Category: wireless vr

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Valve ‘Looking Into Several Methods’ For Wireless Index

Valve Index

During the Index VR headset launch party Valve CEO Gabe Newell stated that the company is “looking into several methods” for making the headset untethered:

“As I said, shipping a product is truly the beginning. There are some obvious next steps. It’s simple for us to broaden our distribution from outside the US and EU into other countries. There are obvious ways for us to lower the cost, there are obvious ways to make the product lighter, and to improve the ergonomics. But then we get to more speculative issues. We’re looking into several methods to do untethered Index. We have a lot of ideas for kind of revolutionary things to do with the display and optical technology. There are lots of opportunities to continue to improve the volumes that you’re tracked in and the simplicity with which you’re being tracked in those spaces.”

Valve worked with HTC to ship the first room scale VR system in 2016, the Vive. In 2018, HTC released a $300 wireless adapter for the Vive, but there’s no indication Valve had any involvement in this project, with HTC citing a partnership with Intel in making it possible.

More Difficult Than Expected?

Back in February 2017, Newell called wireless VR a “solved problem”.

“My expectation is that wireless will be an add-on in 2017, and then it will be an integrated feature in 2018”, Newell is quoted as saying during a press conference.

Shipping Index as a wired headset in 2019 could mean the company ran into technical hurdles with wireless, or simply that the cost was deemed too high.

But there is evidence that Valve have been working on wireless VR for at least four years now.

Nitero

Back in early 2016, Valve invested a “significant amount” in wireless VR technology startup Nitero. Nitero designed custom chips to deliver better performance and lower cost than other 60 GHz solutions.

In 2017, AMD acquired Nitero, including all its staff and property. It’s unknown how Valve’s investment in Nitero was handled in this acquisition, but AMD hasn’t said anything specific about wireless VR for the past two years now.

Job Listings & LinkedIn

Back in 2015, Valve added a job listing titled Software Engineer for VR & Hardware. Among the job Qualifications are “Video Compression” and “Wireless Technologies”.

In March of this year, Valve laid off 13 employees, including some working on VR hardware. Among these employees was Rob Rydberg. Rydberg’s LinkedIn profile states that at Valve he “Developed an FPGA-based VR system architecture, allowing for a tethered or untethered VR experience“, as well as “Discussed and refined hardware accelerated video encoding solutions for real-time streaming of high-resolution video”.

The mention of hardware accelerated video encoding could mean that Valve will use custom silicon to enable low latency encoding and decoding of a video stream. This also could reduce the cost of a potential adapter.

We’ll bring you any updates related to wireless and Valve Index.

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WiGig Chip Company Peraso Technologies Closes $42M Financing Round

Peraso Technologies, a fabless semiconductor company creating mmWave technology and Wireless Gigabit (WiGig) chipsets, announced that it has raised an additional $42 million in its Series D financing round.

Peraso produces WiGig chip solutions for Fixed Wireless Access, a method of wirelessly delivering data between two or more fixed points, in addition to its work in wireless networking and 4K wireless video distribution. Moreover, much like HTC’s Vive Wireless Adapter, which uses a 60 GHz Intel WiGig chipset, Peraso is also focusing on virtual reality using its ‘W’ series 60Ghz WiGig chip.

Image courtesy Peraso Technologies

The latest funding round was co-led by two unspecified “strategic investors” and existing investor Roadmap Capital, bringing Peraso’s total funding to $79.3 million. Its Series D more than doubled its penultimate Series C at $20 million from April 2016, which included investors Roadmap Capital, iNovia Capital, Integrated Device Technology.

“This latest round of funding reaffirms our investors’ confidence in the progress that the company is making and the future for both Peraso and the quickly expanding market for mmWave technology-based products,” said Bill McLean, president and CEO of Peraso. “Raising this capital allows us to take our sales to the next level, especially as an increasing number of consumer electronic and wireless infrastructure manufacturers choose to incorporate multi-gigabit wireless connectivity into their products.”

Peraso’s chipsets are among the first to achieve the Wi-Fi Alliance’s new ‘WiGig Certified’ designation.

“The multi-gigabit speed of WiGig 60 GHz chips allow us to completely rethink technologies still tethered to wires, such as virtual reality, media streaming, wireless back-up and video monitoring,” the company says on their website.

