HTC’s headset has a few things different from their competition’s headsets; such as it’s speedy consumer release, “room-scale VR”, and a tracking system that works well out of the box. In my last episode we pointed out some of the issues Valve’s Vive has due to their unique approach. Today we look at how they're dealing with those issues, and some of the things Valve is doing well.
Valve has now opened signups for ordering their developer edition of the Vive for free. Yes, they’re free and will begin shipping in the spring. But not just anyone can get one. Valve will also be selecting the companies to get the Vive. Their game knowledge will come in handy there allowing them to pick the VR projects that have project launch dates that fit for them, and projects they like.
And now that it’s available to developers free of charge, Valve will get a line up of quality games; despite their abrupt consumer release at the end of this year. This differs from Oculus who has two development kits which cost around $300, but have been out for two years to accumulate content.
So what will developers be getting? well the Vive developer edition comes with two wand controllers for interacting with your environments, and two base stations to track your HMD and Controllers in spaces up to 15 by 15 feet. It isn’t necessary to have it this large though, because the lighthouse VR system works to fit to your space. This way you can set it to the largest open block in your room, without having to move any furniture around. The base stations are using advanced laser tech to track you with extreme accuracy.
The controllers use Valve’s new trackpads seen on their steam controllers. They have triggers for picking stuff up, and interacting with things i.e. pushing buttons, throwing objects. And are tracked in 3D space, combining multiple controller aspects to create a versatile set of input options for developers.
The vive utilizes a room scale vr experience which allows the player to controller their character via real world movements. This sense of immersion is so compelling that the brain tells the player that objects in the game are real and prevent the player from walking through them.
If a player tries to walk out of their preset lighthouse tracking space, then an in-game mesh will appear telling the player they're about to lose tracking or they’ll bump into a real world object upon passing through the mesh.
Without any restrictions though there will be people who get motion sick depending on the experience, but in return Valve gets a vastly larger number of experiences and demos for their headset.
The Vive is going to deliver a premium experience. Valve has been clear on this from the beginning. It means there will be a price to pay, but that price isn’t for nothing. With a high end 90hrtz refresh rate and two 1080 by 1200 pixel screens you get a clearer smoother experience versus their competition, and being one of the first consumer VR releases for head mounted displays, quality is what’s going to matter.
The other problem with a premium experience is that VR is ready to be tracking you and rendering lots of high quality frames a second, although the hardware isn’t. Computers aren't yet made for VR, and so it cost a lot to have games run this nicely in high quality.
It won’t be long before we do start seeing PC’s optimized for virtual reality. So as a VR community were going to have to keep pushing hardware so that a premium VR experience doesn’t require a premium PC.
