HTC Vive Virtual Reality Headsets Start to Ship to Devs

A while ago we took a brief look at the future of virtual reality and we mentioned about the HTC Vive VR headset. HTC joined forces with Valve to create the headset. A dev version of the VR equipment has begun to ship to a select few game development teams. The shipped equipment comes with the headset and two base stations.

The headset, which looks rather functional rather than appealing, is home to over 70 sensors of various kinds including an accelerometer, gyroscope and laser positional sensors. These positional sensors interact with the supplied “Lighthouse” base stations, of which, two are needed to counteract occlusion or blind spots. This positioning system is said to support multiple headsets in an area around a 15×15-foot area (that’s 4.5m x 4.5m for the metric users).

The Steam VR kit will also come with two controllers which are designed for use with the virtual reality headset and are tracked by the base stations. These controllers have taken the high-resolution trackpads from the new steam controller for a new way to move around virtual environments.

They are only shipping to a limited number of developers and according to Garry Newman, the creator of Garry’s Mod and the ever improving Rust, he is yet to get his.

Maybe he will have to wait like the rest of us for the retail release that is earmarked for some time before the year is out.