Vive Wireless Kit

All I keep thinking about is how much more nauseating this could be introducing wireless to these gen 1's. Adding in more delay and potential for other issues from wireless dropping/reconnecting. Just seems to o early for where these are at.
 
HTC’s Vive VR headset gets unplugged via $220 wireless add-on.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/11/h...s-unplugged-via-220-wireless-add-on/?ncid=rss

The wireless add-on includes a standard battery that’s good for around one and a half hours of play, according to HTC’s China regional president, Alvin Graylin, who spoke to UploadVR after demoing the peripheral. He claims the wireless add-on results in no “noticeable difference” when it comes to things like latency — a crucial factor for VR given the risk of nausea from a degraded experience.


TPCAST is also apparently planning to offer a bigger battery eventually — which would sit in a user’s pocket, rather than on the back of the headset itself.
 
Samson4EiT said:
All I keep thinking about is how much more nauseating this could be introducing wireless to these gen 1's. Adding in more delay and potential for other issues from wireless dropping/reconnecting. Just seems to o early for where these are at.
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I hope they're not so dumb to assume the business model of "sell as many as we can before people actually try them and realize it's useless" is not sustainable. This is a niche accessory for a niche device, with a userbase that is relatively sophisticated. Total sales of this would be in the low hundreds if the first end user impressions are not good.

I also hope HTC would not be promoting this if it was a pile of shit.
 
I wonder how much latency this is gonna add?

Also I don't like the idea of more weight and wireless stuff on my head. I think I'd prefer some type of vest or belt.
 
I bet Kyle already has one of these ordered.

Probably only add 1 to 2 ms latency, maybe less.
 
I think what I heard was around 15 ms latency...not sure where that info came from though, someone posted it on Reddit.
 
Here's a video of some guy using it:



Doesn't really show much. Also, a 240p video in 2016? Wtf.

Claims are that the larger battery pack you can put in your pocket lasts ~5 hours.
 
MavericK said:
Sooo...who wants to strap a Chinese-made lithium battery to your head? :D
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yeeeaah.. I would rather have a painful hole in my fat belly than in my head.. I didn't really check but if the battery is in the head I don't know..
 
I guess technically it only has to last as long as the motion controllers.

Need to pack it in some fire retardant pocket protector. It'll probably be an optional accessory. :)
 
Pre-orders sold out in 18 minutes. I guess we'll be seeing some reviews!
 
I don't buy the latency claims, but would love to be proven wrong... then we could have latency free wireless monitors!
 
SirMaster said:
I don't see why it can't be low latency.

In 2010 they already had wireless HDMI (WHDI) with less than 1ms of latency.

http://hothardware.com/reviews/whdi-kits-explored-asus-wicast-briteview-hdelight

Surely in 6 years they could improve 1920x1080 60hz to 2160x1200 90hz over WHDI with the same low latency.
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I'm sure everyone involved in VR is aware of those and tried to make them work. I don't know the specifics of why, but clearly it is not as simple as buying a wireless HDMI kit and plugging it into the headset.

Maybe the latency is coming from the USB side of things.

Valve is backing a different company who's developing a wireless system for vive and they claim to have the latency overhead below 10ms.
 
To me this looks rather cool and useful. That is if it does not affect the experience. Need a review on these and user experience as well.
 
pj- said:
I'm sure everyone involved in VR is aware of those and tried to make them work. I don't know the specifics of why, but clearly it is not as simple as buying a wireless HDMI kit and plugging it into the headset.

Maybe the latency is coming from the USB side of things.

Valve is backing a different company who's developing a wireless system for vive and they claim to have the latency overhead below 10ms.
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Palmer Luckey said the technology was available a year or two ago, but there was no way to make it cheap enough to include in a consumer headset.

The latency is coming from the time it takes to encode/decode the video to and from wireless transmission, along with compression/decompression technology this thing may or may not be using.

Personally I think it's interesting, but I won't get excited until I can read reviews from those who have the consumer version first hand. I'm skeptical that an additional 15 ms delay wouldn't make people sick in all but the most inactive experiences (watching 360 videos, etc).
 
MavericK said:
I think what I heard was around 15 ms latency...not sure where that info came from though, someone posted it on Reddit.
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hexamon said:
15 is really high, Doesnt VR try to stay below 11ms in total at the moment?
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15ms is considered the wall in VR before things start to get uncomfortable for most users so I highly doubt this adds 15ms to the pipeline. They're probably using 60Ghz wireless which has crap tons of bandwidth but severely limited range (think Bluetooth ranges) and zero material penetration ability. Companies have been looking at 60ghz Wi-Fi at least since the release of the Rift, if not earlier.
 
20ms is generally considered good enough. People have tested rift games with the debugging tools and it is generally around 18-22ms in released games.

John Camack said:
A total system latency of 50 milliseconds will feel responsive, but still subtly lagging. One of the easiest ways to see the effects of latency in a head mounted display is to roll your head side to side along the view vector while looking at a clear vertical edge. Latency will show up as an apparent tilting of the vertical line with the head motion; the view feels “dragged along” with the head motion. When the latency is low enough, the virtual world convincingly feels like you are simply rotating your view of a stable world.
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John Carmack said:
Human sensory systems can detect very small relative delays in parts of the visual or, especially, audio fields, but when absolute delays are below approximately 20 milliseconds they are generally imperceptible.
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I doubt SteamVR is more refined than the oculus runtime, so "15ms" being additional latency is likely. If SteamVR is 20ms and this adds 15ms, I don't think it will be the end of the world. It may feel slightly swimmy, but I don't think it'll be a vomit fest or anything.

Also I don't think we should focus too much on the 15ms figure at this time. This is the sole reference to it on the product's page:

Lowest latency 15ms, completely naked without a sense
of continuous operation of 720 hours without exception
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http://www.tpcast.cn/transvr.html?p1=2&p2=1

It's probably best to just wait until someone gets one and is able to test it.
 
If the latency isn't an issue, this could be really promising. That pesky cord is a setback for 360-degree standing and especially room-scale experiences.

Nobody likes limited battery life, though, so that pocket battery would likely be mandatory and cost extra. Even that might not be enough; I could see people wearing a gigantic lithium battery backpack for all-day runtime, but strapping that much battery to oneself, especially the lithium variety, is bound to cause all sorts of safety issues.
 
NamelessPFG said:
If the latency isn't an issue, this could be really promising. That pesky cord is a setback for 360-degree standing and especially room-scale experiences.

Nobody likes limited battery life, though, so that pocket battery would likely be mandatory and cost extra. Even that might not be enough; I could see people wearing a gigantic lithium battery backpack for all-day runtime, but strapping that much battery to oneself, especially the lithium variety, is bound to cause all sorts of safety issues.
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Come on, that just simulates all the junk,, ammo and weapons you just picked up in the game (y)
 
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