Pimax revealed plans for a new online conference, called Pimax Frontier 2021, where it says it will reveal details about its future roadmap and tease a new product code-named ‘Reality’.
Update: Pimax Frontier has been pushed back from October 20 to October 25, but will still take place online and be available worldwide. Original story follows below.
According to an email from Pimax to potential attendees, this conference will go over the company’s Pimax product roadmap and “related technologies,” alongside “the vision of VR3.0” and a sneak peek of their next product, which is referred to by the name ‘Reality’ in the email. The effort is referred to as “a new product that’s several generations ahead of anything currently on the market.”
Don’t expect a full announcement just yet — Pimax says that Frontier will only feature a “sneak peek” of Reality and that CES 2022 will see the full “formal unveiling” of the new product. CES is the largest annual Western technology conference and the 2022 event is scheduled to take place on January 5-8, 2022 in Las Vegas.
At CES 2020, Pimax announced a 180Hz ‘5K SUPER’ headset — an enhanced version of Pimax’s main offering, the 5K Plus. While Valve’s Index controllers are compatible with Pimax headsets, the company’s own controllers, the long-delayed Sword Lite VR controllers, entered mass production last month, with the aim to begin shipping this month. This will make good on a promise from Pimax’s 2017 Kickstarter, where backers could pay an extra $200 for rudimentary VR controllers to go with its “8K” ultra-wide field of view VR headset.
The company has a long history of shipping delays and in the past we’ve recommended treating orders, particularly ones for products that don’t yet have a ship date, as more like backing a Kickstarter than placing an order. For those interested in attending Pimax Frontier, sign-ups are available now online.
Pimax’s top of the line offering, the “8K” X headset, originally shipped with a max refresh rate of 75Hz for its native resolution mode. Today the company is releasing a beta update which pushes that up to 90Hz. The company says it worked with NVIDIA to overcome prior “bandwidth limitations” to enable the higher refresh rate on most GeForce RTX 30-series GPUs.
The Pimax “8K” X is the company’s flagship headset, and the only one capable of natively displaying full resolution frames on its dual 3,840 × 2,160 displays. However, when running the headset in this so-called ‘native mode’, the headset can only do so at 75Hz. Alternatively, users can switch to an ‘upscale mode’ which accepts a pair of frames at 2,560 × 1,440, and upscales them to the headset’s full resolution—this means the image isn’t quite as sharp but you can it run at 90Hz.
Today Pimax exclusively revealed to Road to VR that the company is releasing a beta firmware update for the “8K” X which will bump the headset’s refresh rate up to 90Hz even in the ‘native mode’, giving users both max resolution and max framerate.
For now this is only possible when using the headset with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3070, 3080, or 3090 GPUs paired with the right GPU driver version. Pimax “8K” X owners can download the beta firmware update here and see which GPU drivers are required.
Image courtesy Pimax
While the “8K” X beta firmware currently only supports native mode at 90Hz on the RTX 3070, 3080, and 3090, Pimax notes, “our team is still testing and hopefully the refresh rate upgrade can be extended for the “8K” X on additional GPUs in the future.”
Whether that might include the RTX 3060, or some of the higher-end 20-series GPUs, isn’t clear at this time.
Pimax says that it worked directly with Nvidia to break through prior “bandwidth limitations” which prevented the headset from running at 90Hz in native mode. Indeed, the difference in pixel throughput between upscale mode at 90Hz and native mode at 90Hz is more than double (664 MP/s vs. 1,493 MP/s), making it clear that bandwidth becomes a challenge.
Faster refresh rates in VR make for a smoother and lower latency view of the virtual world which benefits both comfort and immersion. High refresh rates are especially important for ultra-wide field of view headsets like Pimax’ because human peripheral vision is more sensitive to display flicker than the central part of our vision.
Note: We put the “8K” in quotes because Pimax isn’t referring to the same 8K that is often used to describe TVs and monitors. The headset’s total horizontal resolution is the width of an 8K TV display, but this is split across each eye. Additionally, the resolution height is just half the height of an 8K TV display. When referring to the headset’s name, we put “8K” in quotes to help our readers understand that it’s being used differently than they might expect.
Pimax, the Chinese startup building wide field of view (FOV) virtual reality headsets, has secured $20 million in Series B financing.
