FOVE Reveals Lightweight VR HMD Redesign

[kcarbotte]

FOVE Inc., the creators of the FOVE eye-tracking VR HMD, revealed a new design for the in-development headset. The new kit has been re-engineered to reduce the overall weight. Full specs of the HMD are still to come.

FOVE Reveals Lightweight VR HMD Redesign : Read more

 

[WFang]

I wonder if cost and manufacturing considerations was the real reason they dropped the side-walls and hinges.. not feedback that the old design was uncomfortable.. nobody outside the company will know for sure.

Also, Steam/HTC must have been dicks for it to be true that using their lighthouse setup would "delay" them more than developing an in-house solution (complete with software, firmware, hardware and API developments)? -I mean, lighthouse is on the market and shipping and has been available to consumers for a couple of months already.. how on earth would that have 'further delayed' them?

 

[kcarbotte]

I wonder if cost and manufacturing considerations was the real reason they dropped the side-walls and hinges.. not feedback that the old design was uncomfortable.. nobody outside the company will know for sure.

Also, Steam/HTC must have been dicks for it to be true that using their lighthouse setup would "delay" them more than developing an in-house solution (complete with software, firmware, hardware and API developments)? -I mean, lighthouse is on the market and shipping and has been available to consumers for a couple of months already.. how on earth would that have 'further delayed' them?

Valve wasn't working with them to license the tech until the Vive shipped.
Fove made the decision in February that it was already taking to long.

To our knowledge, Valve has not yet licensed the Lighthouse tech to any other companies and the developer kits for adding lighthouse trackers to peripherals aren't available yet.

 

[grimfox]

The lighthouses are pretty basic technology. They don't emit a coded signal, to my knowledge, they just produce a spinning plane of light. I'm not saying I would do it (mostly cause I'm lazy) but if you were properly motivated you could buy some and develop your tech based on interpreting the signal they produce. Certainly having the SDK could help, but I think a lot of the work would still have to be done to catch and time the signals that would not require the SDK, hardware level stuff. To each their own.

 

[kcarbotte]

The lighthouses are pretty basic technology. They don't emit a coded signal, to my knowledge, they just produce a spinning plane of light. I'm not saying I would do it (mostly cause I'm lazy) but if you were properly motivated you could buy some and develop your tech based on interpreting the signal they produce. Certainly having the SDK could help, but I think a lot of the work would still have to be done to catch and time the signals that would not require the SDK, hardware level stuff. To each their own.

It's not a coded signal, it's a pattern of infrared light that spins on an axis. Fove could probably do what you described, but I have to think that Valve's concept has a patent.
Valve has to give permission to other companies that want to use their tech. Fove can't just go out and buy some lighthouses and hack it together with their hardware and then sell it as a consumer product. They would be sued to oblivion for that.
FOVE, like Oculus and OSVR, is developing its own unique system.