HTC VIVE PRO Upgrade & Wireless VIVE Adaptor

[Ekin]

Quote

Today in Las Vegas, HTC VIVE™, the leader in room-scale Virtual Reality (VR) announced new hardware upgrades that deliver premium VR experiences to consumers and enterprises with the introduction of Vive Pro and Vive Wireless Adaptor. In addition, the company debuted new improvements in how VR users discover, experience and acquire VR content through a radical redesign of Viveport VR and Vive Video. These advancements deliver on VR users’ desire for higher resolution, improved audio, greater comfort, wireless freedom and immersive content discovery.

 

The new HTC Vive Pro will feature:

• dual 1440x1600 OLED screens (78% increase over current Vive)
• will be lighter and more comfortable (including for glasses wearers)
• built in audio is getting an upgrade

It will be released this quarter and be compatible with v1 lighthouses.

 

Quote

Also unveiled today, the Vive Wireless Adaptor will be the first to market with a truly wireless VR headset integration for both Vive and Vive Pro.

The Vive Wireless Adaptor features Intel’s WiGig technology and offers a premium VR wireless experience that operates in the interference-free 60Ghz band, which means lower latency and better performance. The Vive Wireless Adaptor will ship in Q3 to customers worldwide. 

I think this is a great version two and backwards compatibility is always great.

But I fear that with the PRO name the price will also be "pro".

 

 

Source: https://blog.vive.com/us/2018/01/08/htc-vive-raises-bar-premium-vr-new-vive-pro-upgrade-wireless-vive-adaptor/

https://twitter.com/Ken_Addison

[mech]

I wonder how this will cost compared to the current vive?

And also I hope that this lets the current price drop to make it more affordable.

[porina]

More res, nice. No word on FoV though... also wonder, how much more GPU do you need to feed it? If it's 78% more pixels, is it 78% more GPU? Given Vive minimum requirement is 970, 78% more would put it around 1070Ti level... I know not everything needs to be increased, but certainly some parts are.

[Brehohn]

Once taxes arrive, I'll probably be buying this. The original HTC VIVE was great, but, it was too heavy, the strap sucked, and the resolution was meh. Now though, this looks awesome! I also wouldn't mind the WiGig option if testing goes great with it. Just have a wireless router above you and you should be good to go!

[Clemens]

I don't know why but I like the blue color...

I wonder what the price will be (and the maybe updated price of original Vive)...but even this is somewhat affordable...you you will need a beast of a machine to power all the pixels.

[dalekphalm]

I'm gonna push strongly for us to buy the Wireless Adapter for work, once it's released. But it's not coming until Q3, which is still quite a long time.

 

We use the Vive a lot for drop-in programs and such, and the cable is always a pain in the ass to manage. Our cheapo solution is to use an IKEA standing lamp, without the lamp installed (just the stand) to "hang" the Vive cable above the head of the headset, so you can move around without tripping over it.

[Sniperfox47]

So it's basically a higher res Vive that comes with the HD Audio Strap?

 

Does it allow us to run at Vive resolution with upscaling, or does it require native resolution? A number of games already struggle to hit a stable 90fps, and even upscaled graphics will help a lot with the screendoor effect. Also with the wireless module it's going to be hard to push the existing resolution much less this increased resolution...

 

Also says it supports the v1 lighthouses, does that mean it uses/supports v2 lighthouses too, or do I need to wait if I want a headset supporting the new v2 lighthouses?

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

So it's basically a higher res Vive that comes with the HD Audio Strap?

 

Does it allow us to run at Vive resolution with upscaling, or does it require native resolution? A number of games already struggle to hit a stable 90fps, and even upscaled graphics will help a lot with the screendoor effect. Also with the wireless module it's going to be hard to push the existing resolution much less this increased resolution...

 

Also says it supports the v1 lighthouses, does that mean it uses/supports v2 lighthouses too, or do I need to wait if I want a headset supporting the new v2 lighthouses?

I'm gonna assume it natively runs at the higher resolution.

 

Some VR game devs might want to include graphics options for the Vive vs Vive Pro.

 

But in either case, I don't believe there are answers to your questions yet.

[AlexGoesHigh]

 

That's how the adapter looks like on a vive.

 

now the vive has little wee horns on it. 

[dalekphalm]

8 minutes ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

 

That's how the adapter looks like on a vive.

