HTC Vive- All that you want to know about it
HTC Vive is a virtual reality headset developed by HTC and Valve Corporation, released on 5 April 2016. This headset is designed to utilize “room scale” technology to turn a room into 3D space via sensors, with the virtual world allowing the user to navigate naturally, with the ability to walk around and use motion tracked handheld controllers to vividly manipulate objects, interact with precision, communicate and experience immersive environments.
Unveiled during HTC’s Mobile World Congress keynote in March 2015, the HTC Vive has since been awarded over 22 awards in CES 2016, including best of CES.
Though HTC Vice is somewhat pricey (sells for $799 / £689 / 899) but the experience you’ll get on the HTC Vive is unrivaled. It’s light years ahead of Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR, miles ahead of PlayStation VR and completely floors its main competitor, the Oculus Rift. For comparison, the Vive costs twice as much as the PlayStation VR and $200 more than Oculus Rift.
When paired with the proper hardware – a PC with an Intel Core i5-4590K and either a Nvidia GTX 970 or AMD R9 390 GPU – the HTC Vive is an incredible gateway into a new medium, one that is currently dominated by short demos and rough-around-the-edges games, but should one day play host to full-length films, television shows and contemporary art.
The positives, in condensed form, include: one-to-one movement tracking; a perfectly natural 110-degree field of view; there’s nary a screen tear or dropped frame when you’re using the right equipment; movement feels natural; it has best-in-class controllers; and the experiences, the demos and the games available through SteamVR, simply blow the competitors away.
Looking for the perfect gift for the tech savvy person in your life? Check out the @HTCVive and more here https://t.co/9E5ophJNo8
— HTC Australia (@HTC_Australia) December 2, 2016
How does HTC Vive work
Like other virtual reality headsets, the Vive has the arduous task of completely immersing you in a video game by producing two images simultaneously. However, unlike PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift that use a single camera to track your head and extremities, HTC Vive has two base stations, which sit on the wall attached to the included wall mounts or a high shelf and help map track your movements as you walk around in the 3D world.
What the stations track are small divots on the top of the two controllers and on the headset itself. There are 72 of these dots speckling the controllers and helmet that help accurately track the Vive.
Inside every box is a Vive headset unit, two controllers, two base stations, a cloth to wipe down the lenses, a small hub that sits between the headset and your PC, charging cords for the controllers and power cables for base stations. Also packaged with every unit are three games: Job Simulator, Fantastic Contraption and The Lab. It’s everything you’re going to need for a great virtual reality experience minus the computer that powers the whole thing.
Once you’re plugged in and the room has been mapped out, you’re free to roam around every inch of the digital space. This means digital worlds can be more expansive and more immersive on the Vive than the other two systems and, thankfully, less nausea-inducing, too.
The only limitations you’ll encounter once inside your digital world are faint blue walls made up of lines that keep you inside the playzone. These blue lines are superimposed into your game by SteamVR, the software put out by Valve that’s running underneath every virtual experience.
It’s called “chaperone mode,” and its practical application is to prevent you from moving too far outside the area that you’ve set up for the Vive and potentially stumbling into furniture/plants/animals/etc around your home and hurting yourself.
The headset is supported by three velcro straps that wrap around the top and sides of the Vive and meet in the back to form a cradle for your noggin. This cradle keeps the Vive from falling off or slipping too far left or right, they do a fair job preventing major malfunctions, the straps are arguably the least user-friendly part of the Vive. Adjusting them while the headset is on is a difficult endeavor, and getting an exact fit takes a bit of trial and error. But, once you finally find a position that feels right, all that’s left to do is turn the knob located on the right side of the headset to increase/decrease the focal length of the lens to reduce blurriness.
Inside the headset is a 2160 x 1200 OLED screen that runs at 90Hz. For comparison, that’s slightly less than the PlayStation VR’s 120Hz refresh rate, but because the Vive is running off a more powerful GPU, it’s not exactly comparing apples to apples. You can expect a 110-degree field of view, which is one of the largest available on any virtual reality headset and results in a more immersive experience.
The base stations, which are crucial to mapping the play space and tracking you as you move about the room, should sit on a nearby wall or high shelf in order to do their job to the best of their ability. The latest version of the stations are smaller, wireless and make a dull hum that’s almost inaudible unless you’re standing right next to them.
Similarly the controllers are also much more versatile compared to the competition, giving developers many more tools to work with. Each controller has a clickable touchpad and a rear trigger that has two stages to allow for more refined interaction. While they’re a bit bigger in stature than the Oculus Touch or PlayStation Move, the Vive’s controllers function exponentially better than either.
The main buttons you’ll need to familiarize yourself with are start and connect buttons located above and below the touchpad, two side buttons that can be pushed with your ring finger and the palm of your hand and the trigger on the back.
Moving around in-game might take a combination of pressing a trigger and the touch-pad, using a trigger to jump from spot to spot or physically walking from one part of the room to the other, depending on the title. While the Oculus Rift can track a playspace of around 5 x 11 feet and the PlayStation VR can spot you in an area of around 8 x 6 feet, the HTC Vive has a maximum tracking area of 15 x 15 feet. It’s a substantial difference and one that takes VR from a sedentary experience to a truly immersive one.
It’s a major boon for the system that switching between games (the lab, Audio Sheild, Vanishing Realm: Rite of Steel, Water Bears to name a few) takes seconds and to move from one game to the next, all you need to do is press the system button to pull up the Steam VR interface and then select another title to load up.
Future of HTC Vive
Honestly there are some fears when you first interact with Vive like motion sickness, emotional tolerance and coming back to the real world. But keeping this aside HTC has created something amazing with the Vive, and that’s been refined in the final consumer iteration of the hardware.
It’s more immersive than the competition thanks to the ability to walk around in the space, and the reduction of wires from the base stations and controllers is hugely welcome. Gaming using this, even with short demos and incomplete games, you will want to try a dozens more titles using the headset. Pure and simple, the HTC Vive is just awesome.