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HTC teams up with Valve to make HTC Vive

TomGot
Honored Guest
Its a new VR-Gear that HTC and Valve is making and the development kit should be out this spring.
They promise that the consumer product will be out before the end of this year.



1200 x 1080 per eye
90 hz refresh rate
110 degrees FOV
3 ms pixel persistence
360 inside-out audio tracking
Wireless hand-tracking hardware
Headphone jacks on either ear side
Laser positioning for head position accuracy down to 1/10 degree accuracy
VR base stations for 15 x 15 feet tracking for VR world movement
Controller for each hand, allowing for interactivity within the virtual world.
Source FR3D/http://gamesided.com/2015/03/01/vive-virtual-reality-htc-valve-coming-year/


"A 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye, with refresh rates of a blistering 90 frames per second."

"A gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of your head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree, allowing you to look around the virtual environment naturally. Couple the headset with a pair of Steam VR base stations to track your physical location (in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet) – get up and walk around inisde the virtual world! "

"The Vive headset was developed in conjunction with Valve, creators of such ground-breaking games as Portal and Half-Life. HTC manufactures some of the finest consumer electronics on the planet and Valve is an unrivaled architect of virtual worlds, so you know the collaboration is something special. Vive is powered by Valve’s SteamVR so plenty of games that take advantage of its capabilities will soon be available on the Steam service. "
http://www.htcvr.com/
279 REPLIES 279

FictionX
Honored Guest
As someone who does not suffer from motion sickness, I have to disagree... First Person Shooters are awesome. It's very very cool to drive a racing car or to fly - but standing head to head(crab) with a zombie in HL2 is incredible. You just can't get that feeling of having someone or something come at you on a normal 2D screen - or even a 3D one.

.. that's also the main reason I can't do horror games in the Rift 🙂

Looking at the Crescent Bay demos and now the Vive, VR is no longer a seated experience (It never really was).
- I hope the increased refresh rate and better headtracking will solve the motion sickness problem for everyone.

flyingwaffle
Honored Guest
Seems to me that Valve is very good at making hardware and partnership announcements, but rarely follows up with anything concrete.
I remember the Sony/Steam announcement with Portal 2 coming on PS3 (Gabe did a total 180 degree from his original "playstation sucks" assessment).
And the confusion around that Steam Box/Piston "thing".

I'm excited that Dovetail Games (one of the gaming companies listed in the HTC announcement) holds a license to MSFT Flight Simulator.

rupy
Honored Guest
"Peteo" wrote:
they wont be laughing when HL3 launches with VR support exclusively for the HTC Revive


VR will only succeed if porting is complete, every big headset will have to be supported.

"ThreeDeeVision" wrote:
It has two 1200x1080 screens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Vive
http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/1/8127445/htc-vive-valve-vr-headset

I am betting you need a dual GPU setup to run the Vive.


I'm sure you won't, but there is potential for dual thread rendering. Wonder how they sync the OpenGL contexts though... Nvidia might shed some light... or maybe you are right = Nvidia dualcore in steambox with steamOS only!
"It's like Homeworld in first person." Disable Aero and vSync for a completely simulator sickness free experience with 2xHz FPS. Keep the config utility open for tracking to work.

kampinisu
Honored Guest
"Tim74UK" wrote:
Actually this is good news.

It's great news in fact, it means that the VR market space is coming to a head (pun intended) :lol:

If the VR market was a game of Poker, HTC-Valve have just called.... Time to show your hand Oculus!

Mind you I've just seen this... entitled "Job Simulator" and was supposed to be a launch title on the ValveVR

Developer Owlchemy Labs has announced that its Job Simulator will be one of the first projects designed for Valve's SteamVR and other virtual reality devices.





HAHAHahahahaAHAHAHAHahahaha :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

I'm not sure Oculus have much to worry about!


Umm, why are you laughing? That same game is built also to Oculus Rift. Homepage:

http://jobsimulatorgame.com/

Adrianstealth
Honored Guest
good luck to oculus and good luck to valve

and who ever else makes VR headsets


I'll just order the one that comes first that has a better resolution than my dk2,
a higher refresh rate and anything else is a bonus

simple as that to me

oculus seriously need to be making some announcements this week at GDC

I'd preorder a crescent bay tomorrow & be happy if that's a CV1
then I'll order a CV2 next year etc

Sharpfish
Heroic Explorer
"RonsonPL" wrote:
Another hint for "the only VR that matters for the business and marketing people, is mobile VR"

More on this:

I guess PC VR gaming died before it was born. It'll be crippled by Smartphone VR the same way as PC games were crippled by 7-year old consoles recently.

