Here’s my buddy Skarredghost trying the Dream Air in China
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Tbf, Martin was saying the entire time that it wouldn’t release in May. He usually goes against the announced dates these days, so him saying he thinks it’s doable now maybe means September or so isn’t totally out of the question.
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Those are the 3 relevant events at Google I/O this year that will include info on AndroidXR. I’m guessing it will mostly focus on the software side, with 90% of that being talk about AI, but it does seem like at least 1 headset and 1 pair of glasses will be shown off. Xreal’s CEO also essentially confirmed their presence during the event.
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In 3 months they’re going from a prototype missing 4 key features to a release? It’s absurd.
If they had a finished prototype and said now we’re gearing up the production lines and will release in 3 months you’d say ok sounds doable.
Pimax never change.
I do think it’s unlikely to come before December/Jan but I was just commenting on Martin as he has been openly critical of the dates set in recent years so I felt that was worth pointing out.
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Really looking forward to this, hopefully we’ll get a release date today!
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Yeah, also hoping we get an idea of what other hardware manufacturers are going to adopt AndroidXR. I think we can safely assume Xreal, considering the comments from their CEO earlier today. I would also assume Play for Dream, Immersed (visor), and then perhaps some other glasses manufacturers like Rokid or Virture.
Oh, and HTC also is highly likely considering their deal with Google a few months ago. Should be an exciting news day for the XR space! FIngers crossed that Google commits this time ha.
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Too bad we didnt get a solid release date for Project Moohan but I guess it’s good news that at least they’re re-iterating that it’s due for later this year.
I’ve read a few reviews from people who got to try it today and all seem quite positive about it and call it a lighter & more comfortable AVP, which is good enough for me LOL. Like I tested Samsung Project Moohan at Google I/O, and it's a true Apple Vision Pro rival | Android Central and We tried on Google’s prototype AI smart glasses | The Verge
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As @SmallBaguette said not likely til around December. However I don’t really think it is absurd that they couldn’t get some of Dream Air Released.
I suspect your thinking a full release. The 3dof tracking is quite doable in that time frame as it wouldn’t require much to get that in place. Now add Lighthouse tracking and you have 2 Dream Air models released in the Lighthouse flavor.
The Lighthouse tracked models are likely to come first and may even be much sooner than December.
The SLAM versions however require a lot more work to have complete with ringless controllers. However as the new ringless controllers are said to be compatible with other Crystal SLAM headsets and the other controllers compatible with Dream SLAM. I can see pimax doing an initial release with the Crystal Controllers first and release the Ringless later.
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So the big question will pimax be the odd ball not to adopt? As it is likely AndroidXR maybe able to be implemented in IG Crystal and even the abandoned Portal. Making these projects more complete as originally advertised. Unfortunately pimax is often slow to adopt things. Ie how long it took them to implement kind of their own pimaxXR.
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I highly doubt they will go back and add AndroidXR into older devices, I also feel like colour passthrough is probably a requirement. In addition, even if Pimax wanted to, I think they would have to get permission from Google at this stage (rather than it being something that anyone can just use) and I don’t see that happening unless it was an entirely new device.
A Pimax AndroidXR headset could happen in the future, but I feel pretty confident in saying it’s not happening with anything already announced or released by Pimax.
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Well we both know pimax often has the issue of pride and that is one of the key things holding them back. The original wireless module was close to being ready and they had decided to scrap it to try doing something on their own.
AndroidXR it is likely the older devices will not meet the spec and pimax of course often skirts spending money where it would actually be beneficial.
@Djonko introduced them to a SteamVR DeV when they were struggling with their SteamVR driver. He wanted a small amount to fix it for them. They did contact him on his open blog/chat? Asked a bunch of questions and didn’t hire him to help fix it. It took a fair bit of time for them to fix it. But they did use info the DeV provided. The DeV’s mistake though was sharing too much info and he didn’t know Helen was from pimax.
Simple truth if pimax is not going to properly fix and implement things in the OG Crystal they should offer a trade in program.
It wouldn’t be too hard for pimax to get these in a more complete state with the Portal and og Crystal by providing iVRy and ALXR needed info and maybe send them a couple of devices with needed info.
Until pimax starts to demonstrate they will complete projects; they will continue to have a rocky reputation.
They have known about the 8kX issues with the 50series cards for as long as the Crystal and are still not putting proper efforts to get this fixed in a reasonable time. So how long before we start seeing this in the current newer models? OG Crystal has been mostly abandoned and if not for needing the XR2 chip for the AirLink it like the portal would be a completely dead project. Though until they actually release the AirLink it may end up like the original WiGiG module and end up not being released.
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So, another week, another Pimax headset announcement.
Crystal Super Ultrawide with 140 degrees of hFoV.
I‘d like to get my hands on one of them just to see how it feels, if roughly half of the visible area is stereoscopic and half of it isn‘t, due to the reduction in binocular overlap. As I have had some issues with some kind of „something‘s off“ feeling with Pimax headsets all the way back to the 8KX, the binocular overlap could be one of the reasons. But if it isn‘t, this one could be interesting because I always felt that 140 degrees was a sort of a sweetspot for high res headsets with great FoV: not wasting too much resolution on the periphery as a 170, 200 degree FoV would end up doing, but still immersing you much more than the standard FoV manages to achieve.
Now that Seb has moved to Taiwan, I‘ll need to find a new VR lunatic who occasionally offers hands-ons and has a good relationship with Pimax… anybody know one in say the Netherlands, which wouldn‘t be far for me?
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What happened to his business where you could demo headsets?
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We would need to look at other headsets. But in this RoadToVR article is about just that. It looks like 120 is around the human vision for binocular overlap.
So we would need to revisit what the earlier WFoV headsets had. The first 57ppd which apparently you will be able to use software to bump it to the original target of 135 with a 105 binocular overlap maybe quite decent.
The new hardware optic module is 140 by iirc 90? So imagine the new one might give similar issue with those sensitive to binocular overlap.
Looks like earlier pimax models had around 86 according to Hmdq database. Most headsets there seem to be between 74 and up. Interestingly Valve index is around 84. So imagine there are other factors than just the binocular overlap. Maybe degree of Canting, focal distance and something else.
StarVR one interesting in one of it’s modes has 117.
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I guess we might to go away from absolute figures, where wider FoV headsets inevitably score higher values of binocular overlap (unless they apply the Crystal Super Ultrawide binocular overlap trick where the same headset with lower FoV of course has more binocular overlap), and consider the effect of the relative percentage of your entire FoV being stereoscopic, as that may have greater impact on how the brain processes the visual information. Unlike horses humans have a greater binocular overlap, so deviating too much from that natural value/range may create uncanny valley effects or discomfort.
EDIT: with entire FoV I am referring to the entire view as offered in the given headset, i.e. if a headset with FoV of 100° has 80% overlap, this would the be 80°, while on a headset with 140° a 70% overlap would amount to an overlap of 98° in absolute figures, so people may believe that this 98° of absolute overlap area should be better than the 80° of absolute overlap on the smaller FoV headset, but maybe the greater percenatge is more important for certain aspects as visual comfort, etc…
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StarVR One has 80.65° in Native mode and the numbers in “Compatible” mode look more like some placeholder values than a real FoV (considering the canting and the way it behaves in Native mode). For judging the real capabilities of StarVR One I would take the Native mode values.
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