More Than 1 Million Steam Users Now Own A VR Headset: Here’s Which Ones

Valve’s Steam Hardware Survey now includes any VR headset used in the past month, revealing that 1.16% of users have a SteamVR compatible headset.

That may not sound like a lot. But comparing it to other currently niche items on the Hardware Survey shows PC VR is off to a great start.

In April 2019, Valve reported Steam reaching 90 million monthly active users. If we assume that figure has now grown to roughly 100 million, we can estimate the number of Steam users with a VR headset as roughly 1,160,000.

More Steam users have a VR headset than an RTX 2080 Ti or than use Linux. At current growth, it shouldn’t be long before more Steam users use a VR headset than have a 4K primary monitor.

Consumer VR is still a relatively new technology. The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were released just four years ago, with the latter launching at $800 including controllers. Today you can get a similar experience for $400 or even lower. As hardware gets cheaper and better and more must-have VR games emerge, this percentage should steeply rise throughout this decade.

VR Headsets On Steam

Using the March Hardware Survey data and the estimate of 100 million Steam active users, we can arrive at what should be a decent estimate for how many of each headset are in use.

For newer headsets, this number should be somewhat close to how many were sold. Older headsets are more likely to be in storage or inoperable.

Just under half of the headsets on Steam are from Facebook’s Oculus Rift brand. The company’s newest PC headset Rift S is the most popular headset on Steam, used by more than a quarter of SteamVR users. The original Rift, once the most popular on Steam, is now used by 15% of SteamVR users.

HTC’s Vive brand is in second place, with almost a third of users. The vast majority of this comes from the original Vive launched back in 2016- the first consumer headset to offer room scale tracking & positionally tracked controllers. Today, roughly one quarter of VR headsets on Steam are still the original Vive.

HTC’s latest consumer headset, Vive Cosmos, is used by just 1.23% of SteamVR users. That’s less than than half the number for the Oculus Quest (2.9%), which isn’t even a native PC VR headset.

Valve’s premium Index HMD now represents over 1 in 10 headsets on SteamVR. This is an impressive feat given the $1000 pricetag for the full kit. It could be seen as proof against Facebook’s product positioning which suggests they believe consumers aren’t interested in hardware at that price.

Microsoft’s Windows MR platform took an opposite approach, with many low cost headsets from different manufacturers. However despite continuous aggressive price cuts as low as $150, consumers just don’t seem interested, so they make up less than 1 in 12 headsets.

Pimax headsets now show up on the survey- specifically the 5K Plus and 8K, thought to be the most popular of the company’s many offerings. As suspected, these are fairly niche products, with even both together making up less than 1 in 300 SteamVR users.

In fact, more Steam users are rigging their PlayStation VR using third-party drivers to work with PC VR- roughly 1 in 200 SteamVR users. This is achieved with drivers like Trinus or iVRy. But unless you’re just using it for cockpit games, you’ll also need a third party tracking service such as PSMoveService or Driver4VR. Keep in mind the quality of tracking often won’t be as good as on a PlayStation 4.

Inside-out tracking has enabled lower cost headsets and easier setup, accounting for the majority of VR headset growth since May 2019 thanks to the Rift S. However, 6 in 10 headsets on Steam are still tracked with external hardware thanks to the huge numbers of Oculus Rift and HTC Vives still in use.

The SteamVR “Lighthouse” tracking system enables interoperability between headsets and controllers. Owners of the original HTC Vive are able to purchase & use Valve Index controllers, for example. This could explain why the Vive is still used much more than the original Oculus Rift, for example.

We’ll Be Keeping Track

Because of the improvements to detection, the 1.16% can’t be compared to previous Steam Hardware Survey data. But UploadVR will continue to track the data over this year. We’ll keep you updated on the growth of PC VR over time.

Over the next few months, Valve’s “flagship” AAA title Half-Life: Alyx, and its incredibly positive reception across the games industry, may be a primary driver of this growth- assuming Facebook & Valve can ramp up to produce enough headsets to meet demand. We won’t, however, see the effect of Alyx on PC VR usage until the next report in May, according to Valve.

The post More Than 1 Million Steam Users Now Own A VR Headset: Here’s Which Ones appeared first on UploadVR.

