Walker Industries’ OPEN, REPAIRABLE VR headset is now LIVE on Kickstarter, and the EARLY numbers are SMALL. As of about 12:25 p.m. ET on October 19, the campaign for the Vector Gear and its CHEAPER sibling, the Andromeda, showed $12,795 pledged by 17 backers, according to Kickstarter’s OWN project stats. That is roughly 8.5% of a $150,000 ALL-OR-NOTHING goal, about TWO days into a 60-day run.
The TIMING is not an accident. The pitch LANDS in the same week the SteamVR community has been DIGESTING Valve’s decision to RETIRE the Index, and HTC’s statement that a base station exit is “unlikely at this time.” The Vector Gear needs NO base stations AT ALL. Walker Industries SAYS its IN-HOUSE AstroSLAM tracker and a SteamVR driver called MilkyWay ALREADY make the headset and controllers appear as ORDINARY tracked devices.
What $980 and $650 Are Supposed to Buy
The official spec page lists the FLAGSHIP Vector Gear at $980 with:
- Dual 2160 × 2160 TFT LCD panels at 90 Hz, behind “pseudo-pancake” dual combined Fresnel optics, with AUTOMATIC IPD.
- A Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 with 8 GB of RAM, a Windows-on-Arm LAPTOP chip, paired with an RK3588S co-processor and its OWN 8 GB for SLAM, face tracking and wireless PC VR.
- Two monochrome SLAM cameras, two global-shutter colour passthrough cameras, two eye-tracking cameras and one mouth-tracking camera.
- An 85 Wh Amprius silicon battery, USB-C PD charging and a 500 GB or 1 TB NVMe SSD.
- YuukOS, an Arch-based XR distribution, running the XRUIOS spatial layer plus FEX x86 emulation and Proton compatibility.
The Andromeda, billed as “Vector Gear Lite,” is a PC VR-FOCUSED design priced at $650 with 1600 × 1600 LCD panels or $1,250 with 2560 × 2560 pancake OLED panels. BOTH headsets ship with the SAME controller, tracked inside-out by its OWN RK3576 chip, in a layout the company describes as Steam Frame-based.
A Spec Sheet Still Full of “Planned” and “In Progress”
Read the FINE PRINT and much of the headline feature list is NOT FINAL. The company’s OWN page tags foveated rendering, an optional Wi-Fi 6E streaming adapter and cartridge software support as PLANNED. Its M-DAS glove system and the Andromeda’s 7+ hour battery life are marked IN PROGRESS. Console EMULATION depends on an iiSU partnership that is STILL “under discussion.” A footer WARNS that the specifications “describe the current development target and may change before manufacture.”
The NUMBERS have ALREADY moved. In a February update, founder WalkerDev SAID the head strap should hold “around 120WH.” An August post put the Vector Gear at 90Wh, said the Andromeda had MANUAL IPD adjustment, and estimated the high-resolution Andromeda at “around $1.1k.” TODAY’S page lists 85 Wh, AUTOMATIC IPD on BOTH headsets and $1,250 for the OLED model. The same August post said the OLED Andromeda has “the same display limits as the BSB1,” and The Ghost Howls’ weekly roundup quotes those limits as 1920 × 1920 at 90 Hz upscaled, or 2560 × 2560 at 75 Hz.
Where the $150,000 Goes
Walker Industries is UNUSUALLY candid about the STAGE it is AT. The campaign page says the money funds a paid 60-person face-tracking data collection event, OUTSIDE verification of its motherboards “for function and for safety,” MORE prototypes, back pay for its team, and UPFRONT manufacturing so backers receive a FINISHED headset rather than a kit. A photo caption on the page describes the board that “has to pass outside verification before any of this gets manufactured.” In other words, the CORE electronics have NOT yet cleared INDEPENDENT testing.
The founder’s note says the work so far was financed by “a college student’s day job, financial aid returns and competition winnings,” and that the company has NO executives and NO venture investors. On OPENNESS, the promise is STAGED: hardware and software are “either source-available or fully open source,” with more of the ecosystem opened AFTER release. Some code is PUBLIC now, including the XRUIOS.Barebones repository on GitHub.
The Math From Here
Kickstarter’s stats show the project went live at about 3:30 p.m. ET on October 17, LATER than the 2 p.m. launch the company advertised. A 60-DAY run puts the DEADLINE around December 16. To close the remaining $137,205, the campaign NEEDS roughly $2,370 a day, or about 140 more backers at the $980 Vector Gear price. The average pledge so far is about $753, which suggests most early backers are BUYING HARDWARE rather than tipping. The Ghost Howls reports that the campaign TARGETS May 2027 shipping. As the campaign page itself notes, rewards are NOT GUARANTEED on Kickstarter.
Walker Industries announced the launch on X, adding a 105° field-of-view claim that does NOT appear on its spec page:
Metaverse Watcher’s Take
The Vector Gear speaks DIRECTLY to a REAL gap: PC VR enthusiasts who want an OPEN, MODDABLE headset that does NOT depend on Lighthouse hardware Valve NO LONGER makes. But this is a PRE-VERIFICATION prototype with a MOVING spec sheet, a $150,000 goal that is SMALL for CUSTOM VR hardware, and a long list of features STILL marked planned. The FIRST milestones to WATCH are the outside board verification and whether the SHIPPING spec holds STEADY through December.
Sources: Kickstarter campaign; vectorgear.xyz; The Ghost Howls; WalkerDev on Reddit (February, August).