
HTC’s Vive Pro will add more pixels to an otherwise familiar-looking VR system - T-A
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/01/htcs-vive-pro-will-add-more-pixels-to-an-otherwise-familiar-looking-vr-system/
======
nkurz
_(The Vive Pro will also support a tracking-area boost of up to 10 square
meters [[https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/valve-announces-
the-f...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/10/valve-announces-the-first-
big-steamvr-2-0-feature-waaay-more-space/)], which requires four 2.0 base
stations.)_

I read this and thought "Hmm, 10 sq meters sounds small. That about 3.1m x
3.1m (10 ft x 10 ft), which is about the same maximum as the current Vive".
Not impossible, but an odd boast to make about make about the new Pro unit,
and funny that it requires more base stations to be able to match the old one.

Then I read the link:

 _The new base station protocol will only support two tracking boxes at first
(just like the HTC Vive), but Valve promises that they 'll receive an update
in "early 2018" to support two more tracking boxes to grow the total tracking
range to 10 meters squared, or 32.8 feet squared (1,075 square feet). That's
quite the jump from SteamVR's current max of 11.5 feet squared_

Oh, I see now what's happening! Instead of 10 square meters, they mean that
you that the new version will support a 10m x 10m room (30 ft x 30 ft), which
indeed is much greater than the current 3.5m x 3.5m (11.5 ft x 11.5 ft) max.
But their own earlier writeup was so confusing and innumerate that they
couldn't figure out what it meant!

Maybe "innumerate" is too harsh, but how does a technical site like Ars muck
things like this up? Am I being too optimistic when I still hope that both the
author and editor should have caught this? Hurried author and no editor? Or is
someone teaching that "X units squared" is a valid way of specifying a square
room of X units per side?

~~~
Simon_says
> Or is someone teaching that "X units squared" is a valid way of specifying a
> square room of X units per side?

I've been taught that this is standard usage, and I've seen it elsewhere.
Personally, I've gone out of my way not to write this way because, as you
experienced, a good fraction of people will not be familiar with it.

------
modeless
Higher resolution screens are great, but I find that the screens are often not
the limiting factor for image quality in my current setup. The optics blur
everything outside the central region and introduce light smearing artifacts.
The head mount makes it difficult to keep my eyes in the sweet spot of the
lenses. My GPU isn't powerful enough to drive the supersampling required to
reduce aliasing to an acceptable level in many games, because devs aren't
paying enough attention to aliasing.

I'll be interested to see people's impressions of the new optics and head
mount, but I probably won't be buying one until the next generation of GPUs is
out, along with the new lighthouses and controllers and wireless support.
Maybe a year from now or so.

~~~
leoc
I don’t have a source rn, but my expectation is that the Vive Pro will have
somewhat improved optics too, courtesy of Valve’s new lenses.

~~~
modeless
You are right; the announce video stated improved optics explicitly. But in
the video they still appear to be fresnel lenses, so I expect the light
bleeding artifacts will remain. I am interested to see peoples' hands-on
impressions.

~~~
yaegers
That's too bad. The light bleeding makes playing games like Elite Dangerous
really cumbersome. You can even dial down the cockpit LED brightness but that
doesn't help with the bleeding. Because then the LEDs are too dull to read
everything allright. Since the game plays mostly in space and the only light
sources are the cockpit LEDs makes this problem really stand out.

Also, the general blurryness of everything outside of the center of the lenses
make racing games way less fun than they are supposed to be. Everyone who
drives in teh real world knows you keep your head mostly in one position and
then peek down by moving your pupils to take a short glance at your
instruments or the mirrors. All you see with the Vive is a blurry mess unless
you move your entire head down until the intruments are dead center of your
field of view. Not really the realism one would expect from a VR racing game,
imho.