By: David Heaney
Title: More Than 1 Million Steam Users Now Own A VR Headset: Here’s Which Ones
Sourced From: uploadvr.com/steamvr-hardware-survey-mar-2020/
Published Date: Thu, 02 Apr 2020 01:24:22 +0000

From Brain-Computer Interfaces To Digital Humans: How These Technologies Are Bringing Us Closer To The Metaverse

Just how far away is full-dive VR?

Technology can augment the world around us, it can enhance the human experience, our capabilities, and also extend our reality to digital and virtual worlds. As people flock online during quarantine we now find ourselves experimenting with new platforms, pushing immersive technologies to the limits, and collaborating in new ways; from eye-tracking technology and facial tracking to biometrics and brain-control interfaces. But just how far are we from becoming one with the metaverse and what can we learn about ourselves through sensory technologies?

Brain-Computer Interfaces

Brain-computer interface systems like Neurable’s VR game Awakening uses an electrode-laden headband, connected to an HTC Vive HMD, to track brain activity. The software analyzes the data to figure out what should be happening in a game. In 2017, the MIT Technology Review wrote that only one year later this technology could be mainstream and picked up by VR arcade companies. It was an optimistic estimate as consumers and hardware alike have required a transition and adoption phase.

CTRL-Labs takes another approach to HCI (human-computer interfaces), using a simple electrode-studded wristband to read neural signals from the arm. In June 2019, CTRL-Labs acquired patents from Myo, a similar wearable created by North that enables control of robotics and PCs via gestures and motion. Shortly after in September 2019, CTRL-Labs was acquired by Facebook, becoming part of the Facebook Reality Labs team to build the technology as a consumer product. With Oculus having launched hand-tracking on the Quest this past December, I wonder how far we are from consumer-ready mind-control systems.

Perhaps more widely known in mind-control systems is Elon Musk’s Neuralink. It’s by far the most invasive technique, one that involves inserting 96 threads into the brain with micron precision. It’s a risky business, but also an absolute reality. “An integrated brain-machine interface platform with thousands of channels,” by Elon Musk and Neuralink offers great insights into how it can replace typing, clicking, or even talking as a form of digital telepathy.

Haptics

Moving from mind to body, the Teslasuit is a non-intrusive HCI system centered around a suit material that uses a piezoelectric EAP (electroactive polymer) to record electrical signals generated by players’ muscles to animate avatars in VR. As new haptic and biometric sensory technologies become more refined, more sophisticated interfaces will begin to emerge. 

Low profile tactile, haptic, and thermal displays that can be used in a variety of applications are already in development. At the Cutaneous Sensory Lab in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, researchers are conducting a variety of psychophysical studies to determine how users perceive these various forms of stimulation. The 2019 study “Closed-Loop Haptic Feedback Control Using a Self-Sensing Soft Pneumatic Actuator Skin,” published in Soft Robotics, also presented a solution for wearable haptics as a soft, flexible artificial skin made of silicone and electrodes that self monitors to provide accurate haptic feedback to a user’s body. 

In the market today, with an acute level of tactile feedback, the HaptX gloves have remained an all-time favorite of mine for realistic touch in VR. It enables users to feel the shape, texture, and motion of virtual objects with 130 points of force feedback. Size, weight, impact, and even temperature (with a bulkier version than the standard enterprise glove) is possible and truly astounding. In January 2020, Haptx announced a Series A financing round of $12M. 

AR Lenses 

AR glasses like Nreal and MAD Gaze indicate a shift away from clunky VR HMDs to a viable consumer option for day-to-day applications, public, and collaborative use. Nreal’s recent partnership with Clay AIR, announced March 2020 to integrate hand-tracking and gesture recognition, indicates another greatly anticipated movement to intuitive interactivity that blends the real and virtual world beyond the Oculus ecosystem. 

Just as we see with the miniaturization of haptic products, AR headsets are also seeing their next-generation counterparts enter the consumer market in the form of AR contact lenses. These include InWith Corporation’s blinking-powered lenses, and Mojo Vision’s contact lenses, which raised $58 million in a Series B investment round in March 2019. 

While VR can be traced back to the mid- 20th century, it was only in 2010 that Palmer Luckey launched the Oculus Rift Kickstarter. Ten years later, we have a healthy immersive ecosystem where AR is quickly becoming a ubiquitous and omnipresent application. 

Eye-Tracking 

Recently, Antony Vitillo of The Ghost Howls spoke with Lars Bergstrom, Mozilla’s Director of Engineering Mixed Reality, on the subject.

