Valve unveils a ‘cheaper, smaller, lighter’ VR base station prototype

Augmented Reality Mixed Reality Virtual Reality

Valve unveils a ‘cheaper, smaller, lighter’ VR base station prototype

| Feb 19, 2017

Our next speaker for our latest GamesBeat event is Richard Marks, a senior research engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment. He will talk about a variety of subjects at our GamesBeat Summit 2017: How games, sci-fi, and tech create real-world magic.

Last year, Marks spoke on “What Works in VR and What Doesn’t” at our GamesBeat 2016 event in Los Angeles. Marks is one of the pioneers of virtual reality, as he was recently running the Sony PlayStation Magic Lab that came up with the PlayStation VR technology. He also helped work on Sony’s PlayStation Move controller and the PlayStation Eye camera.

Marks has worked at Sony’s game division for 17 years. He has a doctorate in philosophy, aeronautics, and astronautics from Stanford University.

Above: Richard Marks, director of the PlayStation Magic Lab at Sony, will join GamesBeat 2015’s panel on virtual reality in October.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

The event will take place on May 1 and May 2, 2017, at the historic Claremont resort hotel in Berkeley, California, just a short distance from San Francisco. You can secure your seat here. Register today and receive 50 percent off current ticket prices. This offer is only available until February 21. That is a savings of $1,000.

Marks joins a cast of speakers who will be among the who’s who of games, as well as the related industries that are inspiring gamemakers. Other speakers include Gary Whitta, the screenwriter for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story; Tim Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games; Owen Mahoney, CEO of Nexon; and Jamil Moledina of Google Play.

Above: Owen Mahoney, CEO of Nexon.

Image Credit: Nexon

Inspiring moments lead to disrupting the worlds of gaming, tech, and entertainment. Who hasn’t been inspired by great novels like Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, which gave us virtual worlds, or Tom Cruise’s data gloves and gesture-controlled computer in Minority Report? Now those things have become real, and we want to see what’s coming next.

Our theme is about what inspires game creators, executives, and investors to be creative. Part of the event will focus on the inspiration cycle that is accelerating as the walls between science fiction, video games, and real-world technology come down. We don’t think there’s another conference that focuses on the seams between industries.

This event will focus on inspiration and creativity. So much of what used to be science fiction is coming true, and it is inspiring even more accelerated visions of the future in games and other entertainment. We hope to inspire you by taking you to the moments that led to great ideas across multiple industries. You’ll leave refreshed and inspired to change the worlds of gaming, technology, and more.

We think this conference will offer a rare chance for cross-pollination and networking between high-level people in different industries, and we believe that insights in one place can lead to inspirations in another.

This conference is for high-end gaming executives, startup CEOs, developers, investors, publishers, marketers, tech experts, entertainment industry professionals, sci-fi experts, AR and VR executives, and other professionals. I should also point out that this is where we try to create an actual GamesBeat community with our supporters, readers, and attendees. We gather the right people in the room and encourage everyone to get to know each other. Join us.

If you’re interested in sponsoring, message andie.rhyins@venturebeat.com. Thanks to our initial sponsor Samsung.

Breakout sessions

Intersection of sci-fi, games, and tech
Monetization: How to acquire and retain your user base
Deals: Follow the money
Esports and community
Emerging markets for games
Platforms: Where to place your bets? VR, AR, and more
Creativity and diversity

Advisory board

Sam Barlow, game developer of Her Story and creative director at Interlude
Michael Chang, senior vice president at NCSoft
Daniel Cho, chairman at Innospark
Jay Eum, managing director, Translink Capital
Clinton Foy, chairman of the Immortals and managing director at Crosscut Ventures
Megan Gaiser, co-CEO at Spiral Media
Lee Jones, global business lead Google Ads
Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners
Roy Liu, general manager at Linekong USA
Wanda Meloni, executive director of the Open Gaming Alliance
Jamil Moledina, game strategic lead at Google Play
Adam Orth, founder at Three One Zero
Mihai Pohontu, vice president of emerging technologies at Samsung
Mike Sepso, cofounder of MLG and senior vice president at Activision Blizzard
Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors
Margaret Wallace, CEO of Playmatics

I’ve been writing about our theme for a while. I’ve written about the accelerating cycle of inspiration between tech, games, and science fiction. I interviewed Shane Wall, HP’s chief technology officer, about the connection between sci-fi and tech. The Westworld TV show also explored the seams between artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and video games.