Just a few days ago Oculus spent $1.000.000 dollars on prizes in a competition for Gear VR devs. This was a hint number 143, since Oculus said "we'll just help Samsung with their smartphone VR, we'll help them a little, and get back to our thing - PC VR".

It seems Carmack isn't even helping with PC SDK.
I see absolutely no chance for proper PC VR gaming in 2015-2016. Proper would mean designing with higher-end PCs in mind, something like a gtx770-970 price point (which would give twice as fast as gtx980 GPU a year from now thanx to HBM). HMD for $499 instead of $250 and a proper controller instead of "f...k it, let's rething our focus on games and switch to the "experiences" since we cannot create a controller suitable for mobiles and/or under $99 per unit, and there are sims (joystick/wheel) games so get lost, sucker!"
No wider FOV, no higher resolution, no custom non-smartphone display, no controller, the plague of de-saturation and blur effects in games etc.
Well... at least this one would have 90Hz, so maybe we'll get some games not crippled by "no, let's throw this out, because it will flicker too much at 60Hz LP mode".
I would like to have some hopes for the controller quality/possibilities of this Valve HMD, but I can't. Too many shattered hopes.

I saw a great future once, the one where PC led the way, pushed VR forward, and where people saying "Oh hell no! I won't buy a PC for 3x as much as a console costs" switch to "It requires quite expensive PC, but I WANT THIS VR SO MUCH! I'll buy!"
It's not going to happen :cry:

BTW. I was right about possible "more than 1920" by 1080 display. I'm still betting on a similar idea in CV1. After all, 2400x1080 is still "more than DK2", isn't it? 😐
.



I mostly agree with this sentiment... I've been extremely disappointed with oculus and the emphasis on chasing mobile VR and pushing smart phone purchasing/usage over TOP SPEC PC based VR (so far at least). It's like they did a 360 on us.. yes.. yes we'll see come GDC or E3 at latest (i'd hope) but as it stands now, with Valve announcing this it at least gives me hopes that some other company will remember WHY everyone was so enthusiastic about VR when the rift first appeared... hint: it wasn't to play sucky low powered, 20 year old 3D cartoon gfx games on a damn mobile that costs $700!!

ANd yeah the thing that really is irking me is that it's setting precedents for VR to be MOSTLY Mobile based (read nerfed/casual) just like the iPhone did to the indie game developer's scene (making the world and it's aunt want to jump ship and make crap flappy bird/angry bird clones purely to chase money).

Oculus and Palmer were meant to be the flame holders for VR, keeping it true to it's original Vision (which requires 10 of today's fastest computers let alone shoehorning 'experiences' into some underpowered mobile). The only positive is the wireless/untethered which we all agree is great - but at the cost of the dream? no way!!

If developers see there's money in mobile VR and "PC VR" is a financial risk (just like console ports are now) and we suffer for it, then oculus jumping in bed with Samsung will have been a large part of why.

I don't believe PC VR was ready, yet, PCs are not yet powerful enough for slick, high class problem free VR as we all dream - but maybe soon, especially around Pascal next year we may be able to scrape by with a scaled down Dream VR - for that reason I understand Oculus couldn't put all their eggs in one basket, esp with "Facebucks" stuffed in a bag behind Palmer's desk... So - this year is absolutely VITAL to PC VR and Oculus' role in it - it's not so much about RELEASING it by end of year imo (I honestly believe most consumers are not actually ready for VR in it's current state and with the power REALLY needed) but I do believe it's about oculus at least matching, hopefully beating Valve with performance, spec, magic features even... something that blows us away and makes us re-believe they have our (PC POWER USERS) interests at heart.

The scariest part is the whole bloody mobile VR thing - it may increase a certain level of adoption and adaptation to VR to the more casual users but it may also SLOW DOWN "REAL VR" for us all in the long run, just like out-dated consoles had back PC software for 7 years, so could mobile. It's a fine line between breaking new users in and forgetting what you set out to do in the first place.

