News A new VR actor [HTC-SteamVR Vive] pre-orders 29th Feb

Exciting times indeed!

There will now be a race for both consumer lock in and control of VR content distribution, which is no doubt what forced Valve's involvement post the Facebook buyout of Oculus.

Valve has always had a strong VR research and development program, which was shared with Oculus in the early days. But Oculus is now clearly making a move to corner content, which is Valve's core busines, so the gloves are off and there is now real competition in the VR PC field.

The HTC Re Vive specs are impressive, as it boasts inside out laser positional tracking, 90hz refresh rate and a controller solution optimized for VR. There is to be a 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen for each eye, with a wider field of view than the Oculus Rift. There is to be a developer release in the spring 2015 and consumer version by the holidays 2015.

Now that the specs are out it is just a short wait until the HTC Re Vive is publicly demonstrated at the Game Developer Conference, commencing on the 2nd March 2015.

I think with Oculus it has been feature creep with the Rift plus the distraction of mobile VR with the Gear partnership.

Valve/HTC have a vested interest in getting to market so I think it will spur things along on all sides, as it is not just about hardware or demos, the real battleground will now be control of content distribution.

Valve has said the HTC access to SteamVR is not exclusive, so expect that SteamVR is likely to be middleware with a range of head mounted display options. It is not in Valve's interest to limit access to Steam games based on hardware, so likely the Rift, the OpenSource HMD and others will be able to use SteamVR should they want to.

The Vive is being demoed right now in closed sessions at the Game Developer Conference, but unfortunately there is a 2 day media embargo. So early reports are very limited, but hint at the extraordinary: http://www.genxisocialbuzz.com/index.php/hands-on-review-mwc-2015-htc-vive/

We will have a flood of detailed info in 2 days time!

Another trickle of info, the Valve tracking system is called Lighthouse and will be open to any hardware manufacturers, which is great for VR peripheral development and would simplify things for consumers: https://steamdb.info/blog/source2-announcement/

The Valve Vive media embargo is over.

While the early user reviews still lack some technical detail like field of the view, they are a glowing endorsement of the the HMD, full room tracking, controllers and demoed experiences and tools:

http://www.cnet.com/news/watch-out-oculus-htc-vives-vr-experience-is-astonishing/

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9048/testing-the-htc-re-vive-with-steam-vr-better-than-oculus

http://gizmodo.com/htc-vive-virtual-reality-so-damn-real-that-i-cant-even-1689396093

With a confirmed developer and consumer release this year, and nothing similar from Oculus, the Valve Vive is well positioned to stake out a strong claim as the lead VR contender, with a gaming related focus. Now if we can just get motion offset with the Vive I would be ecstatic!

There are only perceptual reports so far but at best the initial FOV is likely to be 100-110: http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/4/8148265/htc-vive-vr-valve-hands-on-impressions

I suspect cost is the biggest limiting factor on FOV at the moment, the tech just gets too expensive past the 110 range until we have next gen screens.

A good Vive video review...lots of cables in the dev version:

This is the first really credible Vive review by people who really know their stuff, starting at around 17:15.

The main focus is Lighthouse, the 3D tracking system. I have to say I think it should be trivial to have Lighthouse accurately track our motion rigs, which means motion cancellation would be simple (fingers crossed):

A further promising Valve claim, the ellimination of VR sickness: http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/5/8153101/valve-boss-gabe-newell-says-noone-gets-sick-using-vive-vr