Extended Reality (XR) - Page 57

Although the imminent VR boom could be a considerable boon for beleaguered mobile manufacturer HTC, the company today officially denied that it won't be spinning off its VR business into a separate virtual-reality focused division.

Last night, Taiwanese media reported that HTC's Chairwoman Cher Wang is in the midst of transforming the company's Vive-based VR presence into a subsidiary independent of HTC's smartphone business. The company was quick to squash the reports with an official statement, saying that it has no plans to divide business.

"Recent media reports in Taiwan, such as by United Evening News, stating that Cher Wang is planning to spin off HTC's VR operations into an independent entity that will be wholly owned by Wang is incorrect. HTC will continue to develop our VR business to further maximize value for shareholders," the statement reads.

With the Oculus Rift's controversial $599 price tag kicking off the VR price war, gamers and industry vets alike have speculated on the price point of the other contenders in the VR triumvirate. Now it looks like we have a big hint on the cost of Sony's PlayStation VR, and it might not be that far off from the Rift.

According to a trio of listings from three different Swiss e-tailers, Sony's PlayStation VR headset could cost as much as $550 when it's released this year. We have a breakdown of the prices below from least-to-greatest. Interestingly enough, the prices are all in the same tiers, but the last page may hint something dire.

The first website, Brack.ch, pinpoints the PSVR at 499 CHF (Swiss frans), or $497. Second up is Internet.ch, which shows Sony's VR headset for $539. Techmania bumps up the PSVR's price to $550, but this listing shows a crossed-out price of $608, which may indicate the headset's original retail price.

With the HTC Vive receiving praise amongst the press and consumers who have tried it out, the Vive Pre that was unveiled at CES 2016 with the front-facing camera and revamped Lighthouse controllers is incredible. So it should come as no surprise to hear rumors that HTC would secure its Vive headset, spinning off its VR division.

This would allow HTC to operate its mobile and VR businesses separately so that the VR side of HTC isn't affected if HTC's mobile sales continue to dwindle. The latest on HTC is that the company would start off by owning the VR business outright, with rumors that the Taiwanese giant is seeing if its employees are happy to work for the new business. In the wake of this news, HTC shares gained 5.3% to $2.28, with 9.57 million shares being traded.

All too often today's technology meets--and sometimes surpasses--the futuristic tech we see in shows like Star Trek. The advent of VR and AR tech opens a doorway to one of the most exciting sci-fi dreams ever manifested: the Holodeck. But according to Oculus VR, the tech won't be ready for some time, but we may see a VR-powered Holodeck emerge in less than two decades time.

"Everyone wants the Holodeck, but we're not there tomorrow. We're not there in the next five years. In about 15 we'll be there," Oculus' head of mobile exec Max Cohen said to Pocket-Lint. "We'll get there incrementally. We'll basically attack different sets of problems and we'll try to make the experience as good as possible."

Remember that Star Trek's Holodeck uses "hard-light" holograms to simulate realistic environments which can be touched and felt. VR, on the other hand, is all about high-tech legedermain and trickery: the virtual space becomes a "real" space with the aid of synthetic tech, and the advent of haptic feedback bodysuits and gloves can already bring the sense of touch to virtual reality.

CES 2016 - Leading up to CES 2016, I had plans to try out the new HTC Vive Pre as many times as I could. I booked a meeting with HTC themselves, but then I had a meeting with both AMD and NVIDIA where I could try it out, too.

So during the entire show, we had a chance to use the Vive Pre three times, which was enough to give me a great foundation to write on. I have a larger piece covering the Vive Pre that I'll write once I land back in Australia, but the impressions versus the original Vive are nothing but stellar.

The newly refreshed Lighthouse controllers feel lighter, the triggers feel better, and the entire controller feels more balanced in the hand. The original controllers felt a little top heavy, but HTC has redesigned the Lighthouse controllers with a strange circle at the top of them. We chatted with a few of our industry friends including the guys at Hardware Canucks, trying to figure out why they're designed like that.

