Valve's VR Headset is "Vive", And is a Collaboration With HTC

Steven Bogos

The Taco Man
Jan 17, 2013
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Valve's VR Headset is "Vive", And is a Collaboration With HTC

Valve's "Vive" aims to one-up the competition by coming packaged with special VR controllers, and VR base stations that track your physical location.

Earlier in the month, Valve teased its new upcoming VR headset, and now it looks like collaborator HTC has jumped the gun by announcing the "Vive". Unlike the Oculus Rift [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/oculus%20rift?os=oculus+rift], which hasn't given a solid consumer release date, HTC claims that the Vive will be available to consumers later this year, with a developer edition coming out this spring. Check out the announcement video to the right.

In addition to the standard gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor that most other VR headsets use to track a user's position, the Vive will also feature something called the Steam VR base station, which will let you walk around a virtual space instead of using a controller. A pair of the base stations come packaged with the device, and when set up can "track your physical location ... in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet."

The Vive will also be packaged with a pair of HTC-made wireless controllers for manipulating objects or shooting weapons through hand tracking. They're "designed to be so versatile that they will work with a wide range of VR experiences."

"We believe that virtual reality will totally transform the way that we interact with the world. Virtual reality will become a mainstream technology for the rest of the world," said HTC's Peter Chou. The company added in a press release that the Vive will be the first device to offer a "full room-scale" experience, "letting you get up, walk around and explore your virtual space, inspect objects from every angle and truly interact with your surroundings."

We'll no doubt hear more about the Vive at next week's Game Developer's Conference, where Valve stated it would be made available for attendees to try for themselves.

Source: The Verge [http://www.htcvr.com/]

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micuu

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Mar 28, 2014
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I can't wait to play Half-Life 3 with this fancy VR technology.


OH WAIT A MINUTE....
 

Vigormortis

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Nov 21, 2007
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You forgot to mention HTC and Valve's partners, of whom are already creating content for this new HMD.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.871544-Didnt-see-that-coming#21853073
 

Kameburger

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Apr 7, 2012
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Lol this all makes me think that Oculus really screwed up all things considered. Incidentally I think their kick starter backers deserve their money back. I mean now it seems that both Sony, and Valve will have competing head sets, and all the millions (billions?) facebook spent buying them, have produced very little as of yet. I kind of thought the facebook investment would mean that they might already have put something on the market by now, but I guess not. I guess it'll be interesting to hear what everyone has to say about it at GDC.

Either way, I wonder if valve is going to be slow to support other headsets as well now that they have their own. Now that Valve has really stepped down that hardware rabbit hole, it's not hard to see them going down the route of a more closed ecosystem. I mean they're only second to Nintendo in terms of backwards region locking policies. I don't know, I'm just finding it really hard to get behind valve these days. I guess I'm sort of over what ever it is I used to think Valve was. Everything they do these days just makes me role my eyes...
 

Staskala

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Sep 28, 2010
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Kameburger said:
Lol this all makes me think that Oculus really screwed up all things considered. Incidentally I think their kick starter backers deserve their money back. I mean now it seems that both Sony, and Valve will have competing head sets, and all the millions (billions?) facebook spent buying them, have produced very little as of yet. I kind of thought the facebook investment would mean that they might already have put something on the market by now, but I guess not. I guess it'll be interesting to hear what everyone has to say about it at GDC.
Sony has been selling (albeit somewhat crappy) gaming VR headsets since the 90's actually. They also never caught on and I highly doubt Oculus or Valve will meet a much different fate despite all the hype. Overall VR is simply too expensive to really be worth it for most people.
 

Caffiene

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Jul 21, 2010
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Steven Bogos said:
HTC has jumped the gun by announcing the "Vive"
The trailer splash screen and the video name both call it the "HTC RE Vive" (ie "revive")


Am I missing something?
 

OldNewNewOld

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Mar 2, 2011
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I don't understand why people are so hyped for VR that has you to actually physically move to play. The Wii was nice, but some people actually want the running in place and other shit in games. I'm no jock. I can't run as much as I can game. Gimme a good controller.

Perfect VR would be the one that basically disables your body and sends images directly to your brain. Not the one that puts a screen in front of you and forces you to move in the real world.
 

freaper

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Apr 3, 2010
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Is this going to get me to exercise while playing videogames? I'm not sure how to feel about this.
 

Kameburger

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Apr 7, 2012
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Staskala said:
Kameburger said:
Lol this all makes me think that Oculus really screwed up all things considered. Incidentally I think their kick starter backers deserve their money back. I mean now it seems that both Sony, and Valve will have competing head sets, and all the millions (billions?) facebook spent buying them, have produced very little as of yet. I kind of thought the facebook investment would mean that they might already have put something on the market by now, but I guess not. I guess it'll be interesting to hear what everyone has to say about it at GDC.
Sony has been selling (albeit somewhat crappy) gaming VR headsets since the 90's actually. They also never caught on and I highly doubt Oculus or Valve will meet a much different fate despite all the hype. Overall VR is simply too expensive to really be worth it for most people.
Well I thought that was the point of this whole craze lately wasn't it? Not that this stuff existed at all, but now it would be affordable or at least consumer viable. For this reason. I mean in a market where gadgets are more common place than they ever were it would seem like something that could possibly sell really well, and even facebook had a point, that the connectivity angle could really change a lot of things. As someone who lives abroad, I would love to put on some vr glasses and pop into my living room back home via web cam every morning while I have my morning coffee. That would be freaking amazing.

