How to get ready for PlayStation VR on the cheap

When Sony officially announced price and release date for its PlayStation VR virtual reality headset, it soon became apparent that it would actually cost more to get it up and running that the headline-friendly price tag.

The headset will cost £350 (quoted during the GDC press event as £349, but retailers have it listed at around £349.99 instead) and even if you own a PS4 already, you’ll need to fork out for a couple of other accessories to get it to work properly; a PlayStation Camera and two PlayStation Move controllers.

In the US, Sony has announced that it will bundle those with a launch day edition of the PS VR – for a larger fee of course. It will retail for $499.99 in the States, which represents a $100 premium over the headset package itself.

READ: PlayStation VR: Release date, price, specs and everything you need to know

However, we’re yet to see a similar bundle announced in the UK. Some retailers might be putting something similar together, but officially na-da.

The good news though is that, because the PS VR isn’t due until the beginning of October, there’s still plenty of time to get yourself ready for its arrival. You can actually get the required kit now, save for the headset and processing unit, and on the cheap as well.

So here’s our handy little guide of where to look to find the necessary add-ons to make your PS VR experience run smoothly, and on a tight budget.

READ: PlayStation VR preview: Affordable virtual reality for the gamers

Pocket-lint

PS VR: PlayStation Camera

The tracking system used by the PlayStation VR headset requires the use of a PlayStation Camera – the same camera unit for the PS4 originally launched at the same time as the console.

In fact, there’s finally a bone fide use for the camera that isn’t mucking about with PlayStation Room for the 10 minutes after you first buy a PlayStation 4 or logging in each time you switch on your console.

So if you were duped into buying one with your PS4, the great news is that you can dig it out of a drawer again.

If not, you’ll find a new one costs around £40 everywhere now that PS VR has been officially announced. Game has even priced its second-hand units at £40.

Thankfully, if you shop around, you should be able to pick one up a bit cheaper.

CeX, for example, offers the official PlayStation Camera for £35. It has plenty of stock online and you can check the website to see if there is any stock in a high-street CeX store local to you too.

Alternatively, you can try eBay. But don’t be confused into thinking the PS3 version is the same thing, it isn’t. If it’s not a long, squarish thing, it’s not the same at all.

There are plenty of second-hand PlayStation Cameras on eBay – generally under the name PS4 Camera – and they seem to go for between £25 and £30.

Sony

PS VR: PlayStation Move

Unlike the Camera, which is essential to get PS VR working, the PlayStation Move controllers aren’t necessary for all PS4 VR experiences – a DualShock 4 controller will be used a lot, which you will have got bundled with your PS4.

However, many of the games and experiences will require two PlayStation Move controllers and at around £25 a pop brand new, that could be expensive. Also, what’s the betting that they will go up in price at many retailers closer to the time too?

If you thought motion gaming was the best thing since sliced bread, you might already have a couple lying around somewhere, which you bought for your PS3. However, most we feel should pick up a couple in advance.

Again, CeX comes to the rescue here. It has hundreds of them in stock on its website, which it sells for £10 a controller. So that’s £20 for the pair – much better than the £50 premium you will have to pay new.

It’s worth getting them now though as even that second-hand price is likely to rise dramatically closer the time.

Our old friend eBay can also help out, with many pairs of controllers currently going for around £20 too, but there’s a lot more fuss with private sales. At least CeX tests every controller before reselling.

Pocket-lint

PS VR: PS4

There’s one last item we thought we should include, for those who don’t already own one, and that’s the PlayStation 4 itself.

The PlayStation VR headset works with any of the PS4 models released so far, whether they have 500GB or 1TB hard drives. You are probably advised to plump for the latter because of the extra drive space to store experiences and games, but the former will work as capably in playing them back.

In fact, if you get yourself a 500GB model, you could always expand the hard drive yourself at a later date (read our handy guide on how to do just that: How to upgrade your PS4 hard drive to 1TB or more for less than £50).

By opting for that option, you can keep the cost of the console down. And you can find brand new 500GB PS4 consoles fairly cheap at numerous retailers.

Amazon.co.uk sells the standard console, without a game, for around £270, but you can buy a used one from around £180 (not including postage).

Game sells pre-owned consoles from £220, while CeX lists them at £220 unboxed, £230 boxed. If you’re willing to go for one that’s a bit scratched or less than perfect aesthetically, you can get one for £215.

Conclusion

So, if you went for the cheapest options listed above, you could get a PlayStation Camera and Move Controllers for around £50 for all three devices. Added to the PS VR itself, that comes in at £400.

Then, if you don’t already have the PS4, you can add at least £180 to that. So in total, for the full PlayStation VR setup you could sort yourself out for around £680. That’s still less than the price of the HTC Vive headset itself – and that doesn’t include the machine to run it on.

