What is currently happening Programs, welcome to the Grid VR.
Where I'll be bringing you this weeks news in Virtual Reality.
Its Sunday the 13th of January 2019 and all I can say this week is: To Half Infinity and
Beyond!
We've got the Vive Cosmos Hi Res headset, I think, Vive Pro Eye tracking tracking your
blinks, Pimax irons out the kinks, AR Smart Glasses, PT in VR, Motion Sickness Cure and
much more.
Today I�m going to cover off the main events to keep you in the loop.
So stay locked, enjoy, and welcome back to the Grid VR.
CES 2019 was on this week and a tonne of hardware was teased and demoed.
First off the ranks is the Vive Cosmos, a 6 degrees of freedom, high res headset from
HTC.
Details are a little scatty on this one, but we do know the HMD connects to a PC using
a single USB-C cable, which has to be the Virtual Link cable I covered in this episode
of The Grid VR, and it utilises Vives own inside out tracking system courtesy of 2 cameras
on the front of the device, and 2 on the side, so no external sensors are required at all.
It has a headstrap similar to a PSVR headband though it was noted that the headphones themselves
are an optional extra.
On that point, the website claims a modular design that let's you upgrade components,
though I'm not sure if that means things like upgradable lenses, or you can just buy better
headphones.
A flip top front lets you go in and out of VR in case you decide to visit the real world.
It comes with two 6dof controllers remeniscent of Oculus Quest, which you can see more of
in this video here, and teased mobile phone connectivity, so a potential VR headset that
also works with a mobile phone then?
Yep, more on that in a second.
The headset will have fresnel lenses, and HTC are claiming Cosmos will have their sharpest
screens yet, with crystal clear graphics, pixel packed displays with minimal screen
door effect, and real RGB displays.
More on that in a second too.
Cosmos will draw content from the new 'Vive Reality' platform, which includes Origin,
a VR environment similar to Oculus Home, SteamVR Home, or the WMR cliff house, where you can
chill with friends in a virtual space and do things like watch videos, browse the internet
with Firefox reality, or launch games and apps from SteamVR or HTC's own Viveport service.
And that Viveport service, where programs pay a subscription fee each month for access
to up to 5 titles, has been upgraded to 'Vive Infinity', which grants access of 500+ games
every month.
And while that sounds great, 500 titles is a weird number when you consider there were
over 1,000 titles launched on Viveport last year.
*to infinity an* no, not really tho, more like half infinity.
No word on field of view, resolution, price or release date except 2019 and that's all
we know about Cosmos specifically.
Or is it?
Weeeeell, Qualcomm, in partnership Acer and Quanta, the Taiwanese PC giant that produces
headsets for companies like Acer, were showing off a reference design HMD at CES which was
strikingly similar to the Acer Ojo 500 which I covered in this episode of The Grid VR last
year.
And this headset looks to be the one that HTC used to design the Cosmos.
This HMD has 2k x 2k resolution per eye, making it a 4k headset, which also makes this twice
as sharp as a Vive Pro, and on par with the Deus ODIN headset I covered in this episode
of The Grid VR.
Also, LCD screens with an RGB sub pixel layout which help reduce SDE compared to the PenTile
sub pixel layouts you'd find on OLED screens in a Vive or Rift.
And when you tie these 2 pieces of info back to HTC's claim of the sharpest screens yet,
and 'Real RGB displays', it certainly lines up pretty nicely.
On top of that, this reference headset connects to a mobile phone using the same single USB-C
cable HTC mentioned, which powers the headset while you are on the go and allows you to
play mobile VR games and apps, or stream content like 180 videos directly over the net to the
headset.
Though to stream VR content, this unit was utilizing the ever looming, ultimately better
5G technology, and the headset was running at a low 60hz refresh rate, which is what
you'd see from a GearVR.
So, not a great mobile VR experience, but again, it does line up nicely with the video
HTC was showing off.
And with a 100� field of view, which is the same as Rift and Vive, and HTC not noting
any boost in the field of view on the Cosmos, again.