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HTC Vive Cosmos FCC Documents Confirm It’s Not A Wireless Headset

HTC Vive Cosmos FCC Documents Confirm It’s Not A Wireless Headset

HTC’s upcoming Vive Cosmos VR headset has now received FCC approval. The FCC is a US regulatory agency with responsibility over wireless frequency use.

FCC filings publibly disclose the exact wireless frequencies a device uses, as well as the peak power output of each.

The filing finally puts to rest the speculation as to whether the Cosmos would be a wired or wireless headset. The only listed wireless frequency is 2.402-2.48 GHz with an ultra low 2.5 mW power output. This is identical to the frequency and power output the Vive and Vive Pro use to communicate with their tracked controllers.


Image from FCC filing

Controllers send a relatively tiny amount of data compared to wireless VR. The WiFi connection on the Vive Focus is in a similar frequency yet draws 558.5 mW – over 200x as much. And even that still wouldn’t be enough for high quality wireless VR.

Both the Vive and Vive Pro received FCC approval roughly four months before launch. However the Vive Focus had a delay of 7 months between approval and (western) launch.

At the Cosmos announcement event HTC was already describing the headset as “tethered”. However there was no cable visible. This led to speculation that it could have either optional wireless or that they could mean the headset was wirelessly “tethered”.

We reached out to HTC about this filing and a representative told us that on “day one” the product would be connected by “a tether to the PC similar to other Vives on the market today”. While HTC may well be planning a wireless adapter for Cosmos, what we know now is that the headset won’t have wireless built in.

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DisplayLink: Referenzdesign eines Drahtlosadapters für Oculus Rift vorgestellt

Auf der diesjährigen CES 2019 präsentierte DisplayLink das Referenzdesign eines neuen 60-GHz-Drahtlosadapters für die Oculus Rift. Das Zusatzmodul soll ebenso für andere VR-Brillen adaptierbar sein.

DisplayLink – Referenzdesign eines Drahtlosadapters für Oculus Rift vorgeführt

HTC veröffentlichte bereits eine Drahtloslösung für die HTC Vive und HTC Vive Pro, welche eine kabellose VR-Nutzung ermöglicht. DisplayLink war an der Entwicklung dieser Drahtloslösung beteiligt, denn die Technologie basiert auf dem gleichnamigen XR-Modul, einem WiGig-60-GHz-Standard zur Übertragung eines 4K-Videosignals. Nun präsentierte das Unternehmen auf der CES 2019 eine neue Variante des Adapters für die Oculus Rift.

Der bisherige Prototyp nutzt dieselbe WiGig-Grundlage und ist mit dem USB- und HDMI-Anschluss der Rift kompatibel. Dennoch handelt es sich dabei bisher nur um ein Referenzdesign, die Anpassung an andere VR-Brillen wäre also durchaus noch möglich. Im Gegensatz zur bereits veröffentlichten Vive-Version ist der Akku im neuen Adapter direkt in der Hardware verbaut und muss nicht separat am Körper getragen werden.

Mit dem TPCast ist übrigens schon ein ähnlicher Adapter käuflich zu erwerben. Ob der neue DisplayLink-Adapter diesen in puncto Performance und Komfort übertreffen wird, bleibt zunächst abzuwarten.

(Quelle: Road to VR)

Der Beitrag DisplayLink: Referenzdesign eines Drahtlosadapters für Oculus Rift vorgestellt zuerst gesehen auf VR∙Nerds. VR·Nerds am Werk!

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Exclusive: DisplayLink Demonstrates Foveated Compression for Better Wireless VR

DisplayLink has been building out its wireless VR compression technology for the last few years, eventually finding its way into the recently released Vive Wireless Adapter. But VR headsets are inevitably moving toward higher resolutions—as we’ve seen this week at CES 2019—making it increasingly harder to make them wireless. Luckily DisplayLink has a few tricks up its sleeve to boost compression efficiency without impacting latency, one of which they demonstrated exclusively to Road to VR this week at CES 2019.

Many readers of Road to VR will be familiar with the concept of foveated rendering: since our eyes only see in high fidelity within a few degrees of the center of our field of view, it’s possible to achieve higher quality (or more efficiency) by rendering lower quality imagery in the peripheral regions and higher quality in the very center. Eye-tracking then can be used to make sure that the high quality region always stays at the center no matter how you move your eye. Done right (with good eye-tracking and smart rendering algorithms) this can be completely invisible to the end users.

