Microsoft today announced a bevy of information regarding their upcoming Windows VR headset launch, which will see headsets from Acer, Dell, HP, and Lenovo coming this holiday season starting at $400. Revealed today by HoloLens chief inventor and project lead Alex Kipman, the Windows VR headsets have been confirmed to work with at least 67 apps—including games, experiences, and 360 video platforms.
Apps and Companies Supporting Windows VR Headsets:
This isn’t by any means a comprehensive list, as we’ve edited out some of the elusively Chinese-centric apps that don’t seem to offer multilingual support.
Windows VR headsets will also support SteamVR, as we suspect Valve and Microsoft are currently collaborating on an OpenVR driver that would allow for developers to more easily push support for games already designed for HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
As you might expect from a headset available for $300 (and aiming to maintain a similar price for the consumer version), the packaging is as basic as possible, and the developer unit comes with no accessories. The headsets will support motion controllers, but it appears these aren’t available for developers just yet.
Image courtesy Shachar Weis
Weis calls out Microsoft’s rather confusing use of the term “Mixed Reality” for what is a fairly conventional VR headset, noting that it lacks any features that blend realities together (beyond the boundary-warning system). “It’s not a ‘Mixed Reality’ headset by any means I can think of”, he says. “It’s a VR headset, nothing more, nothing less. There is no real-world 3D overlay, optically or with the cameras”.
The most notable feature of Microsoft’s design is the ‘inside-out tracking’—which shares some of its technology with Microsoft HoloLens—requiring no external devices or sensors to achieve positional tracking. However, it doesn’t support the same spatial mapping as HoloLens, as indicated on Microsoft’s Dev Center page, instead using two front-mounted sensors purely for headset tracking.
Image courtesy Shachar Weis
Weis’ impressions of the headset align closely with our hands-on from the Microsoft Build conference in May, describing a cheap-feeling but pleasantly light unit (although it appears to have gained a few grams at 380g), with a useful but “somewhat awkward” flip-up mechanism. The strap is made from rigid plastic with a basic locking rachet, that is “not very smooth or elegant, but gets the job done”. It is missing certain useful features like hardware IPD adjustment (seen on the the two other headsets already on the market), built-in mic or headphones (also on those headsets), but it does have an audio jack, and the convenience of detachable foam (velcro) and an IR proximity sensor inside to detect when the headset is being worn.
The straightforward hardware design extends to the setup, as it connects directly to a PC via USB 3.0 and HDMI, with no breakout box or additional power required, and Windows appears to automatically detect and install the drivers and software.
Image courtesy Shachar Weis
Weis had some problems with the initial setup within the ‘Mixed Reality Portal’ software, taking “several attempts” to map out the play space, which is done by walking around the perimeter, holding the headset at waist height. While the cable length is similar to the Rift, Microsoft’s setup procedure could have benefited from a more generous cable. “Even with the cable fully extended, the biggest area I could trace was too small”, he says. “I had to move the computer and try again”.
Current inside-out tracking quality is unable to match the precision of tracking systems like the Rift’s ‘Constellation’ and the Vive’s ‘Lighthouse’ technology, but Weis finds it works well enough.
Image courtesy Shachar Weis
“It’s impressively good for an inside-out tracking system with no external sensors or transmitters”, he says. “The headset supports full room-scale, 6DOF tracking, with an occasional jitter / flicker when you move your head quickly. Again, the Vive / Rift is better, but this comes very close”.
The higher resolution displays (dual 1,440 x 1,440 vs. 1,080 x 1,200) result in a “sharper image” and “considerably less screen door effect”, than the Rift or Vive, but are let down by lower quality optics, as we also noted in our hands-on.
“The sweet spot is small and the edge smear is very pronounced”, says Weis, “you can clearly see a circular edge”. Our hands-on also described a lower field of view, and indeed the “95 degrees horizontal” per the Acer specifications is slightly lower than the Rift or Vive.
Weis describes the lenses as ‘hybrid’, although he seems to be using the term (which can refer to several things in optics) differently to Oculus, whose ‘hybrid’ lenses in the Rift refer to the asymmetrical shape combined with Fresnel rings. Acer’s Fresnel solution is likely more conventional than the Rift.
