For the past couple of years, HTC and Valve’s virtual
reality efforts — which produced the HTC Vive in 2015 — have seemed
largely interchangeable. But Valve’s SteamVR platform isn’t limited to
one manufacturer. Earlier this week, LG and Valve introduced a competing
headset with many of the Vive’s features — but a few serious design
tweaks.
Currently, LG’s headset is a development kit, which the
company says will be going out to developers in the next few weeks. This
means that its design isn’t final, although it seems far from a rough
first effort. The headset uses a single 3.64-inch LG screen with 2560 x
1440 resolution, or 1280 x 1440 pixels per eye. That’s the same
resolution as the Gear VR, and slightly more than the Rift or Vive,
which both have 1080 x 1200 per eye. Its field of view is comparable to
the Rift and Vive’s 110 degrees. It’s tracked with the same laser
“lighthouses” as the Vive, and uses a very similar controller.
The headset’s frame, however, is a lot more like the
PlayStation VR. It’s a ring that fits over the forehead and is tightened
on the back, similar to a hard hat. A second band around the headset is
supposed to balance its weight. While I can’t pin down exactly why,
though, it didn’t feel nearly as comfortable as the PlayStation VR, and
the screen felt like it was at the wrong distance from my eyes, even
after adjustments. It wasn’t even as comfortable as the Vive’s new head strap, which is a vast improvement over its predecessor.
The comfort level seems to be a matter of personal
preference, and one developer I spoke to liked the LG headset’s screen
distance far more than the Vive’s. But LG says that either way, it could
change during the design process. It might also change the audio setup,
which is currently a headphone jack stuck somewhat awkwardly on the
side of the headset.
LG’s headset does have one killer feature: you
don’t have to take it all the way off to exit VR. The front of the
headset actually flips up like a motorcycle helmet visor, completely
clearing your field of view. LG isn’t the first to think of this —
Lenovo’s upcoming Windows Holographic headset does the same thing. But we haven’t yet tried a working prototype of Lenovo’s product, so we can’t vouch for its overall quality.
Like the general hardware design, the controllers are
good, but not great. They’ve got the same trackpad as the HTC Vive,
which is excellent. The tracking ring at the top is square instead of
round, which I was told gives better precision, although this was hard
to discern in the demo. The menu buttons have been moved to the top,
which means you can’t accidentally hit them with your thumb, like I did
constantly with the Vive’s controller at first. (Granted, this problem
melted away as I used the Vive more.) The whole thing still feels a
little cheap compared to the Vive controllers, but it’s still not bad
for a development kit.
It’s a little worrying that a new headset is still using the Vive’s controller design, for one reason: Valve showed off a new, much cooler prototype
last fall. Instead of using a somewhat clumsy grip button, that
controller can detect when you open and close your hands, and we were
hoping it would make an appearance at GDC. But if LG is working around
the status quo, it’s possible we won’t see the new version for a while.
Once you’re inside VR, LG’s screen looks no more or less
grainy than most high-quality VR headsets. The environments themselves
are crisp and responsive, and the lighthouse towers work as well as
ever. As with the Vive, there’s a front-facing camera that can
presumably show video from the real world, although I didn’t get to try
it. Honestly, with the flip-up screen, I might not ever need it.
This isn’t LG’s first foray into VR, and its last attempt
— the mobile LG 360 VR — was mediocre. But LG says this is a completely
separate effort, and there’s no reason to disbelieve that. Based on my
very brief impressions, it could well match the Vive’s quality, putting
it at the top of the current headset ecosystem. And both can pull from
the same content libraries. For most people, that will mean Steam, but I
also used the LG headset with HTC’s Vive app. In an interview earlier
this week, Viveport president Rikard Steiber also confirmed that the
HTC’s VR app store will not be exclusive to the Vive.
If you have an HTC Vive already, there’s not a pressing
reason to replace it with LG’s headset. It’s a variation on the same
formula, not a next-generation successor. At the same time, it
introduces some more competition into the current ecosystem, and further
establishes Valve and HTC as independent players in VR. Also, because I
can’t say it enough times: that flip-up screen is great.
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