In fact, it’s so far ahead of what much of the competition is offering that it can be difficult to describe the experience of using it to someone who hasn’t yet tried VR (virtual reality) themselves. It’s akin to trying to describe moving footage to someone who’s spent their whole life staring at pictures, or describing a game to someone who’s only ever watched films. At times it can even be difficult describing the Vive to someone who’s only ever used cheaper mobile VR hardware like the Gear VR or Google Cardboard. But the highest complement I can give to the HTC Vive is just how right it immediately feels, and how easily all your reservations about VR fall away as soon as you start using it.
Putting on the VIVE headset washes away the real world with fantastical experiences–from rec room-type games like ping-pong or pool to experiences spanning categories. SteamVR™ Tracking, stunning graphics, a 110˚ field of view, intuitive controls and HD haptic feedback provide an unparalleled sense of immersion.
Incorporate new objects into your virtual world with VIVE Tracker. Make it easier to put on and take off the headset with VIVE Deluxe Audio Strap, featuring interior padding and integrated on-ear headphones.
ROOM-SCALE VIRTUAL REALITY
SteamVR™ Tracking provides a superior virtual reality experience thanks to low latency, sub-millimeter accuracy and 360˚ coverage. Explore virtual worlds while seated, standing or moving around in a room-scale space–room-scale VR puts you at the center of everything.
YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS AT VIVEPORT
Viveport is the global virtual reality app store for VIVE, showcasing an ever-growing selection of VR experiences across a wide variety of content categories. Now, all Vive owners can start a free one-month trial of Viveport’s subscription service – the best way to experience virtual reality from a specially curated collection of titles for one low monthly price. Where will you go now?
EXPERIENCES YOU’LL LOVE
Enjoy over a thousand games for SteamVR™, plus everything you love about Steam in virtual reality. Keep tabs on the newest releases, automatically download game updates and create and share content with millions of your closest friends on Steam. Incorporate new objects into your virtual world with VIVE Tracker. Make it easier to put on and take off the headset with VIVE Deluxe Audio Strap, featuring interior padding and integrated on-ear headphones.
Source VIVE
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How does the HTC Vive work?
The first time we got our hands on the HTC Vive was at Mobile World Congress 2015, where HTC first made the announcement of its partnership with Valve, and it has been retooled and vastly improved since that original showing.
The consumer version works wonderfully, is vastly easier to setup and feels ready to be shipped to the public which, considering that units are supposed to go out any day now, is a very good thing.
Like other virtual reality headsets, the Vive has the arduous task of completely immersing you in a video game by producing two images simultaneously. However, unlike PlayStation VR and Oculus Rift that use a single camera to track your head and extremities, HTC Vive has two base stations, which sit on the wall attached to the included wall mounts or a high shelf and help map track your movements as you walk around in the 3D world.
What the stations track are small divots on the top of the two controllers and on the headset itself. There are 72 of these dots speckling the controllers and helmet that help accurately track the Vive.
Inside every box is a Vive headset unit, two controllers, two base stations, a cloth to wipe down the lenses, a small hub that sits between the headset and your PC, charging cords for the controllers and power cables for base stations. Also packaged with every unit are three games: Job Simulator, Fantastic Contraption and The Lab. It’s everything you’re going to need for a great virtual reality experience minus the computer that powers the whole thing.
New to the consumer version is a spectacularly simple setup program that should, for the vast major
Once you’re plugged in and the room has been mapped out, you’re free to roam around every inch of the digital space. This means digital worlds can be more expansive and more immersive on the Vive than the other two systems and, thankfully, less nausea-inducing, too.
The only limitations you’ll encounter once inside your digital world are faint blue walls made up of lines that keep you inside the playzone. These blue lines are superimposed into your game by SteamVR, the software put out by Valve that’s running underneath every virtual experience.
It’s called “chaperone mode,” and its practical application is to prevent you from moving too far outside the area that you’ve set up for the Vive and potentially stumbling into furniture/plants/animals/etc around your home and hurting yourself.