I've always turned my nose up at the 'casual' market TBH (other than for making money as it's like low hanging fruit) but the dream, the art, the love of software and VR has always always lay on the horizon, far beyond casual's grasp - away from the short term money pits and soccer moms and weekend affairs with VR. With the team oculus assembled we all assumed it was safe to think they knew what we wanted, if they didn't then who would? Well... maybe Valve... maybe.

This is speculative as we don't know what oculus really have planned and I hope my fears are squashed soon - BUT I will register my vote as one of those dedicated to 'hardcore' VR just like Palmer claimed to be, NO compromise, NO dumbing down and as such each time I read Oculus pimping that, frankly boring subject of gearVR and mobile VR I lose more and more faith in them. Leave that to Samsung now, get Carmack back on PC in full force actually helping you solve these PC issues and with all the skill he has, the vision he had... he is wasted on android and mobile even if that is where his personal interests lie at this time. It's just too sad to see Abrash, Carmack and Palmer pimping and ONLY talking with excitement (and money prizes) about mobile VR while we are vaguely informed that CV1 may now NOT be quite as high spec as we'd hoped (FOV, RES being the main two things for me).

Hope I'm just knee-jerking along with others as this isn't the first bump in the road (the facebook buyout) - I hope I am and that I'll gladly be proved wrong sometime this year.

Those casual/mobile 'experiences' are really not that great, even VR nuts get bored easily once the novelty wears off. We need deep content and stunning VR that only the fastest current home PCs in the world can barely provide. Don't forget that oculus... please.
EX DK2/VIVE/PSVR/CV1/Q2/PSVR2 | Currently Quest Pro (PCVR) | VR developer
RTX 3080 FE / 12900k / Windows 11 Pro

przecinek
Rising Star
I have to agree that Oculus might have played it a bit too safe. There were no serious competitors so far, there were tons of HMDs announced at CES 2015 but nothing that could even remotely challenge Oculus Rift, and now boom, Valve has announced headset with stats that will be hard to beat. I'm not expecting CV to be better in terms of specs, maybe similar. Internal positional tracking would be a real win as well.

I'm a bit worried wondering how much this beast will cost :?: Oculus can still get ahead by simply announcing their product with a 50% lower price tag. If you have to choose between 699$ and 299$ headsets that are not that far apart spec-wise, most would choose the latter. Anyway on face value, this looks massive...


"davidjc" wrote:
also bloody wires every where, also the bloody SDK and that it never works reliably or always has quirks and performance issues. Like JUDDER! Which seems like it will never be solved.


Judder is related to you computer not running software at 75/90fps when needed. This will also happen on Vive or any other device. The only way to solve it is to force a "Sorry! Your machine did not meet requirements for this application" message and prevent users from running soft on under powered hardware.

P.S Without Facebook buyout Oculus would be practically out of the game with this announcement. But because they are Facebook, they are still in the race. I'm all for Oculus, now go go go 😉

smilertoo
Protege
I suspect Oculus are alienating quite a few potential developers with their policy of 'we have super new hardware...but you're not getting it' attitude.

VizionVR
Rising Star
My general thoughts on the subject:
- Valve talks about "base stations" for positional tracking. This one detail could mean that the Rift won't play Valve VR games without some sort of positional tracking hack.
http://vrfocus.com/archives/12172/steam ... -location/

- I'm really interested in the price difference of Vive VS. Rift.

- I wish I had my own dedicated 15' x 15' VR space so I could play without tripping over furniture, pets, kids.
Not a Rift fanboi. Not a Vive fanboi. I'm a VR fanboi. Get it straight.

ThreeDeeVision
Superstar
"rupy" wrote:
"Peteo" wrote:

I'm sure you won't, but there is potential for dual thread rendering. Wonder how they sync the OpenGL contexts though... Nvidia might shed some light... or maybe you are right = Nvidia dualcore in steambox with steamOS only!


I actually hope you don't need two GPU's, but it seems like it would be the best way to power two separate 1200x1080 screens. Nvidia made that "VR Direct" announcement a while ago, I keep waiting to see where it will actually come into play.
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