Desert Bus was never meant to be an actual game. It's more of a huge practical joke...but the kind of cruel joke that only the twisted minds of legerdemain artists Penn and Teller could think up. And that's exactly what it is...but now the low-fi torture is crossing over to high-definition virtual reality, and we're all invited to catch a ride.

Did you know that Penn and Teller actually had a game? It was a Sega CD game called Penn And Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, and it was so godawful that it was cancelled before it was ever released. The game was made up of a number of "non-game" spoofs, and one of the most notorious, mind-meltingly bad mini-games was Desert Bus. The "game" is more like an exercise in monotonous hell--all you do is drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada in real-time, across a blank empty road that's totally devoid of life. As AVGN put it: "You drive, drive, and drive. There's nothing out there but road, and sand. There's no passengers to interact with, no music on the radio...the road never turns, and there's no other vehicles."

Now Desert Bus is making its way into the virtual reality realm to spread torment and misery to Oculus Rift and PlayStation VR owners. Oddly enough, Penn Jillette is working with Borderlands boss Randy Pitchford to make Desert Bus VR. "[Pitchford] is calling it Desert Bus 2.0. I'm calling it Desert Bus 1.0003. It'll be a period piece, it'll be set in 1992, like the original Desert Bus, just high-fidelity. We're doing a couple other games. It'll be a bundle of things. We're talking to a bunch of people. It'll probably be agnostic in terms of platform. It'll probably be for the [Oculus] Rift and for the PlayStatin VR," Penn Jillette said on his podcast.

Google was an early embracer of VR with their Carboard, but since then they've lagged behind a bit. It looks like they've formed a new VR group which is being headed by Clay Bavour, who was previously the VP for Product Management at Google proper.

The Carboard initiative was a very good introduction to the more casual side of VR with a number of apps that were compatible with iOS and Android that let you explore the VR world if you had either the official HMD or made your own. It was a great idea, but progress on Google's own VR solutions has stagnated somewhat. Even the integration with GoPro and having 360 degree video part of YouTube hasn't quite been enough.

But now a prolific executive is moving over to take on a completely dedicated VR department that has the chance to innovate in a market that isn't quite focused as of yet. A lot of great ideas exist for how to make VR more mainstream and an integral part of our lives, but they just need a helping hand to guide them into something that we'll actually use. But now Google has just that, and while we don't exactly know what they're working on, if their past projects are any indication then it'll definitely be interesting and good for the future of VR.

Synaptics had a lot to show off at CES this year, with new advancements in fingerprint reading technology and integration to showing off a very interesting concept for controlling 3D holograms by hovering your fingers mere centimeters over where you perceive the hologram to be.

The hologram they had on display is a showcase of their hover enabled touch controller that allows for the detection of the EM field of your fingers, and can let you manipulate objects on the screen without having to touch it. It's very similar to how some hover-enabled digitizers work.

Controlling the hologram by hovering your finger is a novel concept, but also a natural one. This type of action has been integrated into some parts of Windows since 8.0, where the camera is used to determine motion in order to do simple tasks, say turn a page on a recipe or some such. This could open up a whole plethora of different ways we can control our devices in the future, and such EM reading sensors could be used on surfaces that are usually not touchable too.

In our report earlier this week, we noted pre-orders for HTC VR headset known as the Vive would be starting next month. At the time, no specific date was known, but that's changed; the official word is February 28 is the day pre-orders will begin.

Just recently, HTC added a front-facing camera to the new Vive Pre headset, something that our own Anthony Garreffa tested, and loved. NVIDIA's GeForce GTX Titan X powered the HTC Vive Pre demos at CES 2016, providing enough GPU horsepower to drive the VR headset. The Vive will begin shipping in April, for an undisclosed price.

Our impressions of the Vive from CES 2016 were strong. Keep an eye out for our article on it, due to go live soon.

CES 2016 - After our chat with NVIDIA learning about the new Android 6.0 update for the Shield, we went through two VR demos: one on the new Oculus Rift, and one on the new HTC Vive Pre VR headset.

