In a livestreamed presentation this week, VR headset maker Pimax announced its Reality “12K” QLED headset which aims to pack in a kitchen sink’s worth of wishlist features, not least of which is a dual-mode capability which allows the headset to function as a standalone headset or a native PC VR headset. With the slew of capabilities and specs the company hopes to deliver with the headset, it comes as no surprise that it’s also their most expensive device yet; the Pimax Reality “12K” QLED starts at $2,400 and is expected to ship at the end of 2022.

During a prerecorded presentation Pimax introduced its vision of a next-generation VR headset, the Reality “12K” QLED, which the company says will come packed with features that would make any headset envious. Here’s a rundown of what we do and don’t know about the specs so far:

Pimax Reality “12K” Specs
Display
Unspecified “12K” resolution Mini-QLED [estimated 5,760 x 3,240 (18.6MP) per-eye]
Refresh Rate 75Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, 160Hz, 200Hz
Lenses Compound (aspheric & Fresnel characteristics)
Field-of-view (claimed)
240° diagonal, 200° horizontal, 135° vertical, (118° stereo overlap)
Processor Snapdragon XR2
RAM Unknown
Storage Unknown
Wireless Wi-Fi 6E, optional 60GHz add-on
Connectors Unknown
Battery Life Unknown (6,000mAh)
Optical Adjustments IPD (automatic motor driven)
IPD Adjustment Range 57–72mm
Connectors DisplayPort
Cable Length Unknown
Tracking
Inside-out (no external beacons), optional SteamVR Tracking add-on
On-board cameras 4x head/hand/controller-tracking, 2x eye-tracking, 2x face-tracking, 3x mouth/body-tracking
Input Unknown
Audio In-headstrap speakers, optional off-ear speakers
Microphone Yex (3x)
Pass-through view Unknown
Weight Unknown

Pimax is positioning the Reality “12K” QLED as a VR headset which makes no compromises. Notably, that means the headset is capable of native, tethered PC VR, wireless PC VR, and pure standalone VR thanks to an integrated Snapdragon XR2 chip.

Image courtesy Pimax

Ostensibly the standalone nature of the headset means that the Reality “12K” QLED will be running its own Android-based OS and Pimax will be operating its own store to sell native standalone content.

The standalone mode understandably won’t be able to take full advantage of the headset’s displays and lenses; Pimax says that mode will be limited to “8K” resolution, 120Hz, and a 150° horizontal field-of-view (instead of 200° in native PC VR mode). Even still, that would be very impressive for any standalone VR headset; there’s no telling how long the headset will be able to run on its 6,000mAh battery, though at least the company says it will be easy to battery swap.

Image courtesy Pimax

Beyond that, the company says the headset will include tracking for head, controllers, hands, eyes, mouth, and even the full body, facilitated by a whopping 11 on-board cameras.

Pimax is also promising to deliver a slew of swappable face-plate modules to expand the headset’s capabilities with things like 60GHz WiGig for wireless streaming, SteamVR Tracking, mixed reality, 5G, and more. The company also says third-parties will be welcome to build their own modules to enable the headset to do even more.

Image courtesy Pimax

But wait, there’s more! The company also announced the Pimax VR Station, which it described as a “console dedicated to play VR.” Though the company didn’t go into much detail, it sounds like the device will be a small form-factor PC which can run PC VR content. The Pimax VR Station is said to include the WiGig module for wireless play.

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax says the price of the Reality “12K” QLED “starts” at $2,400, though it isn’t clear which version of the headset and its many accessories and modules this will include. The release date for the headset is planned for Q4 2022.

– – — – –

Pimax found its footing in the VR industry after successful 2017 Kickstarter which promised to deliver an ultra-wide field-of-view VR headset with best-in-class resolution, along with its own controllers, and a slew of modules and accessories. While the company eventually delivered most of what it had promised, it came with growing pains in the form of significant delays, quality concerns, and a dizzying array of product offerings which at one point totaled six different headsets. Even three years after the expected shipping date, the company has also yet to deliver some key items from its Kickstarter, like its own custom controllers.

Pimax has never been short on ambition, but its execution hasn’t always kept up. After getting through rough waters leading out of its Kickstarter, and raising another $20 million in venture capital last year, the company does seem to have found a better footing, having consolidated its headset offerings and improved in hardware and software quality.