 

now the vive has little wee horns on it. 

 

Link not embedding properly?

[The Owl]

1 hour ago, porina said:

More res, nice. No word on FoV though... also wonder, how much more GPU do you need to feed it? If it's 78% more pixels, is it 78% more GPU? Given Vive minimum requirement is 970, 78% more would put it around 1070Ti level... I know not everything needs to be increased, but certainly some parts are.

FoV is 110 according to their website 

 

Headset Specs

Screen:	Dual AMOLED 3.5" diagonal
Resolution:	1440 x 1600 pixels per eye (2880 x 1600 pixels combined)
Refresh rate:	90 Hz
Field of view:	110 degrees
Audio:	Hi-Res certificate headset Hi-Res certificate headphone (removable)  High impedance headphone support
Input:	Integrated microphones
Connections:	USB-C 3.0, DP 1.2, Bluetooth
Sensors:	SteamVR Tracking, G-sensor, gyroscope, proximity, IPD sensor
Ergonomics:	Eye relief with lens distance adjustment Adjustable IPD Adjustable headphone Adjustable headstrap   https://www.vive.com/us/product/vive-pro/

[BuckGup]

2 hours ago, porina said:

More res, nice. No word on FoV though... also wonder, how much more GPU do you need to feed it? If it's 78% more pixels, is it 78% more GPU? Given Vive minimum requirement is 970, 78% more would put it around 1070Ti level... I know not everything needs to be increased, but certainly some parts are.

No with current games a 980ti can easily do it and so would a 1070, 1080 etc. VR games aren't demanding

[The Owl]

7 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

No with current games a 980ti can easily do it and so would a 1070, 1080 etc. VR games aren't demanding

You haven't tried project cars 2 yet ^^

[dalekphalm]

Just now, The Owl said:

You haven't tried project cars 2 yet ^^

Yeah I was gonna say, "VR Games" is a very wide term.

 

Sure there are lots of VR games that aren't very demanding - but then there's Star Citizen (technically not out yet), Elite, Project Cars 2, etc.

[Suika]

19 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

No with current games a 980ti can easily do it and so would a 1070, 1080 etc. VR games aren't demanding

My 1080 Ti will drop to 30FPS in VRChat.

 

Maybe not the best example but 'VR games' are pretty broad.

[BuckGup]

32 minutes ago, The Owl said:

You haven't tried project cars 2 yet ^^

Yeah that is one on the heavier side

19 minutes ago, Suika said:

My 1080 Ti will drop to 30FPS in VRChat.

 

Maybe not the best example but 'VR games' are pretty broad.

VRchat is horribly unoptimized 

[Armakar]

So I guess I can't use my 7700HQ laptop with a  1070 for the Vive pro?

Kind of sucks.. VR was the reason I bought it.

[Thaldor]

1 hour ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Also says it supports the v1 lighthouses, does that mean it uses/supports v2 lighthouses too, or do I need to wait if I want a headset supporting the new v2 lighthouses?

Knowing how Vives tracking works, there probably won't be much change in the lighthouses, since they are quite "stupid" boxes. With "stupid" I mean that they project IR-lasergrid and have 2 sweeping IR-lasers, only "smart" there is is syncing the grids between the lighthouses and BT-chip to receive wake-up and sleep signals from the PC. All of the tracking is done in the headset and the controllers and the lasergrids and sweepers are used to get the starting coordinates for gyro and accelometer based far more precise tracking (you can even test this by walking out of the play area and even out of the sight of the lighthouses, the tracking will work to some extent).

 

So, there really isn't a lot of support issues for tracking between the v1 and v2 lighthouses, but there might be some feature updates (like the now and then bugging sleep mode and durability).

 

What rumours there have been for a long time about lighthouse upgrade have been mostly that HTC would be "upgrading" lighthouses to be more cost-effective by removing something like the second stability motor and thinning the lasergrid. There already has been optimization and upgrades to the lighthouses without much noise, like the gen1 (came with the devkit Vive), gen2 (first consumer Vive) and gen3 (came with the second consumer Vive which had problems with the controllers touchpads) lighthouses have different number and different alignment of the IR-laserleds. The rumors about v2 lighthouses have been quite the same as with the different generation v1 lighthouses, you break your old and send it for repair, they throw it away and send you a new one, completely interchangeable and in use you won't see the difference. But these are just rumours based on some wirting around the net.