All this is just too bad. Because I think while roomscale is pretty neat it is
still very much work to set up. I mean by clearing your room, moving furiture
etc. And then you still don't get to act freely because you will always know
that you can't go very far because you would run into something. Kinda
immersion breaking if you ask me. But where VR could really shine is with
cockpit simulation games. No furniture moving needed. Just sit down, put the
VR goggles on and of you go. Too bad that the light bleeding and the off
center blurryness hinders this at the moment. Heres hoping this will be
changed in the future.

~~~
modeless
It's not just too much work to set up. It's too much work to _play_. Standing
up and moving around is never going to be as comfortable as lounging on the
couch moving only your thumbs.

I think roomscale VR has a real problem as an entertainment medium. People
expect it to slot into the same place in their lives as TV and video games,
but it doesn't work like that. It's better to think of it as an indoor sport
like table tennis (of course, it can literally be table tennis). It can
actually work really well as a form of lightweight exercise. But roomscale VR
is not what you want for vegging out at the end of the day like TV, and better
hardware won't change that.

What really convinced me of this was playing puzzle games in VR. I wanted VR
Myst to be awesome, but it's unfortunately quite uncomfortable to stand in
place for ten minutes at a time while you ponder some contraption. Wearing a
pound on your head doesn't help, but even if the headset weighed nothing it
still wouldn't be comfortable just because of the standing. You can't rest,
except by sitting on the floor. You can't lean on anything. You can't even put
a hand out to steady yourself. It's exhausting.

------
0x00000000
Glad to see HTC continuing development even in hard times, I think they really
got the tracking system right.

I owned a first generation Vive and I think the resolution and wireless (not
included with Pro but official solution coming) would be massive steps forward
to make it what I would consider 'usable' for the average person and ready for
adoption outside of niche games. Still a tremendous cost for all the hardware
and a PC that can push 90+ fps to it though.

~~~
vernie
Wasn't it Valve that got the tracking system right?

~~~
hbosch
Yes, almost all of the technology in Vive is originally Valve research. The
lighthouses, headset prototype, and controllers were all being demoed (in 3D
printed/hacked hardware) at their Bellevue offices in ~2015, or maybe earlier,
I forget. HTC partnered with Valve as a manufacturing partner then. I don't
know of any meaningful VR research that has happened at HTC independently.

------
aeontech
I'm super excited for the Pimax 8K headset [0], supposedly shipping early this
year. This resolution upgrade shows that HTC is still in the game though,
contrary to the rumors that they are giving up.

[0]: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimax8kvr/pimax-the-
wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimax8kvr/pimax-the-worlds-
first-8k-vr-headset)

~~~
errantspark
I wouldn't be, hardware is one thing (that's hard to get right), but as the
FOVE that's been collecting dust in my living room for the past year or so can
attest, without proper software support it doesn't matter how cool your
hardware is.

~~~
T-A
What worries me most about the Pimax 8k is that you will need at least two
1080 Ti in SLI to drive it at full resolution, and even that may not be
enough. I'd definitely wait for the next GPU generation to roll out (should be
soonish now) before committing.

~~~
intrasight
Foveal vision only sees a few degrees of the visual field. Last year's GPU is
plenty powerful enough to render the foveal portion in high-res and peripheral
at decreasing res. Better headsets with eye tracking are needed.

------
CardenB
I wonder how this addresses the screen door aspect of VR? I notice it
particularly in Fallout 4 VR, and really would like a resolution upgrade. It
runs smoothly enough already on a 1080

~~~
DiThi
FO4VR is a pretty bad example of how good a VR game can look today. It's very
badly optimized and with bad defaults.

Lone Echo is much better, and with controls perfectly tailored for VR. It's an
Oculus exclusive but I played with ReVive.

~~~
jjcm
In terms of pure visuals, Gnomes and Goblins has been my favorite. It's
immensely short, but absolutely beautiful.

------
ChrisClark
To me it looks like a good choice for someone who hasn't bought a VR headset
yet. But if you already own one you probably wouldn't upgrade?

~~~
BoorishBears
Imo, Vive can't compare to Oculus because the Touch controllers are just that
good. The ergonomics are just too perfect.