DisplayLink is using this same concept, except for compression instead of rendering. Compression is critical to wireless VR because you need to be able to send high resolution imagery at high framerates over a wireless connection that sometimes experiences sudden drops in bandwidth due to the imperfect nature of wireless connections.

Maintaining smooth visuals is key to preventing freezing and stuttering which would hamper any wireless VR experience. To maintain consistency in the imagery, DisplayLink has designed their compression technology to be able to respond to changes in bandwidth on the fly—even in the middle of a frame—so that if, for instance, a user’s hand briefly blocks an antenna, the system can apply more compression to make sure the image can fit over the reduced bandwidth.

Beyond just maintaining consistent imagery under situations of reduced bandwidth, there’s also the need to be more efficient with compression so that larger frames for future headsets with higher resolution can fit in the same available bandwidth.

Both reasons are why DisplayLink is developing foveated compression which takes advantage of eye-tracking data to understand where to compress the frame the most and where to leave it sharp. In doing so, the company claims some pretty huge gains in compression efficiency.

Photo by Road to VR

Using a Vive headset equipped with Tobii eye-tracking, DisplayLink showed me a demo using their wireless adapter reference design. Initially the adapter was set to use the same amount of bandwidth available in the Vive Wireless Adapter to get the image to the headset. Then they turned on foveated compression and cut the available bandwidth down to 1/3.

To my eyes the difference between the full bandwidth image and the 1/3 bandwidth image (with foveated compression) looked effectively identical. Even as I raced my eyes around the scene in an effort to catch the edges of the more highly compressed regions, I was wasn’t able to see anything more than a fleeting glimpse of a slightly blocky region in my peripheral, and this is as I was actively trying to spot any visual artifacts.

SEE ALSO
Eye-tracking is a Game Changer for VR That Goes Far Beyond Foveated Rendering

Even when I asked them to switch rapidly back and forth between full bandwidth mode and 1/3 bandwidth mode with foveated compression, it was difficult to spot any meaningful differences between the two. Had they handed me the headset from the start with foveated compression enabled (without telling me), I don’t think I’d have any idea it was happening, and that’s exactly how it should work.

Photo by Road to VR

There’s a few caveats of course: this was a proof of concept demo and I only got to see one piece of content (just standing around in the SteamVR home area). So I don’t know if this foveated compression approach will be valid for all or even most content. It’s possible that it won’t work so well with more complex colors, contrast, and lots of motion. The demo I saw was also on the original Vive, which has a fairly low resolution compared to what else is out there. Higher resolution (like the Vive Pro Eye, which DisplayLink plans to support, and even better lenses) might make it harder to hide the foveated compression.

However, the foveated compression is fundamentally based on DisplayLink’s existing compression technology, which works pretty darn well for today’s VR headsets, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find the the foveated approach works well too.

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CES 2019: DisplayLink Showing Wireless Adapter Reference Design For Oculus Rift

CES 2019: DisplayLink Showing Wireless Adapter Reference Design For Oculus Rift

At CES 2019 DisplayLink is showing off a reference design for a wireless adapter for the Oculus Rift.

The company first showed off wireless VR all the way back at E3 2017. The prototype, in cooperation with Intel, became the official HTC Vive wireless adapter in 2018.

There already is a wireless adapter on the market for the Rift- the TPCast. But the HTC Vive adapter powered by DisplayLink seems to have less issues and an easier setup, so this could be a welcome addition to the Rift.

Of course, the main issue with all existing wireless VR adapters is price. Both the TPCast and HTC adapter sell for around $300. This is almost as much as the entire Rift package price- now $349.

The fact DisplayLink powers the HTC adapter raises the tantalizing possibility that the company could be working with Facebook to make this an official adapter. There’s no indication of this however, and Oculus co-founder Nate Mitchell told multiple journalists at Oculus Connect 5 that they had “no plans” for a wireless adapter.

Facebook has however patented some interesting techniques for wireless VR, such as a positional tracking guided directional beam. Perhaps the company is waiting for these ideas to become feasible to want to put their name on a wireless solution.

Hopefully at least one manufacturer takes on DisplayLink’s reference design. Any competition in the wireless VR space is welcome.

