Testing the HTC (Re) Vive with Steam VR: Better than Oculus…?

One of the big announcements to come out of Mobile World Congress this week is regarding HTC’s new VR headset, called the Vive or ‘Re’ Vive, depending on where you see it, and their collaboration with Valve who appears to be providing the software backbone for the hardware. As part of our rush of MWC meetings, HTC invited me (only one person per publication) to experience the Vive developer kit with Steam VR. Having tested the Oculus Rift ‘Crescent Bay’ model at CES and having had a chance to sample Samsung’s Gear VR while here for a few minutes, it is interesting to feel how the VR experiences differ.

At this point in time, HTC is releasing next to no specifications about their developer kit, and the embargo placed today was purely for experiential testing. We were only able to take pictures of the device, and not the room in which it was being tested. Thus the following is purely from my perspective of using the kit and the pre-programmed demos that were provided. Overall each person was allowed 20 minutes to cycle through the demos, similar to that from Oculus at CES.

Functionally I was lead into a near empty room several meters square, put on the headset, and a HTC employee placed a set of headphones over my ears. When the demo started up, the guide held up two controllers, one for each hand. Within the headset, I saw the controllers represented on the screen and reached out to them. The headset and controllers both had a number of wires coming from them, but I was told that the end goal is to make the controllers wireless, and the headset would in the final version have only a single mini-HDMI cable to provide the bandwidth for the display.

The two controllers were designed such that one is for each particular hand with a depressed pad on each (kind of like the initial Steam box controller renders), along with a rear trigger and two grip buttons. Within the first demo, depressing the left trigger caused a balloon to appear from the controller, which I could then let go and punch away with either controller. After a few balloons the main demo began.

The first scene was a basic white field to describe the motions of the set up. I could move my head, walk about 2 meters in each direction before hitting an invisible wall (or an actual wall), as well as duck to get a different perspective from close to the ground. The white field was filled with columns moving up and down to get a sense of perspective.

The next scene was interactive – I was in a kitchen in front of a chopping board with vegetables, with a pot on the hob to my right and a robot helper ahead. With some mild instruction, I used the controllers and the triggers to pick up some of the objects. I put some bread into the pot and threw the rolling pin at the robot helper (to which I was thanked). I also dropped a steak accidentally on the floor, and without hesitation I bent down and picked it up, then threw it across the room. (Pretty much what happens back when I’m in charge of the kitchen anyway.) Turning to my left, I walked towards a fridge which opened automatically with more ingredients inside. I took out a steak, turned to the left again, and using my other controller moved towards a button on the microwave. The door swung open, I placed the steak inside, then I also grabbed a bottle of wine from next to the microwave and put it in as well, before shutting the microwave door how I would normally do so at home. Next to the microwave was a chopping board with a knife and an onion, and when I picked up the knife to cut the onion, it shattered. I couldn’t pick up the pieces of the knife (a safety feature I was told), but I was able to place the onion on a plate and interact with a bell to get the plate taken away.

The second scene put me onto the deck of a sunken ship, surrounded by rotting wood and schools of fish. When I moved around I could see how far down the ship went, but when a fish swam into my face I tried to swat it away, knocking the controller into the headset. After a couple of moments a big whale swam by with the detail on the whale being quite clear. The movement was also smooth, perhaps indicative of 60-90 Hz, but it was not 120 Hz.

The third demo was an example of how the hardware and software can be used in a creative context (I mean more creative than microwaving wine). This was essentially a paint program but allowed the artist to draw in 3D. The right hand was the brush, while using a combination of controls on the left hand allowed the left to act like a palette. I was able to do a full RGB selection similar to most imaging programs, as well as change the type of brush from something more normal to oil paints or a rainbow. I was able to move around in 3D as well, drawing from different perspectives. There was an obligatory drawing of something rude, but then I examined how accurate the software was. It seemed that I could draw with a granularity of about 15mm, especially when drawing long lines. But software like this could be used by developers interested in making and viewing 3D models with immersion and getting a feeling for the size of whatever is being created.

