I know there is a V2 of the Hawaii Five-Oh wings (like, LEI wings) coming out soon. I doubt there’d be a V2 of the pocket wing so soon - the first big batch of them just went out like 6 weeks ago.
If you already knew how to foil pretty well, perhaps you could skip winging and get straight into the parawing, although it’s hardly automatic steering - it’s like a wing but on a time delay. I think getting directly into parawinging with no foiling experience would be pretty tough.
They definitely go upwind, but there’s a lot of power to manage in them and just holding on one-handed is exhausting, it’s not as easy as an LEI wing. I watched a buddy yesterday zipping all over the place - he put in at the point at the Hatch, rode down to lower hatch, back up, he was very mobile. He even tacked the thing. He’s crazy talented in general, but it shows it’s possible.
Lots of folks here in the gorge experimenting with both right now. I didn’t personally have success with the pocket wings but many are. People are playing with parawings and figuring out the best combo of parawing-size and board-size to enable upwind travel, how to effectively use a harness, etc. Fun times!