The Vive Pre dev kit looks much more like a consumer product than early prototypes from last year.
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With all the recent excitement about upcoming virtual reality headsets, many observers have still worried about a pretty basic problem: the inability to see the world around you when your eyes are encased in a vision-blocking headset. A new prototype of the SteamVR-powered HTC Vive being shown at CES this week aims to solve that problem with a forward-facing camera that can integrate views of your surroundings with virtual reality scenes.
The HTC Vive Pre, the second dev kit offered by the company, will be used by many developers working on software before the planned rollout of the consumer version in April (after a recent delay from "2015"). While the Pre isn't representative of final hardware, it seems much closer to a complete consumer device than the rough prototypes we first saw last March, which featured lots of exposed wiring and clunky design touches.
The biggest new feature on the Pre is the front-facing camera, the main purpose of which seems to be the ability to orient yourself in the real world without having to briefly lift up the headset to have a look around. A hands-on look from The Verge describes how the external real-world view turns on automatically when you reach the edge of the system's tracking volume, offering a faint black-and-teal view of your surroundings that lets you see objects and patterns like walls. You can replace the VR world with a full view of your surroundings in "chaperone mode."
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