HTC Vive announces devkits for 6 DOF controllers for Vive Focus and teases hand tracking for Vive Pro

Today it’s a great day for virtual reality: at WCVRI conference, HTC has just announced a kit to provide 6 DOF controllers for Vive Focus and has showcased a hands-tracking technology for the Vive Pro!

In these 2 days (October, 19-20th), in Nanchang, China, it is held the first edition of the World Conference on VR Industry (WCVRI), a very important event to talk about virtual and augmented reality. The city is full of references to Virtual Reality, and so it is like a paradise for us VR enthusiasts. 4000 delegates are expected to take part in the conference and over 250k consumers are expected in the expo side of this incredible manifestation.

Nanchang City is showing a very warm welcome for the 4000+ delegates of the “World Conference of the VR Industry”. #VR signage everywhere! #WCVRI. pic.twitter.com/X1dWr780Se

— Alvin Wang Graylin (汪丛青) (@AGraylin) October 18, 2018

The event hosts people from very important companies like NVIDIA, VR Chat, The Khronos Group, Alibaba (there is Jack Ma!), The Venture Reality Fund and of course HTC. VR is considered a key technology for the future development of China and this event demonstrates it all: the Chinese prime minister Xi Jinping in person has even sent a message that has been read at the beginning of the event. I personally appreciated his mention of the fact that we all experts of all countries should collaborate together to push this technology further so that to create a benefit for all the people of the world.

China Pres #XiJinPing message at #WCVRI “VR expands our perception & will impact all facets of our lives. #China is committed to development & application of #VR in various fields. China will strengthen int’l coop in VR, share innovation & strive to create a better future.”😎🇨🇳👍 pic.twitter.com/9Z7TimKFWW

— Alvin Wang Graylin (汪丛青) (@AGraylin) October 19, 2018

At this amazing event (why am I not there? Why???), today Mister President 汪丛青 (Alvin Wang Graylin) took the stage to do his passionate keynote called “Unleash a New Reality for a Better Future”. As always, he talked about how technology, and virtual reality in particular, can help in shaping a better world. Then he described virtual reality advancements, highlighting the dominant role of China and HTC in this technology. And while being there on the stage, he dropped two bomb-announcements.

6 DOF Controllers for Vive Focus

The first bomb has been the announcement of the 6DoF Developer Kit, that is dev-kits that are able to give Vive Wave-compatible standalone headsets the capabilities to track two 6 DOF controllers.

Today, we are taking the spatial computing industry to yet another level as we announce the availability of the full 6DoF developer kit for the Vive Wave open ecosystem, and a host of new 6DoF content and technologies to more easily bring users into fully immersive virtual worlds.

In short: the Vive Focus will finally have two 6 DOF controllers. As you know, the problem of Vive Focus is that it has only a 3 DOF (actually 3DOF+) controller, that can only detect its rotational pose, but it can’t infer its position in space. This means that while you can theoretically move everywhere with the Focus, since the tracking keeps working indoor, outdoor and even walking on stairs (I’ve tried it), when it comes to interactions with objects, you have only a remote. That’s a bit disappointing and considering that in some months Oculus will release the Quest, that has full 6 DOF support, HTC had necessarily to do something.

If you remember well, HTC was already experimenting with implementing 6 DOF tracking for controllers through a software solution that, tracking the user’s hands, was able to infer the position of the controller (or controllers). This was an amazing idea because apart from being technically supercool, it let all Focus users have their controllers upgraded from 3DOF to 6DOF without having to change hardware. Really fantastic.

But after the announcement at Vive Ecosystem Conference, we had no more info on it and this felt a bit strange. My personal opinion is that HTC realized that this solution:

• Was taking too much to be implemented;
• Was not accurate enough (at least in the short term);
• Was consuming too much computational power: having 6DOF tracking would steal too much CPU to the running application, resulting in poorer performances (consider that the Focus is a mobile device, so it has not that big computational power to use);

and so decided to drop it in favor of a custom hardware solution that just avoids all the above complications: it can be released now, it is accurate and not stresses too much the device. This is just a personal speculation of mine and there is not an official statement of HTC about it. But having seen Google taking a similar route, releasing a faceplate to add 6DOF controller tracking for Mirage Solo, I think that both companies realized that the hardware solution was a better solution at the moment. We don’t know if the software solution will continue its development on a parallel road, though.

Anyway, let’s get back to the devkits: you have basically a faceplate that you plug into the top USB-C port of the device and then thanks to a still undisclosed technology (we don’t know if it is IR or magnetical tracking, yet… for sure it is not RGB-based, because the rings of the controller are not lit), this faceplate tracks two 6 DOF controllers and reports the tracking info to the runtime of the headset. The 6DOF controllers are not identical to current Vive Focus remote and seem a bit an average between WMR headset’s controllers and Quest’s controllers: they have a ring that helps in tracking.

You can upgrade the Vive Focus to a full-fledged 6 DOF device by just buying this addon and plugging it in. Watch the video below to see the 6 DOF tracking in action.

Very nice. I admit that being a techie I was more a fan of the computer vision solution: it felt more magical and also required us to spend no more money to have a full 6 DOF device. But for the reasons specified above, I understand why HTC took this choice. HTC had to release a working 6 DOF solution now, to start competing with the Quest before the Quest will be officially released, trying to get some first-comer advantage, getting all those (mostly enterprise) customers wanting a 6 DOF solution now.