Still, the Pimax Reality “12K” QLED is certainly the most ambitious VR headset currently on the horizon, not to mention all of the accessories and additional promises like the Pimax VR Station, its own standalone VR OS, and its own content store. The new offering certainly has a similar vibe to the company’s Kickstarter in terms of the breadth of what’s being promised. This new headset, and all that’s planned to come with it, is a chance for the company to show it has left its growing pains behind.

Note: We put the “12K” part of the headset’s name in quotes because Pimax isn’t referring to the same 12K that is often used to describe TVs and monitors. The headset’s total horizontal resolution is near 12K, but this is split across each eye. Additionally, the resolution height is just half the height of what one would expect from a 12K TV. When referring to the headset’s name, we put “12K” in quotes to help our readers understand that it’s being used differently than they might expect.

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Ben Lang
Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Anonymous

    I wanted to praise them until after all this day I realize they are a Chinese company.

    Nope. I don’t like want to risk having personal info stolen by some genocidal communist scumbag.
    For me Pimax is done and I’d rather see them crash and burn.

    • gothicvillas

      Communist scumbags? Same as current US administration and EU then

      • adsf

        EU and USA are not communist and the fact that you relate a country that actually is fucking communist with democracies is ludacris and frightening. You’re pretty much defending and making excuses for chinas communism and genocide of uighurs. Grow up and dont debate genocide and communism lightly, these are real terrible things.

        • sfmike

          Communism and Socialism are just the two keywords without any real meaning here to the slow witted to scare Republicans into voting against their best interests. The right like to throw them around because they heard them on Fox News.

        • James Cobalt

          You’re absolutely right! The US has no socialist programs (like social security, police, grade school, fire departments, road infrastructure, industry subsidies, public property…) and China has no capitalist programs (like the open markets, Shanghai Stock Exchange, the private real estate market, the private business sector making up 2/3rds of its GDP…). The two countries are 100% polar opposites! American Style Capitalism = Only Good And Capitalistic. Chinese Style Communism = Only Bad And No Freedoms.

          And certainly the US has never committed genocide... certainly not within its own borders… nor has it gotten into any unjust wars or killed thousands of innocent civilians. That’s just propaganda from the left! The American people have always unanimously agreed with their government, because it reflects all its people.

          BTW I will disagree with you on just one thing – you seem to be confusing democracy and communism. They are not mutually exclusive – they are not opposites as your wording suggests. One has to do with the extent of private ownership, and the other has to do with how government officials gain office. There’s no reason you can’t have communist democracies – and they’ve even existed in very recent history.

          • Well said and frankly the first words in the US constitution “We The People”

      • CMoney

        The US and EU are “communist” in the sense that a particularly dumb 13-year-old would use the word as an insult. Objectively, they aren’t even remotely communist.

        • James Cobalt

          The US Federal government owns almost 30% of all land in this country, and they employ about 1.5% of the population. Surely that makes us a LITTLE communist? Plus our socialist programs like social security, primary school, public parks, police, etc surely makes us a LITTLE socialist? Let’s split the difference and say we are 18% communist!

          • Don’t mix up communism and socialism, but I get your point. Any modern government needs to have social programs because when you don’t, the whole system fails. It should also be stated that many “socialist” countries in Europe voted for these services and the taxes that pay for them. It is more interesting to watch autocratic or one party systems claim they are there for the people, yet the people are one’s suffering the most; which when the fall, become the world’s burdon.

            Frankly I would like to see a better managed democracy that relies on capitalism and fair taxation to fund/remove programs that isn’t heavily influenced by the industries that they affect.

        • Charles

          It’s not so much a question of “are we communist” as “are the people who have recently consolidated most of the power communists?” And the answer is objectively yes, even if some hedge by saying “socialist” instead.

          • Random Name

            Democratic Socialism is the only way forwards.

    • Dawid

      Should I destroy my Oculus Quest 2 as it was made in China?

      • asdf

        manufactures in china and the company being in china is vastly different… try again flappy

        • sfmike

          Is it? You’re still sending American funds to China and making sure American workers don’t have manufacturing jobs because American companies want to pay slave wages with no benefits.

        • What is with the insults? But what aggravates me is not knowing who are what you do. Are you a small business owner who produces electronic products, or a software engineering who develops software for an electronic product made in the US? If you are, then you would know how hard it is to make any thing technical without components from China. Even if you could, your product would be uncompetitive unless you found an easy way into a government contract.