Shortly after completing its successful Kickstarter campaign in late 2017, which garnered the company $4.2 million in crowdfunding to produce its “8K” wide FOV headset, Pimax then secured a respectable $19.2 million Series A to further its reach. The company’s Series B brings its overall outside investment to $39.2 million.
Major participants in the company’s Series B include Shanghai-based investment firm Ivy Capital and CDF-Capital, based in Shenzhen.
Pimax is best known for producing its first Pimax “8K” headset, which (dubious marketing name aside) included dual 4K panels boasting one of the industry’s widest FOVs in a consumer VR headset at an estimated 200 degrees. Many VR headsets, such as Oculus Rift S, Oculus Quest 2 and Valve Index, typically sit somewhere around 110 degrees, making Pimax a unique offering in the consumer space.
Pimax “8K” V5 prototype | Photo by Road to VR
In the following years the company produced several iterations of its line of “8K” and “5K” wide FOV headsets. The company’s latest flagship—VISION “8K” X, priced at $1,300—features 4K native resolution per eye and a number of iterative improvements over the original such as integrated audio, a damage resistant coating, and better software integration with SteamVR games.
“Recently, during the difficult Covid-19 pandemic Pimax was able to successfully improve the entire product line and even expand mass production volumes,” says Pimax founder Robin Weng. “This new $20M USD funding marks a significant milestone that has brought Pimax to a brand-new chapter of its development. Pimax’s market-tested unique innovations include breakthroughs in field of view, resolution and software compatibility.”
Pimax “8K”, Photo by Road to VR
Weng says that leading up to its latest cash injection its resources were more limited, so the company had to address issues sequentially, something which had “profound effects in departments such as logistics and technical support.”
“With the additional resources and the solid revenues we are experiencing, we can address issues and complete projects in parallel with considerably greater speed and efficiency,” Weng adds. “Other ongoing improvements are within other teams for personnel and equipment that include R&D, engineering and manufacturing capabilities. Of course, customer satisfaction is our number one priority so above all else we are focusing our efforts with our support, logistics and warehousing teams to ensure our most important resource – our customers – are always taken care of.”
In the past, Pimax has been admittedly pretty fast and loose on its promises to both backers and pre-order customers, oftentimes successively delaying main product launches as well as its long-awaited accessories. There’s still no ETA when all backers will receive both the hand and eye-tracking modules first mentioned in the company’s “8K” Kickstarter nearly four year ago, which have been consistently out of stock since the company started shipping in July.
We’re hoping the company’s new funds will help move those out the door sooner rather than later.
Pimax has announced that both eye and hand tracking modules, both of which were included as stretch goals in its original 2017 Pimax “8K” headset Kickstarter, are shipping out to backers soon.
A Pimax spokesperson took to Reddit Sunday to reveal that both eye and hand tracking modules will be shipping “in a month” to backers.
“Backers will be able to get the eye tracking for $99 for a limited time,” the spokesperson says. “The price is greatly below the cost to produce it. The price will be much higher when we retail this later in the year.”
The 7Invensun-developed eye-tracking modules teased last year were slated to cost $300 MSRP, however there’s no telling what the final price will be once the company opens up orders to the general public.
Image courtesy Pimax
The company’s hand tracking, which is powered by Ultraleap (ex-Leap Motion), is quoted to cost $170 when bought direct from the company’s website. It’s uncertain whether backers will also be offered a lower price here as well to account for a near three-year wait.
Hand tracking is slated to arrive around one week after eye-tracking, however the spokesperson says the company will “probably combine with other stretch goal items to decrease the number of shipments. We might offer a program where those who want them faster can just pay for shipping.”
“We also been testing a very impressive new game that supports the hand tracking,” the spokesperson teases.
For all of Pimax’s follies (and there are many), the company has been steadfast in fulfilling goals and continuing its development to hone its ever-growing swath of high field of view VR headsets. What’s more, both eye and hand tracking modules are said to fit in all Pimax headsets, which is a good thing considering how many variations we’ve seen devised since the original 2017 crowdfunding campaign.
Pimax COO Kevin Henderson recently stated that the company’s customer support was now all from China. Pimax’s founder now tells us that its COO “has limited information towards other regions”, and that “as a global company group, it usually takes 2-3 weeks to synchronize all the information”.