‘“Eye-tracking has the potential to expose an individual’s intrinsic characteristics, such as race, age, gender, and sexual preferences, as well as revealing sensitive health characteristics such as whether they have autism or disorders like anxiety and depression,” said Bergstrom. “We have very little conscious control over our eyes, so the idea of providing unfettered access to data that can reveal all of this information (as well as provide unique user fingerprinting) is antithetical to our values of treating privacy as a first-class citizen. Instead of providing access to raw gaze data, the web browser can act as an opinionated user agent — an intermediary between the application and the device sensors and resources. In this example, perhaps we would only reveal that a user had looked at an element on a page if they’ve dwelled on it for a certain period of time.”

How will this type of data affect employment, healthcare, relationships, and broader life matters? What is your immediate reaction to the above in the hands of private corporations and public individuals? What is the solution to data privacy?

Digital Humans 

As we stroll confidently through pixelated grassy fields, feeling, seeing, hearing and interacting with environments as if they were real, we are beginning to encounter more advanced NPCs and bots that could be either human or machine. In January 2020, Soul Machines announced it had raised $40M towards their AI-powered customer-facing digital avatar technology, described on their site as “a Digital Brain that provides Digital Humans with the ability to sense, learn and adapt.” We are already encountering these digital humans worldwide, and witnessing massive funding moves in this vertical during the recently announced pandemic. I include digital humans in this list of immersive and multisensory technologies because, like the way we interact with one another, the way we interact with digital humans (whether they are known to be so or not) is another telling tale of our own character. 

Synesthesia, Data & Dopamine 

Frans Evers’, The Academy of the Senses, describes synesthesia as the ability for our senses to be “rerouted” via neuroplasticity, aka the brain’s ability to change and adapt as a result of new situations. This means that we can feel through sound, hear through touch, and see through our taste. Our senses are a fascinating playground for experiences that inform our sense of reality. Even if we don’t use all of the above technologies concurrently, there are endless possibilities of how our perception can be altered and enhanced. 

As we move towards a much more personalized online experience with sensory and immersive technology, we will soon be able to achieve the most incredible human experiences. While we are largely desensitized in the consumption of media today, multisensory immersive technology will forever change the way we measure the success of online campaigns and engage with the digital world.

Building Our Future 

As global movements begin experimenting more heavily with online worlds and virtual meet-ups, we are beginning to see the groundwork for the next era of digital humans (ourselves).

A shoutout to all those who have been actively collaborating with others in VR on multiple WhatsApp XR chat groups.

The post From Brain-Computer Interfaces To Digital Humans: How These Technologies Are Bringing Us Closer To The Metaverse appeared first on VRScout.

By: Anne McKinnon
Title: From Brain-Computer Interfaces To Digital Humans: How These Technologies Are Bringing Us Closer To The Metaverse
Sourced From: vrscout.com/news/bci-and-digital-human-technology-metaverse/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 22:11:12 +0000

HTC Vive Cosmos Elite And External Tracking Faceplate Review: Too Little Too Late

Here’s what we think of the new-and-sort-of-improved HTC Vive Cosmos Elite and/or Cosmos External Tracking Faceplate.

Last year HTC released yet another entry in its line of VR headsets named the HTC Vive Cosmos. Now, the company revamped it with a new model that includes an external tracking option and debuted an add-on to the original to enable the same new feature.

I’ve written reviews of lots of VR headsets over the last four years, but I can definitely say I’ve never reviewed a situation quite like this. Never mind the fact that HTC already offers a confusing number of different VR headsets (such as the HTC Vive, HTC Vive Pro, HTC Vive Pro Eye, HTC Vive Focus, HTC Vive Cosmos, and even more), the Cosmos is also the first modular VR headset I’ve seen, adding yet more variations. This should be a key feature of the Cosmos, but right now it just adds to the confusion.

Since we already had an external tracking faceplate sent to us for the original Cosmos, and already had the original Cosmos from our review last year, HTC just told us to review them together as the Vive Cosmos Elite because it’s essentially the same thing.

Read Or Watch Our Original Vive Cosmos Review!

So, after reading this review you might still have a lot of questions, such as: How is the comfort? How are the lenses? What are the specs? How is Vive Origin? What about Viveport? All of those questions and more I already answered in my original Vive Cosmos review. You should read that review as well to get the full picture here. The only thing that doesn’t apply is all of the commentary from that review on its inside-out tracking and new Cosmos controllers — the rest is identical.

