The Quest 2 is alredy 4K@120h with a heavy underclocked XR2 (unforunately, most of the games render at lower resolution). So for a full clocked XR2, manage a 4k@144hz screen is not a problem (other thing will be the rendering resolution in games).
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Whereâs the $40 million gone then? Why donât Pimax use that?
The secret to Kickstarter is in the name. Itâs to kickstart a business that has zero capital.
Pimax are an established 7 year old company. They shouldnât need anything Kickstarter brings to the table. Itâs embarrassing a $40 million company is back to square one and needs any benefit Kickstarter brings.
Kickstart usually mean zero to low profits which is the opposite to what Pimax investors want.
But donât listen to me, Pimax does itâs own thing. It just begs the question why after 1 Kickstarter 2 rounds of series A and B investment Pimax canât fund this themselves? @PimaxUSA you never gave a reason why Pimax are now above and beyond Kickstarter.
Pimax are in trouble. Crystal struggles to get out the door. The flagship 12k is non existent. Now Kickstarter is back.
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Well, reading your post didnât make me much happier 
Thisis indeed the impression many will have, save for the die hard fan boys. You didnât manage to get the two new products you are advertising since up to 1,5 years released in good shape, just had to announce that the Crystal will be released without some features working leaving customers to wonder if it will ever perform as advertised and priced - and the 12K is âat approx. 70%â which clearly indicates itâs nowhere near a release.
And amidst the outfall of your message of substantial delays you merrily announce a flurry of new products.
From a company of their experience and definitely not being your average âout of the garage Kickstarterâ show, this is rather poor execution.
Sigh.
They did the same with the 12K, and look how that is going. But okay, who cares, as long as nobody puts their money on the line before knowing what the product really if capable of, itâs fine, right.
The issue is, this is hardly true for the Crystal, where nobody has seen a proper hands-on (actually - not even any) yet and you are asked to pre-order and in any case forfeit the roughly 30$ (?).
And for the 12K - what about those who were lured into the trade-in program? Finally the Portal: that will take the route of a Kickstarter, which means you are at their mercy completely.
The truly mind-boggling thing here is that they have some serious potential, but imho drop the ball in various areas unnecessarily.
It somehow doesnât really make any sense what they are doing, time and again - unless we underestimate the Chinese market and their approach is tolerated and successful with their domestic customer base and the results from an overall point of view do make sense. Looking at the Western market in isolation, I am afraid it doesnât add up.
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This was my immediate take on it. And then the timing confirmed. Itâs robbing Peter to pay Paul. Theyâll use the the Kickstarter money to fund Crystal marketing and production.
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Wow, thatâs one hell of a statement from not just a forum member but the actual COO of Pimax. Way to treat your âPimaxiansâ.
I havenât seen anyone commenting positively on the Portal announcement; that might in fact be the case in spite of Portal being a genius product that will blaze the way to new frontiers; it might be due to not meeting the expectations of your target audience which you set yourself via Frontier 21 and the Crystal announcement; it might be due to your target audience not knowing that they are, in fact, not your target audience anymore; it might be down to the many buyers of Vision series HMDs that did so mainly expecting a successful trade in for a 12K in Q4 22.
But to think and actually write down that this forum is populated by critics whose intention is to make Pimaxâs life more difficult is a managerial disaster that shows that Pimax has in fact changed, but not for the better.
I expect Pimax to refund anyoneâs purchase of a Vision series HMD as long as no 12K launch date can be set.
Then Pimax is free to do their thing without continuing to leave a bad impression with users such as @Sargon who have been immense supporters of the ânew Pimaxâ and actually gave them the benefit of the doubt.
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Donât forget the incentive to buy 8kxâs around the time of the Aero release so you can trade it in for full price for a 12k âsoon.â Now that product is nowhere in sight.
Just one hustle after hustle.
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Thatâs partially true. The usual people are certainly speaking and being hyperbolic about it. But I think there are more people raising what I think are legitimate concerns, too.
Iâve previously had a pretty positive outlook on the 12K, Crystal, and the direction that Pimax is going as a company. But I am concerned about issues I see with the Portal and what seems like a significant direction shift for the company.
If Pimaxâs direction hasnât actually changed, then the presentation may have sent an unintended message to your audience. That message is that Pimax is moving away from its focus on VR headsets like the Crystal and 12K. And that erodes confidence in the future of those headsets, especially the 12K.
It may be worthwhile to address those concerns.
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Lol we can say the same about Pimax. Itâs the same few Pimax employees that remain in denial. The same few that will defend Pimax to the bitter end. The same few that say yes yes yes when they should be saying no no no.
Thereâs no middle man between Robin Wang and Sweviver. Pimax canât do wrong. When we say eye strain, Pimax say set up. When we say janky, Pimax says Beta. When we say competition, Pimax says explorers, pioneers, trail blazers. When we say business and profit, Pimax says investors and kickstarters. The list goes on and on, for 7 years and weâre still here with the same denial, kickstarters, bad product launches while the competition gets stronger.
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Portal should of been a 8kX mkii with new lenses, cable, upgraded audio, QLED 4k panels for PCVR only at ÂŁ800 and released now. That is what we ask for, that is what we would of bought in droves. That is what would of put Pimax above Index.