          In any case, I am going to guess you don’t otherwise you would know that the parts I and many other product makers obtain come from parts manufacturers owned and run by Chinese citizens or Chinese business conglomerates. is it good to be so reliant — no, but until we figure away to bring back profitability to parts manufacturers and can hire people who are willing to be trained and do the work; we are going to have really hard time competing.

      • James Cobalt

        Hmmmm I wonder how much of the Index is from China. I know a lot of the assembly is done here, but I imagine they get a lot of the parts manufactured there.

        • XRC

          Index headset, controllers made in China. Index 2.0 base stations assembled by Flex in buffalo grove, IL using foreign sourced components (China)

    • XRC

      Worry more about Google… and to lesser extent Facebook

      • asdf

        worry most about china. worry a bit about FB, Google is the only company who actually uses our data in a way that benefits us by actually giving us useful products.

        Like google maps

      • CMoney

        To a lesser extent Facebook? The company that is destroying democracies around the world, has facilitated genocide in Myanmar, and is promoting anti vaxx lies on the internet is less deserving of worry than Google?

      • Lucidfeuer

        I would worry about Facebook/Meta way more than Google, but you’re right that both are evil.

    • adsf

      i like how youre getting downvoted but youre right.
      Chinese companies steal and disregard world patents.

      They are also REQUIRED to have a division within their company solely for the government to have control in their company. This is every big Chinese company and why Alibaba and their owner have been feuding with china, theyre the first ones to try to get out of chinas control in all business.

      Stay away from Chinese tech companies, they are bad.

      Id wayyyy way way rather give my data to google or microsoft than directly to the chinese government. If you say otherwise then youre a fool.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        The same can be said of american comanpies, hell stay as far away from those.. American companies also steal.

        • Hivemind9000

          I read somewhere “if businesses were people, they would be homicidal sociopaths”. It’s the nature of the beast…

      • Lucidfeuer

        I was with you until you said “rather give my data to google or microsoft”, it’s a stupid comparison since Google is as evil as the Chinese governmental, their just more subtle in the post-modern western sense of it…

      • Do you know this first hand or are you basing this on the media you read in this country? As others have written about the US’s own disgraceful moments in history, including bringing over card carrying NAZIs and their weapons after the war to expedite our rocket progress. In return, allowing them integrate into US society. Von Braun, is the most notable, but there were others. Pretty sure the Soviet Union didn’t appreciate Mig-25 Foxbat being completely disassembled like an iFixit teardown and then reassembled after one of their pilots decided to jump ship and come over to the west. Of course we can say it was necessary because you know “the cold war.” Or that matter, how our satellites and possibly stealth drones have flown over China to monitor their military movements, nuclear warhead increase, and missile deployment and new silos. But of course we need to because you know – they could attack Taiwan any day now. And on and on..

        It is really getting old on the regression we are seeing in the world (on all sides). I really hoped I would die without another major world war, but sadly I don’t know if that will be the case, and frankly I am not ready to die yet being only 62.

    • Foreign Devil

      I agree we should avoid Chinese products on principle.

      • sfmike

        If you avoid Chinese parts and products your home and car would be empty of modern convivences. Do your research.

      • GunnyNinja

        You probably just typed that on a Chinese made product.

        • Foreign Devil

          probably yes. But complacency on this means you will just continue to rely on China for everything.

          • GunnyNinja

            Get me a billion signatures that everyone else has agreed to stop buying anything made in China, and I will sign as well. In the mean time, find me better products made here at a competitive price, and I’ll always buy those. I’ve tried keeping the ocean off of the beach before.

    • sfmike

      And you trust predatory capitalists like Google and Facebook more. Sad.

      • Charles

        Google and Facebook are run by Socialists who take advantage of capitalism.

    • Hivemind9000

      Your xenophobia is only match by your profound ignorance.

    • I didn’t know Road to VR allowed Anonymous posters? Also the fact your choice of words indicate a lot of hostility without much thought into world electronic ecosystem and what it would mean to shut down all trade with China. If the current IC shortage, shipping delays are any indication of what would happen if China just shut their doors the US, we would really see some volatility in the market and our current inflation would be a small speed bump.

      On that note, PiMax has made many claims over the past several years that bordered on fraud (when the product never reached a stated goal or spec), or at least really stretching the truth. But I would have to say this seems to be business strategy a lot of companies, just look at Theranos; which is “fake it to you make it.” and for better or worse PiMax continues down that path claiming fantastic specs to grab headlines (like here) while other companies are showing or close to showing their own interesting products, with a few originating from China.

