vr headset

Augmented reality and virtual reality headsets are proliferating, but now there's a system where the same tiny displays can be used as cameras to track eye-movement. Fraunhofer FEP has cooked up a new headset building on its latest bidirectional OLED microdisplays which, in addition to OLED pixels, have photodiodes sandwiched in-between. With those, the tiny screens can not only show data to the wearer, but watch where that person is looking too.

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Although VR headsets have more or less settled down around a common set of specs, that doesn’t mean that there’s little motivation for innovation in that space. Screen resolution and field of view are two of the biggest areas for improvement in VR headsets. It’s hard to strike a balance, as shown by the Pimax, billed as the world’s first 8K VR headset. It promises to deliver a completely hi-res VR experience, if you’re willing to wear an almost embarrassingly large contraption on your head. As if wearing a regular VR headset isn’t bad enough.

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Samsung has long offered a VR headset, but one that utilizes a smartphone as its 'brain' and display, requiring the user to insert their handset and then remove it after they're finished. While the Gear VR is excellent at what it does, there are many downsides to this kind of headset, ones that make the PS VR, Oculus Rift, and HTC Vive more attractive in certain circumstances. The Korean company was rumored earlier this year to be working on its own standalone headset, and now we have all the details.

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Apple Glasses have been teased for possible release by one of the most prominent Apple-centric analysts in the world today. This tip comes from Loup Venture's Gene Munster, who forecasts that Apple Glasses, an AR wearable, will begin to appear in the year 2020. It's projected that the iPhone will reach its peak sales in the year 2019, then Apple's next big thing will be Apple Glasses, which will appear 1 year later.

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The headset that's appeared today, made by HTC, won't necessarily be available to everyone in the world. In fact it's slated - for now - to be available only inside Japan. This headset was designed to fit one smartphone in the world - the HTC U11 - and will be able to roll with 6DOF (6 degrees of freedom) which is intense for a phone-based VR headset, if not entirely unique to this one.

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Two new cameras have been announced by Facebook - two cameras that look very much like spherical ball cameras we've seen in the recent past. These devices are the Facebook Surround 360 x24 and the Surround 360 x6. The larger device is extremely similar to the camera Facebook showed at F8 in 2016 - save the shape, of course. The smaller device is brand new, made to be sold to the wider public, with a much smaller and more manageable industrial design.

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There are currently two competing implementations of virtual reality available in the market. One makes use of a powerful but relatively immobile computer, be it a PC, laptop, or even gaming console. The other uses a smartphone to trade power for portability. ASUS already has the latter, with the just announced ZenFone AR. According to leaked internal documents, however, the manufacturer is also eying the former. ASUS is reportedly working on a standalone VR headset, but its "AIO" name leaves the door open to something slightly different.

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Not content with its role in the high-end VR market, it appears that HTC will attempt to break into the low-end as well. HTC CFO Chia-lin Chang has announced his company's intention to launch a new mobile VR headset that will presumably compete with the likes of Gear VR and Google Daydream. The only question left is "why?"

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This week the folks at Valve have revealed that they have three new "full" games in development for the virtual reality universe. This information came from a media roundtable held by Valve in Bellevue, Washington, where other messages were released to the media as well. It was also there that it was announced that Steam Greenlight was being shut down in favor of a new program that'd take its place.

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This week the folks at Google have launched the latest version of Chrome for Android devices, this one ready to roll with Daydream VR. Users of Daydream-ready devices will be able to visit and experience a number of Daydream-formatted webpages that allow a virtual reality experience to be viewed directly through the Chrome web browser. In the past, there were rumblings about WebVR for multiple sorts of virtual reality devices - for now, there is only talk of Daydream.*

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The HTC VIVE Tracker is far smaller than any other accessory currently made by the company for the VR headset. It's tiny compared to the other smallest device in the collection - that being the basic HTC Vive Wireless controller - or the Lighthouse box. The tracker is made to take the place of the controller for situations when the trackers in the controller don't necessarily need a handle attached.

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HTC has a new accessory item for its Vive VR headset that can turn just about anything into a VR controller. One example HTC gave is a baseball bat — with the Vive Tracker embedded, the baseball bat becomes a controller that can open the door for realistic baseball gameplay or zombie head smashing. The same goes for gloves, imitation rifles for shooting games, and even, HTC says, a fire hose that may pair well with a simulator.

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