The official unveiling of the HTC Vive was among the biggest surprises of this year's MWC, and with good reason. The Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer was expected to launch the successor to the HTC One M8 and perhaps a smartwatch, but blindsided us all and instead launched its first virtual reality headset, which also happens to be, in my opinion, the best.
I've tested both Facebook's Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus, with varying results. I found Oculus to be slightly buggy and the headset ill-fitting, while Morpheus was immersive and genuinely quite scary (I tested The Deep, a demo in which a shark savages the diving cage I was trapped in). It still left me with a headache caused by latency - a form of nausea triggered when the brain struggles to process sensory overload. It's a common side effect of VR headsets and goggles, and one both the teams are working to minimise.
I came away from the (admittedly limited) time I'd had with the headsets thinking Morpheus was significantly closer to delivering what the consumer experience of what virtual reality has always promised but never truly delivered - losing yourself in a whole new world. But now it looks like the Vive is on the verge of changing that.
Created in partnership with games company Valve, the Vive claims to "transform the way in which consumers interact with technology and the world around them". The companies developed a full room scale 360 degree solution with tracked controllers, which simply means wearing the headset and holding its wireless controllers is supposed to give the impression of walking around an unlimited virtual world with the opportunity to grip and pick up objects in a way that's never been truly convincing before.
The HTC Vive essentially consists of a boxy headset, fixed in place over your head by a series of straps (like Oculus), and two controllers (like Morpheus, a more updated version of which was also showcased at MWC). When I walked into the small room I was testing the Vive in, it was lying in a tangle of cables on the floor. While the controllers in the final version will be wireless, the developer version I tried out were linked to thick wires. The headset works by communicating with two sensors mounted on the wall directly in front of me at a 90 degree angle, and remains in constant sync even when I crouched, ducked and shuffled around. A helpful man fitted the headset - which was wired into a PC - over my face, showed me how best to hold the controllers and started the first of five short demos.
I've tested both Facebook's Oculus Rift and Sony's Project Morpheus, with varying results. I found Oculus to be slightly buggy and the headset ill-fitting, while Morpheus was immersive and genuinely quite scary (I tested The Deep, a demo in which a shark savages the diving cage I was trapped in). It still left me with a headache caused by latency - a form of nausea triggered when the brain struggles to process sensory overload. It's a common side effect of VR headsets and goggles, and one both the teams are working to minimise.
I came away from the (admittedly limited) time I'd had with the headsets thinking Morpheus was significantly closer to delivering what the consumer experience of what virtual reality has always promised but never truly delivered - losing yourself in a whole new world. But now it looks like the Vive is on the verge of changing that.
Created in partnership with games company Valve, the Vive claims to "transform the way in which consumers interact with technology and the world around them". The companies developed a full room scale 360 degree solution with tracked controllers, which simply means wearing the headset and holding its wireless controllers is supposed to give the impression of walking around an unlimited virtual world with the opportunity to grip and pick up objects in a way that's never been truly convincing before.
The HTC Vive essentially consists of a boxy headset, fixed in place over your head by a series of straps (like Oculus), and two controllers (like Morpheus, a more updated version of which was also showcased at MWC). When I walked into the small room I was testing the Vive in, it was lying in a tangle of cables on the floor. While the controllers in the final version will be wireless, the developer version I tried out were linked to thick wires. The headset works by communicating with two sensors mounted on the wall directly in front of me at a 90 degree angle, and remains in constant sync even when I crouched, ducked and shuffled around. A helpful man fitted the headset - which was wired into a PC - over my face, showed me how best to hold the controllers and started the first of five short demos.
Once my eyes adjusted to my surroundings, I'd been transported to the deck of an underwater ship (what is it with virtual reality and underwater?), surrounded by curious fish and huge manta rays. I wandered around the confines of the wooden deck, waving my hands at the shoals of fish to send them fleeing. I had a nagging feeling a shark was going to ambush me. Then I stood transfixed as a gigantic blue whale sailed by. It paused close enough for me to see the whites of its enormous eye, before soaring away - its tail coming within inches of clipping the ship's rail.
Put bluntly - it felt real. The whole experience was oddly breathtaking. I lost awareness of the headset, which fitted comfortably, and the plastic of the controllers in my palms and for around 15 minutes really felt as though I was in another world.
Put bluntly - it felt real. The whole experience was oddly breathtaking. I lost awareness of the headset, which fitted comfortably, and the plastic of the controllers in my palms and for around 15 minutes really felt as though I was in another world.
I threw pots and pans around a robot kitchen, chopped up carrots and mushrooms and then microwaved a bottle of wine (it melted into a twisted cube). I drew amazing 3D shapes in the air using my right hand as a paintbrush and my left as a pallete, then walked through and around them. I attempted to fix a poorly robot who then promptly fell apart, before eventually turning on me and enveloping me in a cube before crushing me.
It sounds ridiculous, but I was grinning like a lunatic the whole time. I can't urge you strongly enough to try it for yourself, and HTC's vision for the headset extends beyond gaming; incorporating shopping, travelling and even speaking with friends. And it deserves to be enormously successful.
HTC will launch a developer edition of the Vive during the spring, and hopes to bring a consumer edition of the headset to market by the end of 2015. Frankly, it can't come soon enough. And it didn't even give me a headache.
It sounds ridiculous, but I was grinning like a lunatic the whole time. I can't urge you strongly enough to try it for yourself, and HTC's vision for the headset extends beyond gaming; incorporating shopping, travelling and even speaking with friends. And it deserves to be enormously successful.
HTC will launch a developer edition of the Vive during the spring, and hopes to bring a consumer edition of the headset to market by the end of 2015. Frankly, it can't come soon enough. And it didn't even give me a headache.