  • Bob

    In other news; have you come across this Ben? Sony is prepping a VR headset for their Xperia flagship phones but what intrigues me is the lenses! It would be great if you could verify this :)

    http://www.xperiablog.net/2021/10/25/sony-prepping-vr-headset-for-xperia-1-ii-and-1-iii-with-8k-360-video-support/

    • Dawid

      The idea is nice but it looks like 3 DoF and not 6 DoF. I thought 3 DoF VR is dead as nobody really liked it. 6 DoF VR headset with mobile phone inside would be cool but I guess wit would require minimum two identical cameras on both sides.

      • Zerofool

        Hmm, it has a cut-out for the camera array, so maybe it has some sort of SLAM going on – theoretically it could be 6DOF.

        • businessita

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      • Bob

        It’s not the general idea which is intriguing, it’s the technology they’re using in a smartphone VR based HMD. I’m not entirely certain if this is correct but it appears to me that those lenses look very similar to the ones shown in this Pimax headset does it not? There is a merging of aspheric lenses in the center of field of vision with fresnel on the peripheral regions.

        • Dawid

          It looks similar to Pimax. I wonder if the border between aspheric and fresnel lenses will be visible?

          • Bob

            Yes I’ve read that article a while back but the implications of this technology being implemented in a Sony headset is massive for the PSVR 2 since it’s coming from the same company.

            Could the PSVR 2 have a hybrid lenses solution? This Sony VR viewer could be the beginning of that trend..

      • Andrew Jakobs

        3DOF headsets are mostly used for watch video’s..

  • JesuSaveSouls

    I bought a used Harley this past spring. I’d likely used that money to purchase a Pimax Reality hmd. But I have a first Gen 5k plus. Oculus made their Quest 2 very affordable, available and it is innovative. You’d be able to buy 8 quest 2’s or 1 reality vr. Also wait about another year too. Who knows the pc requirements too ? Possibly a 3090. Another $2500. So as interesting as it is, I’m satisfied with having more than enough now. A simple affordable Quest 2…has high hz, resolution 4k and its duel pc and standalone.

    • Zerofool

      Possibly a 3090

      Although not officially confirmed, I do believe they’ll require DisplayPort 2.0 in tethered mode to get the full resolution/refreshrate. This eliminates all current GPUs.
      So more likely RTX 4090 is what we’ll need. And I do believe it’s one of the reasons to wait until Q4’22 – the next GPU series from both Nvidia and AMD will have DP 2.0, a huge jump in performance (75-100%) an will be released around Q4’22.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Maybe the RTX40xx series gets the virtualink connectors back.

      • Hivemind9000

        With the eye tracking, it’ll no doubt employ foveated rendering to be able to get to full fidelity/fov…

        • ViRGiN

          Dude STFU. You had eye and hand tracking for about or over a year, now tell me how many minutes did you spend in it :D

          What a pimax fanboy. You deserve to get punched in a face.

        • Random Name

          Yes this will be crucial to run it on a realistic system.

  • Zerofool

    @Ben, they’ll be demonstrating almost production-grade units at CES 2022. Please give it a try (or someone from the R2VR team) and share your impressions.
    I’m still looking forward to R2VR’s review of the “8K” X.

  • Zantetsu

    Will they use the eye tracking for distortion correction like StarVR does? That was the feature of StarVR that I found really exciting and it’s why I was so disappointed when they decided not to release a consumer headset.

  • xyzs

    When I go on their very amateur website and see this not super high end video, I have doubts about all these statements and their ability to make their own (Android) OS + store.
    But I wish they can!

    • PsYcHo

      websites fine,my 8kx is amazing i had it for about 4 months now,excellent headset

  • Aeroflux

    $2400 for a single display headset? For that much I would expect more than the basic IPD adjustment and a single screen. A headset at that cost should have 3-axis independent adjustment and a sealed light path.

    This is effectively convincing people to run marathons with shoes that only match the left foot, then distracting them from the audacity of not matching feet by bedazzling the shoes.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      uhh… it has a dual display and automatic IPD adjustment.

      • Aeroflux

        My bad. I keep seeing the 5.5″ display everywhere I look for specifications. Having two of those is going to make the headset more of a helmet. So long as the weight is evenly distributed, that’s fine by me.

        Even so, IPD center and diopter settings need to be part of this headset. The mechanics are nothing new. Varjo has automatic IPD adjustment. It’s just a benefit of having eye tracking technology, not anything different in how the IPD is adjusted. We are still stuck on one axis.