New Apple iPad Pro will be most expensive 9.7-inch iPad yet at $599

Apple is due to host an event on Monday 21 March where it’s expected to take the wraps off a new iPad. It now looks like we’ll see a smaller iPad Pro that’s priced at $100 more than the iPad Air 2, placing it at $599. That will make it the priciest iPad of its size, ever.

The new iPad Pro is expected to be a 9.7-inch model that features the high-power specs the full sized 12.9-inch iPad Pro comes with. According to 9to5mac this will be the first 9.7-inch iPad to have a starting price of over $499.

The $599 price will reportedly get you the 9.7-inch, 32GB, Wi-Fi only model but there is expected to be a higher priced 128GB model with LTE connectivity too. Each is expected to feature four stereo speakers, a brighter display with Apple Pencil support, an A9X processor with more memory, plus a Smart Connector for a new smaller Smart Keyboard. There is also expected to be a 12-megapixel camera with 4K video recording capabilities.

It looks like Apple isn’t replacing or succeeding the iPad Air 2 with this model but simply offering a more premium spec option for those that want the 12.9-inch iPad Pro in a smaller 9.7-inch display version. There may also be a refresh to the Air tablet line in the form of an iPad Air 3.

Expect to see the new Apple iPad Pro unveiled at the 21 March event.

READ: Apple iPad Air 3: Release date, specs and rumours

Under Armour HealthBox review: Under Whelming

Under Armour has partnered with HTC to give us something that only the freakishly active will probably consider: UA HealthBox.

This setup (which, yes, does arrive in an actual box) consists of three physical devices: UA Band, UA Scale, and UA Heart Rate. And all of these devices work with UA Record, a mobile app that compiles data from everything in the box to deliver a unified and cohesive experience.

The idea is you’ll use the Band to track your workouts, the Scale to record your weight loss (or gains), and the Heart Rate chest-strap monitor to – as you might’ve guessed – get an accurate readout of your heart rate during exercises. All that data ends up displayed in UA Record, with the purpose of giving you a visualisation or total picture of the current status of your health.

UA HealthBox is a potentially useful culmination of fitness gadgets and software, but is it worth $400? We think some fitness enthusiasts will give it a shot, but the average consumer who only dreams about living an active life will probably find the price tag a little tough to swallow, especially since it’s for a system they might not fully utilise.

We’ve spent two weeks fiddling around with UA HealthBox to see if it lives up to its potential.

Under Armour HealthBox review: Setup

The UA HealthBox has everything you need, if fitness-tracking is your goal. There’s no need to download several apps and buy several devices from various manufacturers. With Under Armour’s box, you’re all set. Or at least that’s what Under Armour believes; you can purchase the different devices within its box separately, but then you’ll end up spending about $40 more.

Pocket-lint

When you open up the UA HealthBox, you’ll see almost everything you need to get started. Just make sure you set aside a good amount of time to get everything up and running, because it involves turning on the items found in the box, downloading an app, following instructions within the app as as well as directions found in the box itself. If you’re not tech savvy, it’ll take you a bit of time.

So, first thing’s first: download the UA Record mobile app from Google Play or Apple App Store, and while that’s installing, grab the UA Scale. You’ll need to pull a tab out to wake it, then let it find your Wi-Fi network, before finally stepping on it as to create a profile. Once that’s done, grab the UA Band, push the power button to turn it on, and pair it to your phone via Bluetooth.

You won’t need to setup the UA Heart Rate – because it just works. It connects to UA Record from the moment you first use it. Speaking of the app, it gives some advice on pairing each device and how to use them, but really, you have to figure things out yourself, which shouldn’t be too difficult, although we can definitely see our grandparents not understanding what to do with all this stuff.

Under Armour HealthBox review: UA Record app

The UA Record app is the glue to this whole thing. It’s been around for a while and re-tooled to work with this particular kit. Consider it a hub for collecting and displaying all your fitness data coming. To connect each device to the app, tap the Sync button in the UA Record app and follow the onscreen prompts. After that, you’re good to go.

The app’s main screen has a four-quadrant dial that shows your activity (steps taken), fitness (active time and calories burned), nutrition, and sleep. In the middle of the circle, you’ll see how much you weigh. And below that there is a “How Do You Feel?” question, which you’d use to rate from 1 to 10 about how you feel that day. You can also add notes; it’s like a fitness diary.

Pocket-lint

The “+” button near the bottom of the main screen lets you manually add weight, food, sleep, and workouts. So UA Record aggregates your data from Under Armour’s devices, provides a visual display of that data, and keeps track of your goals (play around a bit in the app by tapping on the dial to set goals or see detailed information like graphs).

