This is the real reason why Virtuix cancelled all orders nd rewards

FR3D · December 2016

http://2p.com/46388906_1/Hero-Entertainment-Talks-Virtuix-Omni-Price-Strategy-and-Games-by-Wei.htm

virtuix makes more profit with hero entertainment. Therfore virtuix needs a excuse not to fulfil the rewards of kickstarter.

It's a shame virtuix shooting down the people who made them big ... provit is all - loyalti is nothing !

Tomek · December 2016

I don't know about this. Doesn't seem true. They could have simply delayed shipping, not cancelled indefinitely.

GreyAcumen · December 2016

Look, if Virtuix was making that much off of these deals, why would they take on the huge negative PR backlash unless there were legitimate shipping issues?
Also, I've already pointed out that the "full package" probably includes multiple size shoes and harnesses as well as the headsets and the pcs to run them all. $5000 wouldn't really be much profit at that point.

Szeliga · December 2016

Hero Entertaiment said:

Their strategy is not selling Virtuix Omni to individual players but to arcade halls, malls, bars, and even gyms. They want players go to those places and play the game with friends.

Exactly what I thought. No words... Wish You the worst guys. Jan, I thought You are a visioner, VR enthusiast who care about something more than money only. I was clearly wrong. I hope Your Chinese partners will f**k You over exactly like You did to us. Make some cheap copy or whatever and You will stay with nothing. Karma, it always coming back.

xxann5 · December 2016

But what does this have to do with anything? I think @GreyAcumen is right on this one. If this was the real reason and they wanted to fulfill Hero's orders sooner rather than latter they would simply take longer to get there original backers there Omni's. It would be a bit of negative PR bot not anything even remotely like what they have now.

I also agree that the $5K includes a full package of everything needed to run the Omni, including the PC and even probably there boom. It would be foolish not to provide commercial partners a turn-key solution.

admin · December 2016

As we stated in our announcement, internationally our goal is to work with distributors for commercial markets such as VR arcades and family entertainment centers where logistics and customer support channels are more established. Working with international partners and distributors is currently our only chance to get Omnis to international markets without us being on the hook directly to ship and support thousands of Omnis in foreign countries, which would be suicide. Our partnership in China with Hero is a great development that we have touted several times in the past few months, but it has no bearing on our tough decision to refund our international customers. Production capacity is not the constraint; the constraint is being a small company and being directly responsible for thousands of Omnis in foreign countries all over the world.

JohnMarkus · December 2016

@admin: Hero Sports says that they can ship omnis and provide after-supports in Asia. So you being a small company is not a constraint for Asian backers.
Why refund ?

admin · December 2016

To be clear: Hero will distribute Omnis only in the commercial entertainment market in China, not the consumer market. Asian backers will receive a refund. Servicing and support is much better established for the commercial entertainment market, not so much for the consumer market in China. They will not support the consumer market at this time.

FR3D · December 2016

admin said:
As we stated in our announcement, internationally our goal is to work with distributors for commercial markets such as VR arcades and family entertainment centers where logistics and customer support channels are more established. Working with international partners and distributors is currently our only chance to get Omnis to international markets without us being on the hook directly to ship and support thousands of Omnis in foreign countries, which would be suicide. Our partnership in China with Hero is a great development that we have touted several times in the past few months, but it has no bearing on our tough decision to refund our international customers. Production capacity is not the constraint; the constraint is being a small company and being directly responsible for thousands of Omnis in foreign countries all over the world.

Yesterday it was shipping costs, today it is the responsibility and tomorrow ?

place a distrubutor in europe and you have no aftersales problems ... but all this is useless because your only aim is to place a refund that you don't need to ship our rewards ...

I'm working also in a small company with thousands of customers all over the world - we have no problems with support ... ( we develop, build an sell high precision measuring instruments )

I have the feeling that hero entertainment makes the rules and virtuix is over ...

Xain · December 2016

@FR3D Sorry but your full of it, over the past week Ive seen nothing but conspiracy theories and other people claiming insider information. You're no different and are a disgruntled person who is lashing out because they are not getting their Omni. They stated before you signed up and started posting that the issue was that a 15 man team cannot handle international support for the Omni.

