11/5/2023 0 Comments Htc vr headset![]() Rounding out the Vive experience is a pair of wand-shaped controllers which are also tracked by the Lighthouse base stations, giving you pseudo-hand tracking in VR and enabling you to swing a golf club, stab a goblin, shoot a bow-and-arrow, or throw donuts at a robot.Įach controller features a trigger, two grip buttons, a Menu button, a button to call up the Steam overlay, and a trackpad-twin to the nifty haptic trackpads found on the Steam Controller, meaning each can be used as a mouse, a scroll wheel, or a bunch of buttons depending on the developer’s needs. We’ll go over the software side of things more later, but suffice it to say that as soon as you plug in a Vive, Steam downloads the necessary VR software. If you get too close to the walls, Valve’s in-house “Chaperone” system simply fades into view, a grid marking the boundaries of your space and reminding you not to run full-tilt into your desk or whatever.Īnd best of all: Set-up is handled from within Steam. It’s more intensive than the Oculus’s set-up, but done correctly it means you can physically walk around in virtual worlds-and, more importantly, can do so without worrying. Set-up involves placing the two base stations (together known as Lighthouse) high-ish up in your room-I have one on top of a shelf and the other mounted on my standing desk-and then calibrating the floor and the size of your space. With optimal placement, the Vive can track an area up to fifteen feet by fifteen feet, though good luck finding a space that large in your house. The concept is similar to the Oculus’s camera-and, in fact, you can use the Vive like the Rift as a stationary, seated VR headset-but the range on the Vive is a fair amount larger. (Side note: These base stations also make an annoying, high-pitched humming sound that’s only really noticeable at night, and probably not at all to some people, but I’ve found them a bit distracting in my bedroom.) At its best, VR feels like you temporarily absconded from your bedroom/living room and teleported to a new and fantastical world-perhaps one in which you’re a dungeon-crawling hero, or an engineer building balloon cars, or a god who can shrink the solar system down to the size of so many colorful marbles. To paraphrase myself from last week, this means it’s essentially a monitor you strap onto your eyes, at which point lenses warp the 2D image into three-dimensional world that you can wander around. And now, as of today, it’s a real product.Īs with the Rift, the Vive is a virtual reality headset. Regardless, Valve announced the Vive about a year later, in the spring of 2015. I’ve no way of knowing when that sunshine-and-roses relationship broke down, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it coincided with Facebook purchasing Oculus two years ago. ![]() Valve fed Oculus its VR research for free, and many of Valve’s top VR heavyweights eventually left to go work in-house at Oculus. See, for years Oculus and Valve were actually partners. It was a shocking swerve, though the effect was maybe lost on those who don’t follow the industry closely. Sure, there were a half-dozen headsets from Razer, Sulon, and a host of other imitators, but nobody who could really compete with Oculus on specs and software.Īnd then HTC unveiled the Vive. Further reading: The HTC Vive’s best SteamVR games and virtual reality experiences Running to stand stillįor years it seemed like Oculus would make it to market unopposed.
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