The app also has a sidebar that lets you create a profile as well as find and challenge other users. If you use other integrated fitness apps, such as Google Fit, MyFitnessPal, or MapMyRun (Under Armour owns those last two), you can connect them to UA Record to see all your data in one place. The app even plays nice with devices from Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone, Misfit, Polar, and Withings.

We just wish the app had a coaching feature or could somehow give you detailed insights about what all your data means. An update could easily add those features, however, and then bring UA Record to the next level.

Under Armour HealthBox: UA Band

UA Band comes at an interesting time. Most smartwatches have some sort of fitness-tracking element, while there are other wearables that are totally focused on fitness. There’s no shortage of options in the market. And yet Under Armour worked with HTC to unveil its own offering, the UA Band, which we assume is the result of the HTC Grip that failed to materialise.

Pocket-lint

The UA Band measures 17mm wide and 11mm thick, and it is super comfortable to wear. That last bit needs to be emphasised. The wearable’s electronics are crammed underneath its 1.3-inch PMOLED monochrome touchscreen, allowing it to be not only thin but also light and versatile. This thing can easily be worn 24/7, and we promise you’ll forget it’s even there after an hour.

You can use a SIM tool to switch out the short band for the long band (they attach at the bottom) for a better fit if needed too. Oh, and the UA Band is water-resistant up to 20-metres – but it’s not waterproof. We were able to do everything from take a shower to do the dishes with this thing; we’d call that waterproof enough for day-to-day.

The UA Band comes with a black with a red design and a textured underbelly. You’ll only see a single red button on the side, alongside a hidden LED. This button activates the display and takes a decent amount of pressure to push. It’s sort of a pain, to be honest.

To navigate the UA Band, tap and swipe around the touch-enabled display. It has five main screens for clock, activity, sleep, heart rate, and fitness, with each one letting you go two or three screens deeper. You can tap, for instance, on activity to see distance and calories. You can also control music from your connected device and access various settings, including brightness levels and an Airplane mode.

The UA Band works as a pedometer but can also actively track specific workouts as well as pair with UA Heart Rate for active heart-rate monitoring and calories burned readouts. A phone with GPS is probably more accurate, especially when it comes to running, but this is still useful in that it doesn’t require your phone to be with you (handy for workouts like yoga) and can later sync your data back to UA Record.

Pocket-lint

But we really like the sleep-tracking feature. It automatically works as soon as it realises you’re sleeping and monitors stuff like your total sleep duration, hours of light or deep sleep, when you awoke, and your resting heart rate. Be sure to tell it stop sleep-tracking in the morning however.

Other features that standout on this $180 fitness tracker include a wrist-vibration alarm, five days of battery life (it has a 112mAh battery), and a proprietary magnetic charging cable that’ll bring the band to a full charge in about 25 minutes.

Under Armour HealthBox: UA Scale

The Scale is our favourite part about this system – at first, anyway. It looks really awesome: it has a circular, minimal design with a sleek black scheme. It’s also 36mm high and 356mm across, so it therefore demands a chunk of floor space.

You’ll want to give it a dedicated spot too, because otherwise it must recalibrate every time you move it. When you stand on the scale, you’ll see digital numbers appear in the LED dot-matrix display near the top. The display is blacked-out when not in use. When in use, it’ll confirm you’re you and bring up your personal profile. It’ll then give you a weight readout (in pounds or kilograms) and your fat per centage.

Pocket-lint

The UA Scale can remember profiles for up to eight people and syncs each person’s data via Bluetooth to their UA Record apps. Keep in mind the scale takes 45 seconds to serve up all your information, while the UA Record app will automatically record and track your data over time.

It sounds pretty cool, but unfortunately, the readouts weren’t always accurate. In our tests, UA Scale always provided different weight and body fat percentages. Sometimes we were three pounds up; sometimes we were seven pounds down. It was disappointing, to say the least.

UA Scale can offer five months of battery life with its included AA batteries, though without being able to depend on the readouts, we doubt you’ll be using this $180 disc for much more than bathroom decoration.

Under Armour HealthBox: UA Heart Rate

So, the UA Band is pretty basic, and the US Scale is largely amiss, but what about this kit’s last physical component, the UA Heart Rate?

We’ll get to the point: it’s awesome. Under Armour made a smart decision by including an accurate, chest-worn heart rate monitor, because we get the feeling the only people interested in a $400 fitness gadget suite will be hardcore fitness enthusiasts, the types who want something like UA Heart Rate.

