LAS VEGAS—HTC and Valve's joint virtual reality project, the Vive Pre, is developing rapidly, and I got a chance to try the latest version here at CES.
With a test of the consumer Oculus Rift and Touch controller fresh in my mind, I got my hands on the development motion controls for the HTC Vive Pre, and strapped the headset on for a battery of demos.
The Vive Pre is very similar to the various incarnations of the Oculus Rift, with a notable exception. The headset is still a large black plastic visor that fits over the eyes, but the Vive Pre incorporates a front-facing camera. The display was just as crisp and bright as the Oculus version, and it tracked my head admirably. I didn't feel any disembodied sensation or motion sickness.
The camera on the front isn't for seeing where you're going; rather, it's part of an ingenious safety system. The camera detects objects and walls in front of you, and turns them into a virtual set of walls for the VR experience. When you get too close to something you might knock over or bump into, the Vive displays a glowing blue wall before you, letting you know you're about to hit something. It's a functional way to prevent embarrassing VR-related accidents, and worked quite well in the fairly large test cubicle set up for HTC's demonstration.
The Vive motion controllers are very similar to the Oculus Touch controllers in concept, as well as the PlayStation Move controllers Sony used to demonstrate the PlayStation VR in the past. They're a pair of wands you hold in your hand, equipped with motion sensors to determine where they are in relation to the headset. Like the Touch controllers with the Oculus Rift, the Vive controllers tracked faithfully throughout my demo, with ghosts of the wands appearing behind the visor where my hands were.
The Vive controllers are much more PC-oriented than the gamepad-like Touch controllers; instead of an analog stick and a set of buttons and two triggers, the Vive wands use large, round, clickable trackpads and single triggers for each hand. But HTC's VR controllers are development hardware like the Vive Pre headset itself, and don't necessarily reflect what a final HTC Vive/SteamVR motion control system will feel like.
The demo took me through a series of simple scenes, starting with a passive underwater view. I stood on the wreckage of a sunken ship and watched fish swim by my head, unable to do much more than walk around within the boundaries of the virtual room and bat away smaller fish with the controllers. It culiminated in a whale drifting dangerously close to my view.
After that, I experienced a tongue-in-cheek office simulator. I stood in a cubicle surrounded by office supplies and was given basic tasks. The office was garish and cartoony and the physics were funny in a Surgeon Simulator way, so it wasn't nearly as dull as it might sound. I poked buttons, made coffee, fired people, and got very, very distracted playing with the absurd gravity and the many objects I could knock off my desk. I tried, with only slight success, to juggle donuts and mugs by tossing them in the air between my virtual hands. It was more mesmerizing than the assigned tasks.
I then tried a 3D painting program, similar in concept to the Medium demo I tried with the consumer Oculus Rift. Instead of clay and sculpting, I was given various forms of light. I could draw swaths of color, bright rainbow ribbons, and clusters of stars with the motion controls. It was certainly eye-catching, and the controllers followed my motions precisely.
Finally, I experienced a downright cruel tease on the part of Valve. It was an Aperture Science scene where I, as a hapless human, tried and failed to do simple tasks. I opened drawers, startled a pocket universe of tiny people, closed drawers, doomed the pocket universe to incineration, and took apart Atlas from Portal 2. Then GLADoS told me I was terrible and killed me. It was an entertaining little VR vignette.
It was also the briefest taste of a Portal 3/Portal VR that hasn't been announced, isn't confirmed, might not be in development, and in all likelihood doesn't exist beyond the Vive Pre demo HTC and Valve set up. In fact, I was explicitly told that that much. But it still makes me really hopeful for a virtual Portal game in the future.
The HTC Vive Pre is still development hardware, and as such isn't available to consumers. HTC and Valve are planning to commercially launch the Vive in April, but until then only 7,000 Vive Pre units will be released to developers.