Hello Friends and Fans:

(Sorry for the late update but there was a lot of information to collect and collate... And the website finally goes live later on today! www.neuronmocap.com its a soft launch so be patient if there are some glitches.)

First of all — THANK YOU! To all the people that came down to see us at GDC.

On behalf of Alex, Daniel, Longwei, Lu, Patrick, Susy, Tobias, myself and the entire Perception Neuron team - we can’t thank you enough for your phenomenal support!

Our launch party was amazing. Susy did a fantastic job organizing everything, and many of you have Alex to thank for coordinating and delivering your VIP invitations and passes to the show. We also have to give special thanks to our dancer Shell Stachowicz for her outstanding performance. Thank you as well to Guerilla Catering for their scrumptious food and libations and an extra special shout out to the Impact Hub San Francisco and their team who hosted our event and made everything perfect. For those of you who missed it, the evening was full of excitement. I went on stage and did a little speech and then Tristan said a few words (via pre-recorded video). We then showed off Shell’s dance moves to the music of Lana Del Rey while an avatar powered by Perception Neuron mirrored her on a projection screen. No glitches except one of the straps on Shell’s, lower leg came undone towards the end of her dance. But surprisingly this did little to mess with the on-screen avatar. (And by the way, we had 30 minutes to rehearse!) Then everyone came up to the stage to look at PN up close, ask us questions and just catch up on the progress. We got to meet a lot of our backers face to face for the first time which was awesome. We also met with a lot of press and of course we stayed up way past our bedtime!

The next day was the opening of the GDC Expo floor... 

Our booth looked amazing (if I may say so). We had 4 demo stations, 3 of which were dedicated for guest experiences. All our demos were performed via appointments so we could give one-on-one attention to each and every person, and we are glad we did because with only 7 of us, we were overwhelmed by the attention and interest we attracted.

So this was the setup.

Main Stage: Dancing and AXIS Neuron (Beta) Demo 

On the main stage, Daniel was wearing a 29 Neuron setup - that is full body plus two hands. That is 17 Neurons to give you the full body and hands plus an additional 6 per hand to give you finger movement details. Your index finger has an additional socket for an additional Neuron to enhance accuracy, but we did not use it. Here Daniel was doing live demos of Axis Neuron beta and a Dancing program done in Unity. His PN system was broadcasting using WIFI. We had some occasional bandwidth issues with our WIFI as the 2.4GHZ band was extremely congested at the show. That caused some data packet loss at times but overall the performance was excellent. This also gave us a chance to look at how the equipment fared with someone wearing it for 8 hours straight (yes - poor Daniel was in that outfit from 10 to 6!). I am glad to report that PN did much better than Daniel!

Hand Basketball Demo

This was a public demo using the glove where we had a PN glove with 6 3 Neurons. The system was wired via USB and we used one of Tobias’ Unity games where users get to pick up different types of balls and shoot them into various targets. The game was a big hit! We encountered two issues. The first one was that we did not have a solution for where to put the hub. So we just left it dangling - bad idea. After dozens of people, the stress of a dangling cord, hub weight and USB cable stressed the connector and simply pulled it out. We also confirmed the issue with the glove regarding the requirement for an exact fit to the user (which we already knew about). The gloves are a “catch-22” - either we do exact sizing with no flexibility for multiple users OR we do an adaptable solution which requires a lot of tinkering to get it “tightly” on.

Full Body Demo

In this public demo, we put on a 17 Neuron full body kit on our guests. We showed them calibration using Axis and then allowed them to experience AXIS Neuron. We then let them play around with one of two games. The first was a soccer game where you get to kick a ball into a net, but it was difficult to use because we could not let our players use the Oculus as we were afraid people would hurt themselves (we did not have enough space!). Then we had this old game, designed 2 years ago where you get to slash through incoming werewolves. I have to say it is not very impressive, as the movement and the action was not very responsive, but the press liked the fact that it was visually exciting and it did match the theme of GDC. This station — was — our media/press demo station! The full body setup work admirably with no problems even though we kept putting it on and pulling it off people. We used the system via wired USB and the only small functional issue I saw was what I mentioned before, the lack of responsiveness from the werewolf game. Everything else here worked flawlessly. Guests loved the full immersion.

Flying game

Finally our last public demo was the flying game. This demo used a 3-Neuron setup on the arm allowing users to fly through a virtual world and shoot at targets or each other while using Oculus Rift DK2. Two people could play at the same time on this game. We had some networking issues here. The Neurons worked fine, but since we were using 2 computers networked to allow for the 2-user experience, the program froze a lot. Some people loved it, others did not. I personally think it is still an issue of people getting used to the HMD motion sickness factor.

We also had Tobias, our Game Programmer Extraordinaire, on hand to answer any questions developers had. He had his own station and spent quite a bit of time interacting with other gaming professionals inquiring about the ins and outs of PN beyond the hardware.