This contraption features an adjustable elastic band with two pads. The pads must contact your chest for accurate readings (and the UA Record app recommends you get them wet for conductivity). A puck-like clip on the middle of the chest strap aggregates and delivers data to your phone or UA Band over Bluetooth. The puck is plastic and measures 38.5mm across and 15mm thick. It fits around your chest during workouts and delivers readings more accurate than what wrist wearables offer. 

Pocket-lint

The UA Heart Rate can track calories burned with the UA Record app. It can also send heart-rate data to the UA Band during a workout, and it’ll even cause the band’s LED to blink various colours depending on your heart rate zone (blue is for resting, red is for peak heart rate, and so forth). UA Heart Rate auto-connects to your devices and requires no setup time – apart from looping it around your chest – before providing live heart-rate readings.

The $80 UA Heart Rate should come with a one-year battery life, so long as you use it for an hour or less each day (we didn’t have long enough to verify that!). It’ll provide readings for a full workout, and when you’re done with it, all you have to do is set it down to turn it off.

If we had to nitpick about one thing, we’d say the chest strap is awkward to wear. It’s not uncomfortable; you just won’t ever forget it’s there – like any chest strap, really, which is why some people prefer wrist-worn heart-rate devices.

Verdict

The Under Armour HealthBox is hit and miss. Some of it is worth its weight in gold, while other bits from the box just don’t pull their own weight.

Under Armour’s HealthBox is a neat idea for those of you looking for a one-stop-shop kit, but don’t expect consistency. We found the UA Band comfortable, but it’s also pretty basic. When paired with the UA Heart Rate – a reliable heart-rate tracker – it’s very useful however. As for the UA Scale, although it looks sleek, it’s just not any good.

Our favourite part about this mashup of Under Armour-branded goodness is the UA Record app which, ironically, has been around for a while, is free to download, and works with apps and devices outside of Under Armour’s own bundle.

We can’t help but wonder if people should take their money and split it on various devices from various manufacturers instead. This is a $400 package with no extra benefit to using it over the many similar products available at similar prices. The Garmin Vivosmart HR and Withings Smart Body Analyzer digital scale, for instance, both sync to Under Armour’s app and cost $149 each. It’s definitely worth exploring all your options.

Astell & Kern AK380 is one bonkers but beautiful high-res portable player

We’ve seen swathes of audio devices in our time, but when it comes to portable audio nothing has ever quite stood out like the bonkers but beautiful looking Astell & Kern AK380.

Now this is no Sony Walkman. Crafted from a single block of aluminium, which is anodised five times to give it that dark colour, the sharp angles of the AK380’s design have no join lines.

It’s also a weighty lump, and super tough thanks to the single piece frame and carbon fibre rear panel, but then this show-off showcase from the audio company is hardly going to be lobbed in a back pockets for a jog around the block (or your private mansion). The £3,300 price tag sees to that.

But this is one high-end and high-resolution audio player. Capable of handling 32-bit/384kHz playback from whichever file format you care to mention, if high-res is your thing then AK has you well and truly covered. Optional accessories include the PEM13 cradle with XLR output so you can wire up best-of-best speakers if you want – so think of it as a full music streamer for the home if that better suits.

Pocket-lint

The operating system is based on a stripped-back version of Google Android, so the Astell & Kern setup is, much like a modern smartphone, very easy to use. It’s mainly touchscreen controlled, with a physical volume dial to the right, and capable of sourcing from any networked device/on-board storage/microSD card – all the options are there, plus Tidal streaming is forthcoming in the coming months we’re told.

Perhaps our favourite feature, though, is the parametric EQ with 20 bands which can be manually adjusted. You can even drag and draw curves to tailor the sound exactly as you want it to be. Gapless playback is also available.

Details aside it’s the look that continues to take us aback. The AK380 is even available in a copper variant, which perhaps looks even more bonkers – plus that model will oxidise and age over time, turning green-brown. Wild stuff.

The world of weird video games at Alt.Ctrl.GDC

Video games aren’t all about fancy graphics on HD televisions and high-end PCs. Back in the day, innovation relied partially on building better cabinets, ramps, buttons, joysticks and all manner of arcade-based hardware. This aspect of the industry hasn’t disappeared — the third-annual Alt.Ctrl.GDC exhibition at the Game Developers Conference is packed with outlandish new games that use wild, wacky and weird input methods.

We tried out a few of the games on display, such as Crank Tank, a two-person base-race game where each player controls a vehicle with a giant, wooden crank machine. There’s also Hello, Operator!, which takes place at the helm of a refurbished telephone switchboard from the 1930s, and Please Stand By, a game that exists inside of a 1951 Capehart television, bunny-ear antennae and all.

