Valve’s Alan Yates Claims Oculus Rift Is A Copy Of Valve’s Prototype

With virtual reality starting to gain more momentum in the tech scene, it makes sense for the different companies to work together to help promote the technology instead of working against each other. While it did come across that way for a while, it looks like the first shots have been fired.

In a recent post on Reddit, Valve’s Alan Yates replied to a comment on a post in which he basically accused Oculus of copying the original prototype of the HTC Vive virtual reality headset that Valve and HTC worked together on developing. Given that Yates was directly involved in the development of the Vive, he would probably have a better idea of what went down.

According to him, “While that is generally true in this case every core feature of both the Rift and Vive HMDs are directly derived from Valve’s research program. Oculus has their own CV-based tracking implementation and frensel lens design but the CV1 is otherwise a direct copy of the architecture of the 1080p Steam Sight prototype Valve lent Oculus when we installed a copy of the “Valve Room” at their headquarters. I would call Oculus the first SteamVR licensee, but history will likely record a somewhat different term for it…”

Now it is unclear as to whether or not what Yates said is 100% true, but so far there has not been any response from Oculus VR. That being said, it doesn’t really seem like Valve has much to worry about, especially since from the majority of reviews, many seem to favor the albeit more expensive HTC Vive over the Oculus Rift.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gadgets
Tags: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Valve, Virtual Reality (VR)