Category: Jeremy Selan

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Valve’s Cancelled ‘Vader’ VR Headset Would Have Cost ‘Upwards Of $5000’

Before Index, Valve’s ‘Vader’ VR headset aimed for extremely high resolution in a compact design.

The information is revealed in ‘Half-Life: Alyx – Final Hours’, an interactive storybook written by Geoff Keighley, who was given unprecedented access to Valve offices and staff. The book is available on Steam for $10.

Throughout 2013 and in early 2014, Valve was working with then-startup Oculus on virtual reality. The two companies shared research, ideas, and resources, with Valve indicating it expected Oculus to provide the hardware while Steam would continue to be the digital marketplace.

This ended around the time Facebook acquired Oculus in March 2014. Shortly after, Valve partnered with Taiwanese hardware company HTC. HTC made its name as the first major Android phone producer, and had a reputation for rapidly moving from prototype to shipping.

In March 2015 the HTC Vive was announced, and in April 2016 it shipped as the first consumer room scale virtual reality system.

According to Keighley’s new book, Valve CEO Gabe Newell wanted the company to “move beyond HTC”- to produce a first party headset tightly integrated with first party VR games- similar to Nintendo’s model. This began the ‘Vader’ project.

“We weren’t going to be held back by third party and business realities, so we went a little crazy with our design for Vader. HTC helped us figure out what could be productized, but without that tension, we sort of maxed out everything on Vader” – Valve Programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais

Valve engineer Jeremy Selan is quoted saying the design had fundamental mechanical and technical architecture problems. According to Keighley’s sources, if the headset “had somehow been manufacturable”, it would have cost “upwards of $5,000”.

Vader reportedly took 12 months of the VR hardware team’s work, and was then cancelled. While this delayed a Valve headset shipping to the world, some important features of Vader were incorporated in the successor project ‘Frank’; Knuckles controllers, Lighthouse 2.0 base stations, and the off-ear audio design.

In June 2019, ‘Frank’ shipped as Valve Index, priced at $1000 for the full kit.

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SteamVR Update Brings Motion Smoothing, Easier Keybinding & More

Valve has released the 1.1.3 update to the SteamVR SDK, and along with it comes a host of long-awaited improvements such as Motion Smoothing, easier access to Valve’s custom controller keybinding utility, and a few more bits and bobs that should make at least a few people happy.

Previously available via the SteamVR beta branch, now all HTC Vive users will have default access to Motion Smoothing, the company’s version of Oculus’ Asynchronous Spacewarp (ASW). When engaged, the utility uses previous frames to synthesize new frames during gameplay, allowing VR applications to chug along while running visibly smoother and more comfortably even when your computer struggles and begins dropping frames.

Long story short: Motion Smoothing halves your framerate to 45 fps when the system dips below 90 fps, inserting a synthetic frame that’s calculated quickly enough to serve to the headset where a dropped frame would otherwise fit. It’s not a cure-all, but a welcome solution for HTC Vive users with lower-spec computers. Like Valve’s Motion Smoothing, Oculus’ ASW has made a significant difference for users at, or right on the edge of the minimum spec, letting them play games with a degree of comfort that wasn’t possible beforehand.

Just like in the beta, users can always turn it off by going to  ‘Settings’ > ‘Video’ or ‘Settings’ > ‘Applications’ to specify when it should be enabled. Valve’s Motion Smoothing tech only works with HTC Vive and HTC Vive Pro; both Oculus Rift and Windows VR headsets have their own driver-specific techniques for doing this.

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Reminder: Motion Smoothing is only available for users running Windows 10 with an NVIDIA GPU currently. The company hasn’t given an ETA on when to expect support for AMD graphics cards.

There’s also good news for SteamVR users who make regular use of Valve’s key binding utility, which lets you map custom keys and buttons for any controller regardless of whether it has official support or not. The UI is now available on the desktop application, found under the ‘Devices’ sub-menu in the ‘SteamVR’ pop-up utility window.

Image captured by Road to VR

Users can also rename actions for applications which do not yet have native SteamVR Input support, and create simulated actions for trigger pulls or trackpad clicks.

As stated in the OpenVR github changelog, native support for VR treadmills is now also live. According to Valve’s Jemery Selan, SteamVR now lets a driver specify that a device is intended to function as a treadmill.

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Skeletal Input, or Valve’s developer-focused set of lifelike skeleton-based animations for Knuckles, Vive wands and Oculus Touch, has also been improved in the 1.1.3 update, bringing an improved hand pose used in the ’empty hand’ range of motion to all of the aforementioned controllers.

The OpenVR changelog referenced above also holds a few interesting bits of info here too, as Valve has classified its Skeletal Input into three levels of interaction: Estimated, Partial, and Full skeletal tracking.

Estimated: body part location can’t be directly determined by the device. Any skeletal pose provided by the device is estimated by assuming the position required to active buttons, triggers, joysticks, or other input sensors. e.g. Vive Controller, Gamepad

Partial: body part location can be measured directly but with fewer degrees of freedom than the actual body part. Certain body part positions may be unmeasured by the device and estimated from other input data. e.g. Knuckles, gloves that only measure finger curl

Full: body part location can be measured directly throughout the entire range of motion of the body part. e.g. Mocap suit for the full body, gloves that measure rotation of each finger segment

You can check out the full list of updates in SteamVR 1.1.3 here.

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Valve Says New Calibration Software Makes Lower-Cost LCD Panels Viable for High-End VR

New SteamVR optical technologies now available to VR hardware manufacturers includes the use of both LCD and OLED custom panels. According to the press release provided to Road to VR, Valve’s work with display manufacturers and recent advancements in LCD technology combined with VR-specific calibration “now make it a viable technology choice for high end VR systems.”

Valve recently announced the availability of new core VR technology components for device manufacturers, namely displays, optics, and calibration tools. These essentially combine with the existing free license for SteamVR tracking and input technology, meaning that the key hardware elements for high-end VR are now all available through Valve.

“World class VR requires highly precise tracking, matched optics and display technologies, and a software stack that weaves together the interactions between these components,” said Jeremy Selan of Valve. “For the first time, we’re making all of these technologies available to anyone who wants to build a best in class VR system for the millions of Steam customers accessing over 2,000 SteamVR compatible titles.”

image courtesy Valve

As shown on the SteamVR licensing page, both LCD and OLED panels are being recommended for VR. While OLED technology offers a number of advantages for VR use cases – an essential specification of the popular first generation, high-end VR headsets available today – it is now possible to use LCD, thanks to recent advancements in the technology and optimisations to calibration software.

The confidence in LCD for high-end VR is demonstrated in the upcoming Pimax ‘8K’ VR system, which uses SteamVR technology – as well as the upcoming ‘high quality’ mobile VR solution from Oculus.

“Fast-switching liquid crystals, low persistence backlights, and high PPI displays” of the latest LCD panels are, according to Valve, “well matched” to high-end VR. They continue to recommend OLED as an “excellent option for new head mounted displays”, pointing out that both display technologies have “inherent artifacts unique to head-mounted usage”, which are being solved at both a hardware and software level as part of the SteamVR technology suite.

Valve’s custom lenses available for purchase work with both LCD and OLED panels, which also benefit from their calibration and correction software. They support a field of view between 85 and 120 degrees, and are designed for the “next generation of room-scale virtual reality.”

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