Lets say the Omni was to sell 20k Omnis internationally. Lets say that only 2k users give Virtuix a call because their Omni needs servicing. Lets say that hope against hope Virtuix somehow has the money to ship all of them back to head quarters to service. Now you've got 15 people who probably don't know the first thing about fixing it as they are made in China. Ok, cool, ship them back to China and have them fix it, right? So Virtuix has to pay x amount of people to always be on standby at a factory that know how to fix and Omni. Then after they get through that backlog they have to pay for shipping... again.. back to you. So to recap:

1. Omni breaks.
2. Omni must be shipped back to factory paid for by Virtuix.
3. Tech support has to fix the Omni.
4. Tech support has to ship the Omni back.
5. You get the Omni back most likely 3 months later. 1 month shipping there 1 month service as lets say they are only paying 2 dozen people to be there waiting for Omnis to break and 1 month shipping back to you.

Stop conspiracy theory crafting, stop hating Virtuix, stop trying to burn their company to the ground and think for a second past your anger that maybe, just MAYBE a kickstarter without the backing of FACEBOOK can't ship internationally.

JohnMarkus · December 2016

admin said:
To be clear: Hero will distribute Omnis only in the commercial entertainment market in China, not the consumer market. Asian backers will receive a refund. Servicing and support is much better established for the commercial entertainment market, not so much for the consumer market in China. They will not support the consumer market at this time.

@admin: Hero sent me an email describing their function in the Asian market. How did Hero acquire my personal data (name, email address) ?
As per your Privacy Policy, you may disclose our personal data only for purpose of providing services (like processing orders), or you filter data so that only relevant data is passed over to them.

Please explain how the data you have given to Hero is relevant if Hero does not provide service to the consumer market.
Or are you implying that you had a SECURITY ACCIDENT that lead to leakage of customer data ?

xxann5 · December 2016

@FR3D From the start Jan and everyone on the Virtuix team clearly stated that although shipping something as large as the Omni worldwide was a challenge it was solvable and that ongoing support was the issue. They never once stated otherwise.

Xain · December 2016

@JohnMarkus And the F.U.D. campaign continues.

I have to say,the nerd spite is real. Although I am hard pressed as to what it will accomplish, International shipping won't be whined into existence, Virtuix will not go under and disapear as they have partnered with Hero Entertainment and people will move on and forget.

xxann5 · December 2016

@JoleneTurg in another thread you claimed to have been in contact with Hero about possibly buying an Omni from them. So it sounds to me like you contacted them. Or did they somehow decide that you are the chosen one, get your contact info, possibly through nefarious means, contact you suggesting you could buy an Omni from them?

GreyAcumen · December 2016

FR3D said:
Yesterday it was shipping costs, today it is the responsibility and tomorrow ?

Why are you acting like the story is changing just because the wording is a little different? It still all refers to the same problem. Money, manpower, responsibility, etc. No matter what aspect you happen to be focusing on, it still is just one facet of the fact that Virtuix is still too small and lacks the funding needed to be able to support any of the international orders. They are based in America, and so other locations are prohibitive on a piece of machinery of this size and with these features.

FR3D said:
place a distrubutor in europe and you have no aftersales problems ... but all this is useless because your only aim is to place a refund that you don't need to ship our rewards ...

Yep, just place a distributor there. Just like in Starcraft, we just need to click the distributor icon and then click the appropriate location on google maps and then wait for it to build itself.

FR3D said:
I'm working also in a small company with thousands of customers all over the world - we have no problems with support ... ( we develop, build an sell high precision measuring instruments )

Okay, you sell high precision measuring instruments. How large are they? How much do they weigh? What wireless bands do they operate on? Do you ship primarily to companies/labs/schools or to individual consumers? How many people work in your company?

FR3D · December 2016

a few years ago I had similar Problems with Delta Six - on the end I was right and got my 2 Delta six I backed for ...

If the rig is so badly constructed tha it will braek if I (a 80 kg) guy can destroy the chassis while gaming, than there will be lots of problems in china too.

defekts within the electronics ( printed circuits are changed very easy ) - I virtuix is not able to ship spare parts I will develop my own electronics -
( my Job is electronic engeneer - with a lot of experience ( 28 Years) in microcontroller, wlan, Apps, Pc - driver development ....- I can replace with my soldering equipment all kinds of chips - ball grid array chips are not problem. The smallest things I developed are active tags and so on - ( Nordic semiconduktor) - my guess is that the Omni needs a mouse driver only - this is what i did in 1990 ... so thats no problem ....

as i stated before is - all I want is to get my 2 omnis i backed for. I do not need support and I do not need shipping.

I do not back things - overtake the risk - just to get my money back if the reward is ready to ship - do you think I'm stupid ?

FR3D · December 2016

yes I'm very old ( in Jauary I will be 52 years old - and I have no time to loose if I will enjoy VR with all candy - ( a dream ofmy childhood)

next year in June I will be for 10 days in New York - so I could easily fly to Austin to put my omnis in a crate and ship it to my home ...

