Valve and HTC Reveal "Vive" SteamVR Headset

An anonymous reader writes Today Valve and HTC revealed the "Vive" SteamVR headset which is designed to compete with Oculus and others, which aim for a high-end VR experience on PC. The Vive headset uses dual 1200x1080 displays at 90Hz and a "laser position sensor" to provide positional tracking (head movement through 3D space), and also includes a pair of motion input controllers. The companies say that the Vive headset will be available to developers in Spring and receive a proper consumer launch holiday 2015, though no price has been announced.

Comments

Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[jagoop]

Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

Re:Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me. The resolution is FAR FAR FAR too low. I can see every single pixel on an Oculus DK2 @ 960x1080 per eye while this is only 600x1080 per eye and higher ppi.

TBH at first I didn't notice the pixels, but once I did, it was game over, always see them...

Re:Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[3.5 stripes]

How does dual 1200 X 1080 equal that?

Re:Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just 25% higher (2400*1080 vs 1920*1080), and there is no mention here about the DPI, so for all we know, the pixels may be even bigger...

Re:Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just 25% higher (2400*1080 vs 1920*1080), and there is no mention here about the DPI, so for all we know, the pixels may be even bigger...

For a VR device, angular resolution is probably more relevant than DPI. In any case, the "low" resolution of 1200x1080 per eye was likely chosen because anything much higher than that would not allow recent games to run at the recommended 90 fps minimum frame rate on hardware that is currently affordable for the majority of people.

Re:Please take my money now Steam!!! I Want!!!

[ArsonSmith]

I have the Samsung Gear VR for my Note 4, I've spent the last few months devouring the content and showing it off to everyone I can. It really is both amazing and impossible to explain how amazing it is. If you haven't seen the current generation of VR you really are missing out.

I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully, they won't crap it up with all kinds of fancy 3D or stereoscopic viewpoints, or at least have an option to turn it off. Some of us who are blind in one eye really have a hard time dealing with some of this technology.

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[NotDrWho]

If you're blind in one eye, why would you ever buy this in the first place?

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not? The immersion is the same.

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[Cley Faye]

The head tracking, being sort of cut from outside visual noises, and the overall immersion? Stereoscopy is a very little aspect of a VR headset.

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[squiggleslash]

It's OK, due to Steam's DRM you will only be able to use one screen (left eye or right eye) at a time anyway...

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! So no one can see me watch porn.

Re:I'm a cyclops, you insensitive clod!

[ArsonSmith]

Well, I just tried my Gear VR on, closed one eye...Yep still f@#$ing amazing.

3d is only a small part of the experience. In fact I have a lot of content that isn't 3d yet still give significant experience. Event he 360 degree pictures I've taken are fun to go back to a spot and stand there how it was when I created the picture. And it's all in a 2d like being in the middle of a giant sphere.

um

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I watch Porn in VR ? or can I vPorn ?

Re: um

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel weird being the guy answering this but yes. Even on a 3DS, yes.

Nice resolution

[Melkman]

But remembering interviews with Occulus developers there is more to VR than a good resolution and tracking. Things like ridiculous low latency needed to prevent motion sickness and screen artifacts caused by rapid panning. Has Valve solved these things in record time in secret or will this be a better specs on paper but worse in practice product ? Or maybe I'm just falling for Oculus marketing: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/...

Re:Nice resolution

[The MAZZTer]

They had one guy blogging about nothing but VR stuff so you can see for yourself: http://blogs.valvesoftware.com...

Re:Nice resolution

[quintesse]

Michael Abrash relegated to "one guy blogging" ;)

And he now works for Oculus!

Re:Nice resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't Valve oculus' hi-tech friend before Facebook happened?

Re:Nice resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

The author of that blog, Michael Abrash is now the head scientist at Oculus. I'm not sure whether he is still working with Valve as well.

Re:Nice resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

>motion sickness
it's worse than these companies are letting on. most people that try a current gen VR headset will get motion sick. and not just a little queesy or "butterflies in the stomach", but full on projectile vomiting and needing to lie down for a couple of hours.

Re:Nice resolution

[Wootery]

Last updated January of last year.

Re:Nice resolution

[bigpat]

The eye/brain interface is much more nuanced than just needing a faster head tracker to make it all come together to make it comfortable, safe and compelling as a product.