The next demo was best described as a table top game coming to life. I started standing in the middle of the table, watching a faction in a castle fighting off some invaders. In true table-top style everything looked a bit small. But I was able to walk around the scene viewing it from different angles both outside and in the table itself. I was also able to peer inside the 3D models, to get perspectives that would not otherwise be available in the real world.

Gallery: HTC Vive Hands-On

The final demo was somewhat of a treat. In true Valve fashion I was thrust into a Portal based room with GLaDOS issuing commands over a loud speaker. The artistry was pure Portal through and through, with Portal 2 based figurines. GLaDOS issued commands to open drawers, which the game allowed you to open the wrong drawer twice before opening the right drawer. In the second incorrect drawer was a piece of really old cake, but there were experiments to run and research to be done – thankfully I was still alive so I continued with the demo and opened the right drawer which housed a small Portal stick figure community. Unfortunately GLaDOS told me that looking into the drawer would cause the community to worship me as a god and in the end we had to close the drawer and there was the sound of something burning. I then walked over to the other side of the room and was instructed to open a door via a lever, causing a damaged Portal 2 robot to stumble into the room and be attached to a harness. GLaDOS instructed me to repair the robot by pulling a few parts before giving some incomprehensible instruction that caused the robot to disintegrate. The robot parts were cleared and the walls dismantled to show GLaDOS who expressed disappointment – ‘Oh, it’s you…’. At this point I was on a small segment of floor while I could see far and wide into the Portal underground moving bits around, before the walls around me were quickly rebuilt into what looked like the start of a Portal level. There was even a companion cube.

Thus ended the demo.

The interactivity in each of the demos was great, and it felt natural. Aside from the commands from the HTC guide coming through the headset explaining what was going on (it was a two way conversation, I asked about the hardware), I felt immersed. I could just about see the pixels in the set, but the two controller method for some of the tasks felt like the right thing to do. The PC hardware used for the demo was a single GPU system (I was told a current generation high end card), indicating that no massive tri-SLI system is needed at this point. For a couple of the demos (such as the table top), the scene was a little blurry but I have experienced this before on VR demos – on the large scale everything seems great, but some of the low resolution demos on small models can cause some defocusing. That being said, the Portal demo was filled with detail and I had no issues there, even though there were some intricate detail within the models.

It was difficult to ascertain what kind of technology the display was using due to the lack of consistent black areas, but there was no discernable backlight bleed during gameplay. Unlike Oculus, although I didn’t specifically think about it during the demo there seemed to be a lack of directional audio, as in computation based on hard direction, but I may be mistaken. I felt I was in the moment, and although there was not some massive movement scene similar to the Oculus demo, the package did feel like it could compete.

The headline for this piece ‘Better than Oculus’ is supplanted by a question mark. It is difficult to pick between the two, but if I was forced at gunpoint to spend my own money, I feel it is the HTC model with Steam VR that would get my notes. If not from the hardware perspective, but then the future potential if Valve gets properly onboard with a major title at launch. HTC currently creating units for developers, and is aiming for a 2015 launch. There is talk with regards to several SKUs with the high end one relying on sensors mounted to the wall and perhaps a lower one with gyroscopes. As always with these VR demos, when the devices come to market a key element is going to revolve around content. Here Valve can do serious damage if a big title or two was released along with the headset. The obvious lines are Half-Life 3 and Portal 3, but there was no indication from HTC that anything was going to be mentioned.

The key difference between the HTC and Oculus demos was immersion combined with interactivity. The Oculus demo was technically great, but the interactive elements from HTC along with the Valve input made the experience feel more natural. There are clear hurdles for both implementations, particularly for Oculus on content. Even though Oculus is working with lots of developers, I also inquired about the interoperability between software created for the HTC headset and the Oculus one but the comments pointed towards locking in the software to each device. The HTC/Valve implementation will have to have some bundled content when it goes on general sale and Valve already has the distribution ecosystem in place as well as the gaming franchises to make the world implode.

