As someone interested in VR (owning a Vive myself) I am always looking for ways to expand my experience. Back in 2014 one of my friends brought the Cyberith Virtualizer to my attention.
From the Kickstarter campaign site:
“The Virtualizer is an award-winning locomotion device for Virtual Reality that allows the user to move freely in virtual environments. Step inside the game and become one with your character.”
Pretty cool sounding huh? Who wouldn’t want a device that can bring your VR experience to the next level? Does this not sound like the coolest thing? I watched the videos where they showed a guy having a grand old time playing Skyrim in a VR environment. I was sold! I pledged my money on Kickstarter and waited eagerly for the drive to end and was hopeful that it would get funded. I was elated to see that that after only a few days the project had full funding and was still climbing. After it was funded it was announced that the estimated ship date would be March 2015. Here is how that went:
As you can tell, the product is clearly invisible and wireless. I put the invisible disc in my computer and patiently waited for it to load up. For some reason though, it wouldn’t start up. I tried to troubleshoot my computer but to no avail.
I wrote to them and asked what was going on. Even though this was my first Kickstarter campaign I backed, I knew that sometimes shit happens and things don’t get shipped on time. I waited for a couple of days without any response so I tried again. I got a response that they were working on it and some other crap, not long after they put out an update.
“While our team in Vienna is working hard on the finalization of the Virtualizer, Holger and Pierre are currently on the road to spread the word about the Virtualizer.”
Apparently they started going to conventions to push this thing. People started putting things into the comments to the effect of where is this going? After that updates were few and far between. Once every few weeks and then, months. As of this review the last update was in July of 2017.
As backers we found out that they had burned through all of their Kickstarter money going to conventions and doing God knows what while trying to go to a business to business model. It seems like when we asked about anything we were given the middle finger with no responses to emails, comments and court subpoenas. Basically these guys took the money and ran and I learned a valuable lesson about Kickstarter. I have since tried one more campaign with good results (more on that in another post) but never will I put up that kind of money again for a project.
It does favor a baby walker, doesn’t it?
Pffft award winning my ass.
[yasr_overall_rating size=”medium”]
People really should start thinking about what they are doing before they fuck the public out of money. I give this project 1 German hippy in a baby walker out of 5.