Re:Nice resolution

[3.5 stripes]

Ah yes, that's why my office has plastic sheeting down everywhere..

Motion sickness happens in 3 cases.

1. You get motion sick playing FPS games on a normal monitor.. VR isn't for you
2. Crappy refresh rate on the VR screen, or high latency between physical and VR movement, both Occulus and Vive have pretty much fixed that.
3. Loss of tracking.. DK1 didn't have it, DK2 does, Vive does, but that's because they have things to occlude.

Re:Nice resolution

[dinfinity]

I've always wondered to what extent it is possible to just get used to the disconnect between your senses (which is something that will never really go away with just optical VR). I'm pretty sure that people who are at sea often don't get seasick (anymore).

Given the plasticity of the brain, it seems that it should be possible to train it to accept the disconnect in general, although you could ask yourself whether you want to go through a month or more of daily sickly training sessions, just to be able to use a(n admittedly pretty cool) piece of technology.

Any no-longer-motion-sick-VR-users in the house?

Re:Nice resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and if I recall correctly many of the solutions that Oculus came up with were a direct result of learning how Value was resolving them when they were still working together.

Re:Nice resolution

[tlhIngan]

But remembering interviews with Occulus developers there is more to VR than a good resolution and tracking. Things like ridiculous low latency needed to prevent motion sickness and screen artifacts caused by rapid panning. Has Valve solved these things in record time in secret or will this be a better specs on paper but worse in practice product ?

Or you're looking at the fact that VR is being super hyped up, and it's only a matter of time before some company comes up with a consumer product on the market. I mean, Occulus has been around for how many years now releasing devkits but no consumer hardware.

So it's leaving a huge gap in the market - which two scenarios are going to play out. Either VR is going to fizzle out because the public is so tired of seeing Occulus this, Occulus that and nothing is available to actually buy (other than what Samsung releases) that they get tired of the hype and it dies as vaporware. Or someone sees that they can make a quick buck and releases crap, and the public buys into it because Occulus has been hyping it up as the next big thing, but someone else releases a product to get first-mover advantage and satisfy pent up demand. Doesn't matter if it's crap or it makes people sick, people will see it as a Occulus competitor and assume that it'll be representative of the state of VR.

And if it makes people sick, guess what? People will think Occulus isn't all that based on what people experienced with what they could buy.

Remember, the public is going to latch onto what they can get first

Re:Nice resolution

[HornWumpus]

Raises hand.

I mostly got over motion sickness with my old VFX1. Never for Descent II though. It is about software more then anything. Up should remain up. Heli and driving sims work pretty good. Fixed wing less so. 3d shooters are OK but the devil is in the details.

In my experience the DK2 is no better then the VFX1 for motion sickness (Both working side by side). When the VFX1 shipped it was terrible, but once the VFX1 was running on a GHz processor and refreshing at 200fps, which is much faster then it's old interleaved 30Hz screen, it became OK.

The problem people working the motion sickness problem face is they are naturally being desensitized. So whatever they think will help with nausea does.

That said: I never get motion sick IRL. VR has mostly been no big issue. Two exceptions: Descent II (VFX1) and Alien Isolation (DK2, I have no explanation for why Alien Isolation is so bad, but it's very pukey. Still not hours for recovery, but 15 minute gaming limit.)

Re:Nice resolution

[ArsonSmith]

Of course we would like to have it perfect but it's well past 95% range and well past the 85% good enough range. Now the only thing mildly lacking is content. Even though that is arguable at this point as well. I sure have found enough content for my (even more limited) Gear VR to keep me occupied for the last 2 months.

Re:Nice resolution

[ArsonSmith]

You are right about the whole $h!7 or get off the pot for occulus.

That being said the GearVR is pretty f'ing amazing for a labeled not quite consumer product. Especially with the announcement of a new one for the galaxy s6 today, as well as all the new content that just showed up in my store.

Re:Nice resolution

[drinkypoo]

Fascinating, I wonder whether Descent would make me sick or not. I'm one of the people who could play it for hours at stuttering framerates without ill effect.

Re:Nice resolution

[bigpat]

I agree that VR is ready for a wider mass market. I was just responding the idea that Oculus had somehow been the one to find that secret ingredient. VR has had a lot of milestones towards becoming a mass market gaming platform and technology improvements in many areas are responsible for that. And there are plenty of opportunities still.

