After being delayed and pushed back for a release date in April, the much awaited HTC Vive has finally been approved by the FCC to be sold in North America. The developer kit, which is to be unveiled at CES in about a week, has held the imaginations of anyone who is a virtual reality fan. Many forms of virtual reality devices are on the market, but for all those who have tried them, many will say without a doubt, that this device is hands down the best device on the current market.
In the FCC documentation, it shows where most of the labels will be, including the controllers, headset, base station, and the link box. It also does indicate that the headset could be free of cables, as seen in the previous version of the HTC Vive device, removing the need to be stationed in one place and adding to the enjoyment of moving about freely as one pleases. Be cautious, as this is still early and there can be no guarantee of this happening. In 2014, early prototypes of Valve-produced virtual reality systems were demonstrated. Then, in late February, we got another teased announcement that a SteamVR hardware system was going to be again demonstrated at the 2015 Game Developers Conference. Shortly after this, on March 1, 2015, HTC finally unveiled its very much anticipated device, Vive, at Mobile World Congress.
In a series of events, HTC had quite a journey on the way of developing the HTC Vive. In 2o12 after approaching Oculus, which is another head-mounted Virtual Reality (VR) display, HTC was looking to work along their side in creating such device. This led to HTC being rejected by Oculus, who was later acquired by Facebook in March of 2014, which then led them directly to Valve. HTC states that their device uses two OLED screens, one per eye. It’s said that each eye has a resolution of 1080 x 1200, and a refresh rate of 90 Hz, which allows the content you’re watching to be rendered at 90 frames-per-second. The VR system has over 70 sensors and operates all within a 15 feet by 15 feet space. The VR market is still very young and already it’s going to begin getting competitive, with HTC, Sony, and Oculus all set to release VR headsets next year.