The response overall was spectacular. We could not have asked for more. The press, guests, attendees and backers we met were all impressed by Perception Neuron and we had a lot of people wanting it NOW! But as you know we are our biggest critics. Our little Neuron did perform amazingly well - actually beyond our expectations, but we identified some functional issues with the strap system, connectors and sockets we could not have anticipated without real-world usage.

So as these issues were emerging, we were back and forth with Tristan and the Beijing crew reporting, discussing and putting a plan in action to resolve these problems.

Here is the result...

We have definitely identified some weak points in our strap, connector and socket system. For example the overlapping hook & loop areas are too small and can come undone especially for larger individuals doing big movements. We also identified issues with the sockets, where the Neuron and the connectors would come loose under repeated stress. Additionally, we have ordered longer cables to fit taller individuals and reduce stress on connectors. Basically, we need to make a about a dozen updates that require tooling adjustments and additional orders. This is unfortunately the repercussion of building a system that is adaptable to all body heights and shapes. Don’t worry, we are not going back to the drawing board, but when you are doing mass production, it is a significant delay. We are currently pushing back the beginning of our ship date to April. Tristan wanted to say an exact date, but I forbade him, so you can all blame me.

This will of course push back all delivery dates by the same amount of time. Please do not ask for an exact ship date as we will not be able to provide that for you. We apologize for any delays or inconveniences this may cause any of you and as a sign of good faith we will offer refunds to anyone who wishes. Please note that all refunds are final (ie. you cannot change your mind later!). To get a refund you will need to contact us through the Kickstarter messaging system and note the pledge level you committed to. We will process the refunds as soon as we receive them.

Bad News… Good News!

I also have another piece of bad news which is also sort of good news. The Rumbler which was a stretch goal has proven much more complicated to build than expected and there has been little interest in maintaining it as a permanent item in our product line. If we were to continue production on this item, it would delay shipment by several months. Haptic feedback devices are being developed at a rapid pace and there are a lot more interesting avenues to explore in the near future, so the Rumbler seems to be a waste of time… But there is good news wrapped up in this… We are not just taking the Rumbler away, we are replacing it!

• For 10 Neuron pledge level = You get ONE EXTRA FREE NEURON for a TOTAL of 11 NEURONS 
• For 20 Neuron pledge level = You get ONE EXTRA FREE NEURON a 16 Gig Micro SD Card for a TOTAL of 21 NEURONS and onboard recording 
• For 30 Neuron pledge level = You get TWO EXTRA FREE NEURON for a TOTAL of 32 NEURONS

So what does this mean? Well, with this upgrade you get more configuration options for your system as you can see in the diagram below.

We hope everyone will see these new rewards as a Free upgrade for their Perception Neuron system. We want all our backers to be rewarded and happy, but we understand if they have changed their minds, and as we have said before, we will honor refunds. Just contact us through Kickstarter messaging.

Also as a side note, our software is now called AXIS NEURON and AXIS NEURON PRO, formerly AXIS Lite and AXIS. No changes have been made to this stretch goal. Backers will still get a 6 month free license to AXIS NEURON PRO, but we have also added some new features to AXIS NEURON and continue to do so. Stay tuned.

Post KickStarter Pricing

This brings us to our next topic, post KS pricing. Perception Neuron is a professional piece of equipment priced at a consumer or rather prosumer price. It is NOT a consumer product. Anyone who has mistakenly thought of PN as consumer product is wrong. It is definitely a stepping stone towards a consumer product, and the ultimate affordable “chemistry set” for developers and makers to experiment with a new digital input device. It is also a high precision piece of equipment with hundreds of components, many of which have to be custom assembled for each kit. PN is also not a mass production product. Several thousands will be made and economies of scale will not come into effect to significantly reduce the price the way they would if we produced in millions. The post KS pricing was not randomly selected, it was based on the actual cost of manufacturing - something we had underestimated a great deal prior to our KS. We also decided to start with a simpler model offering only one single option and very limited accessories. In addition, we will only ship to the United States and Canada on launch. Don’t worry, this will of course change in the future. We will expand our offering, ship to destinations and of course lower the prices as soon as we can. 

So here are the options: 

• 32 Neuron Alum Edition $1499 (Full body with gloves) 
• Single Neuron $30 
• Single Glove (left or right - Neurons not included) $100 
• Glove Pair (Left and Right - Neurons not included) $200 

But we also want to help students and educational institutions, so anyone with an “.edu” address and matching name/order name will get a special discount. 

• 32 Neuron Alum Academic $1199 (Full body with gloves) 
• 18 Neuron Alum Academic $799 (Full body with NO gloves) - ONLY AVAILABLE to academic entities and students
• For complete details see website at www.neuronmocap.com

For all our KS backers, the pledges you made were an incredible opportunity to pre-order a ground breaking piece of technology at an incredible price. The post-KS pricing, with its academic options, remains the most affordable and adaptable motion capture option in the industry, priced in line with the average "good" laptop and cheaper than most professional 3D software. Nevertheless, our commitment is to make Perception Neuron even more accessible in the future and we will continue to work towards that goal.

Thats it for now… Stay tuned for more soon! 

The Miami and Beijing Team!