Gadgetory

hey everyone this is steve from gamers nexus tonight we're at valves booth at GDC 2015 we just checked out a really cool VR demo and i'm joined by dana nicholson from HTC who are developing the hardware solution of the head mounted display for that demo so what is the name of it and what can you tell me about at a top level well the agency vive we're announcing this week it's uh we're announcing the dev kit we're giving demos today the news we have is we're committed to the product and we're bringing it to market in the fall to be the first real commercially available pcs based VR system it is I don't know it as you've seen it it's high performance high immersion you get the full in your gut feeling of presence yeah it's it's it's a bit disorienting after using it as a new user obviously I'm sure you get used to this but as a new user I walked away feeling like I still had a screen in front I face but it was extremely immersive there's a lot of presence as we call it in VR and the the depth in terms of my own depth perception using it moving my arms around it was unique yeah selfie it's sort of the full room scale experiences what we're trying to demo today I mean there's a couple demos where there's you know some crouching and some close inspection as well as sort of marveling at the atmosphere and there's in these demos it's great to see like it's you know you might notice there's no shooting games in these games but I think that shows the promise of the platform is that even some of these simple things like fishing and some real easy analogs once they're so immersive and they're so real some of these even easy things are or they don't seem as there's no explosions but yet they are riveting and they are they they're so real it's a great great demo of really the platform in the promise and I think speaking to that and that there was a painting demo where I was given effectively use the two controllers as paintbrushes and as a palette at a palette yeah and like you said no explosions no craziness but actually very fun yeah and cool so how we should clarify us for the viewers this is a full room experience right and how does it how does it interpret my location as a user great well the real secret sauce there is of course there's all the overall Layton sees there's the low persistence displays and the optics is one thing but the magix office of the room scale is the laser light house system that valves developed so with these lighthouse beacons they're doing X Y laser pulses and we have light light sensors all over the all over the mask and all over the controllers so these are the basis for all of the really precision movements what's great about it it's actually scalable so you could have 20 or 30 peripherals in the room they're all tracked on the same system and its really scalable I mean I love the promise of that you can have your guitar and your sword and everything else and you don't have to unplug anything which is great so it's a really scalable solution and as you can see the the detail the movement is really there and so we're excited in these demos today it's everyone standing up there's no sitting down it's it's walking around and touching things and we love that love the big room skill experience and I think you know these games are really going to exploit that in a new way I mean a lot of the games we see are already are sort of in a cockpit or something else and so I think this is this brings a whole new opportunity for developers and we're excited to see what people will do do you have a target release timeline or price yet yeah we're committing to the developer community that were say the develop dev kits are out now they'll be ready to distribute in the coming months and we're committed to end of the year for a commercial product so we're hoping to hit Christmas and get these in consumers hands and and have real consumer VR ready to go and so this is the HTC vive HTC vive and it's part of Valve's VR solution which we've posted about previously lighthouse is a part of that if you've heard the term lighthouse this week that is referring to the VR solution involving the HTC vive so that's the full full disclaimer from actual HTC developers designers check the link in the description below for full details and coverage of this this very cool VR solution you'll see my impressions there and we'll have unfolding news as we get closer to commercialization with the commercial product announcement some of the final designs and as we get closer to the consumer product I think will be a continuing story line here about steam VR and getting ready very cool looking forward to following it and we will see you all next time