On April 5th of this year, HTC released their newest product – a virtual reality headset called the Vive. While previously known for problematic hardware and plummeting sales, HTC’s Vive has managed to surpass all other virtual reality (VR) systems currently on the market in terms of immersion and gameplay. This is due to its use of motion controls and 360 degree tracking, allowing for players to fully walk around the environment and interact with objects within the games. As said by a writer from the online magazine Polygon while playing the VR game Fantasy Realms, “It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t tried room-scale VR before what it feels like to suddenly be transported. I know I’m in a tiny office, with maybe three feet in every direction to walk. But I’m looking at a huge room, with stone columns stretching up to the ceiling.”
However, the Vive’s practicality extends beyond video games. The car company BMW announced that it will be incorporating the Vive’s use of mixed reality into its vehicle development process. Having made large investments into HTC’s VR technology, BMW was given several development kits for the Vive back in the fall in order to launch pilot projects with it. While BMW has used virtual reality systems since 90s, the company has made sure to utilize the Vive with the most “powerful” processors possible, in their own words.
With all the positives of the HTC Vive in consideration, there have been several setbacks and complaints. The Vive’s headset has three rather large wires protruding from the back of the device, which are easy for the user to get tangled up in. While making them all wrap into one wire would have been an easy fix, the current clunky nature of these wires is certainly an issue. Additionally the Vive does not come with built-in headphones, but rather a headphone jack wire to plug headphones into. The setup comes with a standard pair of HTC headphones, which are serviceable, however not having them already built in adds a fourth wire to the mess and Bluetooth headphones cause lag in the audio making them unusable. It is understandable what the intended purpose was, allowing for easy replacement if a pair of headphones were to break rather than requiring the entire system to be fixed, however in practice it certainly has its drawbacks.
Additionally, the design of the Vive makes it difficult to adjust, take off, or put on, with the three main wires running directly over the Velcro lining. It is also very easy to accidentally drop the headset and while the wires would most likely keep it from falling on the ground and breaking, that would not be before painfully pulling out a fair amount of your hair. Add on to this an expensive price tag and the tiring nature of the motion controls and you have a system with some serious downsides.
HTC has also been experiencing several problems with shipping of the Vive. Even before the release date, all pre-orders were accidentally cancelled automatically during processing. While HTC has released an official statement saying that all people will still receive their Vive systems on time, the company’s problems continue as many users who pre-ordered and paid extra for express shipping found that their Vive’s were mistakenly sent through economy transit. HTC is compensating users for the extra cost, but what cannot be compensated is the additional time their systems will take to arrive. Many users are also concerned that Paypal customers are receiving their Vive systems first over credit card customers and even though HTC has claimed to be operating on a first-come, first-serve policy, many users are taking to Reddit and claiming this is not the case. HTC has addressed the situation involving shipping complications with the following statement: “We understand that multiple issues have arisen in the past two days and we are working hard to resolve them as quickly and efficiently as possible.”
While there are certainly issues from hardware to shipping, the HTC Vive is currently the most immersive mixed reality system and a true demonstration as towards what the future of virtual reality has in store. One critic of the system said it best by describing the Vive to the first-ever iPhone: it’s unpolished, but truly shows what is to come in the near future. With a price tag at $800 and a backorder wait list pushing into June it is not reasonable for the average consumer to purchase the Vive, nor is it recommendable; however, this is without a doubt the start of a new kind of technological wonder that we will see grow into something marvelous in the near future.
