I can see it both ways. For example, PCs took decades to go from the workplace to the home. Maybe the reverse is true? I will say that the dreams of every office interaction being with a VR headset is unrealistic at present. I mean, in the age of video calls, no one does it unless the situation calls for it. Else we want a text! Is VR going to dominate social interactions and the Metaverse something we do everything in? Probably not. That’d be like saying no one would ever text or voicecall now that we can video call, Zoom etc.
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I’d love for Pimax to keep folding things that theres a NEXUS - currently - into its intentions. For example maybe openXR support, maybe higher bandwidth wifi (Wigig), and/or display bandwidth (DP2.0 etc), I think we can all agree that higer PPD is a goal, but other things too like better tracking. (I know its been promised, but will they deliver?) They tackled wide-FOV right? These things are what might be called next-steps, whereas the metaverse is a what would have been called “cyber” in the 90s - a nebulous idea of where the tech can go, meanwhile companies tried “interactive television” to jump ahead. We dont call electronic banking or crypto “cyberfinance”, but its here - just not in the original envisioning, but the product of a long-awaited series of progressive iterations.
Either way: Baby-steps Pimax. Dont jump too far ahead of VR train. Drive it! Be where we want to be over the next 1-2 years (and deliver in somewhat less time = profit), not 10 a ten-years-from-now clunky mess that makes all the mistakes for the competition. Otherwise you’ll produce museum-peices that were expensive, boutique, clunky, unusable, unsupported, consumer test-kits for some other company to look at as an example of what NOT to do with VR - and you run out of money.
Please hire more people Pimax, you’re at a the nexus of growth. Im rooting for you.
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That´s what I mean with wishful thinking. You remember the COVID situation especially in China? You remember the shortage of parts? I yet estimate there are so many hidden bold moves to survive and evolve the same time on Pimax site.
As well hire people for what exactly? Someone need to pay the bills of employees. Do you have a new business model for Pimax to propose?
As philpw99 posted, there is a cool down on VR, he gave evidence on that. Products vanish, companies retreat from VR activities Together with the rising wars and trade wars, this is concerning.
I still stick to my opinion, the industrial needs for AR will drag the VR all along. Besides the leisure aspect (玩儿玩儿）。
I just mean they are at a growing nexus. VR can cool down but it will be to focus. Instead of on the metaverse, consumers still will need each of the things Pimax is pursuing. “Cyber” was dying in the early 2000s -see the dotcom bust. But those using the internet didnt see a change, they saw it getting ready for take off. It only looked like it was cooling off to investors and outside observers. The hype went away. I realize there’s limits and differences here to this analogy however.
You seem to be conflating the availability of variety with consumer demand. Early on, there were more companies that tried to enter the market. Most of them got stomped because they weren’t that great, and the market is now dominated by the few that became very popular.
I don’t see how you can just arbitrarily decide the Quest 2 doesn’t count and therefore VR is dying.
Also, the other popular VR headset is the Valve Index which is sold through Steam, so you’re not going to see it at physical stores. Every other currently produced VR headset has only a tiny sliver of the market share.
So? VR can be used to view 360 videos. But this technology wasn’t developed specifically for VR and exists and is usable outside of VR. I think it was hoped that VR would make it much more popular since it provides a better way to view these videos, but as far as I’ve seen, it still hasn’t gained a lot of traction even among VR enthusiasts.
If it ever really takes off, that will be good for VR. But since it’s never been that big anyway, it’s not really going to hurt VR if it flounders.
That’s just plain not true. Meta and Valve are leading. Pimax only has a tiny sliver of the market.
And Pimax’s way forward isn’t even competing on price. They can’t compete with the likes of Meta’s Quest 2 which has gutted the market for competition at the low end. Pimax has found its niche in the high end. The coming Crystal and 12K are not “affordable” for most consumers. Pimax is instead competing on features and capability, providing the most powerful VR headsets on the consumer market.
That’s not true for everyone. Also, a lot of resistance to video calls comes from people not being dressed and presentable when they’re at home. But that’s not a problem for VR. Your avatar doesn’t suffer from bed head.
According to the recent MRTV interview with Pimax, they have hired more people. A lot more people. He mentioned their business offices alone had over 200 employees now.
I feel like this is a generally overlooked part of that interview and that things he said on that topic as well as mentions about how many units Pimax is producing per month were actually more important (and more surprising) than what was said about the specific details of the 12K.
This is a large part of why I think Pimax is on the cusp of a major change with respect to what has come to be expected from Pimax’s reputation in the past. Pimax seems to have quietly grown their resources quite a lot behind the scenes, and yet we haven’t really seen significant impact on their existing Vision series product line. I think that’s because nearly all of that growth at Pimax as a company has been focused on their new Reality series line of VR headsets, and that we’re going to start seeing this new Pimax with the release of the Crystal and 12K.
Whether or not the VR industry as a whole is growing right now, Pimax sure is.