The first was the Oculus Rift with the Oculus Touch controllers, which we wrote about here, with the impressive Bullet Train demo from Epic Games. The next was an awesome demo using the new HTC Vive Pre, where we played around with a paint brush with the Lighthouse controllers.

Not only that, but there was also an Everest demo, where we kinda scaled Everest - showing off the walking-around-a-room VR experience that HTC offers with Vive. All of the demos were powered by NVIDIA's great GeForce GTX Titan X, which can handle the ~3K resolution of VR at 90FPS.

CES 2016 - With an expansive array of VR-ready games and a possible $400 price point, Sony's PlayStation VR contender could become a force to be reckoned with.

The Big Three of VR tech was in attendance at CES 2016, but Sony's presence was notably quieter than its rivals. Oculus VR finally revealed the Oculus Rift's $599 price tag, and HTC showed off its new Vive Pre configuration with its new camera that combines the real-world with VR. While Palmer Luckey feels that the RIft's $599 price tag is "obscenely cheap for what you get", gamers are divided, and are now looking towards Sony's PlayStation VR headset as a more affordable virtual reality solution.

Will Sony's PSVR be another disappointment, or will it be adequately priced to beat the Rift? Sony hasn't unveiled any specifics, but said in the past that the headset would be "priced as a new games console". SuperData estimates that the PlayStation VR could cost anywhere from $400 to $600, which is a fair estimate considering the Rift's somewhat hefty price.

When Oculus VR finally announced the $599 price tag of its commercial VR headset, it opened a rift in the potential VR market. On one side is the enthusiast crowd, who isn't fazed by spending $600 on new tech, and on the other is the crowd who feels cheated and mislead by Palmer Luckey's previous statements. After all, $600 is much different than Luckey's previous "north of $350" price tease, and that's not including the requisite PC hardware needed for VR.

In an attempt to set things straight, Luckey explained some things about the Rift, including the fact that the company isn't making money on the hardware. "To be perfectly clear, we don't make money on the Rift," the VR pioneer bluntly pointed out.. The founder went on to say that the extras bundled with the Rift--Xbox One controller, audio headset, carrying case--didn't impact the cost at all.

So why is it so much? The Rift's internal components, which include custom VR OLED displays with blazing refresh rates--among other high-grade materials--are the main culprits.

CES 2016 - During our visit with NVIDIA at the Consumer Electronics Show, we got some hands-on time with the latest Oculus Rift VR headset, and the just-delayed Oculus Touch controllers.

We were greeted with the Bullet Train demo from Epic Games, which is an Oculus Touch-powered shooter. It was an amazing ride, powered by the gorgeous Unreal Engine 4, with the Oculus Touch controllers really coming into play. We were able to intuitively pick up the guns (including a pistol, shotgun, hand grenade and even bullets in mid-air) with the Touch controller, and it was awesome.

During the demo, you can warp through space by holding down a button on the Touch controller, where you can get closer to guns or an enemy much more easily. During the demo, you can pick up various weapons to take out the baddies, and then at the end you're confronted with a huge robot which fires rockets at you.

CES 2016 - Vuzix aims to cover the full world of next-generation entertainment with its AR and VR hardware, presenting the latest configurations of its headset trio at CES 2016.

While Microsoft's HoloLens, the Oculus Rift, and HTC's Vive usually steal The Next Big Thing limelight, companies like Vuzix are stepping in to the new market with a range of video eyewear and smart glasses to cover the full range of mobile VR, PC VR, and AR solutions.

Vuzix currently has a trio of hardware aimed at revolutionizing how we see and connect to the virtual and real-world, including Android-powered VR headsets, a Google Glass-like contender, and video-powered sunglasses. Check below for a quick synopsis of Vizux's line of video glasses and headsets

CES 2016 - According to research firm SuperData, the VR market will be worth $5.1 billion in 2016, with 38.9 million VR headsets sold, but it won't be the PC gaming side of VR that will be huge, but the mobile VR side of things.

According to SuperData Director of Research Stephanie Llamas, who said: "Initially, affordable smartphone devices will drive the bulk of sales as consumers first explore virtual reality before committing to the more expensive platforms. After this first wave, consumers will likely move more high-end VR devices on PC".

