Category: WiGig

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HTC is Working With Intel To Create A WiGig Wireless Solution for The Vive

HTC is Working With Intel To Create A WiGig Wireless Solution for The Vive

CES has now officially come to an end and it was relatively light on virtual reality news when compared to the previous few years. However, HTC — the creators of the Vive high-end, PC powered VR headset — were on hand for a press conference that teased and revealed an intriguing road map of new hardware strategies for 2017. Among these revelations was the Vive Tracker and Deluxe Audio Strap, but another announcement flew somewhat under the radar. According to one of HTC’s top Vive executives at CES, Daniel O’Brien, Intel has been working with the Taiwanese company to develop a wireless solution for the Vive.

Wireless Vives were something of a theme at this year’s CES. Three companies: KwikVR, Rivvr, and TPCAST, were all on-hand in Las Vegas to showcase clip-on boxes that eliminate the Vive’s many chords (with varying degrees of success). O’Brien’s announcement from the HTC press conference, however, may point to something larger than a simple accessory.

This is an HTC Vive using the TPCAST wireless accessory.

In his remarks, O’Brien stated that HTC and Intel are collaborating on a “WiGig wireless solution for the HTC Vive.” WiGig is the term for a new, ultra-high speed, wireless Internet connection that is significant to wireless VR for a few reasons. The first is latency. Every millisecond an image takes to properly render in your Vive increases the latency of the image. You don’t want to move your head in a VR world and wait for the world to catch up — it could significantly contribute to cases of motion sickness. The standard WiFi wireless options we’ve seen are, for the most part, expected to be far too latent to be useful, but a WiGig solution could put that to rest theoretically.

The second problem that WiGig could help solve for wireless VR is compression. In order for the complex images of a given VR experience to be properly streamed from your PC to your headset the image needs to be compressed to some extent. Compression reduces the already low resolution of existing VR displays which is far from ideal for an evolutionary new technology.

We had the chance to speak with a representative from Intel on the show floor at CES who chose to remain anonymous. This source was able to confirm that the partnership exists and pointed to Intel’s past collaborations with HTC as an indication of where the project may lead. When asked if the final product would be an add-on accessory or an integrated solution the source replied by saying that:

“We’re working with them. That’s really all I can say at this time but stay tuned for further updates.”

Even though the VR news at CES wasn’t as plentiful as past years, there were still some big nuggets sprinkled throughout to chew on. The advent and potential of wireless VR is certainly chief among them.

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HTC and Intel to Show New WiGig Wireless VR Solution at E3 2017 (Updated)

HTC have announced that, in addition to its TPCAST wireless add-on, it’s also working with Intel on a WiGig powered wireless VR solution and it’s keen to find more partners to work with on further solutions too.

HTC seems to be ‘all in’ on ensuring its Vive VR headset is well supported for wireless upgrades in order to rid us of those pesky cables. Not content with helping to incubate the development of the soon-to-be-released TPCAST wireless VR solution, HTC announced at its CES press conference this week that semiconductor giant Intel is also working on its own wireless VR solution based on a different transmission protocol.

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TPCAST Wireless VR Add-On Available Worldwide Q2 for $249

Update 30th May 2017: HTC have let us know that the new solution developed in conjunction with Intel is taking shape and will be demonstrated to press at this year’s E3 convention due to start June 13th. They state:

“To create this high-end VR experience, Intel and HTC recognized the need to better integrate the HMD with high-computing capabilities. The WiGig technology, based on 802.11ad standard, works solely in the interference- free 60GHz band, and enables high throughput and low latency in both directions, from the PC to HMD and from HMD to PC. This means pristine video quality with <7ms latency in any environment, supporting multiple users sharing the same space. All of this results in the seamless wireless VR with the Vive.”

Road to VR will be at E3 to get some hands on time with the new system.

Original story from Jan 9th 2017 continues below:

Both TPCAST and Intel’s solution both using the same 60Ghz band to broadcast compressed video and input / output data to and from a PC base station, albeit using different standards. The former however has opted to choose the ‘WirelessHD’ standard whilst the latter is going with WiGig.

What’s the Difference Between ‘WiGig’ and ‘WirelessHD’?

Everyone hates format wars, but it seems no shift of any significance happens in the consumer electronics industry without one. Anyone over 40 will recall Betamax versus VHS video tape and then HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray and most recently HDR10 versus Dolby Vision. In this case though, although WiGig and WirelessHD both share some technical similarities they differ in scope and implementation.

