I think it’s quite clear that it was, particularly the part about the reflective film coating which I can’t recall ever being brought up before.
It’s a good Q and A, well written with good insight. I’d love for more communication like this from Pimax, great post imo.
I don’t think this is a cut and dry, black and white thing. Pimax’s engineering appears to be fully committed to Agile and not waterfall. Agile philosophy is constant iteration with short development cycles, typically 2 weeks long. Agile is particularly well adapted to SaaS (Software as a Service)… stuff like websites… and has proven to be much more effective than traditional waterfall.
The really unusual thing is that Pimax appears to apply Agile philosophy to their hardware development as well as their software. They clearly did this with their Vision series headsets. Consumers have complained that Pimax was marketing so many different VR headsets, but in reality there was only the P2… but being released iteratively as part of continuous Agile development.
The rub there is that consumers expect waterfall. Concepts like “final production unit” are waterfall concepts. If your product is continuously updated in sprint cycles, what do you consider a work in progress prototype vs final? Pimax’s marketing is tasked with trying to shoehorn terms and expectations that don’t really apply.
So I don’t think this is a matter of Pimax lying about it. I mean, they seem to be openly telling people at the roadshows what’s going on. But there can be a lot of misunderstanding because Pimax as a company is so alien to what people are used to. And it’s hard for them to explain.
Pimax inherently suffers some significant drawbacks for what seems like a total devotion to Agile even for its hardware development (whereas Agile was developed as a concept specifically for software development to divorce it from being patterned after hardware development!). But its apparent devotion to Agile practices is also why Pimax has been able to bring technology to market which has capabilities well beyond what much larger companies in the VR industry have been able to field in their products using traditional waterfall approaches. It’s a pretty interesting tradeoff.
This is the first time I realize there is similar user type to me. Years ago I primarily replaced my broken 3D TV with a VR-Headset, the 4K. I am a more casual VR-gamer, but I need a video replacement, the best I can get.
And it will be an office replacement, if headsets reach physical borders or restriction of our eyes. So, this rant is a rant, just take it as a rant and forget about it. We will have a look at the finished product though.
@Sargon: whatever the development philosophy is, the product has to be feature complete when the company says it is launching the product with these specs. Frankly, I don‘t think any single customer cares about the philosophy behind it if the bottom line is that he paid for something the company doesn‘t deliver. Pointing to a different philosophy would just be adding insult to injury, it would almost seem to be making fun of the customers.
If they improve it continuously beyond the specs, great, everybody loves that, but that is not what we are talking about here. That was the case with the 8KX when they added the 90 Hz mode some time later for later hardware revisions and that was received largely positively. But as said, that‘s a completely different story to what currently is going on with the Crystal.
Good thing is that its not really being shipped to consumers yet, so we are talking only of marketing sh!t hitting the fan, not yet anything more. Still a very unfortunate communication strategy.
As long as the price has not yet been collected and the product has not been delivered, the customer can in principle not care.
Only one can lose in this moment.
This is true, and I’m not attempting to make excuses for Pimax. Just making observations which could be meaningful to predictions and analysis.
I think Pimax intended to “turn over a new leaf” with the Crystal, announce it only when it was much closer to release, and finally hit a target date on time or at least close to it in order to work on reversing their reputation. And then covid lockdowns completely kicked their a**. That’s thrown a huge wrench in all their plans and schedules, and so now they’re trying to keep things rolling as close to schedule as they can by dropping features at launch and showing units at roadshows that aren’t quite ready yet and hoping it will work out okay. They’re taking risks and prioritizing not being more late.
Except they can. Even if it is a small refundable reserve like the Crystal as it was advertised released at the end of Sept with Opening up distribution to other regions in November. It was said Standalone mode would not be present at this time. Which is fine. However as we know the Announcement was not true and was not even close to what was said to be ready.
When all was needed was an honest announcement that was true. Delayed for now while working out some issues that need to be fixed prior to release.
Well, they are late so they cannot change that fact. Releasing an incomplete product only compounds this fact and the impression on the potential customers. It just doesn‘t make much sense, no matter which angle I view it from.
Another issue with this apporach is that it allows them to delay the completion even more because when the product is already being sold nevertheless there is no real deadline to work against anymore.
But okay, this is very much the old Pimax, not so much new about them after all. We will just have to monitor the reports from their early access customers over the coming 6-12 months hoping to read that they confirm at some stage that the features all have been activated and learn how these perform.
Kind of a tangent, but (relatively) small companies have very real cash flow concerns to balance when launching production of a new product. It can make total business sense to start selling Crystals as soon as the hardware is ready and functional, even if firmware and supporting software is still janky and or missing features, simply because they need incoming cash to continue development of the latter.
That’s obviously not ideal for consumers. Just noting that it can be a reality, especially when some combination of a pandemic and project management issues have kicked your rear.