London theatre shines lasers at audiences to deter phone use

In a bid to stop audiences from distracting actors on stage, staff at a London theatre are shining lasers at audience members who won’t turn off their smartphone. The Times reports that Jermyn Street Theatre, a small auditorium in the West End, adopted the practice after hearing reports of its success inside the Shanghai Grand Theatre and Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts in China.

“[Mobile phone use is] is so prevalent, we need to find some way of stopping it,” the theatre’s artistic director Anthony Biggs said. “A montage of mobile phones ringing at the beginning of the show is not effective. I think we should use lasers. Let’s give it a go.” It’s hoped that the laser will pressure the person into putting their phone down or do enough to single them out in front of other theatregoers.

Although the same thing happens in movie theatres, stars including Benedict Cumberbatch have spoken out about the use of mobile phones during live performances. Last August, the actor confronted fans after a performance of Hamlet, famous for its “to be, or not to be” soliloquy, telling them that spotting cameras in the audience was “mortifying” and “very, very obvious.”

Via: Mashable

Source: The Times

Adobe lets you try new Lightroom features before they’re released

Lightroom on the web is handy for using the photo-editing software when you’re away from your personal computer. Today, Adobe announced that it’s adding a big boost to the web-based software with Technology Previews. This means that Lightroom users will be able to test drive new features before they’re widely available on the regular desktop app. The first tool that you’ll be able to try is a universal search feature that lets you sort through all of the images synced online through Lightroom mobile, Lightroom on the web and the Lightroom desktop application. More new stuff is on the way, and you’ll be able to offer feedback ahead of major feature releases.

To give it a go, log in to Lightroom on the web and click the Lr icon at the top left. From there, select Technical Preview and toggle on the search tool. The app will begin indexing your images so the feature can effectively hunt through them. You’ll be the only one who can access your photos, and eventually you’ll be able to use metadata to perform your queries. If you’re interested in getting a look at new software updates before they’re released, Adobe is giving you that chance here with Lightroom.

Source: Adobe

Swings and suspension wire help make VR feel far more real

If you’re obsessed with the rise and rise of virtual reality, the last few weeks have been busy. SXSW was followed by GDC, and both events made a huge deal on the potential of the new platform / media format, / technology. This time, we’re hopping across the Pacific Ocean to Tokyo, where media company Recruit is hosting “The Future Amusement Park” — which is a bit of a stretch. Recruit is the same organization that showcased some unusual tech for restaurants a few years back, and this time around it believes its VR demos and experiences exceed what we’ve seen before, coining the brave term; “Super VR”. Unlike the virtual arcade we saw at Sundance, the theme here was more about adding physical stimulus outside the headset: wind, water and, well, wings. Become a penguin, (literally) swinging above the Tokyo skyline, and taking to a tiny soccer field with only one hand. Huh? Let’s strap on some goggles and see.

Stanford’s SCAMP robot can fly, climb and perch on walls

Stanford’s SCAMP looks like a quadcopter at first glance, but it can do much more than fly and hover in the air. Just like what its full name — Stanford Climbing and Aerial Maneuvering Platform — says, it can perch on and climb walls, much like an insect. A team from the university’s Biomimetics and Dexterous Manipulation Lab took what they learned from previous projects to create the machine. One of those projects is Stickybot, a robotic, wall-climbing gecko.

What the team did was take the climbing technology they developed for last Stickybot version and modified it to come up with something faster and with greater ability to maneuver. Those modifications include designing the drone to take longer steps and adding microspines to its feet, making them similar to a praying mantis’.

Before the robot can climb walls, though, it has to be able to perch first. In order to make sure that SCAMP can stick to the wall for long periods without falling off, the team placed its climbing mechanism on top of the quadrotor. That allows it to press its body against the surface for more stability. In case it still slips while walking up, the drone briefly switches on its rotors before trying one more time.

By being able to stay perched on vertical surfaces, the drone can save energy without having to stop taking videos or images for, say, first responders or the military. The team found that the ability allows SCAMP to extend its mission anywhere from three minutes to a couple of hours. They still have a lot to do to improve the machine, but in time, their research could lead to a whole line of perching and climbing robots, including quiet, fixed-wing gliders.

Via: IEEE

Source: Stanford Biomimetics & Dexterous Manipulation Laboratory

How HTC and Valve built the Vive

Long before the Vive was born, both software developer Valve and phone manufacturer HTC were separately looking into virtual reality.

In 2012, VR was beginning to creep back into the public imagination. It started in May of that year, when id Software’s John Carmack demoed a modified Oculus Rift running Doom 3. The following month, he took the Rift to a wider audience at the E3 games convention. By August, Palmer Luckey launched the Oculus Kickstarter campaign, and it broke records. Almost overnight, the Rift went from an intriguing prototype to a truly exciting reality. But while all of this was happening, Valve was already at work on its own solution.

