During MWC 2015, HTC surprised us all with the announcement of the HTC Vive, a virtual reality headset that was developed together with Valve, much like how Samsung turned to Oculus to help with the development of the Gear VR. So far initial reviews and hands-on with the headset have been impressive, so much so that Valve’s boss Gabe Newell proclaimed that zero percent of users have since experienced any sort of nausea.
For those unfamiliar with virtual reality headsets, motion sickness is an issue that developers are trying to work out. The nausea comes from the disconnect between actual physical motion and the virtual world we look at through the display, which is also why sometimes some gamers experience that nausea even when playing first-person shooters.
According to Newell, the reason why no one has gotten sick yet is thanks to Valve’s Lighthouse motion-tracking system. This is a precise motion-tracking system that is capable of accurately tracking users as they move around a space. Different companies have tried to come up with their own methods of motion-tracking, but based on the rave reviews of the HTC Vive, it seems like Valve might have cracked it, so you can believe us when we say we are truly interested in getting our hands on it and taking it for a spin ourselves.
Filed in . Read more about Valve, Virtual Reality (VR) and Wearable Tech.