Hello, everybody. This is Zixiong, CEO of Source Technology.
It's been six years since my first experience with VR. For all these years, I have believed that HMDs (AR & VR) are the computing platform for the next generation. It is based on this belief that we created SKYBOX. We wanted to create the most immersive video viewing experience.
We started to work on SKYBOX in 2016. It's been 4 years now. However, we have always maintained the Alpha/Beta status for SKYBOX, because we understand that there are still many things that can be improved, although SKYBOX is already the highest rated VR video player by user ratings.
We are still not quite satisfied with what we have done with SKYBOX. Our to-do-list is still long. I believe we share the same higher expectations towards SKYBOX with many of our users, like videos with 6DOF, a photo gallery, better compatibility, online videos, etc..
These features require much more manpower and energy than we currently have. So we have decided to start charging money for SKYBOX in order to support our further development.
1. The change will begin on May 18th 2020, including Steam and all the Oculus platforms, safe for Cardboard and Mi VR.
2. The initial price will be 14.99 USD.
3. For those of you we have already downloaded SKYBOX for free prior to May 18th 2020 can keep using it for free without any additional charges or changes.
4. The free version will also get the exact same updates as the paid version.
5. Before we have found any other better business models, we will just keep this pre-paid charging method. However, we reserve the right to further raise the price or return to free in the future. We hope you guys can understand. This is just another business decision.
6. If you guys wish to keep SKYBOX free, but want to support us in our development. We now have a Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/skyboxplayer
We hope this plan can cover our development cost and let us make SKYBOX better.
I already have this installed on my Quest, however if this went multiplayer I would pay for it. I'm almost certain that people would rather that, than the 8k at this time!
My thoughts about third and fourth thing in list... You guys must really like your customers. Telling before hand that you can get free version when you download before certain day.
I would like to give some money for good sports, but not Patreon. I dont like monthly payments. Some kind of one time pay would be better.
It's a great piece of software and works well, I view movies on the Quest more then I thought I would and this is my default app for that. Photos and maybe a music player with visualisations in the future would be pretty cool.
13700K, RTX 4070 Ti, Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming, Corsair H150i Capellix, 64GB Corsair Vengence DDR5, Corsair 5000D Airflow, 4TB Samsung 870 , 2TB Samsung 990 Pro x 2, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, Quest, 2, 3, Pro, Windows 11 Pro 24H2 (10.0.26100)
I really appreciate Skybox and I am one of the lucky ones who already used it, so free for me, but 14.99 usd is well deserved for this superb application! Thank you
Just curious - but I've been using SkyBox with the Valve Index res 200% several times, and the image quality is really amazing. Feels and looks like a real cinema (or close). Does the res impact movie quality or is something else going on to enhance image quality? Watching the same movie in BigScreen res 200% looks much worse.
Also I've been increasing super sampling (ss) in some Oculus movie apps for my CV1, but ss didn't seem to matter much for movies.
Oculus Rift CV1, Valve Index & PSVR2, Asus Strix OC RTX™ 3090, i9-10900K (5.3Ghz), 32GB 3200MHz, 16TB SSD "Ask not what VR can do for you, but what you can do for VR"
Skybox has been a great player not just because it has been free to use. Props to you if you now feel a charge is the way forward. I think you deserve it all said and done.
System Specs: MSI NVIDIA RTX 4090 , i5 13700K CPU, 32GB DDR 4 RAM, Win 11 64 Bit OS.
No we didn't remove it. We don't know what's wrong with the store page and we are contacting Oculus now. Please be patient with us. We'll let you know as soon as it's functional properly.