Without motion controllers for now, the UI is operated by voice or a mouse / keyboard interface that “looks cumbersome but it actually works.. OK (ish).” Weis recorded a couple of clips showing the boundary warning, which operates similarly to the ‘Chaperone’ ystem in SteamVR, and the basic interface of bringing up windows that can be positioned freely in space or align intelligently with the walls and other surfaces of the virtual environment.
Microsoft’s E3 2017 presentation concentrated on the new Xbox One X console, but made no mention of VR. After dodging questions for the first few days following the presentation, Phil Spencer, Head of Xbox, gave his thoughts on the games industry, the Xbox One X reveal, and Microsoft’s position in the VR space in a refreshingly candid interview with Giant Bomb’s Jeff Gerstmann last night.
Asked about the lack of VR at the Microsoft E3 presentation, Spencer replied saying that he is “long-term bullish”, and a “believer in the category”, but had some reservations about how suitable it is (in its current state) in the family room environment of the game console. He referred to the issue of cords, and that “there’s just more people” to think about. “I do think we need to lose the cords at some point, we’re a few years from that”, he said.
We’re beginning to see very effective wireless solutions already, but they are expensive accessories and Spencer is likely considering when such solutions will reach mainstream affordability for consoles. He thinks we’re still “a few years away from something that will really work”.
Spencer on stage at E3 2017 where the company announced that ‘Project Scorpio’ would officially launch as the Xbox One X.
He acknowledged that the Xbox One X is more than capable of running VR. “The power of the box is fine in terms of having a VR or MR experience run on it, it’s really that family room environment that we’re struggling a little bit with. We’re saying ok, let’s stay more on the PC where we’re seeing action and developer interest—until we really get the artform of what it means to create great MR experiences, then it can go to more places”.
“It’s not a shot at what anybody else is doing”, he said, diplomatically. “I love what we’re all try to go to. Actually the teams share a lot of learning—we’ve had the Sony team up, they’ve seen what we’re doing with HoloLens, we talk to the Valve guys all the time. I don’t think this is a time for us to be competitive in this space, it’s a time for us to share our learnings and try to get better, because the market is years away, but we want to be ready for it”.
“It’s great that as an industry we are investing, whether that’s PSVR, HoloLens, HTC, Oculus—this what the games industry should be about, investing in new technology. Our investment is on the Windows side right now.”
Spencer’s comments offer more detail to the statement Road to VR received from a Microsoft spokesperson following the keynote, saying “We believe that right now a Windows PC is the best platform for mixed reality as its open ecosystem and enormous installed base offer the best opportunity for developers, and Windows offers the most choices for consumers.”
Microsoft says the Xbox One X has the power to do VR but we aren’t likely to see VR support as a feature at the console’s November 2017 launch | Photo captured by Road to VR
Spencer said, “You’re exactly right. When we focus on the Windows Mixed Reality API, I think it’s important that as the Windows platform company, we don’t start getting people tied into ‘well you’ve bought this HMD, sorry it’s not gonna work with these other things’. When I buy a great monitor and plug it into my PC, I’m not worried about whether Windows understands it and whether some games play on it and some games don’t. Windows as a platform has to natively support any HMD you plug in, and we’ve been getting good feedback from the Oculus and Valve teams about what we need to do on Windows 10.”
Spencer also offered some general thoughts about these early days of VR, where in some cases, there has been an unnecessary urgency to jump on the bandwagon, setting unrealistic expectations for what VR can deliver in its first generation.
“A couple of years ago I think we had maybe an over-exuberance on VR, where we put more interest in it than maybe the tech and experiences could deliver, and I think that’s a dangerous spot for us as an industry”, he said. “To me this isn’t something that’s gonna die, the experience is way too immersive, it is going to happen. You see it where venture capitalists are investing, where everybody’s gotta be ‘VR, VR, VR’, then a couple of people get their hands burned and everybody runs away. I think we have to moderate the temperature a bit in terms of where we are, and not try to tell everybody ‘this is the year of VR’, because then when it doesn’t happen you get [headlines like] ‘the biggest failure of E3’, and it’s neither one of those things.”