When we say distortion, they say âyou have bad eyesâ. Yeah the list is long indeed. But oh well, thatâs Pimax being Pimax and wonât change, at least not without new employees taking over current positions, I strongly believe that, just look at @PimaxUSA kicking at his own customers. Nothing has changed over the years.
Pimax has been somewhat successful, even though theyâre REALLY bad at business strategy, because there simply has been 0 competition for them, no one else has been offering wide FoV at an affordable price point. But with this âportalâ thing, theyâre directly taking on Valve with its Steamdeck. If Iâd be interested in a handheld, Iâd definitely buy a Steamdeck. Why would I want a Pimax handheld? Itâs an ARM processor so it wonât even run steamdeck. Or do they really think they can create a successful alternative to the Steam community?
But honestly thatâs not even the big problem here, the big problem is the complete disconnect between high-end VR and a handheld.
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why should they when the only suitable competitor costs 8000? xD
I sold my 5k+ to buy the Index. To me Valve is a direct competitor to Pimax.
If you look at the Focus 3 itâs been on sale for ages offers 95% Crystal does and Crystal hasnât launched yet. Is HTC not a competitor to Pimax?
Pico4 I own does 95% the Crystal does, cost 1 quarter of the price had s great launch and good reviews. Crystal hasnât launched yet. Competition?
Crystal has no competition because it hasnât launched yet in the same way Apple hasnât launched Index2 hasnât launched, PSVR2 hadnât launched.
When Crystal launches you can bet it will be compared to the Pico4 or the Quest2 Pro and people will ask what is the best value headset for me.
My point is everything has a value marker and the lower the product price the more product sales you get. Pimax has to convince people their products are better value than others. The value can be a combination of cost, specs, store, build quality, comfort, longevity etc.
Index and Pico 4 for me have been that valued proposition but Iâm hoping the 12k will be too. It wonât be though if in 12 months an Index 2 comes along at ÂŁ1k and does 95% of 12k at half the price.
Yes and really no. Valve does not have any WFoV hmds. So if your looking for a Direct WFoV hmd with Steam capabilty(extra cost add on) your buying as mentioned an Xtal Hmd like there original 5k model or the 8k model at an extremely high cost.
The Index is good for what it is though we all agree it should have been a 4k device like the Reverb.
Only maybe for Standalone mode. Otherwise it will be compared to the Varjo Aero and such that is more the competitor on release due to targetting higher visual fidelity with more included like a full package for considerably less price.
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For who? Consumers? Enterprise? Business?
If you want highest res you go VR-3
If you want to go wide you go 8KX
If you go cheap you can go Quest or Pico4
If you go enterprise you can go Focus 3 Quest 2
If you want to go Value you can go Index or G2.
If you want to go PCVR you can go anywhere.
Where does Crystal fit because if there is no competition then Crystal blows them all away.
I think you mean Aero. Well, yes and no. The Aero is a very well built headset. The lenses are extremely sharp and make your eyes completely relaxed. However it does suffer from distortion. If Pimax can match the Varjo quality AND fix the distortion AND offer a lower price point, then it might be a great success. However personally Iâm still very skeptical about that. Maybe I can join the demo in Florida, Iâm honestly very interested to see how it stacks up against the Aero.
Sweviver said theyâd bring an Aero to the roadshows for direct comparison. I think thatâs an awesome idea. If they really do that, at least it shows that theyâre confident themselves that they have the better product. Iâd be surprised, but again, who knows âŚ
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The Products your mentioning is budget products. These are not Prosumer priducts like the Varjo Aero. The Crystal will share many features that are a part of Quest//Pico bit is not really targetted to be direct competitors.
Essentially you will get a headset that will be directly comparable to the Varjo Aero that comes as a complete vr solution with Audio as pluses at a considerably lower entry price point. To boot it will be sjopping eith swappable lenses and also have Stand alone capabilities.
Now I know your just being Atmos lol
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Actually this morning I was thinking: among all the headsets that Iâve owned, which one was really the best? Which one really hit the nail, felt like it was the best engineered? I came to the conclusion that it was the Index. Itâ just such a great and well engineered device. But yeah, really too bad that they didnât up the resolution. Itâs just so outdated right now, I could never go back, at this point in time. But still, the combination of panels and lens design really made the most convincing impression that the virtual world was real.
Iâm happy-ish with my XTAL 3 as my current daily driver, but it has several flaws and I would not even think of it as THE best engineered device at all and Iâm not even taking into account the absurd price point.
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Very much agreed. I was disappointed to see LG bail on Releasing the Ultragear as at time it had a lot of potential.
The Xtsl is really cool save the price and did demonstrate that the Eyestrain issue on pimac is not isolated as canât think of his name atm bought an Xtal with hopes it would give the Eyestrain free experience. The eyestrain issue is interesting on the WFoV hmds it will be interesting to see how the 12k makes out with the new lenses.
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Yeah. Actually the XTAL 3 in many ways resembles the Pimax 8kX. Obviously they struggle with the same problems that wide FoV adds to the already complex VR technology table. The XTAL for example has a similar option to adjust the horizontal offsets and I find myself messing with that over and over, just like I had with the 8kX, in the hope to find that optimal combination, that just never seems to happen and I end up with some (luckily quite light but still persistent) eye strain all of the times.
I guess itâs going to be really difficult to create a wide FoV headset that has 0 distortion and has no eye strain at all.
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