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HTC Vive Is $799, Ships From April 1st (arstechnica.com)
New submitter mobby_6kl writes: The HTC Vive VR headset, developed in partnership with Valve, has been announced ahead of schedule today to cost $799, with pre-orders opening on February 29th and shipping from April 1st. The Vive will ship with two games that take advantage of the system's two motion controllers and "room scale" capabilities, Job Simulator and Fantastic Contraption. The HTC Vive is $200 more expensive than its main competitor, Oculus Rift, but does include the two motion controllers as well as Bluetooth for smartphone connectivity. However, detailed specifications for either system are not yet known. When it's available for pre-order, it will launch in no less than 24 different markets on that day including the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Taiwan, China, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.
Sounds like an April Fool's joke. It's a bit too early in the year for April Fool's jokes.
but not the Viva, and not the Rift either. Both the of them come with a far too narrow field-of-view. I want/need to be able to see what's going on behind myself, and I cannot do so by turning only my head, but need to turn my eyes, too. Hoping for the StarVR (regardless of price point).
I was pleasantly surprised, actually.
I thought this would be a slashvertisement for a smartphone when I saw it in my RSS feed.
Discussion of new VR gear is a little bit different. Maybe once VR is a common thing on the market I'll agree this is is just an ad, but for right now it's still News for Nerds.
If you pay him he will post your ad too. So, um, what is the problem? At least it's not about some political crap. See this thing has circuits and software and buttons on it with a display. I don't know too many nerdy types who WOULDN'T want to discuss it. Maybe you should try harder next time.
Come with 2 VR controllers, which isn't enough for that price. If it came with 2 VH Headsets, then it would be a nice price but also overkill.
Nope, I recall the first flat screen TVs at big box stores were $16,000.
This is pretty cheap for a startup. Once enough buy them, then companies will begin investing in volume production to bring the price down.
I question the form factor, other than playing a game, I can't see wearing that anywhere for any reason - but, I could be wrong.
I'll take two - one to keep for Sundays.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Not to mention the excellent backpack (TM) airflow.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Just an ad? JUST an ad? It can be yours for only 4 EASY PAYMENTS of $199!
Exactly. What nerd isn't interested in virtual-reality? A 'nerd' who was fond of the idea before it was all over the press? There's another name for that.
I think the worst case is that VR is only interesting for gamers. Even then, VR will "take off" and not fade away. Some gamers always seem to have money available and will always upgrade to the latest and greatest.
$799 is too much for the worst headache of my life. I can last about 5 minutes in VR and then I need to lie down.
I'm a stick with my Acer Predator XB270HU,
You are welcome on my lawn.
Submitter here. I am extremely disturbed by all the accusations that this is a paid advertisement. Because I have not yet received my cut.
Who do I talk to in order to escalate this issue?!?
My M7700 failed to hibernate when I put it in the bag once ... after a two hour train journey the outside of the bag was almost too hot to touch; you could have fried an egg on the computer. I'm amazed that it - and the Eurotunnel - survived intact and are both going strong to this day.
The weight of the bloody thing could have caused it to derail.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I appreciate that HTC is selling a complete VR product, including hand controls.
They're making the right decision. If they deliver a solid experience for $800, they'll succeed as a high-end toy, and the price will eventually drop.
By contrast, Oculus reached a lower price by leaving out hand controls. That was a mistake. A complete VR kit for $800 is a better proposition than an incomplete kit for $600.
At $799, it is just too expensive for mainstream adoption.
That's true. But new product categories always go through this. If a product catches on, economies of scale will drive the price down.
Its not that HTC is gouging early adopters; this is just how mass production works. The per-unit cost is high at first, and drops as the market grows.
For everything in this package and the technology involved, I'm blown away by this price point. My original guess was that the HTC Vive was going to cost $1000 at launch. The lighthouses are a particularly complicated and likely expensive piece of hardware. From what I could gather from releases, they are using similar Laser mapping technology as can be seen on the Google Car. Because of this I was suspecting each lighthouse to cost at least $100-150 each.
