Saturday, March 19, 2016

The temporary job of a VR bridesmaid

At GDC - the Game Developers Conference - I saw quite a lot of HTC Vive demos. Compare these two images:



See any similarities? Just like the bridesmaid carries the bride's train, the "VR bridesmaid" carries the wire for the VR user.

Low-latency wireless video links have been on the market for years. I hope to see some in consumer VR very soon, so that the "VR bridesmaid" can be a thing of the past.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Action Items from the OSVR Software Developer Survey

A couple of weeks ago, we surveyed the OSVR community for what they would like the core software development team to focus on. You can see the questions and answers here

Based on this input, the Sensics development team met and decided to focus on the following items:

1. Smoother end-user experience
This includes:

  • 1-click installer for both end-user and developer
  • Lightweight software that will detect when a new hardware is connected and help with the process of obtaining and installing the relevant drivers. 
  • A graphical configurator to help the end-user select the HMD, input and output devices as well as configure key parameters for each
2. Continue to add device support. An immediate focus is to add support for the HTC Vive so that an end-user can obtain software that was written on the OSVR framework that - using a simple configurator - decide what to run it on. For instance 1) HTC Vive; 2) Oculus + hand controller; 3) OSVR HDK and more.

3. Make it easier for the OSVR community to contribute to the platform by listing key development priorities as well as high-level directions on how to perform certain development tasks.

Keep an eye on the progress of the OSVR software platform in the coming weeks.

Thank you for your feedback!