HTC and Valve are releasing a VR headset. Vive.
Vive
$799.00
http://store.steampowered.com/app/358040/
Release Date: Apr 5, 2016
Vive is a first-of-its kind virtual reality system developed in partnership by HTC and Valve. Designed from the ground up for room-scale VR, Vive allows true-to-life interactions and immersive experiences thanks to stunning graphics, HD haptic feedback and 360˚ motion tracking.
Key features:
SteamVR Powered – Room-scale experiences, absolute tracking, chaperone guidance and everything you love about Steam, now in VR.
Room-scale – Two base stations enable 360˚ room-scale motion tracking let you roam around freely and explore anything–you’re at the center of the experience.
Headset – 32 sensors, 110° field of view, 2160 x 1200 resolution, 90 Hz refresh rate.
Wireless controllers – two wireless, rechargeable controllers with dual stage triggers, trackpad and HD haptic feedback.
Chaperone – Keeps the real world in view while focusing on the virtual. While the front-facing camera - blends the real with the virtual when you need it.
Phone Services – Answer incoming calls, check your text messages and view calendar event reminders as you play.
Looks pretty sick.
Comments
Is this how the world of Ready Player One begins?
I'm pretty sure it began with trailer home stacking.
Safety sense is tingling... How long before someone falls over and breaks their neck, how long until we can upload the VR fail compilations to YouTube? Frankly that's who stands to gain the most from this venture.
Snow Crash here I come!
It looks cool, but I'm going to wait a while to see if the price drops.
I've been using/demoing these for nearly a year at trade shows.. Let me know if you have any questions.
I am so conflicted on one hand Facebook owns Oculus Rift, on the other Vive is part owned by Valve. I want to give as little money as possible to both.
I understand the Facebook anti-establishment, but the Valve anti-establishment escapes me.
They set up a bunch of demo booths at work for a week. I finally got around to trying it on the last time slot of the last day, but unfortunately, the GPU on the computer I was assigned to had gone wonky, and the frame rate was really bad. Like maybe 20-30fps. The assistant acknowledged the problem, but being that they were already packing up the other stations, there was nothing they could do. It made me so ill I totally couldn't enjoy the Portal demo at the end and I waited patiently for GLaDOS to end me (this is a real shame, since I recently started playing Portal 2 again and I had chosen the Portal option over the zombie shooter alternative).
Before that, though, they had a 3D painting demo that was pretty rad. I didn't realize there was a monitor that the assistant was watching until I painted NVIDIA SUCKS in 3D sparkles and I heard a chuckle.
Sickness aside, it was awesome to walk around in a room freely without worry about running into things, since it does a holodeck-like wall pattern when you approach the boundary.
Some people just mistrust any company that gets to a certain size. They assume that with success comes evil.
Well Valve can bite me until Half Life 3.
VR is like 3D television. There is this trend of attempting to manufacture demand in electronics. There is a certain organic way things get better for consumers. Look at something like the original Nintendo Wii, it manufactured a demand by giving you a new experience, but the new experience was mostly intuitive. Grandma could now play a few simple video games, kids loved it too. It expanded the market. The Ipad made small touch computers seem indispensable for data consumption, once again, simple, intuitive, I used to hold a magazine in my lap, now I hold an Ipad. Siri, I talk, I ask questions, my computer answers me, it is human. That's how you manufacture a demand, expand a market in tech. It has to work inside the framework of how humans function. VR does not do that and it is going to flop as a result.
VR is wonky, it's weird, it's this big uncomfortable thing that goes on your head, it consumes your field of view in a way that is totally unnatural, in a way that our eyes were never meant to see the world. It's like 3D films on a 50" HDTV, it does not work. This is a dead end trend, invest in a nice big freesync monitor and nice set of speakers or headphones instead. That will give you the best experience. VR, it will be something we look back on and laugh at in ten years. I would not spend a dime on it. It's a bad tech investment.
It's not often, but in this case I totally agree with Cliff. It's BS tech that has been "coming soon" since 1992 and it just isn't for the mainstream. Everybody will buy a huge high-def TV at some point. Everybody will carry around a phone-turned-supercomputer in their pocket, but nobody is going to be walking around with a fucking brick strapped to their eyeballs. Let's revisit this thread in ten years and see where we stand.
True, but I think these are the first steps to augmenting the human eye or brain to interact with computers of the future. Something akin to Ghost in the Shell.