Valve, before HTC

Valve’s early work on prototypes is fairly well documented. In 2012 it developed a system with a simple head-mounted display (HMD), a camera and some AprilTags to enable positional tracking. AprilTags are like larger, simpler QR codes and are commonly used for augmented reality, camera calibration and robotics (they’re all over the place in Boston Dynamics’ latest Atlas video). Valve wasn’t being particularly secretive about this: While the Oculus Kickstarter campaign was grabbing headlines, the company was showing off its VR experiments to The New York Times.

A very early VR prototype (image credit: Stuart Isett / The New York Times).

After its tracking was up and running, there was another big problem to overcome: The images on the HMD still appeared blurry. As Valve experimented, the company realized that for gaming, a low-persistence display was a must. In this case, that meant lighting up a panel for one millisecond and then turning it off for nine milliseconds, in order to prevent ghosting. To prove its theory, it first created a “telescope” that let you look into another three-dimensional space; next it designed a custom board to output high-frame-rate, low-persistent images to off-the-shelf AMOLED displays.

These panels then went into a “big ugly headset” (Valve’s Chet Faliszek’s words, not mine), and testing continued. “We were looking for what we had hoped was out there, but didn’t know if it existed,” Faliszek said. The team at Valve fell in love with “room-scale” VR and the freedom of movement it brings. “We just worried about the commercial aspect, and the quality aspect. No one was going to wallpaper their room like that, and we didn’t have an input solution that matched.” Something else was required.

HTC, before Valve

In early 2013 HTC was a smartphone company, but it wanted to be more. “We knew that VR was very similar to the early days of smartphones,” Daniel O’Brien, HTC’s vice president of VR, explained. “This is a new medium, this is coming, we know it’s coming. We need to get in on the forefront of it.” That meant prototyping. Lots.

Claude Zellweger, the designer best known for his work on the One series of smartphones, was heading up these efforts. “I’d been tasked by [former CEO] Peter Chou to look at technologies that could take the company in a different direction secondary to the smartphone business and started the advanced concepts team.”

The advanced concepts team was a small group that birthed both the periscope-like Re Camera and Re Grip wearable, but by far its biggest venture has been the Vive. Originally it was to be the Re Vive — an apt title for a bold new product from a troubled smartphone company — but the “Re” slowly drifted away from the company’s marketing message. Peter Chou took over the team after stepping down as CEO and renamed it the HTC Future Development Lab.

HTC’s Re Camera.

The team explored both augmented reality (think Microsoft HoloLens) and VR and decided to focus on the latter. But while Samsung seized the opportunity to pair an optical shell with its flagship phones, HTC quickly discounted the idea. “We thought about it from the ground up as a totally different product category that needs its own solutions,” said Zellweger, who’s now the company’s Head of Design. “Out of the gate we never considered something that is glued together with a phone as a display.” Instead, HTC approached the VR headset the same way it approaches phones: Get in early, and get in at the high end.

The culmination of this initial foray into virtual reality, Zellweger explained, “neatly coincided” with the meeting between Valve and HTC.

The Oculus rift

Valve’s work up to 2013 had made real-time tracking in VR a viable proposition. But although it had worked out the fundamentals, it wasn’t about to build its own headset. And why would it? The public had already voted with its wallet, funding Oculus to the tune of $2.4 million. In Jan. 2014 Valve announced that it would collaborate with Oculus on tracking to “drive PC VR forward.” It also said it had no plans to release its own VR hardware, although it noted that “this could change” in the future.

It’s clear that at some point Oculus and Valve’s cooperative spirit fell apart. It could be that Oculus and Valve disagreed on what VR should be: The Rift and Vive certainly offer different experiences. But it’s also been suggested that communication from Oculus ground to a halt in the months after the Facebook acquisition, which forced Valve to explore other paths. It’s unlikely that anyone will go on the record to confirm that for years. All we know is that in early January, Luckey was reportedly calling Valve’s tech “the best virtual reality demo in the world,” and by late spring, HTC and Valve were meeting to hammer out a deal.

Palmer says Valve’s VR tech is the best virtual reality demo in the world right now. #SteamDevDays

— El Oshcuro (@DaveOshry) January 16, 2014

The exact details of that meeting aren’t public. Zellweger paints it as a face-to-face between “Cher and Gabe,” referring to HTC co-founder Cher Wang and Valve co-founder Gabe Newell. It obviously yielded positive results.