      • ViRGiN

        No, it does not. It’s just what it says they do. Did you forget that every Pimax ever was free of distortions, and if you ever experienced one, then you’re simply wearing it wrong?

        • Andrew Jakobs

          huh, who says anything about free of distortions? and in reality any distortion can be corrected through software if you have the processing power and resolution.

          • ViRGiN

            In reality, pimax can not fix it in software. It can not even fix it in combination with eye tracking.

            For years pimax has been lying about everything they do – and that includes the most obvious flaw written you use their headset – distortions. For years, on magnitude of occasions they denied this flaw – it was always the user wearing it wrong. Now with 12k they triple down on the very same statement, and “this time” they apparently finally fixed it?

            Anything pimax says, assume it’s borderline scam, until proven otherwise by a real product. Sounds like you are very new to company – i suggest checking out their original Kickstarter and see how much they have to this day not achieved.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    The fact that they are already announcing that they are using the Qualcomm XR2 in a USD 2400 HMD that will not be released for a year is quite interesting, as it indicated that there will be no XR3 anytime soon. Which in return most likely means there will be no Quest 3 anytime soon.

    There is little doubt that Qualcomm is working on a successor to the XR2, and that it will be based on one of their high end smartphone SoCs like the XR2 is basically a reconfigured SnapDragon 865. As they are pretty much the only game in town for XR optimized silicon, Pimax has talked to them before announcing a 12K Pimax Reality based on the XR2, which is obviously completely underpowered to drive two 6K displays. Qualcomm would most certainly have informed Pimax if they could get access to a much more powerful XR SoC within the next year. Simply because bad standalone performance on the Pimax Reality due to the limited XR2 will look bad for Qualcomm too, and Pimax already stated that they have to reduce resolution and FoV in standalone mode

    Like Pimax Facebook also license their XR SoCs from someone else, as they have no experience in releasing custom ARM chips so far. All their own chip development has focused on server hardware, where they have also been active driving open standards for data center hardware and infrastructure. So unless they suddenly switch to some Samsung ARM SoC with AMD RDNA 2 GPU or just leapfrog the learning process that took Apple more than a decade, the successor to the Quest 2 will most likely again run on Qualcomm chips. Creating a custom SoC for only a few million headsets would also be excessively expensive, and even if money isn’t necessarily an issue for Facebook, experience is, and is simply makes a lot more sense to “recycle” Qualcomms high end phone SoCs that spread the costs over hundreds of millions of devices.

    Currently being the largest customer for the XR2, FB could of course get privileged access to the XR3, so even if Pimax cannot get their hands on a XR3 in late 2022, Facebook might be able to release a Quest 3 based on it for the holiday season 2022. But even if Facebook got exclusive access to the XR3, this would be for a few months only. If there was even a chance that Pimax could get the XR3 by late 2022 or early 2023, they could simply have described the standalone modes as “running on the latest Qualcomm XR SoC” and pushed back the release for a few months to include the faster option. Cost and production capacity shouldn’t be a problem, as the Pimax Reality will sell in rather small numbers at a high price.

    By now it is pretty safe to assume that we will see at least the announcement of a Quest Pro soon, that it will run on a XR2 with less power constraints than the Quest 2, that it will not replace the Quest 2, but be sold in parallel to provide a higher end (and cost) alternative for businesses and enthusiasts. This aligns with what Andrew Bosworth said in April:

    People are also asking about the Quest 3, which doesn’t exist yet, and everyone who is listening to us who is a reporter there isn’t a Quest 3, there’s only a Quest 2, but I did hint at an AMA earlier this year about Quest Pro because we do have a lot of things in development where we want to introduce new functionality to the headset along the kinds that people theorize that we would want to introduce, and that’s a little ways off still. It’s still not gonna happen this year. For those who are curious, Quest 2 is going to be in the market for a while – for a long while, and it’s gonna be, you know, I think the best bet for the most accessible way to get into VR and have a great experience.

    With Pimax releasing a 2 x 6K HMD on XR2 in late 2022 hinting at the XR3 being quite far off, “Quest 2 is going to be in the market for a while – for a long while” looks a lot like “no Quest 3 before 2023”.

