HTC Partners with Valve to Create RE Vive Virtual Reality Headset

HTC today unveiled at its Mobile World Congress (MWC) press conference in Barcelona a new virtual reality system it has developed in partnership with the gaming giant Valve. Dubbed "RE Vive," the system moves beyond just a headset and uses Kinect-style lasers to track even the smallest of body movements, allowing players to become fully immersed in their games. With 70 sensors, the VR device gives users a 360 degree look at the virtual world. According to Ars Technica, besides allowing you to look around, you also will be able to walk around just like you do in the real world, you can explore objects from all angles and look up and down.

HTC calls its RE Vive a "Full Room Scale 360 Degree Solution with Tracked Controllers" and it "features high-quality graphics, 90-frames-per-second video, and incredible audio fidelity." As gathered by the techie news site, the Re Vive headset uses two 1200×1080 displays, one for each eye, and the relatively high resolution should help cut down on the "screen door effect" you got with the original Oculus Rift developer kit. HTC will reportedly also be producing "wireless VR controllers" along with the headset. These will be sold in pairs and will reportedly be less complex than typical gamepads.

Phone Arena, which also covered the Barcelona event, said "we won't see the RE Vive available until this coming November at the earliest." In the meantime, HTC will reportedly also be partnering with prominent game developers, like Vertigo Games, Bossa, Barry -Fireproof, Dovetail Games, Wemo Labs, Google, Steel Wool Games and Owlchemy, along with Google, HBO, Lionsgate, and the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, to provide content for the upcoming VR system.

In unveiling RE Vive, HTC's Cher Wang told reporters: "Vive creates an exciting opportunity for all developers and content creators, to help us bring virtual reality into the mainstream with an end-to-end solution that completely redefines how we entertain ourselves, communicate with each other, learn and, eventually, how we become more productive. HTC Vive is real, it's here and it'll be ready to go before the start of 2016."