Read the original Vive Cosmos review here for our full analysis.

What Is The Vive Cosmos Elite?

The Vive Cosmos Elite is, literally, identical to the HTC Vive Cosmos other than the fact that it uses external tracking via lighthouse base stations (like the original Vive headsets, the Index, and Pimax headsets) rather than the camera-based inside-out tracking that is built onto the front of the original Cosmos, Windows MR headsets, Oculus Rift S, and Oculus Quest. When you buy a Cosmos Elite, you’re buying a Cosmos, but they’ve switched the front faceplate to the external tracking instead of the inside out tracking on the original. And changed the color to black. That’s it.

The specifications are exactly the same as the Vive Cosmos otherwise. The Cosmos features a 1440 x 1700 pixel per eye display (compared to 1080 x 1200 pixels per eye in the original Vive and 1440 x 1600 pixels per eye in both the Vive Pro and Valve Index) which gives it a sharp image. However, the sweet spot of the lenses feels incredibly small in the Cosmos unit we received for review, meaning if you move your eyes very much inside the headset things can look blurry. The Index on the other hand has a large sweet spot and wide field of view.

The refresh rate is 90 Hz for the Cosmos with a claimed 110 degree field of view, meaning that on paper it’s got a solid foundation. Compared to the original HTC Vive especially, it’s a good upgrade.

For $899 you get the Vive Cosmos Elite headset, two base stations for opposite corners of your room to enable roomscale tracking, and two Vive wand controllers just like the original Vive controllers that released over four years ago. Or, HTC recently announced, you can get just the headset itself without base stations and controllers for $549 — an option created for those looking to upgrade from the original Vive or switch from the Vive Pro.

What Is The Vive Cosmos External Tracking Faceplate?

Simply put, the External Tracking Faceplate is an add-on you will be able purchase (for $199 startin April 30th, 2020) for an existing HTC Vive Cosmos that allows it to be tracked by SteamVR lighthouse base stations.  The idea is that you should have the flexibility of switching face plates to have either inside-out tracking, plus new Cosmos controllers, or external tracking with Vive wands or Index “knuckles” controllers. It’s the only VR headset on the market with that sort of adaptability.

It’s a bit of a bummer that the new Cosmos controllers don’t include some sort of add-on to enable external tracking as well. Instead, if you decide to use the external tracking face plate, your new Cosmos controllers are useless. You’d need to switch to Vive wands or Index controllers (we recommend Index controllers if possible.)

Comparing To The Original Vive Cosmos

Using a Cosmos with external tracking (aka a Cosmos Elite) is a vastly superior experience to the original Cosmos inside-out system.

Compared to the Oculus platform, where Insight tracking via Rift S and Quest is extremely comparable in quality to the Rift camera external tracking format, the Cosmos camera-based tracking was a disappointment. It performed poorly in low-light conditions and can lose track of controllers quickly if they’re out of view from your headset. Make no mistake: SteamVR powered by lighthouse base stations is, without a doubt, still the best VR tracking platform on the market from a pure quality and accuracy perspective. They’ve patched the inside-out system to be a bit better now, but it’s still not as good as SteamVR tracking.

But purchasing a VR headset is about much more than just the tracking quality. In virtually all other aspects such as the platform, the comfort, the lens quality, the controllers, and the price, the Cosmos + external tracking and/or Cosmos Elite are hard to justify.

Previously, I found it difficult to recommend a Vive Cosmos to anyone. At $699 it was just too hard of a sell given the way it stacked up against the significantly lower price of $399 for the Oculus Rift S. Coming in at $899, the Cosmos Elite is once again an extremely hard sell compared to the superior Valve Index full package that’s just $100 more at $999. There is a cheaper version of the Cosmos slated to release in the future, called the HTC Vive Cosmos Play, but there’s no word on when exactly.

However, as of the time of this writing, no Valve Index products are expected to arrive to new buyers sooner than 8 weeks from April 1st, 2020, at the earliest. That means June, 2020 as a best-case scenario if you bought something this week.

As a result, if you currently have an original HTC Vive, I could certainly see how the Vive Cosmos Elite headset by itself is an attractive prospect. It costs $50 more than just a Valve Index headset, but you get a slightly higher resolution display plus the potential to eventually purchase an inside-out tracking face plate and new Cosmos controllers if you decide to swap into an inside-out ecosystem instead of using base stations.