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DisplayLink Showing 60GHz Wireless Adapter Reference Design for Oculus Rift

Connectivity company DisplayLink is showing a reference design for a 60GHz Oculus Rift wireless adapter at CES 2019.

DisplayLink created the DisplayLink XR wireless adapter reference design that would go on to become the Vive Wireless Adapter. The unit pairs DisplayLink’s compression technology with Intel’s 60GHz WiGig tech, enabling enough bandwidth for a pretty compelling wireless experience on the Vive that’s unmatched by WiFi solutions.

The Vive Wireless Adapter | Photo by Road to VR

Now the company is showing off a Rift-compatible version of the adapter, both as a proof of concept and a reference design that could be the foundation for another company to further develop into a retail product. The reference design could also be adapted for headsets other than the Rift.

For the wireless Rift adapter, the unit accepts the Rift’s USB and HDMI inputs, and sends them wirelessly to the host PC, while also powering the headset. The battery in this unit is built into the adapter itself, though in the case of the Vive Wireless Adapter, the battery is a separate component which goes on your belt or in your pocket.

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HTC Urges Ryzen PC Users Experiencing Issues with Vive Wireless Adapter to Return Purchase

HTC’s Vive Wireless Adapter released for $300 back in late September for Vive and Vive Pro, but some users running AMD Ryzen CPUs who’ve had issues with the wireless adapter are now being urged to return their unit, as HTC is still figuring out what went wrong and how to fix it.

“We have seen and are actively looking into multiple reports of Ryzen incompatibility with Vive Wireless Adapter,” the company writes in a recent blog post. “Our current data shows this is occurring with a subset of Ryzen-based PCs. Our investigation will take time as we are working with multiple component manufacturers to identify the root cause.”

The issue, affecting some Ryzen users, appears to serve up a nasty bluescreen on the headset, something that isn’t cleared up after rebooting or any other trick known at this time.

Pending a software fix, HTC is urging affected users to return the units in the meantime—possibly a sign that the Ryzen issues goes deeper than anticipated.

Starting today, HTC says they’ll be honoring Ryzen-related returns from retail partners and vive.com “outside of typical return windows.” After contacting customer service, users will be asked to certify their system’s components and proof of purchase of the Vive Wireless Adapter.

The company says that moving forward they’ll be making sure users know some Ryzen PCs have unresolved compatibility issues.

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Qualcomm’s New Chips Should Enable Better Wireless VR

Qualcomm’s New Chips Should Enable Better Wireless VR

Qualcomm recently announced the QCA64x1 series of 802.11ay 60 GHz Wi-Fi chipsets, noting “truly immersive wireless virtual and augmented reality experiences” among the list of use cases.

60 GHz offers far superior bandwidth to 5 GHz, but with the tradeoff that it cannot penetrate walls. Typical home WiFi uses relatively low frequency 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, and while this is great for achieving good coverage throughout your home even through thick walls, it’s not optimal for short distance ultra high bandwidth applications like wireless displays and PC VR.

802.11ay is the successor to 802.11ad, the previous 60 GHz WiFi standard, commonly known as ‘WiGig’. WiGig is actually the technology used in the HTC Vive Wireless Adapter.

WiGig has a theoretical maximum bandwidth of around 7 Gbit/sec. While this is technically just enough to transmit the 2160×1200 90Hz signal of the HTC Vive, in real world conditions it falls short, which is why HTC incorporates compression in their wireless solution. While this compression is minor enough to not to be noticeable in most scenarios, some may notice “blockiness” in fast moving action.

The 802.11ay upgrade promises to increase this theoretical maximum to 40 Gbit/sec, which even in real world conditions would be more than enough to send a current VR headset’s display signal without compression, and should be capable of making a future higher resolution headset wireless.

If the theoretical maximum bandwidth could be reached, 802.11ay could transmit much higher resolutions than today’s headsets at 90Hz without compression. In the real world, though, compression would likely be be used. It’s also important to note that Qualcomm’s QCA6421 & QCA6431 may target a lower maximum than the specification.

Qualcomm’s marketing highlights VR as a use case of these new chips

Neither 802.11ay nor WiGig are replacing standard WiFi of the kind your router would use. There’s another upcoming standard called 802.11ax (“WiFi 6”) intended to upgrade standard WiFi. Instead, the 802.11ay standard is intended only for niche applications like wireless displays, because they prioritize bandwidth over wall penetration.

