production model was called the CV1. The pre-production models were the DK1 and DK2 and if you had purchased either of them you would know that you had unique access to the Oculus Developer forums where developers could discuss issues. The forums are now open for all but you can search back for DK posts in 2013 if you like: Developer Forum
[quote=“jimh54, post:136, topic:5124, full:true”]
I worked as a development engineer for my whole carreer, I never produced a product based on end user feedback like Pimax is doing. [/quote]
I should not need to discuss the importance of feedback to a lifelong engineer! Have you never been in a Beta? Never downloaded pre-release? And Pimax is not basing the product on just feedback, they are basing it on their own idea and then asked for investment and now feedback during prototype milestones (Unless I missed an announcement where they really did ask the public what they should build next lol).
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DK1 and DK2 were not pre-production models of the CV1, they were completely different products with different specs.
The closest to CV1 pre-production unit disclosed publicly was Crescent Bay which was still a prototype. There (most likely) may have been CV1 pre-production units (after Crescend Bay) but those were kept behind closed doors as far as I’m aware of.
Oculus Wiki
“The Rift has gone through various pre-production models since the Kickstarter campaign, around five of which were demonstrated to the public. Two of these models were shipped to backers, labelled as ‘development kits’; the DK1 in mid 2013 and DK2 in mid 2014”
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Well truth in between prototype v1 & prototype v2. PiMax formed a VR commitee of forum members & PiMax team members. At the time it was created to help bridge the gap between.
In this time they asked us for help in assisting with ideas in improving of the 4k & at that time the ideas for developing the 8k.
Some of the results of this blend of developer & community.
-Expandability through moduls
-5k option
-8k-X once revealed problems with native 4k/eye.
-mechanical ipd with soft ipd for tuning.
-probably some i have missed.
Since Kickstarter
-Deluxe headband now with removable headphones
-10m cables being developed/tested
-partner suggestions (ie Adhawk…)
-partnering with game devs.
And other influences from community that I have likely missed.
Now somethings that other headsets have not shared.
-Screen utilization. PiMax 80% were aiming higher.
Can any VR headset currently out use 100%? I would wager no as most use soft ipd & binocular is usually rounded.
Now AntVR II? Might be closer with its squarish optics & unique mech ipd “auto bump” out design.
Now while Cardboard “Wearability” due to its unique approach might also be closer if not 100% utilization; however it’s not using binocular overlap as both eyes can see all of the screen. From my understanding. Folks like @Primax147 & I would assume @Pumcy @Cdaked @SweViver would have better info on Wearability.
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screen utilization is not practical. it’s a byproduct of what the lenses do. You will only use an eliptical cutout of the screen because of the lenses. What they should go for is optimizing the warping algorithms so that they are not pushing black pixels to the dark unused area of the screen as part of the texel processing passes, just skip those texels you know you’re not going to use.
While I agree with you about passion being a very helpful ressource to help keeping a team in a good mood and productive, I disagree pressure is always negative.
I do think some pressure is necessary, it is even often referred as “good pressure”. Too much pressure will produce negative results, but total lack of pressure can do the same. It’s all a matter of finding the right balance.
Two drivers in a same team can create this good pressure as your team mate is your first competitor which make them boost each other (which benefits to the whole team, making it stronger).
When pimax make communication errors they don’t do themselves a favour because it creates unnecessary (and easily avoidable) bad pressure.
Requests from us, backers, being in response to a pimax communication or not, can add good or bad pressure, it all depends on how it is voiced (choice of words etc.).
My point here is backers pointing at flaws, being product flaws or communication or any choice in the making of the product, is not necessarily creating negative pressure. It can create good and useful pressure to help the team remaining focused on what is the most important.
As long as things are voiced politely and not too much invasive (ie: repeated request despite an answer has been given) I don’t think such feedback can produce negative pressure. It is just someone external trying to help, and even if the advice itself is of no help at all it shows personnal investment to support the team (at least that’s how they should take it to be able to turn this into positive energy, even if the specific advice/feedback doesn’t really help).