Note: Currently HTC does not offer an inside-out tracking add-on to purchase for the Cosmos Elite, they only have plans to offer an external tracking add-on starting April 30th to purchase for the original Cosmos. But, it stands to reason, the inside-out face plate may become available for purchase individually in the future to allow for the inverse upgrade path.

Vive Cosmos Elite/External Tracking Faceplate Review Final Verdict

I said all of this in my original HTC Vive Cosmos review and it all still applies today for the Cosmos Elite: “Technically speaking the Cosmos is far from a bad device. The resolution is very near the top of the market, it features a comfortable halo strap design…and comes with a great value in its Viveport Infinity subscription. But it’s just too little too late.”

The one major caveat here now is that, if you currently have a first generation HTC Vive and are looking to upgrade the headset and don’t mind using Vive wands (or have Index controllers / plan on getting Index controllers), and also don’t want to wait on an Index, then the Vive Cosmos Elite headset by itself for $549 isn’t a bad purchase. Especially considering the possibility of being able to switch to inside-out in the future if you’d prefer. Plus, wireless is already possible on Cosmos — it’s not yet on Index. All that said, if you’re in that specific original Vive owner group and don’t need wireless yet and have the patience to wait an extra month for shipment, we’d certainly recommend paying $50 less for the Index headset on its own.

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Final Score:     3/5 Stars | Pretty Good

You can read more about our five-star scoring policy here.

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The HTC Vive Cosmos Elite is available for $899 as a full package including two Vive wand controllers and two lighthouse base stations for tracking, or as a headset only for $549. Check out the official website for more details.

The post HTC Vive Cosmos Elite And External Tracking Faceplate Review: Too Little Too Late appeared first on UploadVR.

By: David Jagneaux
Title: HTC Vive Cosmos Elite And External Tracking Faceplate Review: Too Little Too Late
Sourced From: uploadvr.com/htc-vive-cosmos-elite-external-tracking-review/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 18:14:33 +0000

Review: Lies Beneath

At some point every virtual reality (VR) developer needs to do a horror title, whether it’s purely psychological or filled with jump scares, the genre is such an easy fit for VR purposes. Drifter Entertainment (Gunheart, Robo Recall: Unplugged) has done just that with its latest project Lies Beneath for Oculus Quest, offering a middle ground between those two whilst laying on plenty of action for an enjoyably terrifying experience.

Lies Beneath instantly grabs you thanks to its comic book design and story layout. It puts you under no illusions that you’re not in a realistic world and that doesn’t matter or make Lies Beneath any less suspenseful. What the videogame does, it does really well but there are a few little things here and there which stutter the experience.

One of the best aspects of Lies Beneath is its narrative and the way Drifter Entertainment lays it all out. That comic book style runs through the entire title, introducing the story of college student Mae and her father returning to the quiet Alaskan town of Slumber. There’s no narration, you have to turn the comic’s pages to uncover the story every few levels, a nice touch to keep a player’s attention as to what the hell is going on and what’s happened to the residents. Throughout the levels you’ll spot story snippets along the way, most of which are Mae’s internal monologue remembering her home town whilst trying to make sense of it all.

And this is one hellish landscape. Starting in the outlying forest before venturing into the town, the paths are winding yet fairly linear to keep you on the story track. There are the occasional offshoots which can reward you with useful resources but these tend to be dead ends or filter around to the main path. Not that you want to go exploring in the darkness as Lies Beneath has some monstrous creatures to deal with.

Most of these tend to be of the humanoid variety, shuffling around screaming until they spot you, coming tearing forwards like they were out of World War Z. In true monster fashion, there’s no subtlety to their attacks, it’s all about closing that distance to you. So you can attack and defend yourself in several ways depending on whether you prefer close or ranged combat. Lies Beneath suitably caters for both, with pistols and shotguns offering decent stopping power whilst knives, hatchets (a personal favourite) and other spikey objects can be used to remove heads and even thrown.

The studio has gone for a little VR realism with the weapons to help ground you in the world, but not too much that it hampers the experience. You don’t have to manually reload the guns but you do still need to pop the chamber open or use the pump action on the shotgun. Likewise, the blades are super useful if ammo is low – there’s usually enough around – but they can become wedged in enemies’ heads and bodies which can leave you scrambling for another weapon.

