The Massless VR Pen is ready for pre-order. This stylus is designed to bridge the gap between professional designers and their digital work. This pen will bring precision, exactness, and a new sense of power to your virtual designs and ideas. Massless is planning on shipping the pen to consumers in the fourth quarter of 2019.
The Massless Pen is an input device that is tracked by a camera that ships with the products, and can interact with the VR headset of your choice. Once you understand how the pen works with your headset, it is sure to bring new ways to create interactive content with your VR and 3D artwork, designs, and even short films. The company says that this product will be different than the prototype that many demoed last year, and will still be in early access when it ships this year. With all of that being said, it seems like the pen is very close to being a finished product, but they want to see how the public will use it and respond to the software.
If you are interested in this product, it will be smart to place a pre-order as quickly as possible. Massless is accepting applications with a $50 deposit of the total price of $500. That may seem like a lot, but the final price of this pen and package will be $1,000 after the early access tag is removed. Inside of the package you will receive the Massless Pen, tracking camera, and a free year of the Massless Studio Software. All of that for $500 right now seems like a real bargain.
Massless says that the pen will work with the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive as of right now, but you can expect compatibility with other Steam VR headsets down the road as well. When you get the pen setup with your headset, the Massless Studio Software will automatically be installed, but it won’t remain in your library for free. After your first year of this premier designing app, you will be paying $20 a month, or $200 a year for the software. If that doesn’t sound like a good deal to you, the pen will be compatible with Gravity Sketch, Medium, Quill, Tilt Brush, Maya & Blender, and even Vector Suite. Each of these softwares are unique in each way and you will have a great experience designing with the Massless pen.
The software we recommend with the pen is the Massless Studio. Massless designed this software for their own pen and it will work seamlessly with everything you are trying to do inside of your headset. This app also features real-time collaboration. This is a feature that not many VR designing softwares have right now.
“Massless Studio is built for concept sketching, with editable 3D splines. Our simple mesh generation and intuitive 3D modelling tools are perfect for automotive concept design, virtual production and architectural pre-visualisation.
Generate fly through videos and images for presentation (MP4, PNG); mark up and annotate in our Design Review Mode. Export and import in industry standard file types. (FBX, OBJ, STL, STEP)”
Above you can see the statement that Massless includes about their software. If you are buying the Massless Pen, it will pay dividends to include the software as a partner for your pen. Inside the software is the “Massless Live” function, which will allow you to stream, cast, and share your artwork all from inside of your headset. This is another feature that is exclusive to Massless at this time in the VR industry.
The battery life is going to be 12 hours, and the pen will feature a USB-C charging port. You will also have controls on the pen which are unified with the haptic feedback. The pen will also be doubling as a stylus for non-VR tablets, although the company has yet to comment on the functionality and the compatibility for this added feature.
