LG’s upcoming SteamVR HMD has reportedly just been seen again, this time at Korea’s VR Festival 2017 (KVRF). That’s according to a Twitter post from Silicone Valley Virtual Reality – posted earlier today – which also included a brand new up-close look at the headset and controllers. For those that don’t already know, LG’s SteamVR set was first shown at Game Developer Conference 2017 (GDC) way back in March. The headset follows SteamVR tracking technologies and is intended to be a competitor to HTC’s Vive VR kits for PC. It bears some resemblance to that other setup, as well, though it also features a “flip up” display at the front, so users can look around at the real world without taking the headset off. Aside from that, LG’s offering will feature a separate OLED display for each eye – each with a resolution of 1440 x 1280. Those displays are expected to provide wearers with a 110-degree field of vision with a refresh rate of 90 Hz.
As to the image itself, not much appears to have changed since it was last shown at GDC. As of this writing, no upgrades have been made to its specifications either. That’s not entirely surprising since it has been reported that developer kits for the set have already gone out in some markets. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that no changes will be made before the final release version is ready, most of the major features should be all but settled. With that said, there had been some speculation that the kit may ship with Valve’s SteamVR “Knuckles” controllers instead of the wand-style controllers pictured from KVRF. It is still possible that a separate bundle including those could be offered since the device isn’t expected to become available until sometime in 2018. However, until LG or Valve make some form of an announcement about that, it is probably best not to speculate too much.
Thankfully, LG’s decision to showcase its SteamVR system at the conference should bring a sigh of relief to anybody who was waiting for the device to arrive. That’s because some had begun to speculate that the entire project had been scrapped, following the long hiatus between the initial showing of the device and this sighting.