    TL;DR:
    – XR2 in Pimax Reality most likely means no XR3 in 2022
    – Facebook will most like continue to use Qualcomm XR SoCs in Quest 3
    – Quest Pro will use faster clocked XR2 and be the high performance model till Quest 3 arrives
    – Quest 2 will not be replaced with a Quest 3 for (at least) a year

    • Bob

      I think this so-called “Pimax VR Station” is quite a smart solution for “solving” any potential performance issues that users may encounter when running such absurd resolutions. It’s not realistic to expect any user to be able run 6K per eye at 120+ FPS because if we’re talking AAA high graphical fidelity VR experiences, this just isn’t possible with any consumer GPU. No graphics hardware can push out over 36 million pixels in less than 8.3ms with complex rendering techniques at play.

      So the question that Pimax have obviously raised for themselves here is how do we get users to run this thing? And one of the answers to that question is to offer a system that works hand-in-hand with the headset. If they could get this Pimax VR station to work seamlessly with the headset then potentially they could fine-tune the performance even further and ultimately enable a smoother user experience. Not to mention, everyone who has this VR station will be on parity in performance which means troubleshooting problems would be made much easier. Essentially, a symbiosis with a custom fine-tuned PC designed and engineered to work seamlessly with this Pimax Reality HMD would solve the question of “Will my PC run it?”.

      Many other questions still need to be answered about this VR station such as what GPU is it equipped with? What OS does it run on? Does it stream wirelessly, or is a tether required? etc. etc.

    • ViRGiN

      XR2 in Pimax Reality means +5 million bonus raise for Robin Weng

      Don’t ever look at Pimax and deduct anything they said to learn about theh markets.

      Judging by Vive Flow XR1, XR2 is simply unavailable according to your logic.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        The Vive Flow is an HMD intended primarily for media consumption, which doesn’t require any serious computational power, as it pretty much only has to do 6DoF tracking and video decoding plus reprojection. They instead focused on low weight and long battery life, so picking the XR1 over the XR2 was a logical choice.

        The only feature that might be more computational intensive would be hand tracking (announced as a possible future feature). But as the Quest 1 managed to do hand tracking with a Snapdragon 835 from 2017, which is technically the basis of, but slower than the XR1 from 2019, they have that covered too.

        • ViRGiN

          Whatever Oculus does, competition can not. They could use XR4 and still struggle with good enough tracking, so there is that.

          But regardless, Pimax announcing something for next year does NOT mean ANYTHING.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Maybe you should read some of the reviews for the HTC Focus 3 or the Pico 3, which manage to achieve good enough tracking on the same XR2 as the Quest 2. No doubt Facebook is ahead in many areas thanks to practically unlimited resources, but e.g. the Quest 2 hand tracking is still significantly behind Ultraleap, who have been working on it since 2008.

            Qualcomm has partnered with Ultraleap to give access to their tracking to any XR2 customers that want to license it, and also have started to build a full XR software stack to match the Oculus Mobile SDK. So basically anybody willing to can build a very capable VR HMD today without a lot of inhouse development by simply licensing from Qualcomm and having it produced by Goertek. And thanks to OpenXR it will be easy to port pretty much any Quest app to it with very little effort.

            VR hardware will be commodity, just like mobile phones today, where the top models of different companies do not differ a lot. The main focus of Facebook is not building some proprietary software and hardware that gives them an advantage that nobody can match. Instead they support standards like OpenXR and use the technology base and even the same manufacturer as anybody else.

            What will make Facebook special is all the effort they put into creating their version of the metaverse, i.e. social VR, infrastructure on which others can build their own presence in VR, customizable cross platform avatar systems etc. These are much more critical than whatever the current state of hardware is, and require a much larger investment and effort that few companies besides FRL can provide.

          • ViRGiN

            The only reason why Ultraleap is better is beause it’s not using optical way, aka cameras to track them. What Oculus did was a miracle, tracking both the space and user hands at once, on mobile. This was never achieved before in any real quality, and Q2 tracking works extremely well – if you stop using it as gaming input. For menus or gestures while talking – it’s pretty much perfect as it can get, given no external hardware. Ultraleap was on the market for like a decade? Now tell me how much software supports it, consumer or enterprise. It’s a technology with no real use. What Oculus does is better, and gives developers tools to start developing now, so that when ‘true’ hand tracking arrives, it will be actually usefull.

            Look at Pimax – they also had Ultraleap i believe, and over a year later, it’s only useful in their game launcher. I would not call that progress at all.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            The Leap Motion controller from 2013 is nothing but a bunch of near IR LEDs and a monochrome near IR camera, exactly the same as the Quest uses for room and hand tracking. The whole trick is always software, i.e. image processing and deriving a correct skeletal model. So basically any HMD with IR camera based inside-out tracking can run the Ultraleap hand tracking without any extra hardware.

