Viva La Vive. HTC And Valve Collaborate On New VR Headset

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The big news coming out of the tech world today is games maker/digital distributor Valve Corporation and smartphone giant HTC have combined powers to throw a Team Fortress hat into the VR headset ring unveiling “Vive”. Other than the unique selling point of having the backing and software smarts of the company that embodies gaming on PC, the tech specs of HTC’s kit are set to stand mighty against the market competition (Oculus’ Rift, Samsung’s Gear VR and Sony’s Morpheus). Vive will feature a pair of 1200 x 1080 displays as well as rattle along at non-eye aggravating 90 frames per second (Rift DK2 the next highest supporting 75 FPS).

Getting around that vomit inducing motion sickness that plagues these devices the Vive will include not only a gyrosensor, accelerometer and laser position sensor it will also come bundled with a motion-tracking base station. The added bonus of these sensor inputs the manufacturer advises is that it’ll allow for full tracking in a 15-feet by 15-feet room freeing you from your chair so you can get up and walk around.

A developer edition will be available in the Spring and, even more impressively, a consumer version is planned for release before the end of the year. A demo device will be at the GDC show in San Francisco next week so hopefully we’ll get some hands on news on this developing virtual insanity.