Pimax is a company which sells wide field of view PC VR headsets to enthusiasts. It became widely known in 2017 after launching a Kickstarter campaign.
This article details the context of our previous article as well as a new statement we received from Pimax head Robin Weng. If you just want to read about the new statement, skip to ‘Global Support Centers, Hotline Coming’.
Henderson’s Interview Statements
On January 2, Pimax COO Kevin Henderson gave an interview to the MRTV YouTube channel. Near the end of the interview, MRTV host Sebastian Ang talked about recent emails he’s received from viewers expressing frustration with the customer support of Pimax.
Henderson told MRTV that “It’s all coming out of Shanghai for the support and the service“. When directly asked “So all the support is now ‘made in China’?“, Henderson replied “Yep.“
Henderson also explained the reasoning for the apparent decision, noting “they felt like it’s more cost effective and better to do it from Shanghai. And I hope we can reinstitute some support in the US and Europe, and I hope we can go down that path again.“
A hardware company selling its products to a Western customer base moving its customer support to China, a move publicly commented upon by its own COO, is the type of story we will always cover. We are interested in helping VR consumers be as informed as possible when making purchasing decisions and this report is in line with that aim.
Following our report about this interview, Pimax European Marketing Director Martin Lammi took to Twitter to state that “as long as” he held his job, Pimax would not provide UploadVR with “exhibitions or press releases.” The tweets alleged “false statements” driven by “a hidden agenda”.
As long as I'm the European Marketing Director of #Pimax, there will be no more interviews, invites or discussions with @UploadVR on future Pimax events, exhibitions or press releases. Due to the lack of professional, trustworthly & serious journalism, and the the extremely (1/2)
Lammi is a YouTuber, known as ‘SweViver’, who was given early access to Pimax hardware in 2018, before Kickstarter backers received their hardware. On May 17 2019, Lammi announced in a video he was hired by Pimax. While his channel promotes comparisons of Pimax headsets to others like the HP Reverb, the description of Lammi’s YouTube channel doesn’t mention his employment.
We publicly responded to Lammi’s tweets with a video of Henderson’s statements, asking Pimax to reach out if they want to explain whether their COO’s statements represent the company.
Hi Martin. It looks like you're referring to our article about your support.
Are you claiming Henderson is not a representative of Pimax, or that his statements in the video were incorrect?
We correct any article with inaccurate information, so please let us know! DMs open. pic.twitter.com/niKToUQQ7P
Lammi publicly responded to suggest Pimax would take legal action of some kind and also said Henderson was actually referring to a temporary situation. In the video linked above of Henderson’s comments on MRTV there is no mention of the move being temporary.
Several hours later we received the first email from a Pimax representative stating that if we did not “remove” our article, Pimax would take “legal actions.”
Global Support Centers, Hotline Coming
On January 15 we responded to Pimax over email to get clarity on the support situation and find out whether Lammi’s statements represent the company.
The next day, Pimax founder Robin Weng replied to say he would provide us with an official statement. We received that statement on January 23.
In the email, Weng wrote that Pimax underwent a “realignment of our organizational structure”. He also wrote that the company does have a global support presence and that Henderson “has limited information”:
Pimax Innovation Inc. and Kevin are mainly focusing in North America, we have other business units in Europe, Japan, Korea and China (Pimax Technology Inc), so Kevin has limited information towards other regions. As a global company group, it usually takes 2-3 weeks to synchronize all the information to each business region. That’s why we always request media or partners send an official email to the Pimax PR contact window for confirmation. In fact, in the US region, we’re optimizing the customer service capability by centralized the after-sale service towards San Jose, this team in San Jose has two employees currently. Besides that, we have teams based in Japan (1 full-time employee and 2 part-time employees, they both speak Japanese), Korea, Australia and for EU region, we have the after-sale service center in Poland and France Marseille.
At the same time, we are working on the new added global hotline for our customers. You can try to reach on this hotline, operation hours will be 9.00 am – 5.00 pm on your respective regions. We will announce the hotline soon.
