Gadgetory

so this is the HTC vive Priya and it's the single best VR headset I've ever used for more than half an hour at a time technically the Viper free is not the finished HTC vive that's going to be coming out in April but from everything we've seen the Harper looks almost exactly the same the downside of this is that the pre definitely has kind of a 1980s jacking into cyberspace field even compared to other VR headsets it's a little bit bulky and it's got this large front facing camera that should be able to show you the outside world when you hit a button or you go out of bounds of its trackers then there are these cables back here which run down into an incredibly long cord that you're gonna have to steer clear of as you move around with this cable so long because the vibe actually gives you a lot of space to move around in but thanks to these two boxes around here called lighthouses and what they do is spread lasers across a pretty large section of the floor and then sensors on the headset and controllers will pick that up and calibrate exactly where you are in virtual space to okay I've got my headphones plugged in it's adjusted so it's not gonna give me a headache which it will if it is even a little bit too tight I'm gonna put on these headphones and I can actually see where these controllers are because in the game they appear as a pair of hands so this is job simulator and it's mostly an excuse to throw things around with your controller so this is where the vibe really comes into its own because I'm actually walking around my office cubicle getting some donuts throwing some cups of things photocopying some phones and this obviously looks clumsy because that's kind of the joke of the game but it's really precise and so if I hit this button it feels exactly what like what I might be doing with my hands normally I can get some really bad motion sickness in VR if you're moving even a little bit in a game but here I barely even noticed it that's mostly because when I walk here it is one to one motion I am walking in physical space and virtual space so this is a game called final approach you are landing air and generally being a flight controller so obviously I have a lot of space here but not everybody's going to and that's pretty okay for the vibe a lot of the games you really only need to be able to move a little bit in every direction enough to land these little planes it's even got a setting for just standing absolutely still he's crashing all these airplanes crushing them horribly so the controllers are obviously one of the best parts of the vibe because they really let you feel like you're interacting with space this is really what sets a high end headset apart from something like Google cardboard which is that you're able to create things you're able to really affect the environment you're able to actually get something that feels just a little like reality I'm playing tilt brush right now which is a 3d painting app it's really detailed and really responsive but it's also a sign that the controllers really could be designed a little bit better they're a little bit heavy and being able to hold them like remotes is great sometimes but sometimes it also just feels kind of unnatural it feels like I'm twisting my hand in weird directions to paint when I would be holding something like a pencil most of what you do you do with a little trackpad here and a trigger here but there's also a home button right under that trackpad which is a great idea it's a pause menu it's the way you launch games but it's also right under my thumb so when I'm doing something really exciting look there's the whole steam menu that's great so like a lot of VR the vibe asks you to just imagine your relationship with a computer is completely and fundamentally different you're not really inputting commands you're actually using yourself and putting yourself into some version of a game it can feel really natural and can turn some things that are you know great but a little mundane in the real world into just amazing experiences so I'm just hearing ninja training slashing fruit as one does the thing that's really unique about the vibe is that your body feels the effects of the things that you're doing that might not be great in the long run because it means that it kind of limits how much you can do with the experiences but it's really fulfilling the promise of virtual reality so I'm going to withhold judgment on this until the actual final version comes out but everything I've seen so far has been fantastic and the big question is going to be whether they can put enough good experiences on this that it's worth using in the long term it's nothing else it's the first time I've spent five hours playing a one-minute fruit ninja demo so I'm optimistic