HTC Vive VR Kit Hands-On Preview: Room Scale Virtual Reality Has Arrived

There is already quite a bit of content available for the HTC Vive via Steam VR. As of press time, there are 30 titles available that cover everything from VR tennis to a surgeon simulator. The complete list of titles is as follows...

#SelfieTennis A Legend of Luca Adventure Time: Magic Man's Head Games Atlas Reactor Audioshield Carpe Lucem - Seize The Light Cloudlands : VR Minigolf Descent: Underground Fantastic Contraption Final Approach Hover Junkers Irrational Exuberance: Prologue Job Simulator La Peri Light Repair Team #4 Marble Mountain

Modbox Quar: Battle for Gate 18 realities Space Pirate Trainer VR Surgeon Simulator VR: Meet the Medic theBlu The Gallery – Episode 1: Call of the Starseed The Lab The Rose and I Tilt Brush Universe Sandbox 2 Unseen Diplomacy Vanishing Realms Volo Airsport Water Bears VR

Also keep in mind, in addition to all of this, 360-degree video content available online will also work with the Vive. And if you’re familiar with Steam you’ll have no trouble navigating Steam VR. It appears as a new content category right in your main library.


In terms of comfort and usability, HTC and Valve get high marks. We haven’t used the retail-ready Vive long enough to be comfortable making any sweeping determinations just yet, but the headset and earbuds are comfortable to wear for extended periods. You can make out individual pixels in the display and we'd probably trade the earbuds for circum-aural headphones, but the out of box experience is good. The headset itself weighs in at only about 600 grams, and when properly adjusted doesn’t slide around on your head or feel too heavy. They cables coming from the kit are arguably the only downside, but we’re likely a few generations away from a wirelessly-attached VR headset with the immense bandwidth necessary to properly power the experience -- the cables are par for the course.


We’re sure many of you are wondering if we got queasy or experienced any motion sickness with the Vive. And to that we say, not yet. But again, we haven’t used it long enough to make a clear determination. We will be following up in the days ahead as we get a chance to dig into more of the apps and games available via Steam VR.

The HTC Vive virtual reality kit currently sells for $799. For a limited time, those who purchase a Vive will also receive free copies of Tilt Brush, theBlu, and Fantastic Contraption. Couple the HTC Vive's price with the cost of a PC powerful enough to enable a quality experience, and things can get fairly expensive, but that has always been the case with bleeding edge PC hardware. As we’ve mentioned before, we believe the HTC Vive offers the most compelling VR experiences yet, though we mostly formulated that opinion on pre-release hardware and software. Now that we’ve gotten the change to experiment with a retail-ready kit, however, our opinion has solidified – if you believe this latest wave of VR is going to resonate with consumers (and content developers), you should absolutely consider the HTC Vive.

We’ve got some more experimenting to do, and will follow up with some additional thoughts on the current software library in the coming days. If you’ve got any specific questions about the HTC Vive, please ask in the comment section and we’ll do our best to get them answered...