Category: TPCast Air

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TPCAST Air for Oculus Go Heads to North America

Last month wireless solutions provider for virtual reality (VR) headsets TPCAST began shipping its TPCAST Air for Oculus  Go solution for business in Europe and Asia. Today, the company has expanded those territories to include North America.

TPCAST Air Oculus Go

TPCAST Air is the company’s second generation wireless solution, originally launching it for the Chinese market in February. The technology is SteamVR-based, providing an ultra-low latency wireless VR experience for 3-DOF applications on the headset. Essentially, it allows customers to easily stream content of their PC and into a standalone headset

Designed for industries such as architecture, engineering, construction, interior decoration design, education and gym spinning, for example, TPCAST Air for Enterprise can, in fact, support different 3-DOF or 6-DOF standalone VR headsets. It supports multi-user applications so in time location-based entertainment (LBE) venues such as VR arcades could use the technology to stream content rather than users having to wear bulky backpack PC’s.

TPCAST Air for Oculus Go

As a single-user system, TPCAST Air for Oculus Go will be sold for $499 USD (including the headset) available for order now at www.tpcastvr.com and also at US VR solution providers.

TPCAST has also confirmed AIR will be coming to Oculus Quest. Able to support the devices Oculus Touch controllers, TPCAST Air for Oculus Quest is scheduled to arrive in about eight weeks (so presumably the start of August). No price has been revealed for this version.

As companies like Oculus and HTC begin steering users towards standalone devices TPCAST has expanded its wireless offerings to keep up. You can still purchase the original TPCAST Consumer Editions for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.  VRFocus will continue its coverage of TPCAST, reporting back with further developments as they’re announced.

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TPCAST Air for Oculus Go Begins Shipping to EMEA Markets

Wireless virtual reality (VR) solutions provider TPCAST made a name for itself helping consumers free their HTC Vive’s and Oculus Rift’s from being tethered their PC’s. So you wouldn’t have thought its second generation technology, TPCAST Air, would be a natural fit for a standalone device like Oculus Go. But that’s exactly what the company has now launched across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Oculus Go GDC Promo 02

What TPCAST Air for Oculus Go does in fact do is allow businesses to easily link their PC to the wireless headset, allowing them to showcase content quickly and hassle-free.

Designed for industries like construction, engineering, architecture and interior design, as well as education, and even fitness (VR spin class anyone?), the solution can support different 3-DOF or 6-DOF standalone VR headsets, with Oculus Go targeted first.

TPCAST Air was revealed during CES 2019 and began shipping to the Chinese market in February 2019. It supports multi-user applications so in time location-based entertainment (LBE) venues such as VR arcades could use the technology to stream content rather than users having to wear bulky backpack PC’s. TPCAST has even mentioned plans to support Oculus Quest in the future.

“TPCAST air simplifies the set-up process significantly by eliminating the need for external sensors or similar tracking equipment. By combining best of both worlds – high quality rendered content from a PC with a great display on an easy-to-use headset – TPCAST has once more done a major step forward in increasing the acceptance of VR solutions for enterprises,” says Reiner Pes, General Manager – EMEA, in a statement.

TPCAST Air Oculus Go

Curently, TPCAST Air for Oculus Go is being sold as a single user system, which means you get TPCAST Air and an Oculus Go headset for €569 including VAT. As it’s only for business use, the kit can only be ordered through TPCAST’s authorized distributor Schenker Technologies. Business enquires can also be sent to business.europe@tpcastvr.com.

With the rise of standalone headsets, TPCAST has needed to modify its business as companies start to put a greater onus on all-in-one, easy to use VR devices. VRFocus will continue its coverage of TPCAST, reporting back with further developments as they’re announced.

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CES 2019: I Streamed PC VR Games To An Oculus Go With TPCast Air

TPCast Air Oculus Quest go VR Streaming

When I passed the booth for TPCast during CES 2019 I didn’t initially pay it very much attention. Last year we saw a new model of their wireless adapter that enables either the Rift or Vive to cut the cord and move around rooms freely without any wired connections to a PC. It sends the data to and from the nearby PC wirelessly, but you still need to be close to a computer. It doesn’t turn them into totally standalone devices like the Oculus Quest or anything.

