These are very interesting numbers, but what really makes me wonder is why Pimax is still not there, considering that it is well known that kickstarter backers were more than six thousands and probably more headsets have been sold in the retail market since March of this year.
Even some small sales figures like Huawei VR, Oculus DK1 and DK2 and Valve’s newest Index are included in the chart, I’m pretty sure that Pimax has already got sales numbers capable of going in direct competition with at least WMR figures, and this could be a big factor in helping sales and popularity worldwide.
So why isn’t Pimax getting in talks or doing something to create a mutual cooperation with Valve that could benefit both, since they are using Valve’s technology in their products that could increase the popularity of both parties products and image ?
Seeing Pimax enter the survey and show noticeable numbers in respect to many of the small players could give an huge boost to the brand and products.
I wonder what @anon74848233 and @PimaxUSA opinion on this matter is, and what most backers thinks about this.
Not sure if You’re aware but the headset isn’t detected at all when the survey collects data. Tried various things but couldn’t get it to be recognized.
Yes, there is some kind of huawei VR unknown to me there, but Pimax, which is far ahead of all competitors in viewing angle, is not there for some reason …
And yes, Pimax during the survey is not defined at all in Steam.
It’s a VR smartphone adapter much like the GearVR, and compatible with two Huawei phones, this at least when it was launched in 2017… sold a bunch of units in the chinese market but I don’t think so many like Pimax.
I think the detection is kinda “hacked” by Pitool.
You can’t just start SteamVR to use it, probably the special SteamVR instance is considered a “mod” and the detection of the HMD, if available, is filtered to avoid tainting of the survey results.
I don’t know how the current pitool works, haven’t looked at it very much. But the pimax 4k driver would indeed either emulate an Oculus or Vive for example by filling in the DisplayID data according to these hmd’s.
It could also be that Pimax simply hasn’t sold enough hmd’s to be a factor of importance.
Lol probably true. Even the old acer wmr hmd has almost 10x more reviews on amazon than the pimax 5k+. The rift s has 20x more reviews and it’s not nearly as long available on amazon
Steam stats say that the number of users using a VR headset just surpassed 1% of total Steam users in August , Steam users are oscillating between 14 and 15 million if not higher, so we can hypotize that if just 1% is 150.000 , then a simple 1% of the VR users should be 1.500 , and Pimax sold more than 6.000 units just counting backers and before starting to ship retail market…
So Pimax headsets now probably count close if not higher than the combined WMR headsets by now, that is just over 9% of the total VR users…
Agreed, then there must be enough pimax users to turn up in the survey. Then it’s maybe what i suggested earlier, the way Pimax presents itself. I’m not sure what Steam uses to ID the headsets for their survey but at least in the past pimax used to emulate Vive and/or Oculus users via the DisplayID. If they still do that and Steam uses that for their survey, then Pimax will never show up.
That’s what I was trying to say earlier. They show as Pimax 5K+/8K unless You check “Compatible with Vive Only Games”… If that option is checked it shows as “Vive MV” (same as og Vive)…
I think You can find the string in one of the setting (XML) files in PiTool’s aapvr driver directory but I might be wrong. I know I’ve seen it somewhere though…
Originally, it didn’t show as a Pimax headset but as “Vive MV” so they changed that at some point and added the compatibility option as some games specifically require a Vive to work (I think both the Alien Isolation and the Doom 3 mod do).
The SteamVR survey doesn’t pick up the headset at all which is why it doesn’t show not even with PiTool + SteamVR running which is why I think they have some kind of whitelist of “headset devices”…
SteamVR just released its final 1.7 version , with some mayor changes and improvements.
Quoting from the update list:
Additional Notes:
Note to external SteamVR driver developers: The runtime now looks for icons with @2x variants and will automatically pick them up for your driver(s) if provided. See the drivers that ship with SteamVR for reference (e.g. runtime/drivers/indexhmd/resources/icons).
On first launch, if the stylized icons do not exist, they will be automatically generated and saved next to your existing icons with a custom postfix, then used for subsequent launches. You are encouraged to ship these generated icons with your driver(s) alongside your existing icons, which should remain unchanged. Doing so will enable your icons to already exist on disk for users upon launch. You also should feel free to hand-edit the automated output as needed. Please contact us if you have any questions.
Icon style changes can be reverted by setting they keys customIconStyle and customOffIconStyle to the empty string in your steamvr.vrsettings file. As always, exercise extreme caution when modifying this file as no error checking is performed.
Might be an important thing to check upon to correctly identify and show the headset type and model ? Maybe ? @PimaxUSA
That’s certainly on the list but hasn’t been as fundamental as the other items that are part of our efforts with Valve. There are a fair number of variants that would need to be compiled into a “Pimax” category.
No doubt that will be something that occurs at some point soon as we do easily have sufficient device population.