Together at last

As soon as the agreement was signed, work on the Developer Edition began. “The next week we went down to San Francisco [where Zellweger’s design office is] to install a tag room down there,” Faliszek recounted. “They had these designs going for what the headset would be like. It was so fast-moving.” Zellweger recalls the rapid pace of those early days fondly. “We’d go off and iterate on a bunch of ideas. There was sort of a key moment where we presented our vision for the product to Valve, which at that point incorporated an early form of tracking … everyone worked out it could be great.”

A whiteboard at HTC’s design studio illustrates the company’s prototyping process.

Although its public demonstrations were still rooted in the system developed in 2012, Valve had begun to move away from the impractical AprilTag-based system. A pair of alternate solutions emerged: dot tracking and laser tracking. Dot tracking works exactly as you’d imagine. Controllers and headsets are covered in dots, and a stationary camera uses machine vision to determine the position of those dots in real time. Then there’s laser tracking, which puts sensors on the headset and controllers in place of dots and includes a discrete, laser-emitting base station.

Laser tracking offers the most accuracy, but to enable it at room scale puts severe constraints on the headset. To understand why, a quick science lesson is required. The base stations contain emitters that rotate rapidly to send a laser beam across the room and LEDs that flash 60 times each second. The headset has sensors to detect the invisible light show, and it determines its position and orientation based on the gaps in time between the laser and LEDs hitting each sensor. For that to work properly, you need a wide spread of sensors pointing in different directions.

Knowing that laser tracking was a must, HTC approached the Developer Edition pragmatically. Valve knocked up a laser-tracking prototype. It worked, but it was rough and covered with exposed circuitry. Zellweger’s team had to turn it into a product. Working off early sketches, they used 3D printing to determine where the sensors should be positioned, which then informed the rapidly evolving design. All through this process, prototypes were flying between Valve HQ, HTC’s San Francisco office and its Taiwan-based engineering team.

“We had to make adjustments to the headset, but we couldn’t make any compromises with tracking.”

O’Brien explained that the “tracking had to be perfect, and we had to make adjustments to the headset, but we couldn’t make any compromises with tracking.” The function-over-form principle that Valve and HTC followed is perfectly illustrated by looking at the early-prototype headset pictured above. It’s a 3D-printed model that exists only to test the positioning of the sensors. Although there’s no real design to speak of, the shape of the headset is there.

The controller issue

Two early attempts at a VR controller.

Valve’s early work on VR controllers was primitive, to say the least. The first (that’s been made public) simply attached what looked like an oversized Dungeons & Dragons die to the top of a Steam Controller. The original attempts at a laser-tracked system followed a similar path, grafting some antenna-like sensors onto a regular game controller. But the team swiftly realized they needed something different.

“This is the one time in our lives when we can make a clean start,” explained Faliszek. “We said, ‘You know what, we’re not going to have X, A, B, Y. We’re going to say no. We’re going to make something specifically for the thing we’re making it for.’” What Valve and HTC landed on was a mashup of two existing products. The Vive controllers have the same basic form of Sony’s PlayStation Move, introduced in 2010, but add the precise input of the trackpad from Valve’s Steam controller as well as laser-tracking sensors.

For a first-gen product, the controllers offer an elegant solution. But they weren’t always so dainty. The initial prototype was a bunch of circuitry attached to a pair of spring clamps, which served as a test-bed for the laser-tracking system. It swiftly evolved into the controller first shown to the public, now referred to as the “sombrero” because of its solid tracking disc.

The sombrero doesn’t have many buttons, which was apparently the source of a lot of initial complaints from developers. “The first thing they’d say is, ‘There aren’t enough buttons,’” Faliszek recalled. “By the second week they’d be like, ‘Oh, I don’t need all those buttons, in fact I’m probably not going to use all these.’” Many common tasks previously assigned a unique button are now being handled by gestures. Faliszek gave the examples of replacing the “press I for inventory” trope with simply reaching behind you for a backpack or eschewing the “lean” command by physically leaning to one side to look around an obstacle.

Developers

Less than six months after HTC and Valve started working together, they were ready to share their vision with others. On Oct. 20th, 2014, a select group of developers were invited to Valve’s Bellevue, Washington, offices to try out Vive. “We made them sign NDAs [nondisclosure agreements] just to look at the actual NDA,” Faliszek laughed. “It confused everybody, but they came.” Who wouldn’t?

Developers were adamant that HTC and Valve shouldn’t “splinter” the community.

They gathered a lot of feedback from that initial meeting. Developers were adamant that HTC and Valve shouldn’t splinter the community. No choice between 180-degree tracking and 360-degree tracking. No bundled controllers or unbundled controllers. One product. One specification. “We’d been thinking similarly along the way,” Faliszek said. “It was really an affirmation of that.”

