VIVE - HTC and VALVE join forces

[Mr_SquarePeg]

- YouTube

Imagine standing on the bridge of a starship rocketing across the galaxy, or strolling through the streets of ancient Rome, or shrinking down to subatomic size and watching molecules collide. Now Re-imagine.

HTC’s Vive headset, powered by SteamVR, pulls those virtual worlds off your computer screen and into your home. You’ll experience sights and sounds vivid and lifelike enough to transport you to another place, another time—whole new realities with limitless possibilities.

Valve’s SteamVR headset has been blown wide open, ahead of its appearance at the Game Developers Conference next week. It’s named Vive, HTC are making it (yes, HTC), and it boasts two 1200x1080 displays that refresh at 90 frames per second. This, according to HTC, allows the device to “[fill] your field of vision in all directions, eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies”.

So yes, turns out Valve are collaborating with HTC on the headset, which also boasts a “gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor”, along with something called the ‘Steam VR base station’ that will allow you to control your avatar’s movement by physically walking around your room, “in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet”. HTC-made wireless game controllers will be available for more complex interactions that don’t rely on your feet.

The HTC Vive will be supported by game developers including fishing sim makers Dovetail Games, but also by Google, HBO, Lionsgate, and places like the National Palace Museum. The consumer version is planned for release in 2015 (yep, this year), and there will doubtless be many more details at GDC in a few days’ time. In the meantime, here’s a brief video showing a bunch of nonsense and a dude taking the goggles off:

• PC Gamer

Expect more from GDC 2015

[anonymous_user_138c2332]

Mark Zuckerberg is gonna get upset lol

[Mr_SquarePeg]

@Errvald;232888

Mark Zuckerberg is gonna get upset lol

Very much so. Especially since the Valve VR headset has been in development allot longer and is ahead of oculus in various ways. At least according to what was released publicly by valve.

[andre.breves]

Any word about UE4 being compatible with HTC Vive/Steam VR?

[acatalept]

**** I need a better video card… again.

@andre.breves;232938

Any word about UE4 being compatible with HTC Vive/Steam VR?

I can only assume Epic know about these things well before they’re allowed to talk to us about it… even with the open GitHub repo there’s no reason they couldn’t already be working on a private branch parallel to the public one, to be merged after NDA lifts.

Here’s hoping Valve/HTC make dev kits as easily available as Oculus have: a few hundred dollars (vs the astronomically inflated price of console dev kits), and purchasable by anyone (not just studios etc).

[anonymous_user_b16017bb]

no eye tracking

[getnamo]

it seems it has some inside out depth tracking which would solve a lot of things including potentially wide fov input.

Very interested to see it in action. I assume there is a UE4 integration waiting to be revealed ?

[Sitrec]

Great to see a potential competitor to Oculus, should speed things up in VR development.

[Ben_Cykyria]

I hope this moves VR up in Epic’s priority list

[NanoMind]

I was able to try this today. First time i felt presence. Very cool & clever system.
Looking forward to developing for this HMD in UE4.

[anonymous_user_138c2332]

I was able to try this today. First time i felt presence. Very cool & clever system.
Looking forward to developing for this HMD in UE4.

Pros and Cons?

[NanoMind]

Pros:
LightHouse system just worked; very detailed tracking of both HMD and Controllers
Somehow I did not notice screen-door effect; although I was aware that the resolution was still (relatively) low
First time my body reacted natural; I really had to “decide” to walk through a table
I tried other VR systems; I don’t get sick fast. But this was just much better; no rush to get the system off
It showed me; you do not need bleeding edge graphics; your brain tells you (in this case) this is an acceptable world
Controllers worked very good
Did not see flicker of screens or other hints that the frame-rate dropped

cons:
The weight should come down; but did not really bother me during play
Resolution should go up for reading and up close viewing
Controllers not wireless yet
Field of View (this is the big one for me)

I have been waiting for VR for a very long time
…and in the last year testing the oculus and gear I thought; ok we are getting there…one day.
But after this demo; I am more confident it will happen much faster.
“…this is the iphone 1 …and now we are off to the races”

[Mr_SquarePeg]

HTC VIVE Developer Edition is going to be free.

Dev kits for Valve's first SteamVR headset, the HTC Vive, to be free for...

[Slayemin]

BTW, Tim Sweeny confirmed in another post that Epic has been working with Valve and HTC to have UE4 integration right when the Vive Dev kits launch this spring.

[kindfox]

@Slayemin;262589

BTW, Tim Sweeny confirmed in another post that Epic has been working with Valve and HTC to have UE4 integration right when the Vive Dev kits launch this spring.

could you share a link of the announcement?

[Slayemin]

@kindfox;263478

could you share a link of the announcement?

Yep! Here you go.

@Tim Sweeney;234163

The UE4 VR team has been working closely with Valve, and it’s up and running very well on the hardware. Expect the code to be available at an appropriate time relative to the hardware launch!

[MC_Stryker]

@Slayemin;264179

Yep! Here you go.

@Tim Sweeney

The UE4 VR team has been working closely with Valve, and it’s up and running very well on the hardware. Expect the code to be available at an appropriate time relative to the hardware launch!

This is amazing!

[SaviorNT]

My fear this HMD is that they will be letting major publishers access to the dev kit. These studios will then only be able to create “shorts”, which will not sell the headset.

Even though it is releasing this year, we won’t see major games for it for another 2 years, depending on ease of implementation.

[_cDub]

Any idea of where to sign up for the chance for one of these free dev versions? I’d love to walk naturally around some of my environments. I have a nice and open basement to try it with too.

[Oul]

They’re probably only sending out free dev kits to well-known developers they can trust to crank out VR content.