TP-Link 7200ad router, the world's first WiGig router, unveiled at CES last week
TP-Link 7200ad router, the world’s first WiGig router, unveiled at CES 2016

WiGig (Intel’s chosen solution) is, as the name suggests, a wireless multi-gigabit networking standard which dramatically increases over-the-air bandwidth over standard WiFi over short distances (the same room). In actual fact, the name ‘WiGig’ is a shortening of the organisation (Wireless Gigabit Alliance) which helped define the IEEE 802.11ad 60GHz standard. WiGig is aimed at very high bandwidth data uses, such as the broadcast of multi-gigabit uncompressed video and audio streams. Although its uses are more limited (short range, doesn’t work well through walls) it is ultimately a very high speed general purpose network standard in the same way as other WiFi standards. Bottom line, if you buy an 802.11ad compatible router, it’ll not only be backwards compatible with your older devices, you’ll be able to use that extra bandwidth for any sort of data transfer, not just video and audio. WiGig data rates max out at 7 gigabits per second per channel.

TPCAST 's 60Ghz Wireless Transmitter
TPCAST ‘s 60Ghz Wireless Transmitter

WirelessHD (TPCAST’s chosen solution) on the other hand is an older standard designed exclusively for the transmission of high definition video over short distances. WirelessHD once again adopts the 60Ghz band and, as of version 1.1 of the standard, can transmit at data rates up to 28 Gigabits per second (much higher than WiGig’s . WirelessHD solutions comprise two boxes, a receiver and a transmitter and each is dedicated to transmitting just video and audio between the source and the destination. Unlike WiGig, you won’t be copying files between devices or browsing the Internet via it. As such, devices that use WirelessHD will likely ship with dedicated receivers and transmitters for use only with that product. WirelessHD (aka UltraGig) is a proprietary standard, as opposed to WiGig’s, which is IEEE standards approved.

Both the above technologies suffer from one of the same issues, inherited from their shared 60Ghz band – namely that it doesn’t deal with line-of-sight blockages (walls, people etc.) well at all. However, both are able to beam-form – that is use walls and ceilings to reflect to avoid occlusion by ‘bouncing’ the signal. You can see why HTC may want to entertain the idea of a WiGig solutions as, despite the maximum bandwidth being lower than WirelessHD, it’s likely we’ll see WiGig routers in people’s homes over the next few years, so a wireless VR product that’s able to work with an existing device will also be cheaper, should the transmitter not be required.

As of now, neither HTC or Intel were ready to share any details about the wireless VR project or any timelines as to when we’d hear more. It’s clear however that HTC are not only keeping their options open as far as wireless VR is concerned they’re actively encouraging technical diversity. To further emphasise this, HTC has indicated it’s interested in hearing from other companies about alternative

The post HTC and Intel to Show New WiGig Wireless VR Solution at E3 2017 (Updated) appeared first on Road to VR.

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WiGig’s Ultra-Fast Wi-Fi Could Make Wireless PC-Based VR Viable

WiGig’s Ultra-Fast Wi-Fi Could Make Wireless PC-Based VR Viable

Standalone VR headsets may well be the future of the industry, but they’re a long way off from packing the power of today’s modern PCs. The ultra-fast 60GHz wireless standard WiGig might offer a compelling workaround.

The Wi-Fi Alliance this week announced it launched the certification process for this network, and expects to start rolling out products that incorporate it sometime next year. With the technology installed, these products could offer connection speeds of up to 8Gbps, allowing for faster downloads (nearly 1GB per second) and browser navigation. This is done by sending data over higher frequencies and focusing signals between devices.

Faster, better Wi-Fi of course means great things for everything from gaming to streaming, but it could also be good news for VR. As we all know, VR requires minimal latency between player movement and the given experience to remain as comfortable and immersive as possible. Current Wi-Fi networks simply don’t offer the kind of speeds needed to achieve this, but it might be more viable over a WiGig connection.

For that to actually happen, a VR headset would need to incorporate WiGig technology, so don’t expect to cut the wires on your HTC Vive or Oculus Rift any time soon. But if a headset did incorporate the tech then it might be within reach to offer the some of the detail and visual fidelity of PC-based VR experiences mixed with the freedom of untethered headsets. That could be an interesting middle ground until prototypes like Oculus’ Santa Cruz headset are finally ready for a consumer release, which won’t be any time soon.

The trade-off is a short range as WiGig’s signal reaches 10 meters ,which would mean it wouldn’t cover every corner of some houses and roomscale experiences like those on the Vive would have to be placed within that distance.

While there aren’t any dedicated wireless VR headsets you can buy right now that connect to PCs in this way, there are mobile apps that stream gameplay onto a phone’s display that you can then view in mobile-based headsets. They offer a clunky experience, but one that could potentially be improved with WiGig. It will also be interesting to see if Quark VR’s wireless HTC Vive prototype could incorporate the tech going forward.