Re:Nice resolution

[HornWumpus]

I played descent to the end on a monitor. Descent II was disorienting and pukey as hell on the VFX1. It's 3d did work well.

Re:Nice resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be confused with "one-handed blogging"

Re:Nice resolution

[HornWumpus]

No, it's basically caused by mis-coordination between the inner ears and visual.

There is no 'fixing it', short of finding a way to stimulate the inner ears.

The best you can do is code around the problem. Keep up mostly up. Don't design too windy roads in the car sims (the hill climb in Asseto Corsa is a problem, no other courses are). etc etc

Somewhat strangely. Switching to a non-swivel chair helps. Having solid controls (e.g. G27 wheel) in your hands helps.

Re:Nice resolution

[MrNiceguy_KS]

The only time I got motions sickness from a game was in the "crashing starship" level in Jedi Knight. Played through the Descent 1 and most of 2 without trouble, though when playing, I tended to throw out any preconceived idea of "up" and "down". But in the Jedi Knight level, there was an up, there was a down, and it was constantly changing. Never got to the point of throwing up, but I did have to lay down for a bit till my head and stomach came to and agreement on up, down, and keeping my stomach contents contained.

I'm really looking forward to trying VR with a space sim - shame it's been so long since any good ones have been released. I know Freespace II has been open-sourced, so if nobody's added VR support yet, I'm sure somebody will.

*Ctrl-tab - google oculus rift freespace* Looks like it's in progress -- Holy crap, I forgot about Star Citizen! *makes mental note to dust off flight stick*

Jeez

[Daniel Hoffmann]

Whats up with that full hype marketing video? It is a announcement of a developer edition, it doesn't even have built in audio yet. Give me technical details, how does that headtracking work? Does it need a external camera like oculus? It is "really light" and allows you to "walk around in the room" so will it be (eventually) wireless? How are they managing wireless, latency and batterylife? Or is it not wireless at all?

Re:Jeez

[Shoten]

Dude, did you SEE the video? It was awesome! Never has the back of someone's head looked so incredible! HypeHypeHype! WantWantWant!

Re:Jeez

[quintesse]

If you read carefully you'll see it's more a competitor to the Rift than to GearVR. Meaning it's a stand-alone unit (no need for a mobile phone), tethered (although the controllers, whatever they will be seem to be wireless. Also, no batteries.) and need a powerful PC to get the most out of it.
The refresh rate on the displays (plural, one for each eye) is 90Hz so latency for that part at least should be really good.
Head tracking seems to use kinect-like lasers, cameras and other sensors, not much detail there yet.
But they mention something like a total of over 70 sensors.
They also mention that you can freely walk around in an area of 15x15ft (4.5x4.5m) when using something called Valve's Base Stations.

Re:Jeez

[quintesse]

Well I say "read carefull" but it turns out that http://htcvr.com/ now only says "coming soon", yesterday it showed a lot more.

Re:Jeez

[NotDrWho]

I just wonder if it will be as successful as the Steambox.

Re:Jeez

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all still there. You have to click the tiny hidden circles on the left side of the screen.

Re:Jeez

[Anonymous Coward]

damn it, no coffee, yet. The circles are on the right side of the screen.

Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course THIS version will be lacking, but we are getting there. I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years that most people have dedicated VR rooms.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[Person147]

I was already thinking about my VR room straight after reading TFA. I have considerable space in my loft for just such a venture. Bye bye extra bedroom plan - hello VR room!

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

Really? Like the dedicated "computer room" everyone had? Where have the space in the big-box office supplies was devoted to "computer furniture"? And now all they sell is office chairs?

I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years that most people have dedicated VR rooms.

And I wouldn't be surprised if all the junk is sitting by the curb in 20 years, same as those big-screen projection TVs and computer desks.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[Anonymous Coward]

"Really? Like the dedicated "computer room" everyone had?"

      Had? Many people still have offices. If they don't it's mainly for lack of space.

"And I wouldn't be surprised if all the junk is sitting by the curb in 20 years, same as those big-screen projection TVs and computer desks."

    Because they were replaced by better big screen TVs and better desks. People still watch TV. People still have desktops, and still need a place to put their monitor/keyboard/mouse and/or school work. If you're using TVs/desks as your curb junk example, products that 99% of people seem to own, then you may be a moron.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[rogoshen1]

don't always agree with ya , but yep. this is the exception =/

Hype is, and always will be, hype. People have not changed -- gadgets come and go.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

Most people don't have desktop computers any more. They have laptops, tablets, phones, but desktops? Nope.