I promise you that anyone naysaying VR is in for a surprise. It's here to stay. It's not going away.
VR is different this time. Quality, market size, market players, money, consumer interest. The genie is out of the bottle.
I love the Vive for room-scale VR. It seems to be the winner here at SXSW this week too, with the Gear VR in close second.
I have seen the rift, played with it a little. I'll say, what they have done with the refresh rate to get it to an area that does not make you feel like you are going to get motion sick, it's an impressive optimization. I know a ton of really brilliant people have worked hard on it.... Still, it's a fat brick that sits uncomfortably on your head and it encompasses your field of view in a way that is very fatiguing on the eyes.
It's more of a "Wow, that's pretty neat" kinda tech than it is, "How do I live without it" kinda tech. It's market is going to be very limited. You are never going to convince regular folks that they want to pay $800 to look silly while ruining their eyesight. Even you don't shill that good.
Yes, and what happens to larger and more expensive electronic devices that makes them more appealing to a wider audience through successive hardware revisions?
That has already started at a breakneck pace. The pace of innovation is breathtaking, and the entire PC industry is behind it. The consumer excitement is off the charts.
There's even been a huge shift in the types of GPUs people are buying in anticipation of VR headsets launching this year.
Anyone who naysays VR is going to be on the wrong side of history.
I don't think the idea behind VR is going anywhere, I just don't think that VR in its current from (which, let's face it, is the exact damned same as it was in the early 90s) will be the thing that gets Aunt Sally and Hipster Joe and Everyman America buying into it. You're talking about the "types of GPUs people are buying". Who the hell buys GPUs? 10% of the people in the world? 5%? Compare that to who owns a TV or a smartphone. I think we're both saying "mass market" and yet talking about absolutely completely different things. You're talking about what is ultimately a niche market (PC enthusiasts).
When you put a device on your face and two things in your hands and are forced to be stationary while simulating being in another space, it's just lame, no matter how comfortable, immersive, slick, or wow it is. It's unnatural and it just won't take off. You're not going to see middle-aged businessmen in France using VR tech in everyday entertainment or 25 year old girls in Manhattan sitting around with a VR headset on, just like you don't see them upgrading their gaming PCs with new GPUs.
Now; when I see Microsoft's HoloLens, I think, "That's more like it. That's the right direction". I don't know what it is, but something along those lines could take off. I think augmented reality is the path forward; the more something allows us to experience the digital world in the real world, the more likely we'll see actual mass market acceptance. I want to interact with digital media in every day space; not have to have a "chamber" where I can play around with my VR toys.
AR and VR are married. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. You've just acknowledged how the market will grow: through different form factors that ultimately grow the VR market as a whole.
We are now at the point where VR is already mature enough to provide a variety of differentiated experience/performance/price envelopes. You're even interested in one of them!
But it's never been like that before. And most people don't seem to be imaginative enough to see beyond the (already incredibly diverse and multi-billion dollar) first generation.
Edit: it takes a lot to fundamentally alter the buying habits of the GPU market. A lot. The demographics have been stable for a decade, but the rise of VR has triggered an undeniable change. It's an amazing canary in the coal mine attracting the leading edge of the bell curve.
Did we learn nothing from the Wii? Put on the damn wrist straps!
If you haven't seen it or don't follow extra credits I think they make a lot of great points on why it's gonna be hard to get VR to take off even in the PC market.
Video Source
So here's the thing. VR is something I've wanted to succeed for a very long while. I remember playing with the Occulus DK1 at expo 2 or 3 years ago when @mertesn brought it. It was neat, as a proof of concept, but holy crap it had a long ways to go.
Fast forward to late 2015 and a buddy lets me try the Samsung Gear. It blew my mind. There's a demo where you're in the middle of a WWE NXT pay per view, you're front row in the audience and you look around at whatever you want during the match. Super dope. Amazing experience, and LEAGUES ahead of what I experienced with the Occulus DK1 years ago.
But then the lenses start to fog up badly, and you can't really see. And then the straps start to annoy your noggin. And then your phone's battery is low, and then the virtual video ends, and then you reach for your beer and you knock it over. It was cool, great, even, but a niche experience at best. But all that considered, it gave me a sneak peek at what to expect, and I was into it.