So on the table next to a laptop I spotted an Oculus Go. This seemed odd to me because the Go is already a standalone headset and there were no external sensors, like with Nolo, so it wasn’t a 6DOF tool either. Instead, TPCast Air is a software and USB dongle that wirelessly streams PC VR content to the Go’s display. And much to my surprise it totally works.

Now since the Oculus Go isn’t a 6DOF headset and it only has one single 3DOF controller, there is only a very limited use-case for a device like this on that headset. You can’t expect to play full games on it at all and anything that needs you to move around more than just looking up and down or side to side is a no-go (pun intended). So the demos I tried were TheBlu, a classic VR showpiece that’s entirely passive as you watch fish swim all around you, and a walkthrough demo of an apartment complex rendered in a game engine (I think it was Unity or Unreal).

So if you’re a developer that has something simple to show someone but don’t want to export and package it as a Go app or don’t want to lug around your bulky PC VR headset, then you can use a Go and TPCast Air to display it with head-tracking and give a little tease. This is designed as an affordable enterprise solution and to that end it seems to get the job done.

What makes TPCast Air particularly exciting though, from a tech perspective, is that it will support the Oculus Quest as well.

That means that you can use your Quest like normal, playing ports of games such as Superhot and The Climb, but then also enable the TPCast Air to stream over content from Steam VR. Since the Quest is a 6DOF headset with two 6DOF controllers, you’ve basically got a wireless Rift that can also be a standalone for travel. Pair it with a laptop and you’ve got a really flexible setup.

Since the two apps I tried were entirely passive and had next to zero interaction it’s hard to say whether there was any input lag or latency. During my time with TheBlu I made sure to waggle my head around from side to side and up and down to see if there would be any latency at all with the footage keeping up with my head movement and I noticed a tiny bit. Basically on the edges of my view if I turned really quickly I’d see a thin black bar that immediately vanished once I stopped turning. I think that means there is just an ever-so-slight delay between the image itself rendering and being streamed to the headset.

I’d love to try the TPCast Air on an Oculus Quest to see how it handled 6DOF content streamed to a non-PC powered 6DOF headset. Based on how well TPCast Plus and original TPCast hardware functions, I like to think that it may actually work really well. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what I’m hoping.

Since the Quest can’t plug into a PC, purchasing a TPCast Air might be the next best thing to achieve a truly hybrid headset — assuming it works well on Quest too.

Let us know what you think of the TPCast Air down in the comments below!

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TPCAST Air bringt PC-Content auf Oculus Quest und Oculus Go

Im Rahmen der CES 2019 hat TPCAST ein neues Produkt vorgestellt, welches das Unternehmen als TPCAST Air bezeichnet. Das System soll nicht eure VR-Brillen von den Kabeln befreien, sondern kabellose Brillen mit Inhalten von einem PC versorgen.

TPCAST Air bringt PC-Content auf Oculus Quest und Oculus Go

Beat Saber und Space Pirate Trainer

Zum Start soll der TPCAST Air die Oculus Go mit Content versorgen, jedoch sind Spiele nicht unbedingt für eine Übertragung geeignet, da die Oculus Go weiterhin keine Bewegungen mit der Brille im Raum erkennt. Dementsprechend sagt TPCAST, dass das neue Kit sich hauptsächlich an Unternehmen richtet, welche Inhalte aus den Bereichen Immobilien, Heimdekoration/Innenarchitektur, Industrie und Bildung zeigen wollen.

Zukünftig soll der TPCAST Air jedoch auch die Oculus Quest unterstützen und der Hersteller verspricht, dass man sich mit dieser Brille auch mit dem PC-Content frei durch den Raum bewegen kann. Hier hat TPCAST besonders Arcades im Auge, die kabellos ihre Spiele zeigen wollen, ohne auf eine hohe Qualität verzichten zu müssen. Da das neue Produkt reibungslos mit SteamVR arbeiten soll, dürfte auch genügend Content zur Verfügung stehen, der eine Anschaffung rechtfertigt.