[AlTech]

Yay.... I knew a 580 or a 1060 would be obsolete for VR soon but I didn't think it'd be this soon.

 

Guessing Vive Pro will require GTX 1070/Vega 56

[Rune]

Look forward to everyone becoming even closer

[dalekphalm]

50 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Yay.... I knew a 580 or a 1060 would be obsolete for VR soon but I didn't think it'd be this soon.

 

Guessing Vive Pro will require GTX 1070/Vega 56

To be fair, you could simply buy a Vive instead of a Vive Pro. My assumption is that they are going to run both side-by-side, with the Vive probably getting a price drop, and the Vive Pro marketed as an "upgrade".

[Sniperfox47]

3 hours ago, Thaldor said:

Knowing how Vives tracking works, there probably won't be much change in the lighthouses, since they are quite "stupid" boxes. With "stupid" I mean that they project IR-lasergrid and have 2 sweeping IR-lasers, only "smart" there is is syncing the grids between the lighthouses and BT-chip to receive wake-up and sleep signals from the PC. All of the tracking is done in the headset and the controllers and the lasergrids and sweepers are used to get the starting coordinates for gyro and accelometer based far more precise tracking (you can even test this by walking out of the play area and even out of the sight of the lighthouses, the tracking will work to some extent).

 

So, there really isn't a lot of support issues for tracking between the v1 and v2 lighthouses, but there might be some feature updates (like the now and then bugging sleep mode and durability).

 

What rumours there have been for a long time about lighthouse upgrade have been mostly that HTC would be "upgrading" lighthouses to be more cost-effective by removing something like the second stability motor and thinning the lasergrid. There already has been optimization and upgrades to the lighthouses without much noise, like the gen1 (came with the devkit Vive), gen2 (first consumer Vive) and gen3 (came with the second consumer Vive which had problems with the controllers touchpads) lighthouses have different number and different alignment of the IR-laserleds. The rumors about v2 lighthouses have been quite the same as with the different generation v1 lighthouses, you break your old and send it for repair, they throw it away and send you a new one, completely interchangeable and in use you won't see the difference. But these are just rumours based on some wirting around the net.

The lighthouse 2.0 and Steam tracking 2.0 isn't rumored anymore, it was officially announced by Valve a number of months back, and dev chips have been available to developers for a while.

 

The new tracking tech works completely differently than the first. There's no LED sync lights, there's only 1 laser that covers both dimensions, sync info and other data is carried on the laser beam and transferred to the headset or accessory, etc.

 

Accessories designed for the V1 lighthouses will not even see the V2 lighthouses and cannot use them, but V1 and V2 lighthouses can work side by side.

 

Accessories designed for the V2 lighthouses can use either the V1 or V2 lighthouses if available, changing modes when started to use the better of the two connected to your machine but not both at the same time.

 

More details were announced here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/steamvrtracking/announcements/detail/1264796421606498053

[AlexGoesHigh]

8 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

snip

 

Link not embedding properly?

fixed it.

[Sakkura]

11 hours ago, Sniperfox47 said:

So it's basically a higher res Vive that comes with the HD Audio Strap?

 

Does it allow us to run at Vive resolution with upscaling, or does it require native resolution? A number of games already struggle to hit a stable 90fps, and even upscaled graphics will help a lot with the screendoor effect. Also with the wireless module it's going to be hard to push the existing resolution much less this increased resolution...

VR games never really run at native resolution, because they have to account for lens distortion anyway. And supersampling (or undersampling) is built into SteamVR, so adjusting render resolution should always be possible.

[Sniperfox47]

8 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

VR games never really run at native resolution, because they have to account for lens distortion anyway. And supersampling (or undersampling) is built into SteamVR, so adjusting render resolution should always be possible.

Especially with games using dynamic resolution as a major way to maintain framerate.

 

But even so there's the question of whether the displays support lower resolutions with upscaling "on-display" rather than "on-GPU". To the best of my knowledge the original Vive does not. It encodes in the Vive's display resolution on-GPU and then transmits all of that data over-the-wire to the headset. For wired this is fine, but for wireless this can be a huge headache.

 

Seriously hoping the wireless module also supports VESA's DSC standard too, to compress the video, since DSC is pretty low latency and it would drastically cut down the data transmitted in a lot of cases.