Weng also provided the addresses of Pimax service centers in the United States (San Jose), Australia, France, Japan, and Poland, along with a map showing those locations marked:
The San Jose address is publicly listed on the Better Business Bureau and the phone number on the page “is not a working number.” We had a contact visit the address after normal business hours and it does appear to be a small Pimax-operated space. We’re still following Pimax and will keep our readers informed of new developments.
Are you a Pimax customer who has recently dealt with the company’s customer support? We want to hear from you. Reach out to tips@uploadvr.com to share your experience.
Editor’s Note: This post carries the UploadVR byline as it was written and edited by David Heaney, Ian Hamilton, and David Jagneaux.
For the last few years at CES in Las Vegas virtual reality (VR) headset company Pimax has put on a bigger and bigger display of its technology as it matures and customer base grows. This year Pimax had plenty to shout about, showcasing the latest lineup of 8K resolution headsets. On hand to discuss the continually growing product roster was Chief Operating Office Kevin Henderson.
The new Pimax Vision 8K range aims to offer customers the highest-fidelity VR headset, whether that’s consumers looking for a gaming headset which can provide super clear visuals or enterprise use cases where realism and fine detail are top requirements.
Originally announced last November along with the pre-order campaign, the latest flagship model is the Pimax Vision 8K X which boasts dual native 4K displays offering 3840×2160 per-eye resolution. It has a 200° field of view (FoV), as well as a new ‘Dual Engine Modes’ capability for native content as well as upscaling. Retailing for $1299 USD, during CES 2020 Pimax announced that the model has gone into full-scale production.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Pimax Artisan. Designed as the new entry-level model for customers new to the world of VR or for those that don’t want to spend massive amounts of money, the Pimax Artisan is priced from $449. Featuring a 170° diagonal FOV with 1700×1440 per eye resolution the headset will work with SteamVR 1.0 and 2.0 tracking setups. It’s available now but only in the US, Canada, EU, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
As you can see from the image above, Pimax’s product range is quite extensive offering a range of options that should cover any VR customers needs, from entry-level up to the high-end user. In VRFocus’ interview with Henderson, he helps to simplify the range and where Pimax is heading, whilst discussing some of its other products including the Sword Series VR controllers.
In an interview with MRTV earlier this month, Pimax COO Kevin Henderson revealed that the company is moving customer support back to China.
Pimax is a company which sells wide field of view PC VR headsets to enthusiasts. It was founded in 2016, and became widely known in 2017 after launching a Kickstarter campaign.
During the end of the interview, MRTV host Sebastian Ang forwarded recent emails he’s received from viewers expressing frustration with the customer support of Pimax. The viewers reported waiting weeks for replies which didn’t help with the actual problem they reported.
Surprisingly, Henderson himself called out the decision to move support back to China. He described the problems with such a move:
Some of the people in tech support don’t speak the language that the requests are coming in. So they sometimes don’t understand what the request is. If the request comes in and it can be interpreted more than one way the response that you get may not even be related to your request, sometimes.
That’s why we created the US office and were working on the European offices, but those offices and those personnel aren’t really contributing anymore, it’s all coming out of Shanghai and that’s unfortunate.
At no time did we have less tickets than when the US office was contributing every day. We had actually got the tickets for US-based customers and Canada down to zero.
When asked why this decision was made, Henderson replied that he wished he could answer that, and expressed that it was not under his control. “They felt like it was more cost effective and better to do it from Shanghai“, he explained.
We spoke to Henderson at CES 2019 last year. At the time, the US support center seemed to be one of his main projects and he was excited about how it could improve customer service for the company. Henderson’s LinkedIn profile lists him as “Chief Operating Officer and Company Spokesperson”, but also as “Head of North American and European Operations”. With the loss of the US support center, it seems his role will now solely be as a spokesperson.
The interview is now unlisted on the MRTV channel. It’s unclear whether this was at the request of Pimax, or simply a content decision from Ang. The MRTV YouTube channel collaborated with Pimax in 2018, getting early access to the hardware before Kickstarter backers.
A Company Still Stuck In Kickstarter Mode
At CES 2020, Pimax announced even more headsets, adding to an already crowded lineup. A wider range of products makes customer support more challenging and costly, which could have led to the decision to relocate to China where labor costs are usually much lower.
Pimax is the only company delivering ultra wide field of view VR to the consumer market- an important feature for immersion. Because of this unique offering, Pimax has a loyal (if comparatively smaller) following which the company can continue to try and up-sell with accessories and new headsets.
