What Pimax needs to do to stop being janky

Pimax is a janky company that makes janky products. And yet they make the most powerful consumer VR headset currently on the market, the 8KX. And their upcoming Crystal and 12K stand to become successors unbeaten by anything else in the industry in terms of overall capability.

But that’s not all there is to making a good and successful product. Here’s a list of things that I think, from a customer point of view, that Pimax needs to focus on improving in order to get past their janky reputation:

  • Stop relying on your customers being enthusiast tinkerers: Pimax employees are hardcore VR enthusiasts, which is great in a way. You can feel their passion in video interviews. But they tend to be out of touch with the average customer. Consequently, their products will have rough spots that require significant technical ability and knowledge to overcome on the part of the customer, and Pimax just doesn’t seem to think very much of this. They see these issues as only minor inconveniences. For an enthusiast tinker, they are just minor inconveniences. But to a more average customer, these are frustrating hurdles that they may not be able to get past at all. Pimax should support tinkerers, but not require their customers to be tinkerers just to get basic operation working. If grandma can’t make it work, then it is not ready for release. That should be your standard.

  • Stop publicly announcing future release dates for products which are still under development: Pimax has earned a near total lack of credibility with the public in regards to dates it announces anyway, so what is Pimax gaining by announcing these kinds of dates at all? It seems to only be taking on additional liability without reward. Pimax should only announce dates that it can reasonably guarantee such as a scheduled roadshow events. Estimates for anything requiring development are inherently unreliable for any company, and the bigger difference here isn’t so much Pimax being late with its products versus other companies, but rather other companies don’t normally publicly announce these future target dates in the first place. And Pimax should be doing the same. Pimax could instead announce progress as a percentage complete (“70% done”) and that would be okay.

  • Stop relying on forums to communicate important information to customers: You can’t successfully own and use a Pimax VR headset without reading through Pimax forums. Vital information and downloads are scattered throughout the forums, and so they are required reading for customers to be able to operate their products. What’s worse is these forums are some of the most toxic and trolled forums I’ve ever been on. There is a great deal of misinformation that gets posted along side accurate information which can be hard to distinguish. Stop using forums as your official channel for Pimax documentation and downloads. Everything the customer needs must be available on the website or some other means that Pimax is able to effectively curate. Forum usage must be completely optional for the customer.

  • Stop expecting customers to be knowledgeable of Pimax products and history: Pimax’s website has many insider references which will only be understood by well versed Pimaxians. What’s an “adapter model”? The website should be written for viewers who have no prior knowledge of Pimax’s history and products.

  • Invest in your marketing department: As far as I can tell, Pimax seems to invest its resources almost exclusively in its engineering and R&D. In a lot of ways, that’s great. I think Pimax expects its products to speak for themselves rather than requiring investment in marketing. To some degree, that kind of approach does work. But I believe the problems I mention above are actually a result of having below minimum marketing capability. Besides selling products, effective marketing departments also provide an interface to customers that goes both ways. And this is something that Pimax is missing. As a result, Pimax is tone deaf to the plight of its average customers and instead gets only a distorted sense of their customers’ experiences from the point of view of their most hardcore customers they sometimes talk to. It’s also why Pimax has poor messaging to its community and is generally unable to control the narrative which leads to Pimax’s customers being generally misinformed in ways which will cause them to make bad decisions and negatively affect their product experiences. Pimax needs to invest its resources into marketing at least enough to have an effective two way connection with its average customers and would be customers which will help guide its other decisions resulting in better and more successful products.

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The 8kX is powered by your PC so it is not the most powerful HMD on the market.

The 8kX is one of the highest resolution headsets on the market that requires more rendering than any other headset so it receives one of the lowest fps counts of any headset making it the weakest performing headsets on the market.

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That comes from the person who says Pimax are trash and he wouldn’t by from Pimax again if another company released a high FOV headset. Talk about call the kettle black.

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Just stop talking about things you don’t understand. The 8kx makes more FPS than any wmr headset, as the ms-software is one big brake.

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So the 8kX has better fps than a Reverb G2?

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In Small and normal FOV, both of which are considerably larger than the field of view of the G2, yes.

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All you’re doing is rendering less. You could also render less on the G2. So at full resolution the G2 outperforms the 8kx.

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But I don’t like rendering less than this resolution :joy:

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Good for you. Where’s the relevance to this?

You render 5572x4832 but shouldn’t the 8KX render 7680x3420 to get native 8kX res plus add on extra for barrel distortion?

I’m missing the relevance of your previous question. If I test two headsets with the same vertical resolution, for example 2800pix vertically, and one still brings 25% more FPS despite 30% more horizontal pixels, it is clear to me who is faster.

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Why forget about the horizontal resolution? And whats this all got to do with the OP of which you addressed zero of his complaints. Go figure.

It doesn’t work for itself though does it. Or else why did Pimax invest so much in CES2023 to get nowhere when it came to Portal. The Kickstarter finished about the same after CES as it was before. Instead of showcasing finished products Pimax were showcasing prototypes where things didn’t work and lenses were mixed up again.

If things weren’t ready then surely you’d want a small booth until to save the blushes.

Yes, ask yourself why!

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Did you read the OP? Any thoughts? It’s an interesting topic for sure.

Maybe you should email Sony any let them know the secret to get more fps with more resololution on the PSVR2. Lol.

Maybe you should learn technical basics. lol

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Lol ok you have voodoo magic. Crank the resolution = more fps. I get it now. PMSL.

Blockquote The 8kX is powered by your PC so it is not the most powerful HMD on the market.

Comments like this make your critical position appear biased and even pedantic. If your goal is to convince people of anything, you would achieve more by avoiding such weirdly hypercritical statements.

The OP provided context for what “powerful” means in the very next statement. He’s not talking about processing power or speed, he’s talking about “overall capability.”

I am sure you could (and will) still take issue with that statement as Sargon does not limit the field to consumer headsets, and several professional ones are arguably more powerful by that standard. Still, this is an example of being critical just to be critical, instead of with a productive purpose that adds to the conversation.

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And your answer to Sargons questions is what?

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I love how he always edits his posts to remove the old nonsense. :joy:

If you did the same you’d have nothing to post because I’m still waiting for you to reply to the OP. Lol.

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