New Cable Standards for Full Motion VR HMDs with VirtualLink

[FrgMstr]

The VirtualLink Consortium is group of companies that is helping build open standards around Virtual Reality devices and technologies. As you might guess, Valve, Oculus, AMD, and Microsoft are a part of this consortium. Surprisingly NVIDIA is also, even though it is not exactly heralded for doing much open work at all when it comes to gaming. The groups first "big" move it to rework how the current cabling is done with full motion headsets such as the HTC VIVE, and Oculus Rift. We are looking at moving to a single USB Type-C connector with less cabling. This would allow for a bit less hardware involved possibly in the future.


However, you will still have a cable, which does take away from the true VR experience. We have tested the TPCast here in our offices, and when it works, it works well, and being free of cables in VR is a tremendous game changer.

VirtualLink is designed to enable a new level of immersion in VR, with power, display, and data bandwidth specified to meet the needs of future VR headsets. That includes support for four lanes of HBR3 DisplayPort for high-resolution displays, USB3.1 Gen2 SuperSpeed for headset cameras and sensors, and up to 27 Watts of power delivery.

The current setup process limits VR to PCs that can support multiple connectors. A single-connector solution brings immersive VR to small-form-factor devices that can accommodate a single USB Type-C connector. These include thin and light notebooks and various other small-form-factor devices.

 

[Elios]

but wireless really isnt you have have massive battery pack on you some where and the TX/RX box and wires running to that

unless you can figure out how power these things wirelessly having a cable isnt a big issue

and really the Rift only has one cable already

 

[fuzzylogik]

Cool - great that these companies are actively looking to improve how all this works and start creating standards etc. - VR looks to have a pretty bright future

Now to make sure that I build a future computer has the required stuff to use the new standard lol

 

[FrgMstr]

but wireless really isnt you have have massive battery pack on you some where and the TX/RX box and wires running to that

unless you can figure out how power these things wirelessly having a cable isnt a big issue

and really the Rift only has one cable already

Massive? Not really. Stick it in your pocket.

Three cables bundled into one.

 

[FrgMstr]

Is there a review? I can't seem to find one.

No.

 

[HeadRusch]

I like the idea of a single C cable. The Rift cable is really easy to manage with ceiling-suspension (I personally use those steel coil fishing things with the dhooks on them. No idea how to use them for fishing, but damned if they aren't perfect for suspending the Rift cable), but I'd love a smaller/lighter one.

I don't expect wireless to be there for awhile, adaptors notwithstanding, I like not having to worry about battery power in VR...when I'm in, I tend to linger there....que the Neuromancer quotes.....or if you're under 25, Ready Player One I suppose......Also I'm going to be honest, I doubt the science is there yet to show having that much transmission power strapped to your skull for low-latency HDMI and data transmission...you know, actually being safe and whatnot

 

[whatevs]

Going by HDMI 2.1s change to packet based like DisplayPort and also the reconfiguration to six channels during 2.1 mode (that requires the new "48G" labeled/certified cables), this seems exactly what the new usb-c cable will be doing.

So for reference, HDMI 2.1 is able to push 4k@120Hz with 10bpc (HDR...) and possibly 144Hz if wikipedia is right, but the numbers seem off and am too lazy to check myself.

Considering you want 90/120Hz per eye, that doesnt seem to leave much future proofing for the new "expensive" cable. And where does the sound go through?