Qualcomm has not given any specifics on when we might see the QCA6421 and QCA6431 in consumer products, but the fact that these chipsets are now finalized and available to electronics companies to integrate into products makes it likely that 2019 will be the year.

For wireless PC VR to keep up with increasing resolutions, until foveated rendering is available, companies need to continue to push bandwidth higher and higher, and with the 802.11ay QCA64x1 series, that’s exactly what Qualcomm is doing.

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Oculus Patents ‘Directional Beam’ Wireless PC VR Solution

Oculus Patents ‘Directional Beam’ Wireless PC VR Solution

With the release of the TPCast wireless adapter (for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive), and now the official HTC Vive Wireless Adapter, many have been wondering whether Oculus are working on a 1st party wireless solution for Rift, or whether they plan to incorporate wireless in the future version of Rift. These adapters are, however, very expensive, large, bulky, and the transmitter might have to be mounted on the wall to work well. This is because they transmit a high frequency (60 GHz) signal over a large field of view that generally requires line of sight to the headset.

Narrow Beam Following Positional Tracking

Late last year, Oculus filed for a patent on a technique that would have the wireless transmission system use the positional tracking data from the headset to send a relatively narrow beam to the direction of the headset, instead of all over the room. When the headset moves position, it could inform the transmitter of the new position over regular low bandwidth omnidirectional wireless (similar to Bluetooth) and then the transmitter would direct the high power beam at the new position.

The advantage of this approach is that, because the transmitter only has to send the wireless signal to one spot in the room, less power should be needed overall. This idea could be used to lower cost in future wireless VR setups. The high power transmitters used in the Vive Wireless Adapter and TPCast greatly contribute to the $300 prices, so the need to find lower cost solutions is clear.

The patent mentions that one of the possible protocols for the beam could be 802.11ad, otherwise known as “WiGig”. WiGig is an existing 60 GHz standard widely used for wireless displays such as wireless monitors, and is actually used in the HTC Vive Wireless Adapter.

Fighting Occlusion With A “Relay”

Another Oculus patent application adds a “relay” for when the HMD is occluded. Note that “console” is used in the technical sense, referring to the base transmitter connected to the PC.

But what if the view between the transmitter is disrupted? Oculus applied for another patent for using an assisting “relay” in the room. When the view between the transmitter and headset is blocked, and therefore the signal is blocked, the transmitter would instead send its beam to the relay, which would act as repeater.

Coming to Rift 2?

In his “5 year’s from now” predictions made at Oculus Connect 3 in 2016, Oculus Chief Scientist Michael Abrash said that he expected to see wireless headsets “at the high end”, but that there is “no existing consumer electronics link that’s up to the task”. This may be why Oculus began researching a custom (and patented) wireless solution.

Abrash also mentions that without foveated rendering (rendering at a low resolution everywhere except where the user’s eyes are looking), achieving wireless on PC would be very challenging. In Oculus’ foveated rendering patent, originally filed back in 2016, the company describes a display driver which can handle different resolutions for different parts of the image, noting “the devices may communicate wirelessly instead of through wired connections”. This is usually called “foveal transport”, and means that much less data needs to be sent compared to sending the full resolution frame. As Abrash suggests, this is likely the only practical way to deliver wireless with a significantly higher resolution headset than today’s Rift.

One fact that hints against the Rift’s successor being wireless, or at least against it being wireless by default, is that in July Oculus joined the new “VirtualLink” USB-C single cable standard for connecting wired VR headsets. While it could be argued this would just be to connect to the wireless transmitter itself, the specification for VirtualLink mentions the cable providing power for on headset cameras and sensors. This could indicate that if this wireless technology does make it to the next Rift (to be clear: it may never), it might be an optional add-on, rather than a part of the base package. Even if this tech is lower cost than the $300 TPCast and HTC adapters, it would still probably not be cheap.

These 3 patents paint a clear picture of the approach Oculus is taking in their research on wireless PC VR – a narrow directed beam using as little energy as possible, leveraging foveated rendering to send as little data as possible, with support for relays to defeat occlusion. While all this technology may never see the outside of Facebook’s research labs, if it ever does it could be a game changer for wireless VR on PC.

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