Tag: HTC Vive

Following the end of the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier in January, HTC announced that their Vive VR system will be available for pre-order from February 29th, with shipping to commence in April.

The Vive demonstrated at CES was the “2nd generation” Vive Pre, which boasted significant improvements over the first development unit in terms of headset sized, general ergonomics, fit, comfort and capabilities. In particular the unit boasts a front-mounted pass through camera, (which HTC has sometimes referred to as the “chaperone system”), and a correction tool to present a clearer view of the VR environment on the headset screens.

The pass through camera allows the user to see an overlay of the room around them projected into their virtual view. This fades in if they approach a physical object (e.g. a wall or desk, etc.), or can be manually triggered via the hand controllers. While some have critiqued it as “breaking” the VR experience, others have seen it as a useful means for a Vive user to re-orient themselves within their physical space.

“Mura correction” (“mura” being a Japanese term meaning “unevenness” or “lack of uniformity”) removes the inconsistent brightness levels between one pixel and the next on earlier Vive headsets, giving rise to what HTC called a “linen like quality” to VR scenes. The result is a far more uniform and cleaner image, as shown in the exaggerated image below, courtesy of Road to VR.

The pre-order price for the Vive has yet to be confirmed, but it is anticipated it will be somewhat more that the Oculus Rift. Even allowing for the  fact the price will include hand controllers and room sensors, this leaves HTC with a potentially awkward situation.

While the US $599 (+ tax and shipping) for the Rift took many by surprise, the take-up among early adopters has been positive; so much so that orders are now being backdated to July 2016. That’s good for Oculus VR – but it also means HTC could find the market for early adopters considerably smaller given so many have pre-ordered the Rift; and if the Vive does come in at a significantly higher price, they could find those who have held by from placing an order with Oculus VR to see what HTC do offer, swinging back towards it in favour of the Vive. Nor do the problems necessarily end there.

As I recently noted, tethered VR systems could face an uphill battle in trying to reach a more general market among the populace at large when compared to the cheaper, more accessible opportunities available through mobile VR.

While the latter may limited in capability and scope in comparison to tethered rigs, they are far more affordable and accessible, dampening any interest people have in paying for the tethered rig and the necessary hardware on which to run it. Particularly given that Nvidia estimate less than 1% of computers in household use will be capable of running tethered VR systems. Thus, HTC could find themselves right out in the cold if the Vive is significantly more expensive that the Rift among the wider public who might have a system capable of supporting VR headsets and are willing to give it a go as units hit retail outlets.

HTC was also the subject of intense, if brief, speculation on Sunday, January 18th and Monday, January 19th 2016. It started when the Chinese language Commercial Times, Taiwan’s largest financial newspaper ran a story claiming HTC’s Chairwoman, Cher Wang, was considering spinning-off the fledgling VR business into a separate company.

The report was picked-up through other news outlets, and gained widespread reporting in the VR media, and saw HTC’s share price rise by 5.23%. However, on Monday, January 19th, the company issued a statement to investors, labelling the media claims as incorrect, and stating the company has no plans to split the VR business into a separate entity.

On Sunday, March 1st, HTC held a presentation on the eve of the Mobile World Congress, Barcelona. During the course of the event, they revealed a new VR headset they’re developing in partnership with Valve.

I pulled together news on the announcement from a variety of sources a few hours after it was made. Since then, more information has hit the media, the results of numerous opportunities for hands-on demonstrations. And going by the feedback, it would appear Oculus VR has some very series competition on its hands.

The big thing everyone has been pointing to as being the real secret sauce for VR is a sense of presence. With so many different systems in so many different states of development, how this will be properly achieved has perhaps been hard to judge. Some headsets are managing it in part, some third-party peripheral makers are looking at various means of providing it with room sensors, body kits, etc. However, from all the hands-on reports, it would seem that HTC are the first to nail it in one fairly straight forward package.

“With the original Oculus Rift and things like Samsung Gear VR, that sensation of really being somewhere else is present, but fleeting,” Carlos Rebato says, writing for Gizmodo. “Those can’t track your body, so as soon as you lean just slightly, the illusion is shattered. The Oculus Rift DK2 did it better, with a motion tracking camera that at least let you lean, but you were still a sort of an armless half-body. Sony’s Project Morpheus improved it further by using controllers keep track of your hands.

“But the Vive? It’s like nothing that’s ever come before.”

Gareth Beavis, over at Techradar, is equally gushing. “There’s a TV show from the early 1990s called Red Dwarf that depicted the last human (and a group of humanoids) that were lost in space in the future, desperate to get home. One of the big ways they stayed entertained was with a holographic headset that let them play in hyper real worlds, like they were living in the action sequence … I always thought that idea, that experience, would never be real.

“But with the HTC Vive I took my first steps into that world.”

Both reports – and others in a similar vein – point to the distinguishing factors that make the Vive the complete package: the laser “base station” scanners and the dedicated hand controllers. Details of both of these were rough at the time of HTC’s announcement, but the various hands-on demonstrations taking place at the MWC and, under the Valve banner, as the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, more information on them has filtered into the tech media.

The scanners are small, box-like objects designed to be mounted on wall at 90-degrees to one another. As noted in my original article ion the Vive, these can then scan a square area up to 4.6 metres (15ft on a side), accurately tracking multiple sensors on the headset, and the motions of the wearer’s body and recreating them within a virtual environment, allowing the wearer to move around “inside” a virtual space. To reduce the risk of collisions with physical objects, the scanner also map the location of walls and furniture, and the system fades these into the wearer’s field of view should they get too close.

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