Valve to Showcase SteamVR Hardware, Steam Machines, & More at GDC 2015

Typically we don’t do announcements of announcements. However in Valve’s case it’s not entirely clear if there’s actually going to be an announcement at GDC, so let’s take a quick look at what Valve is up to.

Valve has put out a press release today announcing that the company will be at GDC and will be showing off several hardware initiatives at GDC. Among them will be the final version of the Steam Controller, more Steam Machines, “new living room devices”, and the eye-catcher of the group, a new hardware system Valve is calling SteamVR.

Valve of course has been working on all of those initiatives for some time now, very publicly in the case of the Steam Machines and Steam Controller, and much more quietly on SteamVR. In the case of Steam Machines and Steam controller, 2014 came and left without a release of either, leaving some ambiguity over the state of those projects. Meanwhile we know that Valve has been experimenting with VR for several years now, and although Valve’s press release doesn’t offer any details on what SteamVR may be, they have a GDC programming session scheduled whose description offers a bit more insight:

Valve has been creating advanced prototype VR HMD’s since mid-2013 that are more advanced than other developers currently have access to, and this head start has allowed us to gain a ton of VR-specific rendering knowledge that we’d like to share with developers who are actively working on VR or plan to in the near future.

This may mean that Valve is working on their own VR headset. Then again it may be an ecosystem/specification/initiative similar to Steam Machines.

Anyhow, for the moment it’s unknown whether SteamVR will be revealed to the public at GDC. Valve already held a press-free event in Washington in January, and their GDC press release does not include any details about a session/event where SteamVR would be announced. Instead Valve is inviting only “developers and publishers” to sign up for demos of SteamVR at GDC through the Steam Universe page, in which case this may be all we hear on SteamVR for now.

February 23, 2015 – Valve will show a family of new Steam devices at next week’s Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, CA. Products being demonstrated at GDC include Steam Machines with the final Steam Controller, new living room devices, and a previously-unannounced SteamVR hardware system.

Developers and publishers interested in experiencing the new SteamVR hardware may request to schedule a GDC demo at http://www.steampowered.com/universe.

GDC 2015 will mark the 13th anniversary of Valve’s first public announcement of Steam, which has since become the leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux games and software.

In the last year, Steam added new services and features – including In-Home Streaming, Broadcasting, Music, and user created stores – as it grew to over 125 million active accounts worldwide.

Steam now offers 4500 games, with 400 million pieces of user-generated content contributed by members of the Steam Community.

Oculus Demos Crescent Bay and VR Audio

I’ve been following Oculus Rift since the Kickstarter a couple years back, and while I didn’t help kickstart the project it has always been an intriguing idea. Of course Oculus ended up being purchased for a large chunk of cash and VC funding, but that’s a different story. Having tested DevKit 1 and DevKit 2, I was really interested to see what changes have been made with the latest prototype. The short answer is that ventilation has improved (less fogging up of the glasses), the display resolution is now higher, the screen refreshes faster, tracking is better, and combined with the VR Audio the experience is more immersive than ever.

To be clear, this is the first time Oculus Crescent Bay has been demonstrated publicly and the first time ever that Oculus has shown VR Audio to anyone outside the company. They held private screenings for the press and other “VIPs”, and on the way there we passed by the Oculus booth that had a long line of people waiting to experience Oculus. Being able to jump the line and go into a private screening, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for them. As for Crescent Bay, things have come a long way since the last time I tried Oculus (DevKit 2 at NVIDIA in September, if you’re wondering).

For Crescent Bay, Oculus put together a series of short demos that lasted about five minutes I’d estimate. All of these used positional audio, so as you turned or leaned in, you got a clear sense of the sounds moving around you. This isn’t anything really new, as we’ve had audio HRTF (Head Related Transfer Functions) doing positional audio for a while now, but combined with the goggles and stereoscopic 3D it’s very immersive. Oculus has licensed Visisonics’ 3D audio libraries, though they’re doing a lot of customizations to make things work with the Oculus Rift obviously. I had seen some of the demos before, and some of them were more in line with what you would expect from indie games; a few however were really designed to impress.