Lines up nicely.
And on top off all of that, the CEO of Nvidia said that Nvidia have been working with HTC
on Virtual Link.
And while a lot can happen between reference design and commercial release, a lot of these
features fit like click bait and Linus tech tips.
All up, the Cosmos sounds very similar to what the rumoured Rift S would be.
And while the Oculus Quest would still be the best buy for mobile and standalone VR
gamers, the Vive Cosmos could be the new king for PC VR users, provided the inside out tracking
stacks up, and provided HTC's pricing structure isn't a little too.. well.
HTC.
No release date yet but dev kits will be in the mail late this year so sit tight.
Then there's the Vive Pro Eye.
A headset with exactly the same specs as a Vive Pro but with the addition of eye tracking
courtesy of HTC's partenership with Tobii.
Eye tracking is nothing new for flat PC gaming, with a range of titles supporting the technology
already, but in VR, eye tracking allows for foveated rendering.
A technology that tracks your eye movements, and renders the centre of your vision in high
resolution, ideally very high resolution, while anything in the peripheral edges of
your vision where your eye can't see in detail is rendered in a lower resolution.
Resulting in a visually sharper VR experience that is a lot less taxing on your computer.
The upshot being that cheaper systems with low end graphics cards can still run high
end VR games in perceivably crystal clarity.
And while foveated rendering on something like a Vive or Rift isn't going to make that
much of a difference as the high res image at the centre of your vision isn't really
that high res anyways due to the physical limitations of the screens and lenses themselves.
For something with the resolution of like a Pimax, or Vive Pro, the images in the centre
of your vision can be super high res, and foveated rendering opens these headsets up
to people with cheaper PC's.
And this is a key reason why foveated rendering needs to come before wide field of view headsets
right now, if we're talking the chicken and the egg, not that it matters, what are you
even doing here chicken?
Aside from foveated rendering pushing us closer to 4k consumer VR on everyday PC's, eye tracking
also allows us to accomplish things like assisted IPD adjustment for a less fatiguing visual
experience, intuitive interactions combining gaze tracked object selection with hand interactions,
which wouldn't seem to make a major difference, but for every game tasks as simple as menu
selection, being able to just look at an option and hit a button on your controller, or double
blink to select it would noticeably streamline the user experience.
For social VR, virtual avatars can look where you look to add a more personal experience
to an otherwise static virtual eyeball.
And that's just the consumer side of things, businesses can collect data about how you
look around while giving a speech, to build better training apps.
Or note what apps catch your eye first on a store front, and it's that type of data
which can be extremely useful for companies when running test or focus groups, trying
to decide what images or products people naturally gravitate towards first.
And all of this adds up to better devices.
Sure, we have VR, but all these steps bring us closer to exceptional, widely adopted VR.
Eyexiting, Teyems.
I'm sorry.
And briefly, Pimax have shown off their eye tracking module at CES in their 5k+ headset.
The module is designed by 7invensun, a company whose aGlass eye tracking module for the HTC
Vive popped up in this episode of The Grid VR on the 10th of May last year.
As eye tracking and foveated rendering become more common place and widely supported, modules
like these will be key and it's great to see this addition, as well as some notable improvements
on the Pimax headsets as time goes on.
The Pimax Knuckles style controllers were also on display, but were just shells and
didn't actually function, and Pimax have also noted on their website that their motion smoothing
Brainwarp technology which alternates images to decrease load on your PC is hitting beta.
The company has also been working with Valve as they go along to ensure SteamVR compatibility,
and despite kickstarter backers still waiting on headsets, all these updates are notably
positive and you can stay locked here for further updates.
At this point I'd like to shout out to VoodooDE who supplied me with a lot of this CES footage,
I'll link his awesome YouTube channel in the description of this video.
Nreal, is a company founded by an ex magic leap engineer that also raised $15 million
to develop it's 3 ounce, or 85 gram mixed reality smart glasses.
The glasses, branded the Nreal Light glasses have a 52-degree field of view and 1080p resolution.