~~~
errantspark
I have and use both sets on a daily basis and I find the tracking quality of
the Vive outclasses the Oculus night/day. More than enough to cover any
shortcomings in the controllers. I cannot use an Oculus for more than ~45
minutes without getting nauseous, even sitting down. I've spent 3+ straight
hours in the Vive without any noticeable discomfort.

~~~
BoorishBears
I had both for some time (got rid of my Vive before a recent move since I'm
not as interested in dev use as I used to be) and found the Oculus tracking
being good enough. In fact, since I moved I haven't ordered a new mount for my
3rd sensor but 2 sensor hasn't felt much different unless I'm holding my hands
together in a dead spot I had to dig for.

My comment is oversimplifying why I consider the Oculus the better headset.
For the "layperson" looking at VR I feel we've reached the point where either
choice works, but the Rift is 200$ cheaper.

The Rift home is much more beginner friendly and imo offers a better UX. The
Rift has integrated headphones. I also think that while the type of people who
frequent HN (including me) might prefer the Vive's more open environment,
laypeople will benefit more from value coming from Facebook backed Oculus. I
mean they already do right off the bat, there's no way the Rift would be 400$
(Often even on sale for 350$ these days) without Facebook backing, and there's
some high production value content that's probably funded by them (and no
Revive fiddling to get it).

That's not to say the Vive doesn't have strengths. Vive roomscale is much
cleaner to setup for example (Rift can do fairly solid roomscale with just 2
sensors but it's not advertised by Oculus during setup because roomscale with
Rift does end up taking routing wires around your room). But the Rift being
cheaper is enough to smooth over a lot of complaints.

The way I'd put it is, if you need to ask someone which headset to buy, buy a
Rift because they're both neck in neck for most people, but the Rift is
cheaper.

------
moron4hire
So the resolution is actually only about 10% higher than the Windows MR
devices, which have a combined 2880x1440 resolution. And the Wireless Adapter
isn't included in the Pro model, that's separate. The Windows MR headsets are
all significantly cheaper than the Vive as well, and I find my HP headset to
be quite a bit more comfortable than my Vive. Finally, the Windows MR headsets
are compatible with Steam VR with an official plugin from Microsoft.

I mean, I will still probably buy it, but if you're looking for a decent
headset _now_ , it's already available.

Aside: I wonder what the Wireless Adapter entails, because both the Vive and
the Windows MR headsets run on standard HDMI and USB 3.

------
devit
Why is the resolution still so low?

Why not even 4K combined?

~~~
andybak
Because GPUs are struggling with many titles even at current resolutions.

~~~
devit
Then just simplify the game's 3D scenes?

Also, this seems an inaccurate claim: e.g. a single $449 GTX 1070 Ti can do at
least 50fps at 4K maximum quality in all tested games in
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/11987/the-nvidia-geforce-
gtx-...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/11987/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1070-ti-
founders-edition-review/4)

This means that for 1000$ a dual 1070 Ti workstation should be able to do 4K
120hz just fine in all games, perhaps slightly lowering presets on GTA V.

Of course this being cutting edge graphics a quad GPU setup is more reasonable
which would allow 4K per eye at 120hz max quality, possibly even more with
tweaked settings.

~~~
andybak
> Then just simplify the game's 3D scenes?

I'm sure everyone will be happy with that compromise. After all graphical
fidelity is very low on the average gamer's list of priorities /s

Also - 50fps is not regarded as acceptable for VR. Oculus sets 90fps as the
lowest framerate to avoid VR sickness.

------
joshlemer
I would be wary of buying any HTC products after having gone through a
warranty repair with them. They took 10.5 weeks to repair my phone, never sent
me any updates about it. They only returned it after I spent about a week
arguing with them over the phone for about an our each day. Lots more horror
stories on /r/HTC

~~~
Negative1
Different unit I believe but perhaps same customer service dept. Either way,
isn't their mobile division now owned by Google?
[https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/21/16343342/google-htc-
deal-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/21/16343342/google-htc-deal-apple-
iphone-war)

------
KenanSulayman
I wanted to play with the Rift and develop some apps for it, but the Mac isn't
supported. So I got an external GPU to power it. Using Windows, because they
abandoned Mac driver development. That's EUR 449 for the Rift and EUR 699 for
the eGPU incl. the respective GPU. EUR 1198.

I eventually returned the Rift because I couldn't find a reasonable way to get
it working with my Mac. I was checking out the Vive because everyone seems to
be using it for development. It's EUR 699. WOW. That's when I thought: "screw
it."

I would love to build something with it. It seems to have so much potential.
But I really think that the current prices for the headsets are simply
outrageous.

For me, it's far too expensive for a hobby. Maybe when it's more affordable. I
don't want to know how much the "Pro" will cost.

~~~
dshankar
_> "almost no current laptops have the GPU performance for the recommended
spec, though upcoming mobile GPUs may be able to support this level of
performance."_

This WAS true in 2015 but is NOT TRUE today. All the Nvidia Pascal-generation
desktop GPUs (2016) run extremely well on laptops. Since 2016, there is no
more "mobile class" Nvidia GPU designation.

The "VR Ready" laptops are popular, and they have a 1050, 1060, 1070, and even
an Nvidia 1080 GPU. These are very powerful gaming laptops, and some are still
in slim form factors like the Razor Blade, and relatively affordable for a
laptop ($1400-2000)

~~~
Viper007Bond
Yep, my VR machine is an ASUS laptop with a 1070 in it because my desktop runs
older cards in SLI, which isn't supported. I'm sure it cost less than their
MacBook.

