Consumer variant set for a holiday 2015 launch
Valve has begun shipping Vive Developer Edition virtual reality (VR) headsets to, well, developers. According to the company, some big movie studios are among the first batch of recipients, as are triple A game developers and indies "working on their first titles."
"In the box is a headset, 2 Lighthouse base stations, 2 wireless Steam VR controllers, various cables, instructions, and everything else needed to get started," Valve said Friday. "This will allow developers to target the same system consumers will have in their homes later this year."
Announced at the Mobile World Congress in March, the Vive stole the show (and Oculus Rift's thunder) later that month at the Game Developer's Conference where some members of the media were allowed to get up, close, and personal with it. Maximum PC Online Managing Editor Jimmy Thang was so impressed, in fact, that he adjudged it the "closest thing to the HoloDeck."
Vive, which owes its existence to a close partnership between HTC and Valve, boasts two 1200-by-1080-pixel displays — one for each eye — with a 90Hz refresh rate. Tracking duties are performed by the Lighthouse base stations mentioned above. Central to the Vive's promise of room-scale VR, these things are said to be capable of tracking a wearer's position through a 4.5 x 4.5 meter room-scale space with pinpoint accuracy.
The company says shipments to developers will continue through the spring and summer, with the consumer version arriving sometime around the holidays.
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1HVyvuo