I know of one exception - one of my neighbors. She has a computer desk and desktop - but they're piled under a ton of junk because nobody uses them. She has 3 tablets, a smartphone, and 2 laptops. When the grand-kids come over, they use the kitchen table for homework, same as we did when we were kids.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

Thank you! It's amazing how quickly that's happening. Who needs a "computer desk" for a laptop, tablet, or smartphone? And when you don't need a computer desk, that frees up that space (in many times an entire small room) for something else.

The other advantage today is that you don't take turns sitting at the computer desk. Laptops work fine at the kitchen table, and handhelds work on the couch, in bed, or wherever.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[Immerman]

"All that junk"? I'd imagine a "dedicated VR room" would mostly be an empty room free of junk you could bang in to while flailing around blindly. Maybe featuring an undersized rug/mat that gives your feet some warning when you're wandering too far from the "sweet spot" and risk punching the wall. The sort of room which would double nicely as a meditation/yoga/aerobics/etc space. (and yes, I'm sure there's a "padded room" joke in there somewhere...)

Unless you're going the omnidirectional treadmill route, but in that case you're kind of locked in place anyway, so you really only need one corner of a room that could otherwise be dedicated to less virtual pursuits (maybe a use for some of that horribly wasteful "master bedroom" space?)

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

"All that junk" could include crap like treadmills so that you can virtually exceed 15x15, fancy "jet seat" chairs with vibration, tilt, etc. And of course the vr gear.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[mooterSkooter]

the bye bye wife!

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[HornWumpus]

Current 2d treadmills are just slippery surfaces and socks.

Think about making a treadmill that lets you move in two directions. It would have to be a 3 story 'mouse ball' with only a small relatively flat part exposed on top, Mass of the ball would make the whole thing impossible, not just uneconomic.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

So just put them on the inside of a human-sized hamster ball on gimbals. And a virtual bag of Cheetos that seems to be just outside the ball to exercise your human :-)

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[HornWumpus]

Inside the ball or outside doesn't really change the problem. The ball will be too massive to move when you move your feet. You'd need to put strain gauges on the surface or in your shoes and motorize the ball to move with your feet.

You'd be better off with 'roller ball' skates or just sticking to slippery floor and socks.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

It doesn't need to be transparent, so we have a multitude of materials we can make it out of that are light. It'll feel like they're walking uphill, but the purpose of a hamster ball is to allow the little rat to get exercise while being safe from the family dog and cat. It could be marketed as a panic ball in case of an attack by zombies.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[HornWumpus]

It is a truism of engineering: Nothing scales linearly. Not even hamster balls.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

It is a truism of engineering: Nothing scales linearly. Not even hamster balls.

Never said it did. However, hamsters also don't scale linearly to the size of humans - if they did, they wouldn't be able to move.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[HornWumpus]

Name a material that you think you could make a useable human sized hamster ball out of?

One that will run on gimbals. No inflatables.

Re:Uses a 15x15 room, it's a Holodeck

[BarbaraHudson]

A 2 meter diameter sphere has a surface area of 12-1/2 meters. 6 layers of 125g fiberglass requires 10 kg of fiberglass matting and 14 kg. of resin. If it's good enough for boat hulls ... probably less effort than pushing an empty shopping cart because most carts have crappy wheels.

here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

So a company desperate to grab a toehold in an up-and-coming industry rushes a barely developed product to market, people buy it, become massively disappointed so when the other companies try and release a better and more polished device everyone brings up 'we've seen this before' and kills the market dead..

Re: here we go again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the fact that Valve has been at this longer than oculus and they freely gave oculus a lot of their tech before the whole Facebook thing. "Barely developed" is not the term is use here. This product has better specs than the current DK2. That said, Oculus already announced they would be improvement ng these specs to something similar to this. The only feature the Oculus doesn't have is the full 3d room tech.

Re:here we go again...

[BarbaraHudson]

So a company desperate to grab a toehold in an up-and-coming industry rushes a barely developed product to market, people buy it, become massively disappointed so when the other companies try and release a better and more polished device everyone brings up 'we've seen this before' and kills the market dead..