The solution is currently targeted at developers, and interested developers can immediately request one kit now at this page. At this moment, HTC will send the kits only to qualified devs. The cool stuff is that they are already available for immediate delivery. The 6 DOF controllers solution works with all Vive Wave devices and this means that soon all six enabled Vive Wave devices will be able to run the content that will be produced by developers using this devkit. So, what are you waiting for? If you have already an idea for an app featuring two controllers or you want to make a porting of a SteamVR experience of yours for the Focus, apply now 🙂

Personally, I can’t wait to have it: I love my Focus and the only real complain that I have towards it is that currently it has not two 6 DOF controllers. So, now that there is a solution, I can’t wait to have such a devkit and I’ll apply as soon as I can 🙂

Hands tracking for Vive Pro

The second bomb has been this one: HTC has showcased the implementation of full-fledged hand tracking on the Vive Pro. This is cool because without having to add external hardware like Leap Motion, all Vive Pro users will be able to use their hands inside VR experiences to interact with the VR environment. The tracking is performed using HTC’s proprietary AI computer vision technology.

This is very very interesting, also because on the Vive Pro there is the SRWorks framework that lets you create mixed reality applications: this means that you will probably be able to create mixed reality applications with completely natural interactions by using your hands. I’m already experimenting on something similar on the Focus, where there is the beta Gesture SDK for hand gesture tracking and my custom MR SDK to do mixed reality… and I can assure you that the results are very nice!

Looking at the demo video, it also seems that this hands tracking system can work wirelessly through the Vive Wireless Adapter…wow. The video also shows some little latency issues, that can depend on the mirroring and also in part to some little optimizations that have still to be performed before shipping the SDK. The precision of tracking pose of the fingers seems not bad all, but given the movements of the guy in the video, I guess that the framework does not detect well hands intersecting one with the other, that is a very difficult task to perform.

Regarding the release date… it is still unknown, but it shouldn’t be that far away. The official statement says “Developer tools will be made available to registered Viveport developers in the near future.”. Can’t wait to try it.

Vive content

HTC has also talked about interesting content produced by it and that will be released on Vive or Vive Focus in the near future.

Lazily copying the press release, the content is this one:

• The Vive Studio’s film, 7 Miracles, which just won the Spirit of Raindance: VR Film of the Festival Award, is the world’s first feature-length cinematic VR experience. The film recreates the seven miracles performed by Jesus Christ in virtual reality with unique 6DoF scenes of where the audience can walk into the movie scene with the actors.

  

• The Apple, created by two Vive X invested companies, Yuecheng Technologies and ConfigReality, is a large area multi-user experience that pushes the boundaries of immersive storytelling by enabling the audience to freely and physically roam large virtual spaces together with friends. With space compression technology, it established the concept of the Sandbox Movie Narrative, earning it the Best Multi-Person Experience Award at Raindance Film Festival last week.
• The spatial VR experience of the historic Chinese painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival was showcased as part of the Vive Arts program. This experience turns this famous 2D flat scroll painting into a fully interactive city environment where users can truly appreciate what it’s like to live hundreds of years ago.
• HTC Vive partnered with China National Geography to create an interactive VR scenery application for the Vive Focus, showcasing numerous China’s stunning natural sites and landscapes in 8K solution in VR. To find the best solutions for 8K video display on VR standalones, HTC Vive facilitates the 8K display on VR standalones with the most advanced Visbit 8K VR player and demonstrates the possibilities of the global VR film industry.

I’m especially curious to try the first and last one. The first one is intriguing because it should feature a 6 DOF volumetric video, that is a video where you can move in and I have never tried such technology. The last one seems stunning: amazing Chinese natural sites in 8K for a standalone headset. Wow. Visbit is an amazing player for VR and so I can’t wait to watch it.

Partnerships

Again, copy/paste job of HTC’s announcements.

In addition to content, Vive debuted new partner technology innovations, including:

• SuperNode 3D is on-track to transform all 2D video content, especially sports events, into 6DoF VR content, which will allow users to watch games or movies right next to their favorite stars and enjoy the excitement “on-site”.
• The Augmented Digital Design Solution from YCVR innovates a new way of home design, furniture retail, and marketing. Consumers can choose their furniture and design their homes using simple, intuitive software, and then preview the results in AR by placing the AR image of the furniture in the real environment before placing an order for purchase.
• XCOL from VRWaibao is a 3D online meeting solution designed for holding meetings and other activities involving a group of people who need to interact in the same place, allowing participants access from anywhere at any time and replicate the same behaviors in VR as in the real life.

  

• With a selfie and a short voice recording, ObEN could create a 3D personal intelligent avatar that looks, talks and behaves like you and brings it to VR and AR world.

The last two ones are the one that I like the most. I met VR Waibao in Shanghai and loved talking with Sam, there… so I am happy that HTC is pushing them at such a big event. I have never met ObEN, instead, but what they do seems damn cool… and I want to try it to see if it delivers its promises.

Vive Store

HTC has opened its first flagship store in Shenzhen and it features inside lots of VR headsets, HTC phones, and Vive-branded apparel. The internal design seems very beautiful. It also features a premium VR arcade experience inside a retail environment. If I’ll ever go to Shenzhen, I want to go there: I have never been into a VR-only store! I’m curious to try it: it seems fun to go there, try some VR headsets, have fun and then buy them. And Shenzhen, since it is a very technological city (it is the Silicon Valley of China), seems the natural place for such a shop.

And that’s it for these very interesting announcements of today! I hope you are excited as me for the future of virtual reality, with HTC and Oculus always proposing something new. And if you are, please subscribe to my newsletter to receive such news directly into your inbox 🙂

(Header image by HTC)