[BLOG] #EGX2015: Valve: The year ahead in VR

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PredictedCyborg
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[BLOG] #EGX2015: Valve: The year ahead in VR

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The first day of EGX 2015 saw Valve's Chet Faliszek take the stage in an attempt to try and clear up confusions some people might have on virtual reality and what it is.



The talk started with a little history lesson on Valve's development of their own virtual reality technology beginning back in 2013. They also experimented with augmented reality technology around the same time, before eventually beginning to push more for the virtual reality when HTC entered the picture. Of course, the two are currently working together on the HTC Vive headset and controllers.



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There was then some talk about the Vive, specifically what Valve had done to make sure that it was the best it could be. The cables connected to the headset were explained by saying that so far wireless hadn't developed enough to give a consistently high enough bandwidth for the video so wired connection was still needed to provide the best experience. Valve hope that they should be able to hit somewhere around the region of 90FPS on a high-end computer this way. Audio was talked about, with 3D positional audio and binaural audio being mentioned. For the Vive simulated binaural audio is being produced to help players position the sound in the 'world' around them, through use of filters.



A lot of time was spent talking about the 'input' into virtual reality though, with Faliszek saying that the reason Valve, Oculus and Sony have all developed similar means to bring the hands into the virtual world being because the technology used was already around in a sense with the WiiMote (although he stressed it wasn't actually a WiiMote) being in use as well as the traditional controllers that most gamers are familiar with. It's simple to pick up and failure of a task is understandable for the player, they realise how it happened. However while eye tracking is being looked into, Faliszek doesn't think proper full-body tracking will become a proper input for a while yet.



Finally the one thing we were told to take away from this talk was that VR didn't need a full-size room to work, right now developers should be working to minimise the space needed and also to minimise any disconnect between natural movement input and the visual movements to stop motion sickness. Faliszek said that there should no longer be any excuse for VR to make players motion sick anymore.
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