Which leads onto the fact that Lies Beneath is a very mild horror in comparison to others. Now some may find it truly petrifying when the odd jump scare happens yet for those well versed in VR terror Lies Beneath won’t really prove to be too alarming. Actually, it’s the sections in between the action which can prove to be the tensest as the audio is superb, just the right mix of distant shrieks and groans combined with horror movie violins, so use some good headphones.

It’s a shame then that especially in the early stages the draw distance is so close, either with pure darkness or fog. If it was done for atmosphere then it’s not particularly effective, more annoying. If it’s done for technical reasons then why does it occasionally jitter, like the odd frame is being dropped? This darkness can be somewhat illuminated by the lighter but once again the reach isn’t great. Unlike most videogames the lighter proves to be super useful, activating checkpoints, burning effigies and highlighting enemy weak points. The pistol/lighter combo is one of the best in Lies Beneath.

Lies Beneath might not be one of the scariest titles on Oculus Quest but that doesn’t stop it being intense and suspenseful. Drifter Entertainment has created a dark and twisting journey which has wonderfully atmospheric moments supported by a strong storyline backbone. If you’re looking for perfect synergy between classic horror movies and VR on Oculus Quest, Lies Beneath is worth a peep; just don’t look behind you.

80%

Awesome

• Verdict

By: Peter Graham
Title: Review: Lies Beneath
Sourced From: www.vrfocus.com/2020/04/review-lies-beneath/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 18:06:06 +0000

Interactive Chair Maker Roto VR Raises £1.5 million, Eyes Consumer Product Launch

Interactivity tends to be key for virtual reality (VR) experiences, from simple hand gestures to full roomscale movement. But the latter isn’t always practical both in the consumer and enterprise fields. Which is where a company like Roto VR comes in, with its motorised chair offering 360-degree rotation as well as other features. Today, the company has announced the completion of a £1.5 million funding round to help drive the business forward.

The round was lead by Pembroke VCT with the TVB Growth Fund also participating, SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP acted as financial advisor to Roto VR.

Roto VR’s chair helps to address problems such as motion sickness because it can auto-rotate to wherever the user is looking, either through player input or by head movements. Other features of the chair include an internal cabling system to remove the cable constraints of PC-based VR headsets and haptics for a more immersive experience.

The base Roto VR chair model can also be enhanced with a range of accessories such as a desktop table, tablettes for Hotas control or the racing pack for mounting steering wheels and pedals.

Explaining why they invested, Andrew Wolfson, CEO Pembroke Investment Managers LLP saif in a statement: “In Elliott we have found an entrepreneur who has solved a problem for the VR market with a solution that addresses the physical issues encountered whilst consuming VR content, as well as significantly enhancing the experience. We see future customers coming from both the B2B and B2C markets, in fields such as experiential attractions, home, cinemas and shopping centres. The company has employed a high calibre of people, and we believe that the business is well placed to take advantage of this fast-growing market.”

Currently, the Roto VR Chair retails for $1,499.00 with everything to get you started, while the Total Roto VR Bundle includes most of the other accessories for $1,899.65 (normally $2,025.00). This is quite a lot of cash to be dropping on a chair for VR so most customers have been enterprise-based. In addition to the investment announcement Roto VR has confirmed it is due to launch the consumer and office version of the chair imminently to help lower the entry cost to the platform. How much this will be and its feature set has yet to be revealed.

Plus, the Roto VR SDK has now been rolled out to developer so they can optimise their titles for use with the chair. For further updates on Roto VR, keep reading VRFocus.

By: Peter Graham
Title: Interactive Chair Maker Roto VR Raises £1.5 million, Eyes Consumer Product Launch
Sourced From: www.vrfocus.com/2020/04/interactive-chair-maker-roto-vr-raises-1-5-million-eyes-consumer-product-launch/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 14:30:09 +0000

Steam Hardware Survey Revamped, Will Be Reliable Estimate Of PC VR Headset Ownership

Valve revamped the VR section of the Steam Hardware Survey to support all PC VR headsets. When the data for March is released later today, it will include any headset the user has connected in the past month.

The Steam Hardware Survey is offered randomly to a portion of Steam users each month. If they agree, it uploads their system specs. These specs are publicly collated each month, giving PC developers insight into the hardware capabilities of their market.

