Hi everyone! We have a lot of cool stuff to share about current and future products of the SlimeVR team, but today we have a few important announcements for you.
Next Shipment
At the moment, we have almost all of the sets for the next shipment (shipment 14) on hand. We’re still packing Deluxe and DIY sets, but the rest are ready to ship. As usual, it took longer than we expected, but we’re getting better at estimations. Regardless, if your order is in the next shipment, you should be getting your sets by the end of August, barring any new problems. The only issue that’s left right now is figuring out the best way to deal with the new tariffs imposed by the US administration on all imports to the USA. More on this below…
Shipment 15
Shipment 14 includes over 5000 sets, but most of them have already been sold, thanks to all of your enthusiasm. We have around 1000 sets that aren’t reserved yet, mostly Core Sets, Enhanced Core Sets and Full-Body Sets. If you see August in the shipping date when you order, you should be in Shipment 14.
The rest of the orders, including set upgrades, will be in the shipment after it - Shipment 15. At the moment it’s going smoothly and we have almost all of the parts required for it, except PCBs and main tracker enclosures. They should arrive to us by the end of August, then September and part of October will be spent assembling them, and by the end of October it should start arriving to customers. So far, it’s been going the best of all shipments to date, so let’s hope it continues. Shipment 15 will contain more than 6000 sets, so it should be enough for everyone :) Unless you keep buying Slimes with ever increasing speed…
Price Increase
Which brings us to the next important part. We sadly have come to a conclusion that we have to increase the price of SlimeVR. We’re doing our best to raise it as little as possible, but at the end of the day, we have to be safe. If you already ordered SlimeVR, the price for you will not change.
Why?
Earlier this year with the release of SlimeVR v1.2, we lowered our prices by a bit on our Lower-Body Set, and upgraded the rest of the sets to make them better. As we said back then, we would see if there will be any changes in the future as the situation develops. And it did.
As you might know, the US administration is now imposing 15% tariffs on all goods imported from Europe to the USA. That means we have to pay it when we send sets of Slimes to Mouser & Crowd Supply for distribution. Since Mouser is our exclusive distributor and is located in the USA, the tariffs apply to all customers worldwide.
We’re still working on a solution to pay as little of the tariffs as possible, but we will have to pay something either way, so our costs will increase. Even if we were to avoid tariffs somehow, or tariffs on non-US customers, or if tariffs get cancelled by court soon (not holding our breath), another important reason for the price increase is making SlimeVR sustainable and having an ability to make new stuff.
SlimeVR started 4.5 years ago with just two people - Eiren and Polymoria - and we initially were planning to make everything ourselves, with some help from volunteer contributors, but it quickly outgrew the abilities of just the two of us, and we had to expand the team. Right now the SlimeVR team is comprised of 11 full-time employees (8 of which work in-person from The Cave in The Netherlands), four part-time community managers and support people, and we also pay contributors for their time. That’s a huge team, but that’s what is required to make SlimeVR better, to ship ever increasing numbers of orders, to provide the best warranty and support we can, and to make new stuff.
Both Polymoria and Eiren receive a normal salary by the standards of The Netherlands, we don’t take dividends or anything like that. Every extra dollar that SlimeVR makes goes back into new things, into hiring new amazing people, into trying to make open-source VR better and cooler, and into weathering storms like the current one. And we want to continue doing this for years to come.
Who’s Affected?
Only new orders after the price increase will be affected. If you already ordered SlimeVR, you will keep the old price. If we have to pay tariffs on your order, we will absorb it. It’s the least we can do.
Can We Stop Working With Mouser?
The short answer is no. Mouser not only provides fulfillment services to us, but they also help us to make very big orders from our suppliers, which lets us use the economy of scale to keep the price as low as we can. They place a huge order with us, we order production, and then they sell preorders from this order. Replacing Mouser with anything else would require getting a huge bank loan or taking in outside investments, and it will increase our costs. In the end it won’t save us money, but will increase our headaches. Fulfillment is very painful at our scale. So far, it has been a good deal. In addition, two thirds of our customers are from the USA, so for most of them nothing would change anyway.
