November 2022

Welcome to the first ever sit-rep for BowkVR; this method of communication has come about because of the massive amount of activities that have been occurring in the past couple of months (and I didn’t want to ping everyone every day for something new).

General Update Summary:

In the past month we have gone through all our prices and checked against all the inputs to ensure they are as low as possible - the prices of almost all stocks have been reduced to reflect the results of this operation.
There have been a few new headsets either announced or released and we have been hard at work designing gunstocks to suit.
New products have been launched - Invert / Forged Invert (more on these later)
We have started reoganising the 3D print files to make them as easy as possible to find.

Invert / Forged Invert

The Invert Marksman is now for sale in the BowkVR shop - thank you so much to all the testers who helped verify this design.

https://www.bowkvr.com/shop/p/invert-marksman

The Invert is an evolution of the “Index Marksman” by including Quest 2 mounting for the tube-on-top gunstock design.

This design involved:

Full redesign of the tube lengths to allow for additional stiffener wholst maintaining optimal hand positioning range.
Design of a controller mount to make a secure link between Quest 2 controllers and a tube on top
A LOT of product testing

With the Invert, the Forged Invert was also designed and released (for both Quest 2 and Index). As part of the “Forged” family, these stocks are designed for easy DIY. The print files are publicly available and are designed to be matched to easily obtainable tubes (wooden dowels/aluminium tube, etc).

Signature Series - Product Upgrades

At BowkVR we try and prioritise quality components and customer service. Over the past year we have made a number of updates to the Signature Series design in order to improve them, a lot of these you will already be aware of.

Stiffener:

The “stiffener” for the elbow joint that was originally designed for the Signature Marksman has been included as standard in all Signature series gunstocks since early on in development. There were some reports that this part was cracking due to over-tightening and so we have addressed this by:

Increasing the amount of material around the bolt head to reduce the stresses.
Including a backup stiffener as standard with all gunstocks.

Since making these changes, we have not received reports of this part breaking.

Cups:

The Quest 2 cups have recently (in the past few days) gone through a major design overhaul. This was carried out partially in preparation for Quest Pro but also because some of the cups have been breaking (generally after prolonged use however we still wanted to improve the design).

The Q2 cup was remodelled from scratch with a much more accurate shape (based on a high definition 3D scan of the Quest 2 controllers). The wall thickness was also increased from a nominal 2mm to 2.5mm (with further localised changes). These design updates will result in a cup that sees substantially less failures. The more accurate shape will reduce the amount of flex the cup sees during use and the thicker walls will withstand the input loads better.

All Q2 Signature orders as of 1 November will have the Gen3 cups.

Marksman Butt:

There were a few failures reported due to a crack initiating in the hole closest to the main cross bolt (the bolt used to stop the butt sliding up and down). To address this we have removed the closest hole (as it was barely usable anyways) and have reduced the gap between the mount and the slider (so that there is less flexing of the plastic with each clamping action). We have not received any reports of cracking since these design updates have been made.

The other failures that have been reported are due to user errors (standing on the gunstock / letting an angry younger Brother get their hands on it, etc) - as with all failures, the parts were replaced free of charge (excluding shipping).

Quest Pro

The Quest Pro was announced recently and we have controllers on order (apparently the controller orders have a longer lead time than the full headset orders so we will not receive the controllers until December).

HOWEVER, thanks to help from a Signature stock owner who has a 3D printer (thanks the Minion!) - some cups have been developed!

It was a really easy development, the controller cups are the same shape as Quest 2 (they just require a slightly bigger offset due to a grippier surface finish) but are oriented slightly differently. We worked our way through a few iterations to get the orientation correct and we are golden. Quest Pro controller cups will be on the website imminently.

Pico 4

The Pico 4 was released and we have purchased (and recieved) one. We are in the process of designing both Signature and Invert cups to suit the controllers (which are not the easiest to design for). Watch this space.

Quest 2 - Slippy-Slapp Cups

What started as just a fun muck-around development has potentially turned into something that may interest people. If you are keen on this type of cup being a product please let me know!

Marksman Butt for Protube - 3D Print Files

This is not a new product however we have only just released the 3D Print Files. If you have a ProTube and would like to add on the BowkVR Marksman Butt (for direct cheekweld adjustment) these print files are for you!

Speaking of 3D Print Files - these are in the process of getting better organised and linked to build/print instructions!

Situation Reports