The first developer kits rolled out in Dec. 2014. Known posthumously as the “-v1,” they were handmade, hand-delivered and set up personally by Valve employees. In the following weeks, HTC’s production line kicked in, and the first factory-made units started finding their way to more developers.

As a smartphone manufacturer, HTC knows more than a few things about products breaking cover early. But the Vive didn’t. “Over 20 companies were involved, and no one leaked,” O’Brien explained. Why? Faliszek attributes it to camaraderie among developers. There were only so many people with the kits, and Valve arranged a private forum where everybody could share their work and help one another out.

One strength of this community was that developers would apparently call one another out on their mistakes. “Normally when a developer shows another developer something they say, ‘Hey that’s great,’ rather than, ‘Hey no you’re screwing up here, you have to fix this, this is wrong,’ but that’s what they were doing.”

Going public

With developers on board, the aggressive pace of the Vive project continued. HTC and Valve decided on MWC 2015 for its grand reveal. A second showcase two weeks later at GDC 2015 focused on games. By every account, the launch was a complete success. Even journalists who had tried dozens of VR experiences before Vive were impressed by the room-scale demos and the accurate head and controller tracking. The plan was then set in stone. Exactly one year in, preorders were to go live, with the final consumer edition to be unveiled at MWC and game demos at GDC. Now they had to make the thing.

Engadget editor James Trew models the first Vive Developer Edition at MWC 2015.

What followed was exactly what had come before: iteration. That led to the Pre developer edition, which was made public in January and is almost identical to the consumer version. At first glance, not much has changed. But on closer look, almost nothing is the same. The final edition is considerably smaller and lighter than the original, and the strap has been completely redesigned. These modifications combine to push the center of gravity closer to the face, which is important, as it means the headset is more stable when you’re moving around. The sensors have also been covered up, and the lens-adjustment and strap-tightness mechanisms have been refined. Finally, the cables on the original were thick and protrusive; now they’re thinner and … still pretty protrusive. They’re less in your way when you move around, but you still know they’re there.

Aside from comfort, two additional features have made their way to the headset over the past year: a front-facing camera and a microphone. The front-facing camera is part of Chaperone, a system announced in January that’s meant to keep you safe and in touch with the real world. With the press of a button, the Vive can display real-world images on top of the virtual world you’re inside. This was always part of the plan — we were told as much back in January — and O’Brien said the original developer kit nearly had a pair of cameras on the front (you can see the place where they were supposed to be added in our first hands-on), but “it didn’t work, so we just introduced it at a later point when it did.”

The consumer edition of the Vive, complete with controllers and base stations.

The same is true of the microphone, which you can use to answer calls while inside the headset. The Pre developer edition actually has a microphone inside. But because HTC hadn’t worked out the software yet, it was omitted from the announcement and revealed alongside pricing in late February.

Aftercare

Faliszek, O’Brien and Zellweger all claim that developing the Vive was trouble-free. Given the tight time scale here — less than two years since Valve and HTC first started working together — it’s clear it’s been a pretty smooth ride. Headsets, controllers and base stations are flying off the factory line. All that’s left now is to sell them.

The Vive launch commercial.

Assuming the Vive is a success (HTC doesn’t break out sales numbers, but it’s sold through its entire stock for April), how long until customers need to replace their headset with the “Vive 2”? A console might last eight years, a top-of-the-range gaming PC might stay relevant for five years, a smartphone just two. Neither HTC nor Valve want to divulge their future plans. But they do believe the Vive has legs.

The companies could have made a better VR headset — there’s no doubting that. The resolution on its two 1,200 x 1,080 panels (one for each eye) could have been increased, for one. But the bottleneck isn’t the headset; it’s the PC that’s powering it. The GPU requirements are already high, calling for an AMD Radeon R9 290 or an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. These are cards that, even years after their release, still cost about the same as a PlayStation or Xbox. “The idea was to pick something that’s super high-end so in a year there’ll be enough people that have the graphics cards to run this,” explained Faliszek.

A Vive 2 — or whatever the sequel will be called — has to happen. “At some point you’re going to want to increase resolution,” Faliszek admitted. “We’ll definitely learn more. We’ll find out what’s interesting. But you can’t [release a new headset] lightly.” Once PC graphics cards are capable of pushing the required 90 frames per second to a higher-resolution panel, it’s likely we’ll see a new Vive. But that doesn’t mean that early adopters will be left behind.

“We’ve made it very clear,” O’Brien asserted. “Once the consumer edition is out, there’ll be the Pre, the v1 developer kit, and the -v1s. We’ve designed a system that will be backwards compatible and we will definitely maintain that.” Faliszek continued, “When we release this, these are living things. This hardware is going to keep updating, we’re going to keep taking care of it. It’s not like, release it and forget about it.”