HTC Partners With Valve To Create Vive VR

Valve recently announced Steam VR, its own virtual reality platform capable of being imported onto headsets. The focus is bringing the vast collection of Steam developers into the VR business, without losing the largest PC marketplace.

To make the platform successful, Valve needs partners, and the first to come out the woodwork is HTC. At Mobile World Congress yesterday, HTC announced the Vive VR, the first Steam VR headset.

HTC revealed a small amount of features for the Vive VR at MWC, but will bring a complete demo version to the Game Developer Conference next week, where Valve will also be showing off Steam VR.

The Vive Developer Edition will be available in the coming months and features two 1200 x 1080 displays with a refresh rate of 90 fps. This should offer realistic quality graphics and eliminate noticeable stutter.

HTC claims it is the first VR headset capable of full immersion, allowing a person to walk around the full room. In terms of sensors, HTC has fitted a gyrosensor, accelerometer, and laser position sensor into the Vive to track user movement.

The design of the Vive VR makes it light on the head for extended use. It offers a weird mesh of cameras and plastic on the front and is much thicker than the Gear VR, since all of the internals are fitted into the headset instead of the smartphone.

HTC is hoping to release a consumer edition later in the year running Steam VR, clearly unhappy with the state of Oculus’ own platform. This could be the tipping point for Oculus in the VR battle, if they start to lose potential partners to Valve and later Microsoft.

Image Credit: [HTC]