            The initial problem was that the Leap Motion tracking was computationally very expensive, which is why it only ran on PCs and the Android beta they announced in 2014 was never made publicly available. But their tracking was usable from the star, got a lot better with the Orion release in 2016, and the current version beats the Quest tracking, especially concerning overlapping fingers. The Lynx R-1 uses the current Ultraleap tracking on the XR2, take a look at some of the reviews.

            The “miracle” Oculus performed was getting all the tracking for Quest 1 to run on the Hexagon DSP that is part of the Snapdragon/XR SoCs. It is inherited from smartphones, where the DSP is usually used to process camera images. Daydream phones used the Hexagon to improve 3DoF tracking, so they didn’t need extra calibrated IMU sensors like the Gear VR.

            Doing all computation on the underused DSP left CPU and GPU fully available for OS and apps, which was important, as the SD 835 wasn’t exactly fast for 6DoF VR. This “miracle” has become less important now that the XR2 provides a lot more power, but it is possible that it still runs on the DSP to provide the same tracking quality on Quest 1 and 2. Which might be part of why the Ultraleap tracking is better, since it is not limited by having to run on the DSP of a chipset from 2017. Maybe FB will offer advanced/non DSP-only hand tracking with the Quest Pro, as it’s extra sensors like eye/face tracking will make some Pro apps incompatible with Quest 1/2 anyway.

            The problem with all hand tracking is still that is much slower and less precise, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. Yes, there are now some games that support it on Quest, but in pretty much any case the controllers work a lot better. Which is one of the problems that Leap Motion always had: they had the technology, but not the use case. I’ve used a Leap Motion with DK1/DK2, it was a cool tool, esp. since the Touch controllers hadn’t been released yet, but besides a few demos nothing ever happened with it.

            The Leap Motion was initially intended for desktop use, i.e. you were supposed to wave over your keyboard to turn a page, and they only switched to VR later, looking for a problem that fit to their solution. And even today hand gestures on Quest are most useful for media consumption, i.e. apps that aren’t really interactive and only need occasional input, making it inconvenient to either wear the controllers all the time or find them again if you want to e.g. pause a movie.

            No doubt playing Cubism using only your hands with passthrough showing your room is a cool demonstration of what future AR devices will look and feel like. But after about two minutes I switched back to the controllers, which simply work a lot better. Hand tracking will become a lot more important for applications like Horizon Workroom, simply because we use our hands as part of our communication, point with fingers etc. So it is more about future proofing a HMD, not so much something that will be integrate into a lot of existing apps.

          • ViRGiN

            Long story short, despite using basically the same hardware, Oculus for some reasons “sucks” at hand tracking? Is that what you ultimatetly say?

            You get better hand tracking with Ultraleap, and that’s where ALL benefits stops. Nobody is implementing it. If you are a fan of thsoe, then you’re ultimatetly a benchmark jerk, with no real usage to provide.

          • Christian Schildwaechter

            Oculus doesn’t suck at hand tracking. The tracking on Quest is quite good and it is possible that the sole reason it isn’t better is that for technical and compatibility reasons they restrict it to the DSP. All that doesn’t mean that one has to use another tracking solution, esp. since hand tracking is not really important for VR usage so far, so even if Ultraleap tracking on the Lynx R-1 is better in “benchmarks”, the Quest 2 still makes a lot more sense for almost all users.

            All these caveats I have mentioned above. You will never find me painting a black and white picture, where only one side is ultimately the best. Technology is a constant process of improvement, where different companies lead in different areas at different times, and this doesn’t solely depend on competence, but also on tactical decisions. I have no doubt that the Rift 2 could have been a superior HMD to pretty much any other offering, if Facebook hadn’t decided to scrap it.

            They made a strategic decision to go for a mass market Quest 2 instead, which primarily meant to bring down the price, which comes with a lot of compromises. I was astonished that they managed to push the price down to USD 299, and I don’t see how anybody can match that, but naturally that means it cannot have all the features a HMD with a much higher price has. This is completely normal and expected and doesn’t diminish Facebook’s achievements in any way. And it was almost certainly the right strategic decision.

            Whatever Oculus does, competition can not. They could use XR4 and still struggle with good enough tracking, so there is that.

