Cyber Reality: HTC Vive Pre-Orders Now Open
Are you an early adopter?
Kiss your meatwife goodbye and take a photo of yourself for your meatdaughter to cherish, for you are soon to transcend the flesh and enter the cyberworld. I mean, if you have £700/$800/€900 spare, a powerful PC, and someone who'll refill your nutrient paste tubes and empty your bucket.
The Vive - HTC and Valve's virtual reality system which combines cybergoggles with motion controllers and sensors to track cyberusers moving around the room - has just opened pre-orders. They will start shipping on April 5th. They are expensive.
For me here in the UK, it comes out at £746.60 thanks an additional £57.60 in estimate shipping fees and tax. That's for the cybergoggles, two motion controllers, two movement-tracking base stations, a link box connecting all the cables to a PC, earbuds, various cables, a cleaning cloth, and copies of gadget-making game Fantastic Contraption, the silly Job Simulator, and 3D painting program Tilt Brush.
There's a limit of one kit per customer, to slow the inevitable scalpers.
If you don't know anyone who's getting Vived up, a few Vive games will be at EGX Rezzed in London in April for folks to try.
What's the difference between this and the Oculus Rift? Alec explains.
I'm not into this latest virtual reality craze myself. I've had a few Oculus Rift experiences, all disappointing - not quite right with my wonky eyes, and not exciting enough to merit spending a load of money or mussing up my cool hair. The Vive is more interesting to me, given that it's made to let folks reach in and walk around, but definitely not enough at this price. And as an awful dreamer, I probably need to be in our reality more, not less. Alec, Adam, and Graham were all quite into VR when they chatted about it in September, but that was before we knew prices - I wonder what they'd say now. Can the rush of VR early adopters provide enough interest and cash for cybergoggles to live long enough to become worthwhile for regular folks this time?