While HTC is getting all the news with the Vive - including the new Vive Pre which sports a front-facing camera, and the Oculus Rift - with the company announcing free Rift headsets for Kickstarter backers - the big news is going to be mobile VR. The market will see a huge 30 million VR-powered mobile devices, compared to just 6.6 million VR headsets on the PC, and 1.9 million from consoles.

CES 2016 - Oculus has just announced that it will be providing free Kickstarter Edition headsets of its Rift headset to anyone who pledged enough money to secure the original DK1 headset during the Kickstarter run.

This means that original Kickstarter backers won't need to pre-order their Rift CV1 headsets, as they'll get a free one in the mail in the coming months. Considering that they'll also arrive with free copies of EVE: Valkyrie and VR platformer Lucky's Tale, that's a pretty damn good deal.

But, this isn't just Oculus feeling generous. HTC is putting up a serious fight announcing the new Vive Pre headset sporting a front-facing camera, and with constant delays in the Rift itself and even the Touch controllers, the PR that Oculus will get from this will be great.

CES 2016 - HTC has just announced the new Vive Pre VR headset, which will be on its way to developers in the coming hours. Vive Pre is the next leap between the Vive prototype and the final consumer version, which will ship to consumers in April.

The second-generation kit is a more final version of the Vive, with the "most experimental technology and the least compromise" reports The Verge. HTC and Valve then delayed the Vive after they had reached a "very, very big technological breakthrough", which seems to be what the Vive Pre turned out to be.

HTC has added a front-facing camera to the Vive Pre, which provides a look into the real-world, when you're in the virtual one. When you are walking around with the Vive headset on, and you walk near a wall in the real-world, you'll be introduced to a "black-and-teal rendering of the real-world" to show that you're hitting the limits of the real-world.

CES 2016 - NVIDIA has jumped on the VR bandwagon in a much stronger way, announcing its new GeForce GTX VR program, with its aim of getting PCs, notebooks and GPUs ready for VR.

NVIDIA has a list of add-in cards (AICs) and system builder partners that are good to go when it comes to VR. NVIDIA designates its GeForce GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X as GPUs ready for VR gaming, with NVIDIA's partners meeting the company's standards able to display a "GeForce GTX VR Ready" badge on their systems and video cards.

The company is aiming at the combination of GeForce GTX GPUs, NVIDIA Game Ready drivers, GameWorks VR and DesignWorks VR technologies - alongside the new GeForce GTX VR ready program, that it will provide gamers with the best solution for VR gaming.

The actual release date for the Oculus Rift VR headset hasn't been announced aside from a generic "Q1 2016" date, but they're opening it up to pre-orders starting this Wednesday, January 6th at 8AM Pacific.

Of course we're hoping for more than just a pre-order date at CES and something more concrete to look forward to. The delay of the Oculus Touch controller shouldn't be too much of a detractor for those wishing to get their hands-on final hardware. If early development kits combined with controllers has been any indication, then VR is more than viable without a VR-specific input method.

So if you've been dreaming of trying out the consumer model as soon as it hits the streets, before anyone else has a chance to plop it on their heads, then you might want to be one of the first in (digital) line when the pre-ordering begins.

Oculus VR has announced that the Oculus Rift's Touch controllers won't be launching alongside the VR headset, and have been delayed to the second half of 2016.

In a recent blog post, the VR pioneers at Oculus said they need more time to perfect the wireless VR peripheral. Luckily, this delay won't affect the main attraction: the Rift is still on schedule to release in Q1 2016 with pre-orders following in the new future.

"On the path to perfecting Touch, we've decided that we need more time before release, and we'll now be shipping Touch in the second half of 2016. Pre-orders will open a few months prior to launch," the announcement reads. "On Touch hardware, we've made significant advances in ergonomics, and we're implementing many changes that make Touch even more comfortable, reliable, and natural. We're also implementing changes that improve hand pose recognition.The Oculus Touch originally made waves as the first-ever controller made specifically for a VR headset, and like the Rift, the hardware has gone through many changes and variations."