Back at CES we met a small creative studio with some big technical plans for the HTC Vive’s upcoming Tracker peripheral.

The team’s name was Master of Shapes, and they were one of the groups that HTC had gathered to showcase some of the many applications for the new device. Specifically, they made a technical demonstration for makeshift local multiplayer VR, called Cover Me. The tracker was attached to a phone, which itself was attached to a gun peripheral, allowing someone to look into a VR user’s world and help them out by shooting enemies. The potential for multiplayer was huge, but it also showcased how the Tracker could be used to make smartphone-based headsets positionally tracked.

At the time, Master of Shapes said that was “fully doable”. Now? It’s been done.

The team today posted a look at its experiments attaching the Tracker to Google’s Daydream View, a device that doesn’t positionally track a user’s head movements. With a 3D printed mount, the Tracker is stuck on the front of the headset and tracked by the same base stations that track the Vive itself. The team’s work on Cover Me meant it had already figured out how to translate the Tracker’s positional data to Android phones, thus it was quickly able to make a true mobile room scale VR experience.

In the blog, Creative Director Adam Amaral noted that the experience wasn’t as solid as the traditional Vive setup and, since there are no Daydream games that have implemented positional tracking tech, the team used its demo for Cover Me instead.

“I will say the daydream with added room scale is pretty awesome,” Amaral wrote. “There is something really cool about having no tether and sharper resolution.”

The concept is purely experimental, but Master of Shapes plans to keep on with the experimentation. Speaking to UploadVR, Amaral said the team was also going to look at attaching the device to Daydream’s remote controller, which currently offers tracking in only a few directions. In theory, adding the Tracker to the device could make it a fully tracked device akin to Vive’s own wands. He also teased that the company has been using the Tracker with a phone supported by Google’s Tango 3D mapping tech too.

This could also turn Cover Me itself from a game in which one player is in VR, and one is using a phone, to two players being fully in VR. People with both a Vive and a smartphone-based headset could experience new types of VR content.

We’re not sure how viable the concept is in the market, but it’s still a fascinating concept. The Vive Tracker is expected to release in Q2, and there are plenty of developers that want to get their hands on it.

We’ve already seen Valve tease the next generation of SteamVR controllers, now the company has offered a peak at a new base station. too.

Company programmer Joe Ludwig showcased a prototype for the next iteration of the hardware at a press event inside the Valve offices earlier this month, captured on video by the Valve News Network. Base stations use Valve’s Lighthouse tracking system to find the positions of a VR headset and controllers in a tracked area, and relay that information into a VR experience, giving the user positional tracking and, in a big enough space, room scale VR experiences.

Ludwig described the prototype on display as “an early engineering model” that was subject to change. He pointed out that a base station used with the HTC Vive has two spinning motors inside, while the new device only has one. As a result the device is “cheaper, smaller, lighter”, producing less noise than the low hum you’ll hear in current base stations and using less power too.

Sadly, Valve didn’t get into the specifics of how much cheaper, smaller, and lighter the device would be, though these elements likely aren’t set in stone yet.

“We think it will track a little bit better, have a wider field of view,” Ludwig added. “[It’s] basically the next generation. Better in every way.”

It was following this that Valve co-founder Gabe Newell talked about a vision for “house-scale” VR in which several environments could be knitted together for more elaborate experiences.

This device will be shipping out to Lighthouse licensees later this year. Valve noted that it now has 500 of these licensees, working on everything from headsets to controllers. The Vive may not be the only major SteamVR headset for much longer.

Obviously these new base stations are big news for the future of SteamVR tracking, a technology that could be the most important to the VR industry in 2017. Cheaper tracking means that VR systems can come down in price, opening up the technology to a wider audience, and better tracking will give everyone more solid experiences.

Along with hardware, Valve is also making three full VR games that we’ll hopefully see later this year. GDC is just around the corner; is the company planning some big announcements?

Breaking News

Design for Immersive Technologies

Valve unveils a ‘cheaper, smaller, lighter’ VR base station prototype

Breakout sessions

Advisory board

HTC Vive’s upcoming tracker hacked to work with Google Daydream

NBA All-Star Weekend gets highlights in virtual reality

ABOUT THE AUTHOR taterboy

Valve unveils a ‘cheaper, smaller, lighter’ VR base station prototype

Breakout sessions

Advisory board

Share this:

HTC Vive’s upcoming tracker hacked to work with Google Daydream

NBA All-Star Weekend gets highlights in virtual reality

ABOUT THE AUTHOR taterboy