LAS VEGAS—Gaming hardware vet Razer says that virtual reality (VR) has the classic chicken and egg problem: People won't buy into a new gaming category, with all of the extra hardware and time commitment if there's no content, but developers don't want to make something for a platform that might not go anywhere, which is currently a real risk even for products backed by known brands. Razer's solution? Reduce fragmentation by providing a base platform for both game developers and hardware makers to develop products for, promoting development in VR gaming on the whole, and giving Razer a prime position as leader in the nascent category. Razer has dubbed this effort OSVR (Open Source Virtual Reality), and is prepping a developers kit for release this June.
The industry initiatives and open source efforts are all well and good, but many readers are clamoring to learn more about Razer's OSVR Headset. I had a chance to use the new head-mounted display in a demo here at CES.
There are several components to the hardware of the Hacker Dev Kit. First is the headset or Head Mounted Display (HMD), which is everything inside the ski-goggle-like face mask. This includes the display itself, a 5.5-inch full HD display capable of showing 1,920 by 1,080 pixels at 60 frames per second. Other hardware inside the HMD includes a sensor hub with integrated accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass, which allows all of the head-tracking, letting the display look where you look.
Finally, you have the lenses, part of what's called a Near-Eye-Display system. The lenses allow for a vision-filling 100-degree field of view, and the optical-grade lenses focus the displayed images to the eye without any unwanted distortion.
The weight of the headset is reduced by putting some of the hardware into a separate Belt Box that is worn at the waist. The Belt Box houses signal boosting equipment and integrated surround sound audio codecs. Shifting the hardware to the box reduces the potential head gear fatigue you might get with a heavier headset, but it also means another attached cable snaking down your back. Clearly, head mounted display design is still being refined.
The headset is quite adjustable, however. Much like the Oculus Rift headsets we've tested, the OSVR set has a small screen with optical elements adjusting the display for each eye. Razer uses a dual-lens design that lets you fine tune things a bit more easily, and two knobs on the bottom of the goggles for further adjustments.
Using the headset to play through a brief game demo was admittedly awkward and clumsy, but no more so than I've experienced on the Oculus Rift. During the demo I also navigated using the Razer Hydra, which uses two wireless handsets that let you gesture, press trigger and thumb buttons, and navigate using dual thumbsticks.
What I didn't get to really see was the actual software platform that Razer hopes will unify and spur forward the VR industry. What I would expect is that, as a development tool, things are still pretty rough, as Razer is pinning its hopes on open source collaboration to iron out some of the bugs.
While this may strike the interest of plenty of curious gamers expecting a cheap way to snag an Oculus-like device now, it's worth noting that this isn't a consumer product. It's a developer's kit, so the package you get may be pretty raw.
It's an ambitious goal, bringing together the several VR approaches that have sprung up in the last few years. Will we ever think of OSVR as the Android of VR? Will Razer become the hero and darling of a new field of gaming? It's too soon to really say, but the company is certainly putting its best foot forward with this effort.
Coming in June, the Razer OSVR Hacker Dev Kit is $199 for the full kit, including the OSVR headset and belt box.