Aktuell ist noch nicht klar, was TPCAST Air kosten wird, wie viele Stationen nebeneinander betrieben werden können und wann das Produkt auf den Markt kommt. Wir werden euch informieren, sofern es weitere Details von Hersteller gibt.

Der Beitrag TPCAST Air bringt PC-Content auf Oculus Quest und Oculus Go zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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TPCAST Air is the 2nd Gen Wireless Solution for Enterprise

Chinese tech startup TPCAST started by designing a wireless solution for HTC Vive before turning its attention towards Oculus Rift. For CES 2019 the company has now revealed its second generation wireless solution, TPCAST Air, designed for multi-user industrial and enterprise VR applications.

TPCAST Oculus Rift
TPCAST for Oculus Rift

With more companies looking towards location-based entertainment (LBE) and enterprise to make money for virtual reality (VR), TPCAST Air is primarily designed for multi-user applications.

Able to display PC VR applications wirelessly on standalone VR headsets by utilizing regular Wi-Fi networks, the solution is based on TPCAST’s real-time codec technology (RTCodec and RTCIP). Currently supporting headsets like Oculus Go, in the future TPCAST will add support for Oculus Quest.

Michael Liu, CEO of TPCAST, said in a statement: “TPCAST Air achieves our vision of TPCAST 2.0 – it provides wireless VR transmission in the short, medium and long-range distances. TPCAST Air for Enterprise combines the best of both worlds, which is the lightweight and low-cost standalone headset with the power of PC graphics. By that, it delivers lightweight mobility and high-performance rendering.”

Wireless TPCAST Adapter

Due to TPCAST Air’s ability to be used with standalone headsets, LBE and VR arcades won’t need backpack computers to achieve mobile VR, helping reduce capital and operational investment. And when you remove the need for backpack PC’s which can be difficult to set up and run, the whole system becomes easier to manage and run, plus there’s a nice reduction in cables.

TPCAST Air for Enterprise utilizes the same software infrastructure as Unreal Engine and Unity so there’s no lengthy migration process for developers. Plus, the system runs SteamVR and supports all SteamVR applications. Companies employing TPCAST Air will find the system is provided with an enterprise VR management suite that enables system administrators to manage multi-user solution easily, optimize the wireless performance and more.

TPCAST Air will be on display at CES 2019 all week. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

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CES 2019: Tpcast Air Wants To Turn Oculus Quest And Go Into Streaming PC VR Headsets

TPCast Air Oculus Quest go VR Streaming

TPCast’s second generation wireless VR solution wants to turn Oculus Quest into a streaming PC VR headset.

TPCast Air was announced at CES 2019 in Las Vegas today. Whereas the Chinese company’s original products made the HTC Vive and other PC VR headsets wireless via streaming, this new device will beam high-end VR content into less powerful standalone headsets.

The company says it’s starting out with streaming to Oculus Go. Go is a three degrees of freedom (3DOF) headset with one controller, though, so don’t expect to jump up and start streaming Superhot to the $199 kit. The kit supports SteamVR and is focused on enterprise and location-based customers, thus TPCast says this service would be best for “real estate, home decoration/interior design, education, and other industry applications.”

However, the company’s press release also notes that support for Oculus Quest will be added in the future. Arriving later this year, Quest is another standalone but it has a full 6DOF range of movement thanks to inside-out tracking. Specifically, TPCast says this integration will allow users to freely walk and interact with each other. The company says it could be put to use in VR arcades.

We know that Quest won’t be able to plug into a PC to double as an Oculus Rift. Oculus did, however, debate offering a streaming solution similar to what TPCast is describing. According to Oculus’ John Carmack, it could turn into an official feature, but ‘no promises’ as of yet.

TPCast Air is on display on the CES show floor. We’ll look to get you some impressions later this week.

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