“So our focus is on the Windows platform, making sure HMD manufacturers can plug in,” he concludes. “We have four OEMs shipping good HMDs at really affordable prices this fall”, he says, referring to the upcoming Mixed Reality headsets for Windows 10, and perhaps hinting that the new designs from Dell and Asus will being joining Acer and HP’s HMDs at retail this year.
E3 2017 is underway and one of the key events this year is Microsoft’s Xbox briefing, at which we’re expected to learn much more about Project Scorpio, the PS4 Pro rival which the company have stated will host “high fidelity” VR. Watch the livestream right here
Despite Microsoft already dampening VR enthusiasts’ expectations for this year’s Xbox E3 event (no VR specifics I’m afraid folks), this event will focus on Microsoft’s great hope for drawing level or overtaking Sony’s technical superiority in the console space.
This means we’ll finally get to see what the mid-generation refresh Xbox powerhouse known as Project Scorpio is capable of, even if virtual reality demos may be absent. Catch the livestream for the show below. The event is due to kick off at 2PM PST, 10PM GMT. Feel free to comment below, it should be an interesting show.
Microsoft Technical Fellow and chief inventor of HoloLens, Alex Kipman, took the stage today at Microsoft Build 2017 to show off a number of upcoming mixed reality hardware and software streaming out of the company and its partners. Among the announcements—including pre-orders of Windows Holographic Headsets from Acer and HP and a new VR hand controller—was a teaser for more to come at E3 in June.
“Holiday 2017 is going to be phenomenal,” said Kipman. “We have a product lineup that customers really want. I hope you tune in to E3 to learn more about Windows Mixed Reality content story for this holiday.”
Many of the headsets taking part in the Windows Holographic program including Asus, Dell, 3Glasses and Lenovo have yet to receive a street date. There’s also no telling what bundle deals Microsoft will push to entice newcomers to their Universal Windows Platform-flavor of virtual interactions.
image captured by Road to VR
As it is, HP and Acer’s headsets are set to arrive to developers in August, which according to Kipman will be the exact same models shipping to consumers later in 2017.
Today Microsoft announced that developers in the US and Canada can now pre-order the Acer ($299) and HP ($329) Mixed Reality headsets from the Microsoft Store. Delivery of the headsets is scheduled for later this summer.
In October, Terry Myerson, Microsoft executive VP of Windows and Devices announced that the company had partnered with HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, and Acer to make VR headsets a part of the new Windows 10 Creator’s Update.
“These headsets will be the first and only to ship with inside-out, 6-degrees of freedom sensors. Unlike every other VR headset on the market today, it means there’ll be zero reason for a separate room, zero need for a complicated setup, and while those less immersive accessories today cost over $500—most of the time requiring a new, expensive device, we are announcing today that these Creator’s Update accessories start at just $299,” said Myerson.
The ‘Windows Holographic First Run’ application, a sort of pre-check to see if your computer can actually run one of Window’s headsets, revealed some surprisingly low minimum requirements for AR and VR on Windows compared to what we would call a ‘VR ready’ computer today. Combined with the relative low cost in comparison to a high-end gaming PC, Microsoft is aiming to quickly build a large audience of Windows VR headsets, and more importantly, a large userbase.
Among other things, these specs imply a PC that could be running with hardware as low as the 2009 AMD Anthlon II series (some have 4 cores) and 2010 Nvidia GT 400 series (some support DX12). And what that means is a very cheap PC, that may also be ancient by today’s standards. If these specs are all that’s required to run Windows Holographic, even many lower-end laptops should work, compared to what would be required for an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive.
Because of this low-end PC approach, Microsoft is focusing on providing applications like Cliff House, an app that’s meant to showcase the Windows operating system as imagined in virtual reality. According to Principal Program Manager Brandon Bray, Cliff House allows you to place and arrange your apps around the space where you can create a number of customized areas like a gaming basement, a productivity room or an entertainment hub on the balcony overlooking a mountainous landscape—essentially mirroring the HoloLens usecase of choosing which Windows apps you want to use and sticking them around your house.
You can now pre-order Acer ($299) and HP ($329) headsets directly from the Microsoft Store. They won’t include the motion controllers shown earlier today however, but the Acer VR headset will be offered as a bundle with controllers for $399 some time around the holiday season.
