Getting Inside HTC's Vive Pre VR Headset

LAS VEGAS—HTC and Valve's joint virtual reality project, the Vive Pre, is developing speedily, and I got a chance to try the latest version here at CES.

CES 2022 Bug Art With a test of the consumer Oculus Rift and Affect controller fresh in my mind, I got my hands on the evolution motility controls for the HTC Vive Pre, and strapped the headset on for a bombardment of demos.

The Vive Pre is very similar to the various incarnations of the Oculus Rift, with a notable exception. The headset is still a large black plastic visor that fits over the eyes, but the Vive Pre incorporates a forepart-facing camera. The display was just every bit well-baked and bright as the Oculus version, and it tracked my head admirably. I didn't feel any disembodied sensation or motion sickness.

The camera on the front isn't for seeing where you're going; rather, it's function of an ingenious safety organisation. The camera detects objects and walls in forepart of you, and turns them into a virtual set of walls for the VR feel. When yous become too close to something you might knock over or bump into, the Vive displays a glowing blue wall earlier you, letting you know you're near to hit something. It'southward a functional way to prevent embarrassing VR-related accidents, and worked quite well in the adequately large test cubicle fix upwards for HTC's demonstration.

Vive Pre SteamVR Headset

The Vive motion controllers are very similar to the Oculus Touch controllers in concept, as well every bit the PlayStation Move controllers Sony used to demonstrate the PlayStation VR in the by. They're a pair of wands y'all agree in your hand, equipped with movement sensors to determine where they are in relation to the headset. Like the Affect controllers with the Oculus Rift, the Vive controllers tracked faithfully throughout my demo, with ghosts of the wands appearing backside the visor where my hands were.

The Vive controllers are much more than PC-oriented than the gamepad-like Affect controllers; instead of an analog stick and a set of buttons and ii triggers, the Vive wands employ big, circular, clickable trackpads and single triggers for each hand. Only HTC's VR controllers are evolution hardware like the Vive Pre headset itself, and don't necessarily reflect what a terminal HTC Vive/SteamVR motion control system will experience similar.

The demo took me through a series of simple scenes, starting with a passive underwater view. I stood on the wreckage of a sunken ship and watched fish swim by my caput, unable to practise much more than than walk around within the boundaries of the virtual room and bat away smaller fish with the controllers. Information technology culiminated in a whale globe-trotting dangerously close to my view.

Later on that, I experienced a natural language-in-cheek office simulator. I stood in a cubicle surrounded by office supplies and was given basic tasks. The part was garish and cartoony and the physics were funny in a Surgeon Simulator style, and then it wasn't near as deadening equally it might sound. I poked buttons, made coffee, fired people, and got very, very distracted playing with the absurd gravity and the many objects I could knock off my desk. I tried, with but slight success, to juggle donuts and mugs by tossing them in the air between my virtual hands. Information technology was more mesmerizing than the assigned tasks.

Vive Pre SteamVR Headset

I and then tried a 3D painting program, similar in concept to the Medium demo I tried with the consumer Oculus Rift. Instead of clay and sculpting, I was given diverse forms of low-cal. I could draw swaths of color, brilliant rainbow ribbons, and clusters of stars with the motion controls. It was certainly eye-catching, and the controllers followed my motions precisely.

Finally, I experienced a downright cruel tease on the part of Valve. It was an Discontinuity Scientific discipline scene where I, as a hapless human, tried and failed to practise simple tasks. I opened drawers, startled a pocket universe of tiny people, closed drawers, doomed the pocket universe to incineration, and took apart Atlas from Portal 2. So GLADoS told me I was terrible and killed me. Information technology was an entertaining little VR vignette.

Information technology was besides the briefest taste of a Portal 3/Portal VR that hasn't been announced, isn't confirmed, might not be in evolution, and in all likelihood doesn't exist beyond the Vive Pre demo HTC and Valve ready. In fact, I was explicitly told that that much. Only it still makes me really hopeful for a virtual Portal game in the future.

The HTC Vive Pre is all the same development hardware, and as such isn't available to consumers. HTC and Valve are planning to commercially launch the Vive in April, only until so just seven,000 Vive Pre units will be released to developers.