But the way this is playing out is really pretty awkward to be honest.
 

flying_whimsy

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Dec 2, 2009
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Poor HTC, they must have no idea of what valve time is. I'll get excited for this when I finally get my damn steam controller.

And until someone comes up with better physical feedback, vr will always feel awkward. I honestly still feel it'll probably be easier to go for the matrix as opposed to the holodeck for our virtual technology. Although I would prefer a holodeck.
 

JCAll

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Oct 12, 2011
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If Valve wants to sell their VR Headsets they're going to have to start letting the Japanese porn games on Steam.
 

Smooth Operator

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Oct 5, 2010
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Not sure HTC knows how Valve develops things, they might just put this stuff to the market with no support from the gaming side. Valve does sit in a very favourable position where they can have VR components in Steam itself that any game can use, but they take decades for that sort of thing.
 

008Zulu_v1legacy

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Sep 6, 2009
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It seems to me that Valve's VR interface won't have the same response time as a mouse and keyboard. So other than a few "niche" titles, it won't really catch on.
 

Alcom1

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Jun 19, 2013
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JCAll said:
If Valve wants to sell their VR Headsets they're going to have to start letting the Japanese porn games on Steam.
They do, sort of. Any pornographic content on a Steam game has to be taken out in its Steam release, and downloaded from elsewhere as a mod, but it does happen.
 

Scars Unseen

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May 7, 2009
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Sounds interesting enough, but I couldn't give half a shit about moving around. The room my computer is in has a 2' by 5' area that isn't occupied by furniture.
 

Zontar

Mad Max 2019
Feb 18, 2013
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008Zulu said:
It seems to me that Valve's VR interface won't have the same response time as a mouse and keyboard. So other than a few "niche" titles, it won't really catch on.
That applies to the whole VR market.

OT: Looks interesting, and if they can actually keep to the retail release being by the 2015 Holiday season they'll have probably beat out the Rift or Morphisms though simply being first with a retail copy that works coupled with support of a brand the niche market VR is built for having a corporation which has long been a part of that niche is intimately familiar with.
 

Entitled

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Kameburger said:
Lol this all makes me think that Oculus really screwed up all things considered. Incidentally I think their kick starter backers deserve their money back.
The Kickstarter backers have received all of their rewards years ago, including the actual expensive developer headsets that the money's bulk was spent on and that made the higher reward tiers valuable.

Even if you were right that Oculus is screwed on the market, (rather than just holding back their own killer announcements for GDC , and then obliterating Valve with billion dollar marketing or something), that has nothing to do with the Kickstarter.

It's like if you said that the backers of Wasteland 2 should get back their money because it wasn't the best-selling game of the year, and didn't help it's developers turn into a huge AAA dev studio. It's irrelevant, the pitch was not about a promised success in gaining a market share, it was about delivering a product to it's backers.
 

SonOfVoorhees

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Aug 3, 2011
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"The Vive will be the first device to offer a "full room-scale" experience, "letting you get up, walk around and explore your virtual space, inspect objects from every angle and truly interact with your surroundings."

Now does that mean other VR sets require you to be seated? Or that they want you walking around blindly in your living room, because that seems dangerous. All i can think is there will be more VR vids of people causing accidents and damage than the Wii mote.
 

Kameburger

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Apr 7, 2012
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Entitled said:
Kameburger said:
Lol this all makes me think that Oculus really screwed up all things considered. Incidentally I think their kick starter backers deserve their money back.
The Kickstarter backers have received all of their rewards years ago, including the actual expensive developer headsets that the money's bulk was spent on and that made the higher reward tiers valuable.

Even if you were right that Oculus is screwed on the market, (rather than just holding back their own killer announcements for GDC , and then obliterating Valve with billion dollar marketing or something), that has nothing to do with the Kickstarter.

It's like if you said that the backers of Wasteland 2 should get back their money because it wasn't the best-selling game of the year, and didn't help it's developers turn into a huge AAA dev studio. It's irrelevant, the pitch was not about a promised success in gaining a market share, it was about delivering a product to it's backers.
Is that true? I was under the impression that this wasn't the case. Somehow if that's the case it feels a little more sad considering what happened. I can't say if I were in their shoes I wouldn't have sold my company to facebook and made myself a millionare but at the same time wow do I give so little of a shit how a giant corporations piece of tech does as compared to a visionary underdog product. Hypocritical? Absolutely. But I don't think I'm alone.