While we Wait, I Pose this Question to other forum members. I’ll start by saying what I believe would happen is you will have a lot of people wishing they had backed the project and a lot of happy backers who will learn that for others to now receive the Pimax HMD just a guess but I will say likely they will have to pay double or even triple the cost backers paid for what could be the best enthusiast level HMD available. Remember this is all hypothetical at this point since I don’t own a crystal ball, well I do but it doesn’t really work.
The original title of my post was quite long in tooth and for obvious reasons had to be shortened to fit on page, but I leave it here so that you know my original intent. It would have read:
While we Wait, what do you forum members and backers think it would mean to the VR industry as whole and to VR enthusiast everywhere if Pimax succeeds against all odds and adversaries and brings forth a quality Enthusiast level VR HMD?
Well, Oculus and others will still be actual, providing devices with lower price, as not everyone needs a high end device like 8k. The real question is what is going to be done with Vive if Pimax fully succeed.
I think high-FOV headsets will only appeal to enthusiasts for the next few years, until GPUs which are capable of driving a 5K/8K/8KX are priced below $200. Prices for the headset will need to come down too, before we will see wide market adoption.
In the short term, we’ll probably see narrow and wide FOV headsets on the market.
I said before, after this I don’t see Pimax even existing anymore. The stuff Oculus is researching is so top level, this small company is just glueing together smartphone screens and tried to do the best it can. I don’t want to rain on them because I’m very happy they do this but realisticly the future is out of their league.
The hypothetical question was What if Pimax succeeds what would that mean? If you want to start your own post title what if they fail, feel free your comment would be better suited there.
What PiMax will have achieved will push the state of the art on in the sense we will have higher FOV and better SDE and pixel density. But in the big questions of mobility, tracking and comfort it won’t have achieved anything and may even be a step back in comfort. Important steps but not gen 2 VR steps.
If PiMax takes until the end of the year to get to release they may actually be in danger of being behind because their competitors are invariably working on substantially more capable V2 devices that have wireless communication and excellent inside-out tracking. They may well have also been working on FOV and putting higher quality lenses and resolutions into their devices as well. So time is of the essence here.
So PiMax’s success will be an important step but it isn’t going to bring the mainstream VR movement as the device is still to clunky for that.
Pimax 8K is a proof of concept. Its an accomplishment with lots of struggle due to the limitations of today’s limited display panels, game rendering methods and expensive optics. Whenever they can fulfill all promised or not upon release, they have already proven the industry that wide FOV in VR is possible on a home consumer level. No other company have yet taken the risk of trying, except a few ones making some 5000 dollar prototypes aiming for the business market.
Its is a very brave move by Pimax. If we care about the future of VR, we should be thankful as this will only make things better over the next couple of years.
I believe with the release of pimax 8k, vr will skip quite a few incredmental updates that the big brands had planned ready to ram down our throats every year or so.
Take a look at vive pro, and you know what they had in store for us.
This statement was made by Pimel not by me @Fresco the way you have captured it makes it appear I made the statement just wanted to clarify that would be false. I have all the respect for Pimax trying to pull this thing off and no I don’t personally believe Pimax is a small company just gluing together smart phone screens. @Heliosurge have you got any ideas why this would happen?
I don’t think there’s much to worry about, as far as the other main VR companies go. They seem to be more focused on getting the price down, than improving the specs.
Maybe back then but the next itterations of VR headsets are going to implement far more complicated tech than screens and lenses. But maybe we should indeed start a new post concerning this topic because this topic was about the success of the 8K for the overall VR world
@neal_white_iii Thanks for your comments you distracted me for a moment though I was just heading into a session of Skyrim VR hopefully I might get a good 2 hours at least in today, we’ll see. I know I’m of off my own topic here. Will check back in about 2 from now.
To be honest, there is still a really big untapped market for VR. In other words, there are still lots of people waiting to get into VR. Some of those people will want the one with the best resolution (ppd at least) & best FOV. If Pimax delivers that, I see no reason why they wouldn’t sell really well to that public.
Those who don’t want the top of the line, don’t have the pc to run it, or can’t afford it, will obviously not be interested in it, no matter what.
I do agree with posts like oysta1109 though. This could very well push the other brands into needing to innovate a lot faster than they may have planned. Because they will no longer have the best hardware and lose out on customers that way.
I know pimax will not be perfect but i hope at least to be a little better than for example lenovo explorer. I use it and i like it, but the sweet spot its very small, just one move and i see everything blurry. The controllers tracking are not very good for some games like doom vr for example, but its perfect for seated games or games without full room.
If pimax have better fov, even with small distortion in edges, no god rays and glare, good resolution even if not have the same colors and brightness than oled headsets, and better tracking than wmr, i think can have sucesss. If 8k has more problems than this forget the sucess and the sells will be maximum like 4k.
The headset will not be so cheap like some wmr headset, so people are expecting better.
We know that pimax is brave and have great value to industry for sure, but this value dont give more sells.
Pimax gave too many promises that they can not keep. There will be many disappointments for sure.
Well.
If Pimax succeed we would have a proper heir for valves steamvr platform.
HTC is probably not going to survive the next two year, the vive is pretty much all that’s left for them. and most of that is Valve’s tech.
Not any real assets for HTC there.
Only way I see the vive remain as a brand is if Amazon buys them out.