Valve, an established games software company, recently unveiled its Vive VR headset, produced in conjunction with Taiwanese phone manufacturer HTC. The Developer Edition headset has two 1,200 x 1,080 displays, which HTC says can deliver “photorealistic imagery”. Like the Oculus Rift, it’s fed by a PC. It also uses two small Lighthouse laser-tracking base stations for high-precision room mapping and location tracking, so the user can move in a space up to 15ft square. It uses “context-aware” SteamVR handheld controllers, which you can see as hands (or anything else) in your virtual world. VR applications will be distributed via SteamVR.
Many of the people who tried Vive at Mobile World Congress or GDC 2015 raved about it, and it seems to be a significant advance on Oculus Rift DK2. Dan Page from Opposable Games wrote a blog post about it: “We’ve tried the HTC Vive and it’s absolutely mind-blowing.” Oculus has the recognisable brand, but Valve may have a better system, plus more than 125 million game-playing customers. The Vive VR could go on sale this November.