HTC RE Vive VR Headset Revealed

HTC partners with Valve for the HTC RE Vive virtual reality headset.

Gaming company, Valve, revealed the Steam VR virtual reality headset last week, but that is not the only VR headset Valve is working. HTC partnered with Valve for the HTC Re Vive virtual reality goggles.

The HTC Vive headset is powered by Steam. The VR features a 1,200 by 1,080 pixel screen in front of each eye, with refresh rates of 90 frames per second. The VR headset displays photorealistic imagery that fills your field of vision in all directions, eliminating the jitter common to previous VR technologies and transporting you to another world. 

A gyro sensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor combine to precisely track the rotation of the wearer’s head on both axes to an accuracy of 1/10th of a degree, allowing users to look around the virtual environment naturally. When coupled with a pair of Steam VR base stations to track your physical location (in spaces up to 15 feet by 15 feet) – get up and walk around inside the virtual world.

Cher Wang, Chairwoman of HTC commented, “It’s rare that a company has an opportunity to forever transform the ways in which people interact with the world and communicate with each other, but that is exactly what we plan to do with Valve.”

“We achieved this once before with our development of smartphone technology,” Peter Chou, CEO of HTC added, “And, through our partnership with Valve, we’ll now be doing this for a second time with VR technology of which consumers could only previously dream.”

The HTC Vive Developer Edition will be launched this Spring and the consumer edition available by the end of 2015. Valve and HTC will be showcasing Vive to developers attending the GDC 2015 in San Francisco starting today.

By now, every major consumer electronics company besides Apple has announced a VR headset. Is this really the age of virtual reality? We have been at the same enthusiasm about VR in the early 90s, fed by sci-fi novels like William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The new hype for virtual reality started with Oculus, a startup launched on Kickstarter and now owned by Facebook.

Via the HTC Re Vive site.