But it feels like having a son, who is a recovering heroine addict, you thought he was doing better, people told you he was doing better and you just wanted to believe them so badly. And then you see him in some alley shooting up again. Yeah That’s exactly what this is lol.
Well the good thing is there was no press and media present. Hopefully this can just stay between us. But damn, lol, who makes this stuff up, who thought it was a good idea to do roadshows with some half baked product. Like what was their reasoning. Honestly would like to know.
Yeh honestly it would’ve better to not do a roadshow for crystal if so many important elements were missing or not working properly. I’m thinking Q2 or Q3 2023 shipping date for crystal and 2024 for 12K.
Hmmm. The Crystal seems to have so many issues, now confirmed by a second user who cancelled his pre-order as a result. And I haven‘t seen any report stating the opposite so far.
@SweViver: Marcin, you are a reasonably thinking guy - if the product simply is not ready for show-time, why don‘t you just cancel the rest of the roadtrip and protect Pimax at this stage? If this continues there will be dozens of scathing reports on reddit, discord & this forum, and anybody googling Crystal reviews in 6 months from now, when the product perhaps is ready for sale, will read them and possibly disregard it right away.
You guys wanted to show a new Pimax - this currently looks exactly like the old Pimax! But now for double the price of the Vision headsets, which were already in the high price segment of VR. Just put yourself in the shoes of somebody being asked to spend 2 grand - and he’s being presented with a mess in pre-alpha state, and the company doing so is seriously demo’ing this device and offering pre-orders already, which means they apparently think their job is almost done, so this together with some hot fixes rolled out in the coming few weeks is apparently what he’d have to expect to get for his money? By the way, a headset which allegedly launched in China mid-October (at least that’s what was announced on 30 September, right)?
Can‘t you see how bad it looks from the outside? This road-trip is looking like it‘s going to turn into a trainwreck. Pull the plug now. Come back when the Crystal is ready, not one day before.
Who was it said anyone wanting one before XMas should be able to get one?
I really thought from the sheer magnitude of hype shoveled at us this last year that things would resemble something more professional. It’s like 2 different companies. One trying to invoke a Hollywood blockbuster and the other still doing Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour.
Don’t forget that if Pimax miss the first half of January 2023 windows for delivery of this kickstarter, January 22 is China new year festival this year. This mean a more probable mars 2023 delivery date for the portal units.
Really regretting having sold my 8K X to get the funds for the Crystal lol (I had bought it secondhand so no trade in option).
Looking forward to hearing a few more opinions and get trying it myself in 10 days but yeah, it’s looking pretty bleak right now. The controller tracking was my biggest concern and seems like that happened as said. So seems like I won’t be getting rid of those damn base stations anytime soon…
Might just get a pico 4 for now and wait for these products to mature in a year or 2. Maybe by the next few roadshows some of the kinks specific to the roadshow will have been worked out and we see a more reliable experience but I’m not holding my breath.
I do hope they sort it out though, there’s not really any other headsets with the same potential as Crystal/12K.
Well the good thing is that it’s very likely they’ll sort it out. I have high respect for their developers. Back in the days with the Pimax 4k, I remember how they switched from using the standard Steam compositor to their own and how they had difficulties doing so. Back then I also looked into it and actually there was pretty much no info at all on the internet! Actually I did find one relevant discussion and it turned out one of the guys in that discussion was one of the Pimax developers, haha (I heard from another participant who said he had been talking to him via PM). But just the fact that you’re developing and there’s just pretty much 0 public info on the subject of course complicates things a lot. Actually to the point that I started to doubt they’d be able to fix the issue’s. But they did. So they surely have some bright developers that are able to fix complicated issue’s when there’s not much info to go by. That makes me think they’ll also get this going. But yeah it’s too bad that we’re now here when we were told everything was nearing completion (or even: already shipping to china).
EDIT I just found that board again, this was the relevant discussion that I found at first: IVRDriverDirectModeComponent.SubmitLayer · Issue #745 · ValveSoftware/openvr · GitHub as you read it, you start to understand how difficult it is to write software against a, pretty much undocumented (back then) mode in steamVR when those companies don’t hand out any info at all on the subject. BTW this is not the particular discussion with the pimax developer in it, it’s one of the other threads on that forum, but I won’t post it here out of respect for them.
Another bit of feedback from todays roadshow on the mrtv discord by “nuclear penguin” :
“Its not small sweet spot. By the way - lenses are bigger than Areo… FOV is also a nice surprise… I was testing a 35ppd lenses… I will write a summary later. Positevely surprised (overal feeling).”