If anything, this makes Oculus look really bad. The Rift is launching with a controller, built in headphones, a basic IR tracker (not laser), the HMD, and a dinky remote. The CV1 isn't even going to have the Touch controllers for a better experience included and those have to be purchased separately which I'm expecting to cost in the range of $50-100 which puts the Rift CV1 at a price around $700.
If we're talking about who we think might come out on top though. I think the Touch controllers on the Oculus are a better overall form factor and will fit better with the kind of games that benefit from a VR experience. The Vive controllers just seem about as clunky as the Playstation Move controllers. I think the HMD are probably going to be fairly similar in quality but I have a sinking suspicion that the Oculus might turn out better simply because of how much time they've put into the process. In terms of games, I think the Vive has a chance to come out way ahead since they have Valve's backing and because SteamVR is integrated right into Steam. Steam is going to provide a huge platform for indie devs looking to build experiences for VR. The big worry for anyone looking at getting the Oculus though will be whether Valve makes it a point to make sure the SteamVR releases are always up to date with the Oculus SDK or not. If they aren't, then the Vive will always be ahead of the Oculus and that's going to lock a lot of people out of potential games. The best example to date is Elite: Dangerous, which in terms of most up to date VR versions, only works on SteamVR with Frontier stating that they plan to support V1.0 of Oculus sometime in the future.
Taking all of this into consideration, I think overall Oculus stands the best chance of claiming VR on the PC. The Vive can do more I think, but the "more" that it can do seems almost "gimmicky" and not in tune with how I think most games will probably use VR (ie: sitting down). If we can get access to the camera on the Vive though, there are some potentially huge AR applications that the Vive can tap into that the Oculus just can't. All of the worries about the drivers/SDK will probably clear up after a year or two, and the Oculus has more room to come down in their price point as time goes on compared to the Vive which is probably tied down by the complicated lighthouse units.
100% useless for video only control. You are NOT getting 720P video at a decent frame rate over bluetooth.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Husband and I will both be pre-ordering one the very second pre-orders start. We've already reconfigured our entire living room in anticipation!
Yes. A killing of $0 since this was not a paid submission.
half = 1/2, inverse is 2
2^3 = 8
$799 is almost $800, therefore Half Life 3 is coming.
If Valve releases HL3 with support for Vive, it's going to make VR mainstream. HL2 helped Steam, HL3 would help VR.
The original iPhone was $599 in 2007. That's $698 adjusted for inflation. How would you say the smart phone market is doing these days? Did you know you can buy a smart phone now for under $100?
There are hoardes of first adopters for this product, and I think everyone knows that the price will come down over time. You can probably expect to see DK2 quality devices out of China starting in 2017, 2018 at the latest. I don't think anyone expects the price to stay static at over $500. The first sub-$400 headset will probably sell quite well.```
moox. for a new generation.
Does somebody know if it will have SteamOS/Linux support from day 1? There is no mention of this on the site (or i couldn't find it).
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
"But VR is just around the corner now!" said a guy in 1993.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Show me a laptop with a GTX970.
Or did you mean the laptop version the GTX970m? Because you are looking at major performance differences between the 2.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Just so you know, there are no laptop versions of video cards that can push enough pixels to make VR work. Even Nvidia's flagship GTX980m cannot give you the 1680x1512 per eye at 90 fps needed for the Vive. You need to have a desktop card. And WHILE there are a couple of "laptops" on the market that can have a full desktop card, I would seriously hesitate to call them portable, and you are certainly not going to be running them on battery.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Since when is HTC a startup? Since when is Valve a startup?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Yet the price of the iPhone has stayed the same since day one, around $600.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
April first huh?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
I'm probably in the majority of the tech minority -- somewhat curious about VR and never tried any system. My impression from the reviews at Ars and elsewhere is that Valve has figured out the use mode best. If I had the option to *try* just one, I'd try the HTC vive.
That said I don't care much about the job simulator, but some sort of SimUniverse where you sit in the lab and experiment with different fundamental processes based on the technology pioneered by Aperture Sciences... that might be worh $800.