Did anyone tried Doom3 BFG fo the vive ? walking is well done within this - but in some leves you have to crouch in very low tunnels - this is a great experience - but not possible with the omni ... maybe we do not need these treadmils in future if the walking simulation will be better with the time ...

FR3D · December 2016

Yes call me a nerd, call me crazy, call me what you want - I have no problems with that

http://www.mtbs3d.com/gallery/albums/userpics/16455/VR_Room-2631_1080.JPG

but I'm going to fight until my omnis will be in my VR room !

GreyAcumen · December 2016

@FR3D - You have a solid hour after each post you make where there will be a little gear button next to the time your post was made. If you click on that, you can edit your post instead of having this big long string of multiple successive posts.

giroudf · December 2016

@FR3D , Frankly if you have the time, the money and the ressources (as it i seems you get) , you will better go with an home made virtuix ( a la KatVR).
after all it is just s slipping platform with teflon pad under the shoes.
The feet stability can also probably be improved by using a thick carpet and fins under the shoes, so lateral slide is blocked (and it will remove noise)
you can probably bypass the ring with a harness fixed in the ceiling and increase the size of the platform
For the control, you would go with a neuron motion control suit (full suit is only 1500$).
anyway , even if you get an omni, lots of thing are missing (like the gun, hand controller, haptic).
for the haptic you can add some fans (for wind) and IR lamp (for the heat of sun or explosion) all that controlled by some cheap board (arduino or raspberry)
you can even get rid of the headphones with a 5.1 surround sound since i doubt your neighbour will complain about the noise.

all that is completely out of reach for a industrial product , but perfectly feasible for a DYI hard core.

DanteM · December 2016

FR3D said:
http://2p.com/46388906_1/Hero-Entertainment-Talks-Virtuix-Omni-Price-Strategy-and-Games-by-Wei.htm

virtuix makes more profit with hero entertainment. Therfore virtuix needs a excuse not to fulfil the rewards of kickstarter.

It's a shame virtuix shooting down the people who made them big ... provit is all - loyalti is nothing !

sounds feasible but that math though... "one-player package is about $5000 USD while the 5-player package is over $40,000 USD" 1unit =5k so you could buy 5 for 25k yet they say the package cost 40k ... I feel like they are grasping at straws now. It would be flat out idiotic to charge 15k for the needed connectors to connect these units.

JohnMarkus · December 2016

DanteM said:
sounds feasible but that math though... "one-player package is about $5000 USD while the 5-player package is over $40,000 USD" 1unit =5k so you could buy 5 for 25k yet they say the package cost 40k ... I feel like they are grasping at straws now. It would be flat out idiotic to charge 15k for the needed connectors to connect these units.

It might include network hardware and additional monitors (and display switching / PIP (Picture-in-picture) controllers) for arcade type settings.
I believe Hero does games that are played 5 vs 5

DanteM · January 2017

admin said:
To be clear: Hero will distribute Omnis only in the commercial entertainment market in China, not the consumer market. Asian backers will receive a refund. Servicing and support is much better established for the commercial entertainment market, not so much for the consumer market in China. They will not support the consumer market at this time.

But they are distributing them to consumers as well for $5,899 as @Admino showed us in another thread with the photos of the emails between him and Omni which they state he would get in 10-15 days

.

Admino said:
@GreyAcumen

FWIW, this is the link to the PDF I created of two emails I received from Hero Entertainment (edited to remove my name and email address).
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9bJFEHxccGBOXRVV25XbTdOejA

yannis · January 2017

In the investor update issued by Virtuix they said that 800 units have already been shipped to their commercial partners in China. If you do the math these are the 800 omnis they have "missed" in the production schedule. As an investor i like the increase of the company profits but that doesn't mean they are not douchebags.

sutekiB · January 2017

800 units have already been shipped to their commercial partners in China. If you do the math these are the 800 omnis they have "missed" in the production schedule.

That's taken slightly out of context. Those 800 Omnis have been delivered to the JV, Heroix - not necessarily to the commercial operators that Heroix is supplying. I expect those Omnis will need careful inspection, just like the Omnis that are sent to the Austin office. The inspection process is time consuming, so sending more units to the Austin office would not result in more Omnis being sent out to US backers / customers. The bottleneck is not the factory output, which far exceeds the number of Omnis that can be inspected in the same period. That will hopefully change soon.

