HTC Vive will soon go wireless - with a £175 upgrade kit
The £175 wireless VR solution was born out of the Vive X Accelerator project
One of the enduring problems plaguing high-end virtual reality is the tethered nature of the headsets. Regardless of manufacturer, you'll have a lengthy umbilical cord chaining you to the base PC.
Sadly, it's been an unavoidable limitation of the technology - a headset capable of actually rendering and processing virtual reality would probably weigh enough to snap necks and generate enough heat to melt brains, so the cable is a requirement, delivering power and signal to the helmet while the computer did the hard work.
That sense of being restricted - and the trip hazard a cable causes - was one of our biggest frustrations in our HTC Vive review. It seems the Taiwanese company has listened to the complaints though, and partnered with TPCAST to develop a "tether-less VR upgrade kit".
TPCAST's kit was created under the Vive X Accelerator program, and revealed at Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's 11/11 shopping event. The date marks Singles Day, a day meant to celebrate people's pride in being single, and that has become China's answer to Black Friday.
"We are very proud and supportive of teams that develop great accessories and game changing peripherals to the Vive ecosystem," said Alvin W. Graylin, China Regional President of Vive, "The fact this was developed in such a short time, and delivers such high quality is remarkable. It will allow Vive customers worldwide to gain untethered mobility in VR from their existing devices, while satisfying the biggest feature request of potential PC VR customers."
The TPCAST add-on - which is currently being marketed as a 'preview edition' - promises Vive owners the ability to modify their headsets to "have a fully untethered experience without compromising quality". The only catch is, neither HTC nor TPCAST have clarified how it works.
From the image released, it appears to be an in-home streaming solution, where the computer continues to do the grunt work of processing VR games and experiences, and then beams it to the TPCAST peripheral. The Vive's connector cables can be seen plugged into the add-on too, supporting this possibility.
This is further backed up by Graylin telling Upload VR that the kit offers no "noticeable difference" in terms of latency. Latency is the big hurdle in making wireless VR over a local network a reality - VR games are massively power- and data-intensive, so pushing that out and responding to player controls can easily lead to lag.
TPCAST's rig may not be the only option for going wireless on Vive in the future. Bulgarian studio Quark is also prototyping a wireless adaptor for HTC's hardware, though no release date is known.
"The way the headset will become wireless is through a small gadget, connected to the headset, but not wired with cables to the PC itself," Quark said of its technology. "Instead, the small transmitter, that may be placed in the pocket of the user, sends and receives the signal between the PC and the HTC Vive through Wi-Fi."
The TPCast preview edition is available to preorder in China for ¥1499 (£175), and expected to be delivered in Q1 2017. Perhaps to avoid the fulfillment problems of the original headset's release, orders will be prioritised to "existing customers who can provide a valid Vive serial number".
At present, there is no indication of when the TPCAST upgrade kit may be available to UK Vive owners. Hopefully, actual specifications on the hardware will be revealed before it is.