Yes and this is a overlapping feature product, not necessarily in direct concurrence to nitendo switch, some people will buy it for a cheap VR entry like a Quest 2
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I can imagine the marketing meeting at Pimax, where the marketing director (whoever it is) asks: âSo, how are we going to position our product line, which market segments are we going to target?â and the CEO (whoever it is) answers: âYes!â. And there you are few months later with both Portal and 12K competing for the audience⌠
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If youâre using it as a PC headset this has better specs than the Quest 2. Comfort is going to be an issue either way itâs a very minor difference between the two. Itâs not like one is shaped like sunglasses then comfort would probably be a factor.
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For sure. Nintento Switch came out in what 2017? It was never built for VR in the same way Sony Move controllers were never build for VR either.
But the Portal concept is a direct copy of a 5 year old device which will be 6 years in 2023 when the Portal might come. Using a XR2 SoC which has been around since 2019. With no exclusives like Nintendo. With no native Steam access like SteamDeck. What are Portal kids going to do with it?
Content is king and Nintendo has Mario, Zelda, Pokemon to bring kids onboard. Pimax has dodgy Beta software.
VR Desktop will probably by adapted and give quality access to wireless streaming in steam like for the Pico 4 but wifi6E aka better image quality. ( maybe I missed your Kid comment?)
Pimax donât really have to compete with the Nitendo sales numbers only to find some nice applications that will increase the sale potentialâŚ
The problem I see is customer support⌠many cheap low end devices with a lot of variation, a lot of possible problems
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Sorry that was my Ninja edit lol
Just a comment in betweenâŚ
After a few days to let it sink in and reading all the comments, there are some main concerns for me.
I hope it comes across as english is not my main language.
If i compare Pimax to Varjo for a moment. I trust Varjo to be a very highend VR company with exellent research and build quality. Not going for quantity but quality.
And now Pimax wanting to sell headsets in the same league while focussing at a broad lower end consumer market makes me doubt to buy a 1900 euro(incl. taxes) headset.
Imagine Varjo suddenly going for consoles and other stuff, it is unimaginable.
So thinking about this it is not strange that the core Pimax fanbase is sceptical, who just jumped in for highend vr end pushing the bounderies since the kickstarter.
I will try the Crystal at a roadshow and i hope it will convince me! if iâm in doubt i will go for Varjo
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I feel the same way⌠a long long time ago I worked for a small tech company making every thing or simply to many things at once, they generally fail
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I will note that not only do I not have any idea how large Pimax is, nor in which manner elements of this eco system they are on about are distributed across divisions and teams (and as such not necessarily causing work on one thing to halt, to free up manhours for something else in between), but there is also the question of how much is really developed-, manufactured-, and/or assembled in-house, and how much of it may not only be outsourced, partnered, and contracted, but âsimplyâ constituting custom OEM orders of existing reference designs, wholly externally made.
That said: The pattern recognition is palpable, when again n new things get announced, over the time people are waiting for something long pitched â sometimes things that offer an alternative to the original thing, and promise more imminent delivery than the original thing, which meanwhile draws away into the distant horizon.
:7
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Yes but at contrario Pimax said that they are reusing common technologies so the coupling hardware/software between the products is there whatever work force load they have. a minor change in the base could impact all products. this is going toward complexity and engineering change management problems.
Meta has only a few hardware VR platform/products on the market for example. not saying itâs impossible just like you said more on the dreams side and uncertain delivery horizons
But just to be fair to Pimax
1: What large FOV VR headset is available now on amazon thru-out the world?
Pimax 8KX and other Pimax variants
2: How many low cost VR headsets with OLED features / image quality are announced?
- Sony PSVR2 - locked on PS5
- Quest Pro - local dimming but not low cost
- Maybe the Quest 3 next year
- Apara 5K - not a VR headset
- Pico 4 good pancake lens and LCD resolution but dimmer contrast and less vibrants color
Yes, but Iâll point out that when I wrote the above, I meant: âsoftware and engineering includedâ.
The question is how this software âplatformâ, or whatever one should call it, is structured, and as such how task assignment is structured in the developer team, and how easily an application is retargettable between human-machine interface paradigms. I guess theyâve been working on their store for quite a while, and I would have to assume (I have not downloaded the new software), that things are done highly modular, so that e.g. a driver is a plug-in, rather than a whole monolithic system recompile for a minor update, but I have no idea, really.
EDIT:
Well⌠The Portal platform looks to my mind to shape out to be what the parents in a computer-less, and possibly tight-living-space household buys as a more expensive toy to their kid, at some age⌠A small, relatively inexpensive, portable android device, which can take streaming, and expand into VR, from also relatively small companion devices, which can be stowed into a drawer. These parents would also be perfectly happy with their kid remaining on these devices when they become outdated⌠:7
âŚbut,yeah⌠I could see others getting it too â maybe as a bit of a secondary, âtravelâ device⌠:7
(EDIT2: Oh, and in the context I envisioned above, one do, of course, wonder what sort of parental controls Pimax may, or may not, have createdâŚ)
How much benefit local dimming brings, depends on content⌠I imagine it would e.g. not do a starfield much good, since that is all a dynamic-range-maxing combination of extremely high frequency, and extremely high amplitude, which contrasts a solid deep black background, with single-to-few pixel very bright points⌠:7
There are several misconceptions in that video:
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Pimax is not claming 27ppd for both the 100° and 140° version â they say 20ppd for the latter.
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He rightly says to divide the horizontal resolution for one eye, with the FOV for one eye (âŚwhich is not total divided by two - it is more; One need to take stereo overlap into account), but then forgets that, when actually doing the maths, and divides by the full, combined FOV instead. This is why it is so much easier to use the vertical values for these sort of extremely rough calculations, if one have them, instead of horizontal; You donât need to figure out the per-eye horizontal FOV.
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As always, when we do these rough calculations, we do not take into account the variability of PPD across the FOV, due to lens distortion and projection. This is not specific to this video, of course.
Pimax does seem to fudge their numbers, though: The 140° is not claimed to be horizontal, but diagonal, and I am feeling pretty confident this is not ârealâ diagonal, but the all too familiar âPimax diagonalâ, which is complete and utter nonsense. -I canât stay angry with Robin - his demeanour is just too adorable, but only a little while ago (in that flightsim-youtuber video), he repeated the old 200° diagonal for the 8k series BS.
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How do you even know that? It just seems difficult to make it feel comfortable when you have such a âblockâ in front of your face, seems harder to balance the weight.
Thereâs a battery pack at the back of the VR frame. I agree that the way unit mounts should tend to make it more front heavy, but the weight in the back would likely more than make up for this relative to the Quest 2.
I donât see how it would be much different from a Quest 2. Itâs basiscally just a block also, not much happening weightwise between the lenses and the SoC. Also gearVR was pretty comfortable, I used to watch movies on it regularly.
I think with the battery to counter balance, and then the usual mods like an extra strap going horiontally over the head then it will probably be very similar to a Quest 2. Thatâs not to say itâs good but I donât think it will be notably worse. Honestly, it is likely to be better out of the box than the Quest 2, just probably not potentially as comfortable but little difference.
Portal has those games too since in standalone mode I will mostly be using it to run emulators. But Iâm rarely away from my PC so I will also use it to stream PC games.
Also this has Wgig so it will stream PC games better and at a higher resolution than Steam Deck.
Quest 2 has 2 smaller panels, this one has one big panel AND the plastic package around it. Weâlll have to see how much weight all that adds.
But with steam deck you dont even need to stream. You just play them natively! Way less hassle and huge advantage if youâre not close to your PC or on the move.
This isnât true. The Q2 is a single panel.
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