            This is what triggered the whole argument about hand tracking, because for you there always seems to be only one winner, and that simply isn’t how it works in reality. There are multiple players with different focuses, so who is in front depends a lot on which of the many frontiers you are currently looking at. Facebook is really good, but it is not powered by magic, the laws of physics and economics still apply.

  • g-man

    Disclaimer notwithstanding, placing quotes in a product name is an error.

    • Random Name

      The quotes are neccessary, otherwise far too many people will be conned by Pimax using severely misleading/blatantly lying product names.

      • g-man

        As if anyone buying a Pimax headset wouldn’t understand the specs. This is just Ben pointlessly expressing his distaste for their naming in every single Pimax article.

  • redi

    Ok from a company that make an image with ” paint” , look at that image Pimax VR station image it’s pretty obvious it’s made by paint, a website made by WIX , who doesn’t even work properly on mobile, and yes a 12k headset high quality 1 year before release.

    ok everything is fine, nothing scammy to see her.

    • Hivemind9000

      Do you have an actual point?

      • redi

        and you as an employee of pimax, instead of replying to random comments you should focus on building a better website not hosted in WIX. and try avoid paint for your pictures

        • GunnyNinja

          I thought he was kidding. You really did upvote yourself. Twice. Bruh, is it that bad where you are?

          • redi

            i upvote what i want, and if it’s ” good’ where you are you won’t be replying and arguing with somone comments on disqus LMAO get a life now

          • GunnyNinja

            So lame. I bet the other two people are you with different accounts. lol

          • redi

            i’m not you, i have a life and i don’t waste my time using multiple account for pimax employee trash like you. your life must be so miserable that you are still here lmao. you have a wix website to fix. get lost again.

          • GunnyNinja

            Why do you think everyone works for Pimax? I don’t even OWN one much less work for them. You truly have some real issues going on there buddy. And you aren’t fooling anyone by voting your response down this time. We know it’s you.

        • Hivemind9000

          Hilarious. So you don’t really care about facts or performance, just as long as they use a different website host? Gotcha.

          • ViRGiN

            You never cared about anything, other than no facebook login.
            Enjoy your distortionless 5k/8k or whatever, but hey, NOW they finally fixed it, although they denied any issues ever before.

      • ViRGiN

        Oh is this the dude who spent thousands of hours on pimax forum?
        lol

        • Hivemind9000

          Lame, but at least you didn’t upvote yourself.

          • ViRGiN

            What’s lame is you putting thousands of hours into pimax forums, a magnitute order more hours than you ever spent in all VR headsets combined. What are you waiting for, 25k per eye?

  • George Moonman

    Oh look, another big spec sheet of promised features, I wonder how many of them are complete bullshit this time round.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    It’s not likely, but if I come into money…definitely would like a Pimax Reality. But that’s just the beginning, then you need a 3090…another 2500.

  • MREis

    While Pimax surely has had some downsides in its process of getting the 5ks and 8ks out and it is still a maturing company, I perceive that its positives are and where rarely but into the right light – always just the shortcomings put into focus. I am highly anxious to the 12k! Why?
    I used the 5k+, 8k+ and the 8KX, with focus on the, x for over 400h. They are not perfect (like all others also – my Samsung HMD had more faults and failed far before reaching anything near such hours, support was bad at the best). In short, there is no other HMD I would trade my Pimax’s for, for what I use it (Sim Racing/Flying) – especially if I also consider the price and what I get for it. I am highly ambitious to the 12k, especially since they did some good partnering (tobii, nvidia,…) and promise good improvements and would be a true all in one. I hope they can deliver the 12k, I will surely try and get my eyes on it as soon as possible and very likely one to my home (good bye kidneys)!

    • You do know they have been around almost as long as Oculus, right?

      • MREis

        Almost is correct, Occulus 2012 Pimax 2015? If remember correctly he had a prototype by 2010 and 2014 Facebook bought it for 3$Billion? I think Pimax had the 4k around 2016 and raised something like 4.5 to 20million for the 5k/8k.

  • I don’t think they can deliver all of this with polish and high quality in one year. But I hope to be wrong

  • Phoenix1969

    yea right, as if anything exists in 12k

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Wankers still have not finished their last project. Still waiting for my controllers. Pisses me off that they are spending my money on something else before finishing my product.

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not this trust company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Jaysun Matthew Spinks

    Do not trust this company AT ALL!

  • Nordic guy

    Refresh rate is too low for gaming. But great to see QLED displays, QDLED and MicroLED will be even more amazing experience.

  • Super AI

    2 years later and still no release yet….