The Microsoft Store hasn’t updated with pre-order pages for either headset just yet. We’ll be updating this article as soon as they do.
Brandon Bray, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, took the stage at Unity’s Vision VR/AR Summit 2017 to show a little more of what Microsoft has planned for the VR side of things when the first Windows Holographic headsets come later this year. And to wit, Microsoft is giving away a free Acer Windows VR headset to everyone present at today’s Unity Vision VR/AR Summit.
After reporting to the crowd that currently 91 percent of the ‘holographic’ apps built for Windows headsets (including HoloLens) were constructed using the Unity game engine, Bray showed off an app that looks uncannily similar to something you might see in a HoloLens demonstration, but this time entirely virtual in nature and intended for the fleet of Windows-centric headsets coming later in 2017.
Called Cliff House, the virtual home is meant to act as a showcase for the Windows operating system as imagined in virtual reality. According to Bray, it allows you to place and arrange your apps around the space where you can create a number of customized areas like a gaming basement, a productivity room or an entertainment hub on the balcony overlooking a mountainous landscape—essentially mirroring the HoloLens usecase of choosing which Windows apps you want to use and sticking them around your house.
“Mixed reality allows me to place a hologram in a room, and walk around it, interact with it, and engage with it as if it were really there. It also allows me to take objects, people and places from the real world and bring them into the digital world and create entirely new experiences,” said Bray speaking about the capabilities of the Microsoft HoloLens.
As we’ve seen it today, Cliff House is almost entirely copying the HoloLens usecase of app-centric spaces. Without the power of gesture recognition, it’ll be interesting to see if these apps hold the same level of usability when used within a VR headset, and if they can ultimately foster he sort of ‘productivity room’ Microsoft envisions.
According to a Windows Central hands-on with Cliff House, you move around the virtual home using the Xbox One controller. Windows Central reports that the VR-capable Windows 10 UI and shell are “very much like HoloLens but a little more polished.” Gaze-based interactions control the UI and locomotion is achieved via teleportation, the report says.
image courtesy Unity Technologies
The Acer-built Windows Holographic headset is one of the first to arrive, with similar headsets coming from Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and 3Glasses later in 2017, and Microsoft wants to tap further into the Unity dev community by giving away a free Acer headset to all participants at Unity VR/AR Summit, arriving in the summer. Audience members will receive more detail on their free Acer headset sometime in June.
Windows Holographic VR headset users will reportedly gain access to more than 20,000 UWP (universal Windows platform) apps in the catalog, along with 3D objects from the web using Microsoft Edge to drag and drop into their physical world. Immersive WebVR content via Microsoft Edge and 360 degree videos will also be available in the Movies & TV app.
The Acer Windows Mixed Reality Development Edition headset is shipping this month, the first HMD to include the inside-out tracking technology pioneered on the HoloLens. This marks the beginning of the rollout of Microsoft-endorsed VR headsets that support ‘world scale’ tracking and ‘mixed reality’ apps.
Originally announced at Microsoft’s keynote in October 2016, VR headsets with inside-out tracking from HP, Dell, Lenovo, ASUS, and Acer (with another from 3Glasses revealed in December), are due to launch later this year. The rollout of the developer kit begins this month in the form of the ‘Acer Windows Mixed Reality Development Edition headset’.
Microsoft insist on using the term ‘mixed reality’, despite the new headsets being much like any other VR headset, but using inside-out tracking. The Acer unit uses two 90Hz 1440×1440 panels – totally opaque, unlike Microsoft’s HoloLens, which has a transparent visor to overlay images over the real world. Gesture tracking, another key pillar of the HoloLens experience, is also missing from the Acer HMD. The ‘mixed reality’ delivered by the Acer headset is defined by the inside-out tracking system, which provides positional tracking without the need for external sensors, as well as being able to outline real-world objects so that you don’t walk into them, and ability to access the Windows Holographic environment.
The devkit will include access to Windows 10 Insider preview builds and the SDK to enable developers to build mixed reality applications. Announced at GDC 2017 and via the Windows Blog, Microsoft has broad plans beyond the Windows desktop and HoloLens, bringing mixed reality content to the Xbox One family of devices, including Project Scorpio, in 2018.
