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HTC Vive Goes Wireless (uploadvr.com)
One of the biggest cons with premium virtual-reality headsets is the fact that they need to be tethered to a powerful gaming PC or game console via annoying wires. In early September, HTC announced it was working on a method to remove the wires, and now their solution is officially available via a $220 add-on kit. UploadVR reports: HTC today announced a tether-less VR upgrade kit for its SteamVR device, made by TPCAST, one of the first of 33 companies to join the Vive X Accelerator. Speaking to UploadVR in a phone interview, [China Regional President of Vive at HTC Alvin W. Graylin] said that the experience would "greatly improve" the overall Vive experience, with no "noticeable difference" for factors like latency. The product will be available to pre-order with a standard battery, though Graylin said that a bigger battery will be sold eventually. We're told the standard battery can deliver around one and a half hours of power. The bigger battery would rest in a user's pocket. HTC expects the device to be adopted by "avid" Vive users, though it could also be useful for businesses. The upgrade kit will be available to pre-order on Vive's Chinese website "in limited quantity" for 1,499 RMB ($220.33). The kit is said to ship starting in Q1 2017. According to HTC, pre-orders go live at 7 a.m. Pacific on Friday. Graylin said anyone could order the unit from there and pay for shipping. According to HTC, in a press release, "Order fulfillment will be prioritized to existing customers who can provide a valid Vive serial number." You can watch some wireless HTC Vive test footage here.
...and the Chinese web site wouldn't sell to people outside of China in the first place.
Other companies are working on similar products, though.
The biggest problem is that it takes a good solid 6 gigabit/sec connection to push the amount of bandwidth the Vive and other headsets need.
http://uploadvr.com/18-minute-...
I thought wires were good.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Wires are good. I'd prefer if they got rid of the "powerful gaming PC" part. A man can dream...
This comes in two versions, one where the battery pack sits on the back of your head for 1.5hrs, and another where a battery pack is clipped to a belt or put in a pocket for 5hrs.
Since there's been over a hundred thousand copies of at least one Vive game sold, you might not have a realistic grasp on market size...
They haven't figured out how to actually get the VR part of the PSVR working on the PC. At the moment, it's just a non-VR HMD when connected to a PC.
Obviously wireless adds latency, that's why it took this long to come out on the market, they had to find a way around the latency issues.
Most of the wireless VR method use their own low-latency wireless system instead of existing wireless technologies like wifi or bluetooth
Hopefully the connection to the battery pack is just a standard USB or USB-C connector, so we can use standard external phone batteries.
I think you are confusing the vive with the rift, Facebook has nothing to do with the vive.
As far as HTC taking away rights, they really don't care what you do with it, and Valve just cares about selling games.
What usually makes lag is compression.
Uncompressed wireless, even at higher resolutions, doesn't have to be laggy. The latency of a straight-through digital signal is vanishingly small in this context.
The real problem is getting access to enough bandwidth to let it work. Wi-Fi certainly won't work with uncompressed 90 Hz VR signals. Getting FCC permission for very short range (less than 5 meters with no obstacles in the way), very high bandwidth connections is the real issue.
I'll be all over that. The wires quickly become a trip hazard if you start moving around much at all. A couple of games for the thing require more agility than the wires allow. This does mean I'll have to move the coffee table that's just outside the play area, though, or someone's going to break a kneecap.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There are (at least) four different projects with full VR when connected to a PC, all of them on Github, since ~2 weeks back.