Is ZapBox print-at-home PDF available to everyone?

Hi,

I’ve used Zappar on a couple of projects recently and I loved it! I’m keen to try out ZapBox, but I missed the Kickstarter campaign. On the campaign page it says there’s a PDF of the controllers and markers for people to use during the beta phase, is this publically available? Or can someone upload their copy for me to play around with until ZapBox goes on sale to the general public?

Thanks,
Tim

Hi Tim,

The print-at-home PDFs were part of the Developer Bundle, which was part of a higher pledge level on Kickstarter. To respect those backers who paid extra for the Developer Bundle, we’re not going to release them publicly, at least in the short term.

You can get hold of a ZapBox pretty quickly if you “Pre-Order” now; if you’re in the UK or Mainland Europe it should be with you in under a month.

This is bull****. Why can’t you just print out the f’ING markers because they’re just paper? Makes me think you guys are all a scam…LOL

Hi @tshowers1240,

I’ve edited your response to remove expletives, as our community guidelines encourage constructive conversations without profanity.

Thanks for your understanding,
Daniel

Hi @tshowers1240

It’s quite common for board games on Kickstarter to offer print-at-home files at higher pledge levels. This gives the opportunity for backers to play the game before the rewards are delivered. However those projects don’t just publicly release those downloadable files afterwards - both out of respect to the backers who pledged additional campaign funds to get them, and because the product does have value beyond just the manufacturing cost.

If you think about it most board games are really just simple pieces that could be printed at home, but I doubt you’d have much success just emailing a board game company saying “come on guys, it’s just printed stuff, just give me the files for free”.

By the way the actual ZapBox world markers are nicely printed with a matte foil finish on dense corrugated cardboard, rather than just being printed on paper. The controllers also feature triggers which are not part of the print-at-home kit delivered as part of the Developer Bundle. On top of that you get a high-quality Google Cardboard headset, and the fish-eye lens adapter that offers a wider field of view for the camera and hence more immersion and better tracking.

We think $30 is a very reasonable price for that, and looking at the comments on the Kickstarter page it seems the backers who are receiving their kits now generally agree, despite the still-early state of the ZapBox app.

We have never claimed that ZapBox would be available to print-at-home for free so I fail to see how any accusation of it being a scam could possibly be justified.

Longer-term we haven’t ruled out the possibility of making a free print-at-home version available but no final decisions have been made and certainly it’s unlikely to happen in the next couple of months.

Backer here, I opted for the digital files myself. I don’t think you’d need to make them downloadable for free, but why not just offer them as a paid digital download? Seems like a pity if someone originally wanted to just jump aboard the Kickstarter without a deep commitment, but then found themselves wanting to experiment more with additional position trackers… and are unable to do so even if willing to pay for them.

Hi Niclas,

Fair points, but I don’t think right now there’s a lot of people in that category - KS backers already had the opportunity to include the developer bundle into their pledge with a paid add-on in their BackerKit survey.

My concern with a paid download is that anyone who doesn’t have ZapBox already wouldn’t really get the full experience - without the fish-eye adapter the FOV is quite limiting, and the ZapBox app currently hardcodes the rendering parameters for the ZapBox headset. I wouldn’t feel that comfortable charging for that; and likewise we don’t want to give it away for free right now for the reasons mentioned previously.

Any update on the availability on the print out PDF files?

Nothing to announce yet on the PDF files, we are considering what to do about that as part of the full v2 rollout around October.

cool thanks!

I was looking at somethings and it looks like they took out the demo Z controllers in the last update.

Steve

I found it on the faq for zapbox on the zappar website.

That looks like the demo Z controllers they set out to us from Kickstarters.
I don’t think we where to share them. @simon??

Steve

Thanks for the mention Steve, and sorry I forgot to update this thread earlier.

As the quality of the ZapBox experience on android depends on some device-specific details we took the decision to make it available to everyone, so that android users who don’t have a specifically supported device are able to “try before they buy”.

The .zpt file in the forum post on using the triggers in Studio includes these “Z” controllers too alongside the other four sets - I think that one should still work with the print-at-home kits.

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