One was a city-scape that looked a bit like Gotham, with your view positioned on a platform high in the air. Looking down and stepping off the edge of the platform definitely gives a sense of vertigo, though the demo didn’t let you plummet towards the ground sadly. (And when you look down and can’t see your feet or any other representation of your persona, it definitely removes you a bit from the experience.) Another sequence has a T-Rex come stomping around a corner, similar to a scene from Jurassic Park. I was admiring the level of detail when the dinosaur puts his face right next to you, opens his mouth, and roars. The little bits of spittle flying through the air are a nice touch. Finally, there’s a slow motion on-rails sequence where your view moves forward toward a large alien robot with bullets, missiles, and even cars flying through the air – NVIDIA called this the “car flip demo” back in September. This was one demo where I definitely noticed the increase in visual fidelity thanks to the higher resolution display and the VR Audio.

In terms of the hardware, Oculus wouldn’t provide us with very many specifics of the display, but all indications are that they’re using a 2560×1440 OLED display like that in the Samsung Galaxy 4 Note. While they wouldn’t tell us the actual resolution, however, they did tell us some of the changes that they’ve made since DevKit 2. DK1 obviously was the starting point, and it used a 1280×720 60Hz LCD. While it looked okay, pixilation was very visible and there was some ghosting between images. For DK2, Oculus switched to a 1920×1080 OLED display, and they were able to drive it at 75Hz. They also use minimal persistence where the image is shown on the OLEDs for 2ms and then the image is blacked out, which works better with our eyes and doesn’t lead to ghosting as much – but it was still present at times with DK2. Crescent Bay has increased the refresh rate to 90Hz, with 2ms showing the image and then blacking out the screen, and that combined with an increase in resolution helps to improve the visuals even more. This was the first time I didn’t notice any ghosting on Oculus.

One thing Oculus wouldn’t comment on is a release date. The hardware at this point could probably ship and people would be really impressed, but there’s a lot of work yet to be done with interacting with the environment and the user interface. I wouldn’t be surprised if Crescent Bay gets released to developers as DevKit 3 later this year, but other than some cool tech demos this isn’t really something end users would want/need just yet. It could easily be a couple more years before public release and by then we might see 4K or even 8K displays in the goggles. More important however is that we’ll need compelling games and other software that people can actually use, and that will take time more than anything.

I should also note that I was able to try a few other VR headsets at CES. The first was from SoftKinetic, and they mounted a forward facing 3D camera on the Oculus DK2 to allow you to interact with the environment using your hands. The demo involved reaching into the space in front of you to “grab” boxes, stack them up, and then you could whack them around and knock them over – all with your virtual hands floating in the air. This helped place you in the environment, but it is still early in development. The second was similar in some ways, in that it involved a forward facing camera mounted on the goggles, and it was at the Razer booth. You were supposed to hold your hands in front of you and fire and ice would appear in your left and right hands, which you could then throw at flaming or freezing floating skulls to “kill” them. It was a game of sorts, and the goggles use different software and hardware than the Oculus Rift, but the demo at least for me was a bit raw – most of the time my hands wouldn’t actually appear in front of me. Oculus also had Samsung’s Gear VR (powered by Oculus) available, but the software being run wasn’t at the same level as the Crescent Bay demo, and the hardware seemed more like a cross between DK1 and DK2.

There’s definitely a lot of interesting stuff being done with VR these days, and compared to the stuff I saw back in the 90s what we have now is truly impressive. Large polygons have given way to impressively realistic textures and models, and the positional tracking and latency are very good as well. It’s not perfect yet but we’re getting there. It’s going to be interesting to see who manages to release a public product first and what software we’ll end up using, and I’m looking forward to seeing more over the coming years.

Gallery: Oculus Demos Crescent Bay and VR Audio