HTC has presented in a talk of the XRDC a series of novelties, among which we find more alternatives of controllers for Vive Wave, the new Viveport awards and more.
Rikard Steiber, president of Viveport, has shared in a talk at the XRDC on best practices to monetize virtual reality content different news about the third edition of the Viveport Developer Awards, the launch of the first guide of good practices for content creators (as part of the XR Association), their binding to the standard VirtualLink and more details about the Vive Focus absolute positioning motion controllers, who bet on the ultrasound to achieve follow-up.
Below we highlight the driver features as well as the details of the new Viveport Developer Awards.
Vive Focus 6dof Controllers
As we saw last week, HTC’s solution to provide six degrees of freedom to the Focus autonomous viewfinder uses new drivers (one for each hand) and an accessory that attaches above the viewfinder and is responsible for issuing ultrasounds with 180º horizontal and 140º vertical coverage, as they are not omnidirectional and therefore behave like optical positioning technology. In addition to the ultrasound emitted by the accessory of the viewfinder and that collect a series of receivers of the controllers, these also have inertial units (IMUs) to help determine their absolute position.
Steiber points out that his solution offers “high precision” at a distance of one meter. For our part, we have been able to test this type of technology with the Pico Neo devkit (prints here) and we did not get a great impression, although it is possible that both Pico and HTC have improved this technique to achieve a similar or identical experience to that of optical solutions.
Developers residing in the United States can order your 6dof controller kit now.
Finch Technologies third-party Controllers
HTC’s Vive Wave platform allows you to use different controllers with different technologies, one of them being the FinchShift (in development since 2016), which are helped by some accessories that are placed on the arm to achieve 6dof, something that they indicate solves the occlusion problems and even the limitation of the FOV coverage of optical or ultrasonic systems, although for greater precision they also use the cameras of the HMDs.
The pre-purchase can be made for $ 249, with shipments planned for January. The controllers work with more viewers, in fact, the company also shows them with Gear VR.
Viveport Developer Awards
HTC has announced the new edition of its awards that will select a winner and a finalist through 4 categories for the PC VR and 3 for the mobile VR of its Vive Wave platform. The lucky ones will receive a financial prize, in addition to hardware, tickets for the GDC 2019 and the production of a promotional video and assets.
Registration will be available in November and the winners will be announced at GDC 2019.