Which may sound shit by VR standards, but for AR wearable tech, those numbers are actually
quite high and result in a reportedly sharp AR experience.
The glasses do need to connect via a USB-C cable to an external computing pack much like
the Vive cosmos in mobile mode, so they're not standalone, and are powered by a Qualcomm
Snapdragon 845 processor.
There's integrated spatial sound and voice control which all sounds really good to me,
and the glasses will shipping in Q2 or Q3 this year and be priced under $1000.
Ian Bell, the CEO and founder of Slightly Mad Studios, the team behind Project Cars,
has taken to Twitter and announced a high powered concept console designed to deliver
90fps VR gameplay at 4k resolutions.
This console is not in development yet but just look at the concept designs, in particlar
the finalised designs and know that sometimes it's ok to dream of what the future might
be.
And depending on what the PS5 ends up being, a VR gaming console PC may be just the ticket
to madness.
Finch technologies are releasing a somewhat universal 6 degrees of freedom controller
to developers this month that will allow devs to build 6dof games and apps for headsets
that only have 3 degrees of freedom controllers.
Like the Oculus GO, or Vive Focus.
There are no field-of-view limitations thanks to arm bands you strap on that track the controllers
and relay that tracking information to your VR headset.
And a solution like that in itself, could negate inside out tracking limitations on
other upcoming VR headsets.
HTC and Qualcomm have both endorsed these controllers for their headsets as well as
it being noted they are compatible with both iOS and Android platforms.
If you would like to build apps for this controller and enable 6dof gaming on something like an
Oculus GO or Vive Focus then this may be worth a look.
In YouTube land, Linus Tech Tips furthered their allegiance to the clickbait bandwagon
with a video titled "Why VR has crashed".
Dear Linnis, I've been typing this letter for moments now and I realise one thing, my
bread has been in the toaster for 10 minutes and it's probably burnt now so I can't eat
it.
Please send more bread.
Also, I watched your video and...
Despite Nvidia pointing out that 4 million PC VR headsets have been sold, SteamVR numbers
have doubled since this time last year, games like Pavlov saw a doubling of their userbase
over Christmas, Resident Evil 7 VR now shows over 600,000 players, and Amazon completely
sold out of Rifts to sell over the holidays, I get the point you were trying to make.
VR hasn't taken over the world in it's first year, but that was a mismanaged expectation
by the industry.
To me the only real talking point here is can the industry realign it's expectations
and strategies to make VR in to a profitable model?
And if you are right and VR truly has crashed who are all these people coming over the horizon
to kick your a..
Also, the Oculus Rift with touch controllers is now priced permanently at $350 US which
is better than a ball park figure and makes it in my opinion the best bang for buck VR
headset you can get.
Sony were seen holding the PSVR up high while announcing they've sold 91.6 million PS4's
and over 876 million games at CES.
When you consider over 3 million PSVR have been sold, that's around 4% of Playstation
owners being PSVR owners.
Which ain't bad for a young tech that's supposed to have crashed.
PT, the horror game from Hideo Kojima, Guillermo Del Toro, and not published by Konami has
been rectreated by one Program and made free to download and play through for the next
week.
The initial release didn't work properly in VR, but the bugs have been fixed, I've played
it through and yeah, this is the best way to play this sadly doomed work of art.
And a French startup called Boarding Ring claim to have solved motion sickness with
the Boarding VAR.
An attachable dynamic LED light ring that responds to in game movement while you play
and helps remove the effects of VR sim sickness.
This work actually seems to follow on from work that Microsoft themselves were doing
a couple of years back and if you want to find out more about that one, or any of the
other topics I've covered today, as always, all the links are in the description.
And finally, this just in, actual footage of Linus signing autographs for members of
the VR community.
And that�s this week on the Grid VR.
You can help support this channel by grabbing exclusive rewards on Patreon, and if you liked
this video then crush that like button, have your say in the comments below, and hit the
XO logo to subscribe if you wanna.
I�ll see you in the next one.
Peace!!
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