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While I agree with the elliptical utilization. It is important to understand that you don’t get full panel resolution because of it.
Now many lay gamers it might confuse them that they are not actually able to have full panel resolution due to oval vs rectangle & space reserved for soft ipd. The unseen space is dead to ones eyes.
This is where dlp is interesting as from what i have read a screen doesn’t need to be the traditional rectangle & can be oval etc.
Round OLED’s have been around (arf arf) for awhile , e.g. smart watches etc so this tech could find its way to HMD’s?
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Indeed Linux is an excellent example.
As Linus Torvald has said something like “Political correctness has made projects fail & disappear.”
And being something like #7 most influential person in the world. See ted talks
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Check out alegant(sp) in other hmds discussion. Dlp glyth(sp?)
Most smart watches have often used rectangular but yes were starting to see screen layout changes ie like you said Round.
The 8k*8k true resolution from the wiki i think called it round/circular er something like that for 1:1
Do you mean the Avegant Glyph? These guys? https://www.avegant.com/
If so that is DLP light shone into your eyes. DLP has been around in projectors for years (used to own a home cinema one myself). I think it is Texas Instruments who created DLP chips. Anyway, yeah, love this idea. Although I wonder if users suffer the rainbow effect like the old projectors did with the colour wheel that DLP tech uses.
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Yep thats the one. 
It’s always interesting the more new ideas developed; how often an older idea revisted may work better.
Granted projecting into the eyes may prove to have other issues. But hey before long we may see Tekwar headsets. Lol
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Guys, do not come to small Chinese company with American standards. Had you seen Pimax CEO interviews? This is what level of English language you can expect from Chinese engineers. People from Pimax who write on this forum, are not developers. Possible they technical knowledge is very limited. Their main skill, that they can communicate in English. And tell only what they were told. I do not see much sense in attacking them with questions about development process: what, how and when will be fixed. How could they know it? They are not part of the development team, they are just in PR. And engineers, who actually know technical stuff, you can’t speak with them, unless you are fluent in Chinese.
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I want to add that I would like to see Infos about brainwarp too. Does it work?
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From the context in which Pimax mentioned the 80% screen utilisation (directly linked to FOV and PPD), I got a distinct impression this was not at all about the out-of-sight corners of the screens, that we are familiar with in current HMDs, but about a whole 20% strip of each screen being unused out toward your ears, (to the point that had it been 70% instead of 80, they might as well have used 5:4 panels) . :7
Incidently; If this true, that could mean that more of the resolution of the dual 4k panels of the 8k model could potentially end up used, while the 5k model (reasonably assuming the same optical circumstances) should actually need to have a theoretical 100% utilised 2.5k input downsampled (EDIT: …to…) 80% horizontally. (All depending on whether the 20% black pillarboxes are already present in the throughput-limited input, or whether its utilisation is maximised and then readjusted on-hmd.)
( As for recent heated discussions, I’ve always found the argument hilarious, in a tragic way, that one is not allowed to try to avert a disaster; Only when it is too late, do your surviving relatives earn the right to raise a questioning finger. :P)
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Dropped back in to see if Q&A resulted in anything new. Holy crap. These Update threads devolve into a real mess quickly. I think it is fairly reasonable to ask that moderators (at least) respect the “on topic rule” practiced in most forums. Even if this infamously organized forum has gotten to convoluted to make managing it all too hard, can we get some sort of agreement to only allow Pimax dev and their spokespersons to report and answer questions in a thread titled Pimax 8K Progress Update. Hint: If they mailed the opening paragraph to backers as an update that would constitute an Official Update thread.
Everyone is entitled to opine whatever wisdom they feel they have and there seems to be no shortage of threads to do that in. Let’s keep the update threads exclusive to the task. I am sure most of us want their updates from the devs and their designates only. We can get opinions all over this forum and elsewhere. Pimax Update threads should be sacrosanct. Pretty please.
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True we may need clarification on screen utilzation percentage means as presented.