Cmoar Announces Cancellation of Hybrid VR HMD

Bad news for VR crowdfunding as CMOAR LTD’s CEO, Damian Boczek, announced yesterday the cancellation of their Cmoar hybrid virtual reality headset in a lengthy, somewhat somber statement posted to Kickstarter.

The post, entitled “Project Overview” is a deconstruction of the project as a whole, deeply apologetic for the end of Cmoar, one that while certainly defensive of the contributions his team and indeed Boczek himself made over the two years of the project is quite candid, exploring the mistakes that were made, laying much of the blame on himself.

So what exactly went wrong?

CMOAR were the creators of what looked to be a modular midrange HMD solution, complete with integrated tracking, phone (or separate screen) integration, motion controls, augmented reality support, high quality lenses and support for pretty much every platform under the sun. With a staggering feature list and an ambitious 9 month development prediction it seemed too good to be true, and it very much was.

The first warning sign was how much work was still going into research and development, a significant cost factor, costing the project precious money, precious time, and ultimately leading to changes and compromises which cost even more. The lack of active hunting for additional capital at the time when VR was a big thing with venture capitalism trying to get a share of what Facebook bought into was definitely a misstep, as $120,000 would not be enough for a protractive research and development cycle. Additionally, once trouble was brewing, perhaps it would have been prudent to provide some sort of product using that technology as fast as possible, as Oculus did with the Gear VR whilst the Rift was stuck in development.

Cmoar also seemed to be a classic victim of scale creep; their modular design, multiple modes for add-on screens, dedicated iPhone 6 Support, 2D and 3D lenses, Steam connectivity that appeared to not just use an existing application like VRidge or RiftCat but some kind of proprietary solution, console support, motion controls, a motion suit and a number of other ideas. When preparing a crowdfunding campaign, it can be very easy to get carried away and overpromise. This isn’t exactly a new thing for Kickstarter, with even the Oculus Rift falling victim to widespread scale creep which caused the device to ship several years behind schedule.

Lessons to be learned

To Boczek and CMOAR LTD’s credit, it does appear that they have tried to keep in contact with backers over the two years, as further delays and funding issues began to appear. Many of the updates contain an apologetic tone, offering updates while at the same time apologising for the numerous delays. Even despite long delays and refunds already being provided to early backers, Boczek did to the very last try and drum up additional funding and keep work going on the system.

In spite of all that has happened, it is a shame Cmoar didn’t get a chance to finalise what looked to be an interesting product with an ethos of being completely all-in-one and just as much a tragedy that not one person seemed to benefit in the end, with backers, developers and Boczek according to his claims being out of pocket at the end. In the end Cmoar is another lesson to be learned by crowdfunded projects that failing to prepare is preparing to fail. The hope remains that the tragic end of Cmoar does not deter people from pledging to other Kickstarters.