Yep, those first crappy "home computers" sure poisoned the well for everybody.

Then again, look at how many people don't use the 3d on their 3d tv.

Re:here we go again...

[Immerman]

Well, when they make an affordable TV that can do decent 3D without nauseating shutter-glasses, I'll consider it. Though in fairness a lot of the problem is content that tries to make stuff float in front of the screen, which generates horribly unsettling artifacts whenever line-of-sight from one eye extends beyond the edges of the TV. It's an awesome effect when my FOV is filled by a huge movie screen, but it just gets nauseating in my living room. I'd much rather have the TV act as a window to a seperate 3D world than have them try to comingle, badly.

vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope it's not another valve vaporware

Re:vaporware

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, steam IS water vapor.

Re:vaporware

[q4Fry]

If they say the dev kit is available this spring and the consumer version for the holidays, they are beating Oculus to a stand-alone consumer unit.

Dead in the water

[Anonymous Coward]

This is dead in the water unless they quickly find a way to add the glove-free hands tracking that Oculus is presently adding to the Rift. Oculus just bought a company that was about to make an add-on for the Rift that sits on the front of the Rift and tracks your hand/finger movements (very precisely) and mirrors them in the VR world so that you can interact with VR without any controllers or gloves.

This is a "Game Changer" that HTC/Valve are dead in the water without.

Re: Dead in the water

[Manatra]

No, the game changer is someone developing a VR headset that doesn't make its users hurl. Until then everything else is fluff. We will see if Valve managed to do that.

Re:Dead in the water

[Anonymous Coward]

Glove free tracking is buggy, laggy shit and optical tracking will never be able to handle occlusion.

Gloves or controllers until somebody comes up with a penetrating scanner. Preferably one that doesn't cause cancer.

Re:Dead in the water

[Immerman]

Really? Cool. I missed that one.

That would admittedly be truly great for some things, but if you want to swing a sword, aim a rifle left while looking over your right shoulder, or reach over the cover you're crouching behind to fire toward the approaching baddies, you're probably going to need a much larger FOV than such hardware is likely to offer cost effectively. At least for now. And it seems unlikely that you'd be able to aim a pistol precisely based on hand position (plus, it probably wouldn't feel right)

Not to mention the cumulative error issue: total error = error in hand tracking + error in head tracking. Further complicated by the fact that head position will be constantly moving, so to get any sort of precision at all your hand and head tracking would have to be perfectly synced. Doable in theory, but probably more challenging than it sounds. Still, should have afar fewer issues as an integrated component than as a 3rd-party addon.

Hmm, you know, the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. Facebook will probably be primarily targetting the casual gamer/VR social experience crowd, for which simple (for the user) hand tracking will be ideal. While the hard-core gaming crowd is going to want their precision controllers with some measure of tactile presence. Not that I wouldn't like both - give me "naked" hand tracking with holsterable controllers please!

And I suppose with a bit of cleverness that hand-tracker could portray physical environment information as well - which could be very nice for cockpit games - if I take my hand off the throttle to interact with the HUD in my space fighter, it would be nice to be able to see "it" when I reach for it again, instead of having to fumble around blind.

Re: Dead in the water

[Anonymous Coward]

DK2 doesn't make me hurl. Just aren't very many games for it or "good" controllers. I'm guessing something like a kinect v2/intel realsense/sixense will be really needed as I don't care for some combo of keyboard/mouse/joystick/console gamepad style controller/etc. Tried them all.

Have the new realsense, however the specs were changes to windows 8.1 at some point and a haswell("4th generation"). I suspect that at least #2 is bogus, and I've get to try testing #1 on my primary desktop(where my DK2 is installed) which is on win7 pro x64. No intention to "upgrade" the OS until the free win10 upgrade comes along.

Might try it out on the haswell 4800mq/780m notebook that I setup to demo the DK2, but I really don't think that will work well, but might end up trying IF it's not possible to get realsense operational under win7 or failing that linux. Desktop is an i7-3930k and IIRC there were no real additions between haswell and the 3XXX-e series and that won't be upgrade until at least skylake-e is out, 4XXX-e wasn't worth "upgrading" as it provided very little performance improvement, kind of like ivy bridge->haswell or ~5% on a good day or IOW not worth upgrading what you have unless you just have to have the latest and greatest. Haswell-e changes socket/memory -> new mobo/memory PLUS CPU at the minimum, but I'm planning a new total build and might pop for the 8 core this time as it might be worth it v. 3XXX/4XXX it was just fractionally more cache and a slight base speed bump -> virtually no perf that 3/4930k couldn't hit. OTOH the low end 5820 doesn't look bad this time around as it gets the full 6 cores v. 4 in 3/4820 and VERY gimped cache.