This appears positive. Opinions are like buttholes…everyone has 1, some stink lol. What 1 person likes, another does not etc. I’m quite easy to please when it comes to hmd’s, out of the 9 ive owned only the rift cv1 i didn’t like. Looking forward to more feedback.
To be fair Pimax in time will solve their problems but not in the announced time frame. If they are still the only provider of wide FOV headsets then they will stay in business…
Was they case for the 5K+, 8K and 8KX which is now a mature product with not to many quirks, enjoyed by many peoples but it’s not for every one…
Pimax USA “They were really tired setting up the first show, there was a lot to do. Hadn’t done one of these in years. We put together a lot of stops so we can refine the process.”
More reaction from nuclear.pengiun in the mrtv discord :
"Well first of all, I plan to make proper summary later. Unfortunately, I am right already during business trip so my availability is limited.
I spent there like few hours of time discussing with everyone, testing the units. Very good overal experience.
Importaint remarks:
FOV is a little bit higher than Aero, but comparable. I triee both ine sfter another, but its hard to tell how big difference js.
With Crystal, after pushing the facial interface there is a potential for increase with custom covers or even 3D printed gaskets.
Clarity is comparable or even higher than Aero.
Blacks look much, much better than anything I have seen so far. Local dimming is amazing. SweViver made a presentation where he disabled and then enabled it again in pimax experience menu with black background. Amazing.
Edge to edge clarity - comparable or the same as Aero.
Chromatic abberation or distortions are not an issue. I deliberately tried the background with paralel and perpendicular lines ( like #) and distortions were a little bit seen, but only if you really look for them hard. Not seen during text reading, not even mentioning games.
You know what I deleted my post. It had some misinformation in it and was overall very negative and critical of Pimax. I will wait for more roadshows to conclude and give some time to digest the state of things.
Lenses calibration. Some headsets had different focal points (I am not sure is it proper naming). Basically if you look up close its perfectly aligned, however if you look up further, you have serious eye strain. However if you look with only one eye (doesnt matter which one), then its perfect both in close plane and further one. They were aware of it and said it requires tinkering, it can be easily done with spacers between lens inserts and HMD itself.
SteamVR faceplate may come later, most propably after Chinese New Year or even in March. Temporarily solution for those that are extremely unpatient with their lighthouses will be pairing the htc Vive tracker, mounting it on HMD and calibrating with openVR steam calibrator.
Reason: Their main goal is camera based controllers to appeal mass audience (lower entry barier).
"
Interesting question and answer with Joshua on reddit:
Redditor:
If it’s not rude to ask, how come they are pre-production units? Or do you mean just in terms of software? It’s my understanding, according to pimax communication, that there have been retails units done and off the production line since the end of October (and also we were told, by Kevin I believe, that units had shipped to customers in China already from the preorders). Just confused as to why there would be pre-production units being demoed when a sizable number of retail units already exist, with some even shipped.
Joshua:
Our Chinese sales are indeed ongoing. However almost all of those purchases are not end consumers but developers and industrial customers. They are writing their own software for the headsets.
The hardware in the headsets is almost finalized. We are just playing around with final adjustments to the components. For instance we discovered that the rf transmitters and receivers in the controller and headsets need to be changed to limit interference and improve the tracking performance. That will be done this month. Our industrial customers are just being sent the necessary component to affect the hardware change themselves.
Gotta say, I really appreciate Joshua’s honesty here. Seems like there aren’t any retail crystals yet. I guess plenty of units exist but need some parts switched out, but not actually done yet 100%. Considering they will need to get approval in various countries etc before they can ship, I really can’t imagine any of us getting a crystal this year and considering the feedback we are hearing it’s probably best they take some more time. I’d rather wait a bit and get a good product with a solid launch rather than forcing some arbitrary deadline and then hurting Pimax’s already not stellar reputation even further. They have a chance here to chance a lot of minds and show they have matured as a company, rushing the crystal out would fly in the face of the last few years of work.
I do recall being told that there were production units already made, and that they were shipping to customers in China already but that honestly feels like it was a bit misleading when it was said as that was clearly going to be taken as customers that pre-ordered, not enterprise customers that would be writing their own software and working on the hardware itself etc. Of course those are technically customers but there seems to be some saving face going on which then just comes back to bite Pimax as things progress. Joshua’s response here was exactly the type of communication that is needed and wanted imo, if the communication is meant to just save face then it’s better to say nothing.