That said, we’re trying to work with Mouser to make fulfillment from Europe possible. That might happen eventually, especially with all the new global trade pressures, but it’s still work in progress, and a huge company like Mouser moves very slowly.
What’s Cooking?
So what are all these people doing, what do we spend the money on? Here are some of the projects in active development:
- You've all heard about Butterfly Slimes, please subscribe on the page, it's very important for us! They're coming along nicely, and we hope to start the crowdfunding campaign in late September. We're making them better every day, with new firmware, software, improved hardware, and better accessories. We're on the 8th hardware revision right now. More soon on the Butterflies page or in our Discord!
- Moth Slimes! They flutter their wings so you can feel touch! We're working on a haptic system for VR that will be more capable than anything currently available, while being affordable, modular and DIY-friendly. We're at the early prototyping stage, but most of the challenge will be in the software.
- Constellation Tracking. Infrared tracking with camera base stations, combined with IMUs. Close to what Quest CV1 was doing, but we have a bunch of cool ideas that will make them perform on par with SteamVR base stations, while also being cheaper and easier to use. First prototypes are in production right now. Stay tuned, this is very exciting.
- VR Glove! A holy grail of dead VR hardware companies. There are a lot of technology options for us, and the server supports it, but it's a challenging product to make well, so we're not in a rush. We have a few prototype boards, but we don't have spare resources to push it forward yet.
- SLAM tracking. Inside-out camera tracking! A cornerstone of standalone VR headsets that no one can make right except a few huge companies. Very complicated, and no good open-source solution exists. We've put a bunch of time into it, but we're close to abandoning it in favor of Constellation Tracking.
- Fully Open-Source VR Headset? The end goal, the ultimate VR achievement. Unobtanium with our current resources and technologies. But maybe when we're done with the tracking part, we will have one piece of the puzzle.
Honestly, we’d love to have a team twice as big to make all of this happen, but what we have will have to do for now.
What Else?
That’s not all, of course. Besides new things, most of the people are also working on current things, such as:
- Constant improvements to our Server software with many features: new and better UX, easy setup of trackers, better tracking, new anti-drift algorithms, new features, new supported software and hardware
- Improvements to hardware. Like two new iterations of SlimeVR Trackers hardware, including support for new IMUs.
- Fulfillment, logistics and assembly. All the things that are required for Slimes to get into the hands of our customers. Sourcing parts, talking with suppliers and manufacturers, doing paperwork, sending things to correct places, packing, assembly, testing.
- Support. We pride ourselves on always being on the customer's side. We try to help with setup, with technical difficulties, and with warranties. This takes time, human effort, and money for shipping and replacing broken items.
- Community development. From organizing online and IRL events to banning spammers and scammers, writing updates and engaging with you all daily. Our community is the most important part of SlimeVR and we're trying our best to care for it.
- Marketing. VRChat advertising, web site development, new photos, Crowd Supply updates, and many more things that help us keep the lights on and Monster Energy in the fridge.
Are There Other Ways To Help?
If you want to directly send us money, it can be done through GitHub Sponsorship. Right now you don’t get any perks for this, only our heartfelt thank you. In the near future, you will be listed on the team page on our site. But you will know that you help making VR more open and fair <3
Otherwise, spread the word! Or get yourself a set of Slimes!
Thank You
Thank you again for listening to us and supporting what we do. We’re so insanely grateful for all your support, your enthusiasm, your kind words. It means a lot to us as founders, and to the whole team, and to contributors, and to the community. Every day we’re thankful to all of you!
There are a lot of things we’d love to share with you in detail, like what’s new in Butterflies, or what’s cooking in the next Server update, but this update is already very long. I promise, we will be back soon!
Meanwhile, please subscribe to keep in the loop about the SlimeVR Butterfly Trackers campaign! And as usual, join our Discord server for weekly updates and other news! If you don’t have Discord or don’t want to join the server, we have started to post updates and other cool stuff to our social networks as well! Follow us on Bluesky, Reddit, and YouTube for regular updates, news, and other cool stuff! We’re also on TikTok, Mastodon, and Tumblr!
See you soon!