But Pimax is no longer a Kickstarter project, and this strategy can only last so long. Given the price of its products, if it wants to appeal to and retain a wider customer base it will need to get serious about support.
Pimax announced some new additions to its line of wide field of view VR headsets recently. With the constantly growing number of headset variations and mind-boggling additional prefixes to account for, you’re certainly not alone if you can’t keep all of their headsets straight.
Thankfully the company provided a comprehensive spec sheet at CES that puts all of the company’s headset offerings in one place. Here’s the company’s six headsets, including all of the most important specs:
Note: Both the 5K Super and Artisan aren’t for sale just yet, however we’ve included links below for those that are. All of the headsets below are priced without SteamVR tracking base stations and controllers.
We had a chance to visit Pimax’s booth at CES, so we should have our hands-on impressions with their latest tech out soon. We’re here for the entirety of CES, so check back for all things AR/VR to come from one of the world’s biggest consumer electronics show.
Pimax provided an update on their Kickstarter campaign page indicating that their 8K VR headset models have been delayed once again. The initial Kickstarter promised that headsets would ship in January 2018. This delay is just the latest in many, and comes 26 months after the initial September 2017 Kickstarter campaign launch.
These delays affect the 8K+ and the 8KX models. The 8K+ now has an “estimate start shipping [sic] no later than end of Dec. 2019,” while the 8KX has an “estimated start shipping [sic] late Mar 2020 early Apr 2020.”
The reasons given for the delays are as follows:
“The 8K+ experienced a slight delay with last-minute changes to help ensure a quality launch.
The 8KX is still in development. The engineering team will finish assembly some samples for testing this week. We will update the production plan according to test results next week.”
Other Pimax and Pimax-related products, such as the Pimax Comfort Kit, Index Controllers and lighthouse sensors, have also been delayed. You can see the full list of delays here.
We said it in January, but it probably bears repeating: the company’s repeated inability to meet self-defined deadlines means that we strongly recommend not ordering a headset until they completely fulfill backer orders, clear their current backlog, and demonstrate the ability to consistently ship quality hardware at scale.
Pimax new headset, the 8KX, offers a true 4K per eye resolution across a 170 degree field of view.
The 8KX is priced at $1299. However, this doesn’t include tracking base stations or controllers. Additionally, Pimax’s own base stations and controllers are once again delayed- despite telling us back in January that they’d ship soon. That means you’ll need to buy these components from Valve or HTC, if you don’t already own a Vive or Index.
That brings the total price well above $1800. This is a VR headset for people who want the absolute best specs available- better than even the $999 Valve Index- and are willing to pay the price.
It’s not exactly clear how any graphics card on the market is supposed to run this kind of resolution in VR. When Tom’s Hardware benchmarked the 1440p per eye Pimax “5K Plus”, it found that even an RTX 2080 could not hit full framerate in games like Space Pirate Trainer or Arizona Sunshine, even with the field of view and resolution reduced to save performance. However, Pimax has added ASW-like “Smart Smoothing” and Static Foveated Rendering to help users keep framerate. Users could also turn down the resolution and framerate, but at that stage we’re left wondering the point of spending this much on a headset in the first place.
This problem could however be solved by the $300 eye tracking addon announced, from the same company making the HTC Vive eye tracking addon. Pimax claims this will enable foveated rendering. The human eye is only high resolution in the very center, as you can notice by looking around your room. VR headsets can take advantage of this by only rendering where you’re directly looking in high resolution. Everything else can be rendered at a significantly lower resolution.
We haven’t seen any verification of this dynamic foveated rendering yet however, but we’re definitely eager to review it once it releases.
For users who want the largest room scale possible, Pimax is also coming out with a 10 meter cable for $100. This should pair nicely with Valve’s SteamVR 2.0 base stations, which support a 10×10 meter space when four are used.
The 8KX finally delivers on Pimax’s original Kickstarter claim of a dual 4K VR headset. While the original Pimax 8K does have 4K panels, it can only accept an input resolution of 1440p per eye. Additionally, those panels didn’t have the full 3 subpixels per pixel- in fact, some reports suggested it had less than 2 subpixels per pixel.