Then the price announcements dropped. Occulus Rift for $599. $799 for the HTC solution. And on top of these insane prices, there's the hardware requirements. I have a brand new top of the line gaming PC at home with two GPUs that I built less than a year ago, and even so I don't have the hardware required to run an Occulus Rift because my GPUs are only GTX 960s and are one step too slow. Are you kidding me? Who in the WORLD is going to be OK with this outside of hardcore enthusiasts?
They say with VR you have to expereince it to believe it, and as somebody who's done just that, I 100% agree. But that price point? Forget it. Too high. Too much risk. Not enough notable exclusives. Not enough reasons to invest. At 800 bucks, I can build a new gaming PC. I can buy a console, tons of games, and an entertainment solution. I can buy a BOATLOAD of games for the systems I already own. Why bother? Right now, VR is begging for the enthusiasts to invest, but to this enthusiast, that price point is way too high with far too little a return.
I've got a few close friends working at Occulus. I have easy access to it. I'm the target market. But after all the demos, hands on, insider previews and promises of future goodness, I just can't get on that horse. I get it, bleeding edge tech commands a high pricepoint. But if you want to introduce an entirely new form of media and entertainment, this is not the way to get the mainstream on board. And praise enthusiasts all you want, those whales buying all the top dollar gear, but if you don't get the maintstream on board, you won't make history. Simple as that.
I really, really want the Vive and Occulus to succeed. But there's a long ways to go, and the general public just thinks the tech is gimmicky or creepy right now. And if your price points are close to a grand, people are just going to laugh at it.
Never forget how people reacted to this pic, it tells the story without putting down a single word. Casual consumers think this tech is creepy, and they will never pay 5-8 hundred bucks for it.
They don't have to. Only the leading edge of the bell curve does. And they already have. With more enthusiasm than anyone ever dreamed of. The rest will be history.
Imagine past the first generation.
What will eventually win will be something like the technology of Magic Leap with the form factor of Google Glass. Everything else is Betamax.
In the meantime, I'm excited about the low end of the market - Google Cardboard. It captures all the magic of a ViewMaster, and by not trying to do too much and by being cheap, it avoids most of the criticisms above. As an academic, if I were to do a viz demo, I'd want it to be accessible and affordable. Cardboard is the only viable option.
Indeed.
I am sad and confused that Cardboard is not supported on my newish device (Moto G3).
Really what it boils down to is the physical experience. Anything that covers your eyes and replaces the real world with the virtual will never gain mass market acceptance. I think today's VR is the caveman experience that will eventually lay the groundwork for retinal projection to your eyeballs in some fashion, much like Ook Make Fire lead to kebab carts on street corners.
Don't get me wrong, I really want VR to succeed and I don't think it's built to fall no matter what. I just don't think the public is ready to adopt it in its current state, and I believe it will take a LOT of iterations to make the general public care enough to put one of these in their living rooms, least of which is the price issue right now.
One big problem I'm seeing right now are game exclusives. We already know VR will have market share problems because Developers will likely never hit a point of parity when developing a game to be on both console/PC and VR. The resources required to do so are enormous, and VR requires input/gameplay mechanics completely outside of what a traditional HD gaming experience does, meaning there would be a LOT that would have to be re-tooled to port to VR. I just don't think large AAA publishers will ever try to fit that into their pipeline 100%. EA, for one, isn't even considering it right now.
Beyond that, I think there's going to be an even bigger problem with exclusives between Rift and Vive. So we're already starting out with a fragmented space where VR is going to get less games than traditional HD, but these two platforms are competing and have different features, so now the amount of available games are fractured even more thanks to exclusives by VR platform. If I go out and drop $599 for the Rift (+ whatever nonsense money to build the gaming PC that can run it), there's no way in hell I'm going to be ready to pay $899 just so I can play those other sweet games only available on the other platform. This isn't like consumers buying a 3DS + a Vita so they can have all the games. This is a totally different thing with a higher barrier for entry and less games to pick from.
GDC is happening this week and we're gonna see a lot of announcements about VR. I know Rift is planning to show a lot of new games and exclusives. Hopefully my feelings on the game side of the story changes after GDC comes and goes, but I get the feeling we'll be hearing a lot more about platform exclusives rather than cross-platform anything. It's a really tough value prop for the end consumer.
VR Gaming is so Immersive You'll Want to Stick Your Head Through the Floor via Reddit
http://store.steampowered.com/app/450390/
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