No images of this Valve VR device just yet, so enjoy this exciting logo.
Last night, Tripwire’s David Hensley was comparing Valve’s VR prototype to Star Trek’s holodeck, and today there have been further developer impressions released prior to the Steam Dev Days’s VR conference talks. Both of these were linked to by the SteamDB twitter account.
First up, Garry Newman of Garry’s Mod (and not electro-synth) fame summarised his impressions of the first Steam Dev Days day, and included some details about the VR prototype.
Somehow [Valve’s VR] doesn’t make me sick. I was wearing it for a good 20 minutes. One of the last demos they showed had the player flying through the world.. and I would expect that to make me sick (something about the movement not matching with what you’re really feeling).. but for some reason it didn’t.
He adds that, in contrast, the Oculus dev kit does make him sick, then talks a little about how immersive Valve’s VR prototype feels.
It’s hard to explain just how immersive it felt. Imagine being in a room and looking around and seeing and hearing things in that room. That’s what it was like.
In addition to those thoughts, another developer going by the name of “Harabeck” popped on to Reddit to give some views and answer a couple of questions about the VR device. Again, he notes that the Oculus dev kit made him sick whereas this device did not. He last “a full half hour” and felt fine, noting that the motion tracking seemed “damn near perfect.”
More information about some of the VR demos on show is divulged too:
They had a bunch of demos showing off various ways to use VR. One had me on a small platform over a pit. It actually felt a bit scary looking down. Another showed massive block structure that made me feel like I was peering up in a cyberpunk mega city. A few actually startled me. There was that was a room full of pipes and I was ducking to look around them, I looked down to see that I was at the edge of a hole. I actually jumped back. Then there was the one that showed portal turrets being assembled and I was trying to dodge the mechanical arms.
Further down the page, he says that the FOV seemed about the same as with the Oculus Rift dev kit, but that immersion was “far superior.”
It’s worth noting that all of these comparisons are with the first Oculus developer kit and that there is a second one on the way. Perhaps this one will have parity with what Valve is prototyping.
Published: Jan 16, 2014 10:25 pm