Valve’s Lighthouse absolute positioning system announced last week at the GDC can be a very hard blow to devices like Sixense STEM or PrioVR, but it can also become an opportunity if they manage to work together. PrioVR does not rule it out.
In its latest campaign update, PrioVR confirms that they have already started manufacturing, which they are taking advantage of to refine the API and the demos for the time of shipment. The physics model and the calibration system have undergone considerable improvements and the API functionality is practically finished. The MoCap Studio software is being completely rewritten to support PrioVR and the interface is undergoing radical changes to be more user-friendly.
And there’s good news for developers, as PrioVR will be natively compatible with both Unreal Engine 4 and Unity 5, which opens the range of possibilities when developing software compatible without the use of plug-ins or external tools. In addition, the PrioVR team is preparing video tutorials to make the experience even easier. As icing on the cake, the demo games that PrioVR is developing, Dodgeball, CopyCat and Zombie Survival, will come with their complete source code so that developers have fully functional examples.
Finally, they comment that there is still very little information about Lighthouse, but they say that they will take a look at the system once the Kickstarter kits have been sent. Let’s not forget that PrioVR announced its intention to develop a finger detection system later, so it cannot be ruled out that they are looking to integrate their device into Valve’s virtual reality ecosystem.
