When will U.S. non-commercial orders be able to be placed again?
Will
Posts: 3
I'm confused...maybe I missed something somewhere?
According to the announcement: "Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to only deliver units to our U.S. home market and issue refunds to our customers outside of the U.S."
But on the Shop page, the Omni package info states it is only available for purchase for commercial use.
So, can U.S. home customers purchase a consumer version or not?
Thanks in advance.
According to the announcement: "Therefore, we have made the difficult decision to only deliver units to our U.S. home market and issue refunds to our customers outside of the U.S."
But on the Shop page, the Omni package info states it is only available for purchase for commercial use.
So, can U.S. home customers purchase a consumer version or not?
Thanks in advance.
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Best Answer
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sutekiB
Posts: 1,059
@Will The wording is perhaps a bit confusing. By 'delivering units to our U.S. home market' it means those orders that have already been placed. It is not possible for anyone to purchase an Omni for personal use at this time. Consumer sales may resume at some point - of course that's what everyone wants, but there is no timetable as to when this will happen. If you are lucky enough to be getting an Omni in the next few weeks or months, take care of it, and make the most of it! My apologies again to anyone who is being affected by the international refund program or the cessation of consumer sales. Hopefully the Omni will be available to consumers again in the not-too-distant future.Community Manager at Virtuix5
Answers
If you are one of the lucky few to be getting an Omni unit, make sure to hold onto the box it comes in and all of the various packing pieces, because at this rate, you wont be seeing anything new once you get bored with TraVR.
@GreyAcumen - If any developer has a game they want to add Omni support to, they may contact developer relations. The link is on this page: Developers
I have several simulations I'm working on for the Oil & Gas/Power Gen industry, and we were looking forward to using the Omni with those, but we've given up on that now - there's no point, and I'm certainly not paying $4k for a "commercial" one - we'll make do with teleporting and room-scale instead.
I really can't imagine that serious VR titles/developers, which won't work in a high-throughput/time-limited Arcade scenario, will bother with Omni support.
If a Dev can't personally verify what issues may come up, or what freedoms they are granted by adding Omni support, then what possible temptation could they have to add support for it? Just look at how often dropping through the floor happened in TraVR, and that game was built specifically for the Omni, and you expect Devs to just plop in the code and that will be the end of it? They certainly aren't going to be tempted to make that sort of attempt with the current consumer-end footprint, which apparently has a very clear maximum bar which wont be getting raised any time soon.
Within the confines of an Arcade setting, what benefit is the Omni even going to be? You already have games like Space Pirate Trainer that are perfect for an Arcade, and that only requires a quick adjustment of the headset and you're ready to play. The Omni only benefits from large open worlds, which require time to explore. Arcades are only suitable for short experiences, and half your time is going to be spent just getting people suited up in the harness, and then also waiting for the other person to get OUT of the Omni.
This issue is exacerbated by the apparent issue that commercial Omnis may not even come with a full set of shoe sizes and multiple harnesses, which would at least justify the $4k+ price and allow people waiting in line to get the harness on while waiting for the other person to finish playing, and then be able to begin their turn as soon as the other person steps out.
@SutekiB - If there's any defense, where you can say "no, I'm an official source, and the commercial units totally come with a full range of shoe sizes and multiple harnesses" now would be the time to bring it up. I've been hearing a whole LACK of denial on that subject every single one of the multiple times it has come up. The only people who have been refuting the point are people who are doing it purely hypothetically, purely on the basis that it is such an idiotic and tactically disastrous stance to take, and we're getting tired of looking stupid when all evidence seems to pointing to us defending someone completely guilty of the accusations being posed.
I've been doing a lot of testing of the in-house game 'Omni Arena' today - that is a short solo / co-op experience that lasts a few minutes, but contains an area much larger than you could have with room-scale. It's great fun!
I have some ideas for cutting the embarking / training / disembarking time down considerably, and I'm hoping to get an opportunity to test these soon.
I don't handle the commercial side of things either, so I can't say what's included by default. There is a contact form for commercial inquries here - http://www.virtuix.com/commercial-license/
Cheez\/\/iz
Omni Backer #40!
Rift Backer #2,770 (That was a good one!)
Middle Tennessee
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Check out a few of his youtube videos and forum posts.
So... at the moment Virtuix still needs to ship a ton of units to backers. They decreased the financial and production burden by cutting international backers out of the picture, but that's still a huge financial burden if they're shipping at a loss. They've found commercial investors overseas in various markets so that keeps everything afloat... but it also diverts units from backers/preorders to those commercial partners... so that's a capacity problem.