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Truly good points. Love it! Especially have to agree with you about the age makes a difference argument
Using physical stores as an example isn’t proof as many devices that rely on software downloads to function are primarily sold online. Your example shows the steep decline of brick and mortar vs. online sales more than anything. That said there is a lot of interest from the B&M segment but you can’t easily setup the kiosks for demos with rare lighthouses and controllers. The physical space room scale VR requires is also a massive challenge for retail where shelf space usage is measured in value per inch. It will require entirely new methods to demo.
CAGR in the VR business is indeed higher than other media devices were at each stage of their cycle. In some cases there is a production lag due to shortages and on the PC side the graphics card shortage also did not help. Consumer and enterprise interest in VR is literally at an all time high but in many instances difficult to capitalize on.
I estimate in Q4 most of the production and delivery side conditions will be almost entirely resolved. Further the next batches of headsets build on the many previous building blocks so those who didn’t have the best experience will finally get to experience VR in ways that inspire.
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Still would love to see a Pimax at Best Buy. 
As families tighten their belts I think VR will not be as popular as it was in COVID. America along with other country’s are heading into a recession. It just hasn’t sunk in yet so people are charging up debt more. Besides running vehicles ,ships and semi trucks petroleum is used in Plastics that’s a fact. Game developers are coding for quick bucks in limited versions to accommodate games available on Quest instead of high end PC games. I was considering the 12k Pimax but there are no worthy VR titles coming anytime soon for PCVR. I would be happy to see full conversions of games in Unreal 5 like Skyrim and Fallout. DCS would be wild in Unreal 5 DX12 or Vulcan. Look around people not alot of upcoming games or sims in VR.
Can’t remember where i saw it but business report/stats suggest vr is growing year on year, yes alot of that is quest 2 owners. But the quest is a good introductory headset for newcomers so no harm in that imo. Some of those new quest users will move up to higher end headsets like pimax etc.
VR is a place for:
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Freeform hardware design. Any shape needed to mass manufacture any other shape can be designed. Precision, accuracy, efficiency, perfected to physical limits, open-source and widely available.
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Rehearsal. Assembly lines can be optimized in VR
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Simulation software development. Working through a 2D screen as a window is no way to develop the approximations or build the virtual environments to create accurate simulations.
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Training. Anyone with a VR headset will be able to use intuitive CAD modeling, physically interacting, instead of poking with a cursor through a 2D window. A little less ambitiously, people can learn and do jobs like welding, flying, air traffic control, etc, through VR.
VR will be an essential, necessary contribution to already ongoing two world changing trends: drastically improving hardware/software design techniques and drastically improving the number of persons skilled with the best techniques.
Applying those benefits to both hardware design (ie. freeform CAD modeling, rehearsal) and software design (ie. simulators, evolutionary algorithms, etc), will result in a sufficiently widely available, high-performance, interoperable technology base to define the desired inputs, outputs, and available CNC/robotics tooling/assembly, for an entire manufacturing line, then have accurate simulation and evolutionary algorithms define the factory.
Historically, technology has improved from paper drawings, to 2D CAD, to parametric 2D CAD, to parametric 3D CAD poked at with cursors through 2D windows and VLSI , and has now reached just ~20million programmers behind this industry.
Today, a team is lucky to upkeep a combination of SteamVR, Arduino, gEDA, FreeCAD Assembly, etc. Today, we have ~20million programmers in the world, working through 2D windows into models of the real world.
Next we will have ~200million programmers, many more who do far more advanced CAD in VR.
Last, humans will use those resources to have machines designing and making machines.
This. Indeed.
Added to that, I think small world theory, degrees of freedom, etc, will be an essential part of VR adoption. Early adopters and developers will make things work, then share with people they know.
How did we get into web browsing, historically? I don’t imagine tinkering with OS/2 Warp, Windows 3.1, or DOS, or paying the price of a computer back then was very ‘intuitive’ either. Maybe the very lucky were using UNIX effectively.
What I imagine is friends and family had computers, made things work, and shared what they could with others. For me at least that was basically the case - some of the hardware and software was already there, so I used it.
While VR hardware, and the rendering beasts needed to feed it, can be prohibitively expensive, there is probably a little bit to be said for there being a tendency for sales of “comfort stuff” to still do very well in trying times, and maybe even have an uptick… People consoling themselves with a coffee and bun they might or might not have had otherwise – little things like that.
I have a bit of a possibly odd, and “fantasy” little take on the whole thing with AR… There are so many pundits going: “VR? Nah, I am waiting for AR - THAT’S where all and any value lies!”, but for my part I don’t really see it - not even as a stopgap,
My personal disdain for social media type stuff probably blinds me (never mind my participating on a forum :P) - I am certainly in an infinitessimal minority there, but I kind of feel that the technological breakthroughs that make AR as often imagined really become viable, may also be the point it inherently becomes obsolete, on account of the same progress enabling something much better.
Why have a visual display of some sort labelling things in your view, or microphones and cameras that take voice- and gesture commands, if at the same point in the future you could interact with your augmentations “intuitively”? Why formulate a “formal” thought command, or receive response through aural/visual nerve stimulation, when you could, for all intents and purposes access them in the same way you pull things out of your own “wetware faculties”; Just be “aware” of the exact time of day, and elapsed time since you entered through the door, and your relative position to that door, an how many steps you’ve taken from it; And accessing arithmentical functions, and knowledge from online databases like they were just part of your own memory, and so on…
Yeah, I may be waxing waaay more fi that sci, here, but there you go… :7
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A lot of the use for VR in real employment hasn’t really been explored yet. There’s a strong tendency to see VR as only useful for training purposes, not in doing the real job.