UploadVR has been collecting the VR headset data reported by this survey for years now. Because Facebook and HTC don’t release sales figures, the survey is actually the most reliable publicly available indicator of PC VR headset sales.

However, before these changes it had a major limitation: only reporting headsets currently connected to the PC. While many PC VR headset owners likely keep their headset plugged in, some may prefer to unplug and store it.

In an email sent to UploadVR and others, Valve explained that starting on March 1, Steam started to use the SteamVR records of any headset connected in the past month, instead of just scanning current USB devices (which will now be just a fallback).

Using SteamVR’s data also means the survey will be tracking wireless headsets, theoretically including Oculus Quest via Virtual Desktop. It also means it can keep track of less common headsets that weren’t in the Hardware Survey’s whitelist beforehand.

Drivers for the Pimax 5K Plus and the community drivers Sony’s PlayStation VR seem to have been retroactively added to the report for the February survey, which has now been updated. Those headsets have usage shares of 0.04% and 0.05% respectively.

How can you use a PlayStation VR on Steam you might ask? Third party drivers like Trinus or iVRy allow it to interface with SteamVR. But unless you’re just using it for cockpit games, you’ll also need a third party tracking service, such as
PSMoveService or Driver4VR. Keep in mind the quality of tracking often won’t be as good as on a PlayStation 4.

These changes should make the Steam Hardware Survey by far the most reliable estimate of PC VR headset ownership. Steam has roughly 100 million active users, so each percent should represent roughly one million users.

If a significant portion of users don’t keep their headsets connected to their PC, or are using wireless headsets, it could dramatically change our understanding of the size of the PC VR market.

Once the March data is released, we’ll bring you the figures, visualizations, and our analysis on UploadVR.com.

The post Steam Hardware Survey Revamped, Will Be Reliable Estimate Of PC VR Headset Ownership appeared first on UploadVR.

By: David Heaney
Title: Steam Hardware Survey Revamped, Will Be Reliable Estimate Of PC VR Headset Ownership
Sourced From: uploadvr.com/steam-hardware-survey-revamp/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 13:55:04 +0000

FundamentalVR Expands Surgical Training Platform Support to Oculus Quest

British tech company FundamentalVR has been at the forefront of virtual reality (VR) training in the healthcare system, primarily focused on surgical education via its Fundamental Surgery platform. Today, the company has announced an expansion into standalone headset support for the likes of Oculus Quest and HTC Vive Focus Plus with a platform extension called @HomeVR.

Thanks to standalone headsets offering a low-cost alternative and being easier to run than their PC-based counterparts, devices like Oculus Quest make VR training a far more viable and convenient option. Fundamental Surgery is hardware-agnostic, able to mimic the physical cues of surgical actions, medical tools, and tissue variations.

Already deployed in hospitals worldwide, the surgical platform utilises off-the-shelf hardware combined with HapticVR sense-of-touch, enabling users acquisition of real-world skills. Surgeons experience the same sights, sounds and feeling they would in a real procedure.

“Leveraging low-cost hardware, our multimodal platform allows medical institutions to take advantage of the proven benefits of surgical simulations at scale, and in ways that ensure the consistency of training delivery, and effectiveness of their curriculums,” said Richard Vincent, CEO, and co-founder, FundamentalVR in a statement.

“The @HomeVR modality provides a highly mobile and cost-effective way to acquire the knowledge and understanding of the technical skills required to carry out surgical procedures,” Vincent continues. “The HapticVR modality helps students apply and deepen this knowledge while becoming proficient in the skills required to carry out the procedures. Together, they provide a more powerful education platform. No other software platform can do both nor have received CME or CPD accreditation from the America Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.”

You won’t find @HomeVR on the Oculus Store. Users download the simulations by logging into their Fundamental Surgery account and selecting their desired procedure. Procedures are being phased in for existing customers starting with Total Hip Arthroplasty (Anterior Approach) with more on the way.

VRFocus will continue its coverage of FundamentalVR and the healthcare industry as a whole as it continues to embrace VR technology and its educational abilities, offering up t date news on the latest advancements.

By: Peter Graham
Title: FundamentalVR Expands Surgical Training Platform Support to Oculus Quest
Sourced From: www.vrfocus.com/2020/04/fundamentalvr-expands-surgical-training-platform-support-to-oculus-quest/
Published Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2020 10:25:30 +0000