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The fun-loving part about technological advancements is that with more players involved in the research and development process, the faster the technology is available and accessible to the majority of the consumers at an affordable price. The same has been the case with virtual reality. Over the past year, we have seen a lot of participation by technology enthusiasts in the VR industry. As a result, VR has witnessed lightning-fast growth with multiple affordable VR solutions available.
Last year, Samsung and Google released affordable mobile VR headsets in an attempt to get more people adopting the VR Tech. Although both of these companies made a significant penetration in the VR market, their mobile VR headsets fell short of delivering the ultimate high-end immersive VR experience of rivals like Oculus and HTC Vive.
However, there is one company, Zeiss, that wants to bridge the gap between the two kinds of VR Headsets (mobile VR and PC connected) with its newly introduced Zeiss VR One Connect. This means that mobile VR headsets will face a dearth of impressive visuals and complex gaming experiences. Zeiss is a world leader in optics and optoelectronics with its own mobile VR Headset, Zeiss VR One, available in the market.
Zeiss VR One Connect
The Zeiss VR One Connect runs PC-powered SteamVR games by sending a pre-rendered display signal to a smartphone that is installed within a mobile VR headset. This will allow you to play games using the Zeiss wireless controllers that are connected to your Android/iOS smartphone via Bluetooth. This also means that all the VR porn games and famous titles like LaDouche, available on VRPorn.com and previously only compatible with the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive will now be accessible to mobile-VR-Headset users as well.
Image credit: Zeiss
However, Zeiss has recommended that users should use the “current” smartphone and any mobile VR Headsets of their choice. Zeiss will also be providing a USB cable to connect a SteamVR compatible computer with a pair of controllers. All the game processing will be done on the PC, but your perspective within the game will be based on your smartphone’s built-in motion sensor and Bluetooth chip.
Image credit: Zeiss
The wireless controller’s internal sensor tech performs 3DoF (degrees-of-freedom) motion tracking. The controller data is then matched with your smartphone sensor data in order to coordinate your hand movements with the image on your mobile screen. However, don’t expect something big like positional room-scale tracking.
The Zeiss VR One Connect is expected to arrive by the end of 2017 at a retail price of $129.
Trinus already has all these same capabilties and its like 10$ to unluck full version. With zeiss your basically paying 130$ for two bluetooth controllers for your phone and my guess is they wont work as well as other solutions. You can get full motion controllers and even roomscale tracking using Trinus for way cheaper…sure it requires you to go out and piece a few things together but its not hard if you follow any of the great tutorial vids out there. I currently use either my iphone or my psvr headset through trinus with 3 old ps3 cameras hooked up and have full room scale capable setup. Also with some of the new windows headsets coming out that utilize inside out tracking my guess is by Q1 or 2018 there is a stand alone headset for under 300$ that will be able to handle the majority of all VR content and pretty much any computer, which we all know at this point the computer required to run VR is where the true expense comes in (current entry level VR ready PCs run around 800$)
Ohh looks nice… But will this Trinus setup also work with mobile VR Headsets?
Zeiss is well respected for their camera lenses. It’s cool to see them getting into VR. My only concern is that this streaming technique might introduce some lag when gaming.
Yeah, you may be right on the issue of lag… However, waiting for this to hit the market and get reviewed
im sure they must have thought about it
This is actually pretty impressive. It’s good to see that Zeiss is innovating, it’s more than just another “smartphone holder” vr headset.
Yes… And the great thing is that the Zeiss VR One Connect will offer compatibility to any other VR headset and not just the Zeiss VR One