Admino · January 2017

admin said:
To be clear: Hero will distribute Omnis only in the commercial entertainment market in China, not the consumer market. Asian backers will receive a refund. Servicing and support is much better established for the commercial entertainment market, not so much for the consumer market in China. They will not support the consumer market at this time.

@admin I was under the impression that Hero had an exclusive licence for Asia (not just China). I understand that you can't divulge the exact details, but if Hero is distributing to just China, then wouldn't it be in your best interest to look for distributors in other countries as well? After all, doing so will only increase your client base, right?

DanteM said:

But they are distributing them to consumers as well for $5,899 as @Admino showed us in another thread with the photos of the emails between him and Omni which they state he would get in 10-15 days

@DanteM To be fair, no sane consumer would pay that price for a peripheral (you could set up a few high-end spec VR systems for less) so I do believe that is the price of a single unit to a commercial entity. The fact that only one size of any item is included is kinda worrying for a commercial package. It's possible though that the discrepancy is due to a mistake in translation and the package is meant to contain one pair of shoes and one harness of all sizes. Everyone has their breaking point though so as the price of the Omni drops to more reasonable levels, I may consider meeting them part way and splurging a bit if I haven't found a better deal by that point.

Also, Hero isn't just a commercial entity, it's a venture partner/distributor so the agreement is probably different. It's highly likely that Hero isn't bound by the same restrictions that would apply to a commercial entity. A commercial entity probably isn't allowed to sub-let units out to third parties (excluding its direct clients), whereas Hero, being a distributor, kinda has to be able to pass on units to other entities

.
Also, I'm guessing that sales made by Hero would be covered by Chinese trade law, not US trade law. Therefore, any obligations regarding support and servicing may not necessarily apply to Hero and it's customers.

These are all guesses of course, but it's irrational to assume that Virtuix would screw over their international customers on a whim as there are far more simpler and easier ways of committing corporate suicide.
The situation for international backers is far from ideal, but it could be a lot worse (especially for Kickstarter backers).

I think the best thing for international backers to do is accept the refund (+interest) and hope that when Virtuix becomes able to ship to international consumers, they remember those who went out on a limb to get them started (assuming that the international consumers do eventually end up getting an Omni at some point in the future).

MAYAman · October 2017

Xain said:
@FR3D Sorry but your full of it, over the past week Ive seen nothing but conspiracy theories and other people claiming insider information. You're no different and are a disgruntled person who is lashing out because they are not getting their Omni. They stated before you signed up and started posting that the issue was that a 15 man team cannot handle international support for the Omni.

Lets say the Omni was to sell 20k Omnis internationally. Lets say that only 2k users give Virtuix a call because their Omni needs servicing. Lets say that hope against hope Virtuix somehow has the money to ship all of them back to head quarters to service. Now you've got 15 people who probably don't know the first thing about fixing it as they are made in China. Ok, cool, ship them back to China and have them fix it, right? So Virtuix has to pay x amount of people to always be on standby at a factory that know how to fix and Omni. Then after they get through that backlog they have to pay for shipping... again.. back to you. So to recap:

1. Omni breaks.
2. Omni must be shipped back to factory paid for by Virtuix.
3. Tech support has to fix the Omni.
4. Tech support has to ship the Omni back.
5. You get the Omni back most likely 3 months later. 1 month shipping there 1 month service as lets say they are only paying 2 dozen people to be there waiting for Omnis to break and 1 month shipping back to you.

Stop conspiracy theory crafting, stop hating Virtuix, stop trying to burn their company to the ground and think for a second past your anger that maybe, just MAYBE a kickstarter without the backing of FACEBOOK can't ship internationally.

The Omni has no moving parts. What is there to break? It has a magnet in the ring that senses the harness I believe, what is there to break? If anything goes bad I'm almost positive you could IKEA instruction the replacement part via post. The dish is a large piece of plastic, what is there to break?

I know I'm very very very late to this party, but I just don't see what really the worry was about. I'm not buying it. I myself am starting a business with a device that is triple the size of the Omni and much much much more complex. The way I've designed it if anything goes wrong I will be able to send a technician to repair or have any individual piece sent back to me via the user service agreement that the customer pays upon buying. Its a tiered service. If you pay for the support you get it, if you don't, you won't. As for just having a company of 15 people? If you offer paid support for your very large and expensive item its likely that users will pay for a support package. Support packages are a gravy train, especially if your product is designed well and simple, like the omni. You could have mitigated any support issues and the hiring of staff by offering support packages in tiers. That is why I'm not buying any of the story.

This is the real reason why Virtuix cancelled all orders nd rewards

Comments