Intel's doing a very strange job on differentiating the enthusiast line. Prior two times the mid and top were negligibly different, this time it's the low and mid that aren't very different, so I guess that the 3/4960Xs didn't sell all that well while 3/4930k were the sweet spot. Might just end up back at the mid point again, but I'll have to wait and see what they do for skylake-e. See if they truly make the top end worth the hefty price premium(enough to buy a decent GPU).

Re:Dead in the water

[3.5 stripes]

So they could add something like the Myo... depends on how useful your hands are honestly.

https://www.thalmic.com/en/myo...

Re:Dead in the water

[q4Fry]

I am going to echo you, and add one other point: Valve claims their product lets you move in a 15' x 15' area. Whatever hand tracking system they use needs to work with you where you go in that area, and presumably also if you turn around. If NimbleVR (Oculus's acquisition) or another hand tracking solution can't do that, it wouldn't have been helpful to Valve anyway.

Re: Dead in the water

[ArsonSmith]

Done, what's the next step?

I've had zero hurling incidents in the 50 ish people that have tried my Gear VR.

Re: Dead in the water

[HornWumpus]

Try 'Alien Isolation' then get back to me. I don't know what's wrong with that one, but something is.

Seriously, the devil is in the details. I suspect you are carefully selecting software if you had no incidents of pukeyness with 50 people.

Re:Dead in the water

[Immerman]

Well, anything mounted to the helmet like the NimbleVR is going to go wherever you do, so I doubt that would be an issue.

Re: Dead in the water

[ArsonSmith]

very likely as it's with the Samsung Gear VR with Oculus software. The titles are pre-screened and required to be at least comfortable for most.

I do find it somewhat amazing that it can do what it does with my phone as the display and compute power.

Re: Dead in the water

[HornWumpus]

Your phone has much more computing power then my old 486-66 with the VooDoo 1 card.

Granting they didn't write GLQuake in Java.

"holiday 2015"

[rogoshen1]

This is just getting out of hand. Not to get into the "War on Christmas" Fox News bit.. but really guys? What "holiday" are you really talking about? =/

Re:"holiday 2015"

[Anonymous Coward]

war on chanuka

Re:"holiday 2015"

[Immerman]

Well, let's see, there's Christmas, Hanukkah, and Pancha Ganapati, among the more popular religions. And dozens more. Or we could go back to the core reason for most institutional celebrations about that time, and the only one with actual physical relevane: the winter solstice. The longest night of the year, and beginning of the return of the sun. Traditional time for all manner of celebrations of rebirth and new beginnings.

Most of what has become "the traditional Christmas celebration": santa, decorated trees, lots of lights, gifts, big meals, etc. have their roots in various pagan soltice celebrations in lands conquered by Christianity: the conquered aren't going to give up their soltice celebrations, so you'd best offer them an alternative so that they can party around your icons instead of their own. Only requires adjusting your calender a little bit...

Re:"holiday 2015"

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a war OF Christianity...

Won't freesync/gsync help out here?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like the new freesync/gsync tech would be a boon here. I never see it mentioned though so maybe it doesn't help.

I don't get it

[slashmydots]

This is like a week after they agreed to significantly help Occulus after Facebook, their #1 gaming platform competitor, bought them. I don't think they understand the concept of crush your competitors' products that compete with yours. I didn't see MS making the Zune work with itunes.

Because that's what 3D visors are these days

[Sycraft-fu]

For whatever reason, the games industry has decided that these things are amazin' and everyone has to do it. Of course nobody is doing it, I mean Occulus has a prototype out that has some pretty major issues and no release date for final hardware but that's it. Everyone else doesn't even have any hardware at all.

So of course what companies lack in deliverables they make up in hype. Talk about how damn cool their shit will be, how the world will be changed, etc, etc. Particularly since it doesn't seem any of them have a solution to any of the issues. Most of the things aren't solved by magic, but by better technology which is being developed by other companies. Things like latency/refresh are largely going to be a combination of higher speed displays and faster GPUs to drive them. Well, those will get developed I'm sure, but by Samsung or LG, not by Occulus or Valve.