It would also very much help their image and customer trust levels if they were transparent about this and provided updated time tables.
I love Pimax’s “can do” attitude. I hate that they too often think they’re closer to done than they are. They did it in 2017. They did it during KS beta testing until the testers said nope! The current situation is unsurprising’
@Atmos tracking the Cryatal development and the surrounding controversy is a good example. In business it’s called a Pro Forma and is done during a project to track a projects various components, their completion and the affect on the overall timeline. Thing is, it’s something that Pimax should have been doing all along since the beginning. Not something they should later argue about maybe tracking, but who should be doing it? Should have been on-going.
Some good points in this video. Is he harsh? Yes. But who cares. Being “harsh” is the type of feedback you need to hear before releasing an expensive product. Top takeaways that I think the Pimax team should be listening to.
So we should also scrap mechanical ipd. Swappable lenses does not add moving parts. All it does is make lense changes easier if damaged and provides an upgrade path.
If you remove the XR2 chip then the lossless codec compression has nothing on the hmd side to decode it. The XR2 chip is also being used to offload processing and add wireless capability as well as a standalone mode.
Lighthouse is good as an option for those whom already have. For new people in VR having a full package without needing to buy Lighthouses & Controllers is a boon. Plus countries Valve does not sell to and have rules that others cannot sell there as well. Then of course Lighthouses also make a headset less portable requiring a more complex setup if travelling.
Better to have it as an option that is available to purchase on launch.
Formfactor? Sure it might be good to remove extra bulk that is maybe not needed in the Crystal but this will add costs to manufacturing and need additional resources as well.
The Vision series all used the same chassis. It’s a good idea for the Reality series to all use the same chassis, too. Why? Because this standardizes accessories, especially 3rd party accessories. Pimax already struggles for 3rd parties to make accessories for their headsets due to their small numbers. VRCover doesn’t even make facial interface covers for Pimax. If Pimax split it up further so each headset they put out had a different chassis, they’d be completely hopeless for availability of accessories.
In my opinion, this is something that all VR headsets should already be doing. For the same reason that the tether cable should not be permanently attached to the headset and therefore nonreplaceable.
Lenses in VR headsets are highly vulnerable and do get damaged. And they simply… age. Eventually repeated cleaning will take off coatings and cause other issues where they may still work okay, but they’re not as good as new.
Pimax claims that making the lenses removeable adds very little complexity to the design. It’s almost a free feature. And I believe this to be true. And that’s also why I think other VR headsets should have been doing it all along, too. It’s low hanging fruit that significantly increases the serviceability and lifespan of the headset.
@Heliosurge I agree with all of your rebuttals to the (3) items being suggested for removal above. I like that options are being factored into the headset. There are always going to be some who don’t have a need or desire for a particular option but their position is no more valid than the position of a person who does need or want said option. Pimax is trying to address as many viewpoints as they can and I appreciate them trying to do that.
I actually love the inter-changeable lens design. It allows me to easily add little metal spacers between the magnets, effectively become a poor-man’s prescribed lens. My right eye has a higher degree than left eye, so I just add a little more thickness on the right side, and I should be able to see clearly on the right eye as well.
This little moddable design is much better than finding an online vendor who will sell you special lens just for your eyes and Pimax Reality Headset. The lens they sell probably won’t match the quality from Pimax anyway.
I suggest Pimax Crystal should even come with those little metal spacers. If they don’t I will use my own anyway.
As I was too lazy to check out the Pimax Discord, was there any meaningful new information in the reviews from the roadshows in the US? Did the eye-tracking (auto IPD, DFR) finally work? Controllers? Just like the stand-alone (and mixed reality) features, the face plates were said to take a while I believe so we will not know about Lighthouse in near future I guess.
I can just imagine him thinking “where can I film this without looking like a complete weirdo?” And he walks out all the way to the middle of no where and makes sure no one is around. Lmao great video for sure though
Even Pimax themselves admitted that the eye-tracking software is not ready.
Luckily for Crystal headset eye-tracking is actually not that important. It’s only essential for 12k.
The “auto IPD adjustment” was not ready either, but personally I prefer manual IPD adjustment, which is done by using 2 buttons on the headset.
Eye tracking is not that important?
I mean… Why is that? For Example, Couldn’t they use the eye tracking to allow looking around in a flight sim without the need to fully move your head? I mean. I think that’s useful.
Isn’t the eye tracking also essential for the tech to know where your looking so as to have the best quality in that location and reduce quality in the periphery in order to help with performance?
Why would you need eye tracking to do that? If you have FFR turned on then yeah, you’d want it to instead be DFR so you could so that. ET would have no impact in looking around with your eyes without any foveated rendering.
That said, ET I think is massively important as while the crystal looks easy to run compared the the 12k it is still going to be one of the hardest headsets to run on the market. Perhaps second only to the 12k.