With its official debut yesterday, the HTC Vive joined the Oculus Rift in the great adventure of serving as an ambassador of virtual reality. Of course, every new high-profile product needs a trailer, but describing virtual reality to someone who hasn't experienced it is quite difficult. The teams at Valve and HTC decided to accept the challenge, and the result is an excellent montage with more than a dozen games, green screens, and group sessions.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the start of a new era. Doubts, rumors, and speculations are over. From this point on, virtual reality headsets are on their own and must do everything possible to win over each user. Unfortunately, the process will not be easy. All first-generation products tend to set the bar higher than usual, but with virtual reality, this detail was felt strongly. The prices of the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive are 699 and 899 euros respectively, not counting the inevitable hardware investment that most users will have to make... However, what awaits us on the other side is something like this:
Unlike the Rift, the HTC Vive places greater emphasis on the player's movement thanks to its auxiliary sensors, and this is clearly reflected in this official trailer. Another aspect to highlight is its honesty. It never tries to hide the presence of cables, and there is no doubt that the HTC requires a considerable amount of space. More than a dozen games appear in the trailer, including Hover Junkers (which we talked about last October), Arizona Sunshine (zombies), Everest VR, Job Simulator, Budget Cuts, and more advanced titles like the excellent Elite: Dangerous.
Is it perfect? No. Is it here to stay? Yes. The Vive must resolve issues like comfort (for many users it is too heavy) and the SteamVR interface is more complex than it should be, but time is on the side of Valve and HTC. New games, software updates, and similar solutions from the competition should greatly enrich virtual reality. The HTC Vive is just the first step.