Valve has also been having some problems in this area as of late. They seem to wish to become more than just "the guys who run Steam" which makes sense, because Steam is super profitable but also unstable, people could migrate to a different store en masse for various reasons. However their "no bosses" organization means that a lot of playing happens and not as much delivering. So you see hype and noise, but not necessarily final products.

The Steam box is a good example. Heard lots about that for a long time, some hype videos about their controller, and yet nothing is on the market, and there is no date when anything might happen.

Re:Because that's what 3D visors are these days

[3.5 stripes]

We have some hardware, both Valve and Occulus.. Morpheus is a nice solution as well, but it's PS4 only.

Re:Because that's what 3D visors are these days

[ArsonSmith]

What are these "major" issues with Occulus? Right now they are just refining the details. They will be on smaller and smaller incremental improvements from now on. The days of nearly everyone being sick has been whittled down to really only the small minority of people that are very susceptible, which like with 1st person shooters may never be able to be resolved. It still creates an experience that I have found nobody yet that doesn't think it's anything less than amazing.

Let's go for a walk. NOPE.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do people keep trying to force the stupid "Let's you walk around your room" nonsense?

Do you honestly know anyone that has a large room with loads of empty space to actually be able to make use of that?
Is it free from things, people and pets that you could trip on and cause yourself a potentially serious injury?
What about those wires? Are those still going to be there? Long ass wires and a room?
Gee, great idea. I remember those times of consoles being ripped off tables. Now it will be your head off your shoulders.

What an utterly pointless waste of money for a feature that you'd be lucky was used by 1000 people on the entire planet in its entire lifetime.
And that is me being generous.

Dead in the water

[7bit]

This is dead in the water unless they quickly find a way to add the glove-free hands tracking that Oculus is presently adding to the Rift. Oculus just bought a company that was about to make an add-on for the Rift that sits on the front of the Rift and tracks your hand/finger movements (very precisely) and mirrors them in the VR world so that you can interact with VR without any controllers or gloves.

This is a "Game Changer" that HTC/Valve are dead in the water without.

This was my post, I didn't have my password at work. The company Oculus bought was Nimble VR. Here are links including a video of the tech in action, it just works and has a larger FOV than the Rift:

Original Kickstarter (With VIDEO): https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
CNET Article about the Aquisition: http://www.cnet.com/news/oculu...
Oculus Blog announcement : https://www.oculus.com/blog/ni...

VR Sex

[Anonymous Coward]

This is dead in the water unless they quickly find a way to add the glove-free hands tracking that Oculus is presently adding to the Rift. Oculus just bought a company that was about to make an add-on for the Rift that sits on the front of the Rift and tracks your hand/finger movements (very precisely) and mirrors them in the VR world so that you can interact with VR without any controllers or gloves.

This is a "Game Changer" that HTC/Valve are dead in the water without.

This was my post, I didn't have my password at work. The company Oculus bought was Nimble VR. Here are links including a video of the tech in action, it just works and has a larger FOV than the Rift:

Original Kickstarter (With VIDEO): https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...
CNET Article about the Aquisition: http://www.cnet.com/news/oculu...
Oculus Blog announcement : https://www.oculus.com/blog/ni...

I wonder how well this could work for tracking "other" protrusions for use in VR Sex?

In other words

[AntiSol]

To me that headline just says "Valve announces that they're still not working on Half-Life 3".

So when is this amazing new innovation which is absolutely definitely not just me-too-ism coming? I'd appreciate if somebody would clarify the anticipated release order for SteamVR/SteamController/SteamMachine/SteamOS/SteamTrain/HL3/armageddon.

There's also that little Illegal business practices matter. Not to mention the abysmal quality of their "technical support".

So I guess my real question is "why should I care?"

Fuck Valve. I'd rather burn my money.

Re:In other words

[drinkypoo]

To me that headline just says "Valve announces that they're still not working on Half-Life 3".

To me it says that the next version of their engine is going to have support for this baked right in, so that anyone who uses Source can support it without any extra work. And that will include HL3.

Ug-ly!

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they replace the front cover with a smooth IR-transparent material, i.e.: no conical holes for the IR LEDs. That's one ugly looking VR headset.