But take emergency services, for instance. VR could have significant application for EMT.
One night in VRChat a couple of years ago, we were having a party. There were 20-30 people there, all in their avatars having a good time socializing.
Then one of the guests collapsed and started having a seizure.
Most of us had Vive trackers for full body tracking (FBT), and the person having the seizure did as well. The VR gear was able to portray what was actually happening to him in the real world. His avatar was collapsed on the floor in the virtual world having the same seizure that he was.
In the real world, he was alone in his home, and so this was a very dangerous situation. He couldn’t function to call for help for himself. And none of us knew where he actually lived. Call 911 to send help to where?
One of the other guests among us had training as an EMT. And she also had Vive trackers for FBT. She got on the floor with him and cradled him and spoke to him as his seizure continued. In the real world, he was alone, but in VR we were there with him. But we could not touch him to directly help him physically. But she was able to comfort him with her voice and tell him what to do to save himself. He couldn’t think clearly enough to function on his own, but he could follow her simple commands.
This ultimately worked, and the story had a happy ending.
And this was done with VR gear and software from a couple of years ago that was not designed or intended for this particular purpose. It was impressed into service ad hoc by accident in an emergency situation. And yet this VR technology was able to be used to save someone in a life threatening situation.
Imagine what new VR technology that was actually designed for the purpose could do. VR could allow the doctors in the emergency room to come along with the EMT and see the situation and the patient before the patient ever physically arrives. They could instruct the EMT beyond the EMT’s own medical knowledge in how to respond while the patient is still in transit. And it could eliminate that transfer time where EMT hands off the patient to to the ER where the doctors in the ER today may know little or nothing about what’s happened as the patient arrives, reducing response time to critical life saving procedures.
EMT could have support from a specialist on the other side of the planet. The ER doctors could, too, for that matter.
This could be done with VR technology that we already have right now.
And I think we’re going to start seeing even bigger growth in the VR industry when people realize what is possible and start putting this stuff into practice. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what VR could be used for so far.
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Those conditions only typically affect very high volume low cost devices. History is the guide here, other media delivery devices all continued growth even during significant recessions, especially in the mid and high end segments. Thing is on the media sales side the audience is there and generally cumulative though the attach rate drops over time. The larger the installed base, the larger the opportunity. VR hardware and software sales are tracking better than those and the installed bases are now quite significant for PCVR, console and stand-alone.
I will continue to support your company and the 12k looks great. I have the 5k and an 8k Plus. Been through all the others and they are collecting dust. I stand by my previous statement. The average consumer here in America is putting out over double in gas and food. Gaming and VR are not high on our list. My wife and I make over 100k a year and we are scaling the spending back. There is no real shortages just stupid leaders around the word crushing us after covid ! We had survived COVID and had a booming us economy. Then this idiot drove us into the ground. Hope things change after November and our American Idiot and other crooks are removed from office. I could go on and on but seeing small businesses being crushed by our current leadership. Sorry for the politics but it plays a part in my statement. Hope you guys hang in there.
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The trade war started back in 2016, when that president claimed “Chinese will pay for all the tariff…”. Many people believed him. Well, talk about idiocy…
Once a country start trade wars with other countries. Its economy will start declining. This is not rocket science, but just common sense. Yeah, you see the economy crashes now, but the trend started back in 2016, combined with the failure of stopping COVID from coming in and killed over 1 million Americans. Now the economy crisis is fully manifested. So you cannot blame the current president and forgot the one who started the trade wars, failed to stop the virus and planted the root of inflation.
Your party is the master of hatred. They know exactly what to say to make you hate the other side. “radical left”, “communists”, “traitors”… All those words were supposed to describe enemies, but now commonly pointing at other fellow Americans. No problem. You can hate the other half of Americans anyway you want. America won’t get anywhere anyway.
I don’t care about your political views it’s pretty obvious in your statements where you stand. I stated facts about the current state of our economy and the fact that people are not buying as much as they used to and yes it will affect the VR market. Have a nice day and try to keep politics out of it.
Survey: A Vast Majority Of People We Polled Don’t Actually Own A VR Headset
Agree. I don’t want to talk about politics here either. It’s quite an upsetting topic anyway.
I replied because your own statement is party-biased as well. I see 2 failed president and you only see one, and you said “We had survived COVID and had a booming us economy”, but the truth is “We had a booming economy, then COVID came along and ruined everything”. I guess you said it that way, because you don’t want to blame the previous president for what he did, and you just want to point out the current one is an idiot. Yeah, the current president is an idiot, which I agree, but the decline process started way before he took the office.
So please don’t accuse others to have a political view while your own bias is very obvious. Don’t say you “stated facts” while your own statement is not accurate.
Well, you have a nice day too !
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Have a nice day !