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Earlier this month at the CES 2017 expo, HTC made some pretty good announcement of its Vive accessories like the Vive Tracker and the Deluxe Audio Strap. While unveiling this accessories to the media, the company also announced that it would be offering a total of 1000 Vive Tracker units completely for free, as a matter of encouragement to the developers.
HTC is recently considering developer applications for the same and interested developers are requested to submit their proposals before the 7th of February. To give you an idea about the Vive Tracker device, it is basically a motion sensor unit that comes with Vive’s own Lighthouse tracking system, built-in. The Vive Tracker unit can be attached to several real-life objects to teleport them in your virtual world.
Image Credit: RoadToVR
HTC’s invite to Vive Developers
HTC has already announced that they would make the Vive Tracker units available for consumers in Q2 of this year. However, before the official release, HTC wants to invite several talented and creative developers to try their hands on this device.
Developers can apply to grab their free Vive Tracker Kit, wherein they need to share their ideas and plans with HTC, and the projects they planned by using the Vive Tracker. Applications with clear goals and innovative new ideas will then be considered by HTC and would be rewarded with free Vive Trakcer developer kit. To make it clear, HTC released a statement saying:
We are lending a limited number of Trackers to developers for free. Companies providing more detail in their application with clear goals on how they plan to use Tracker will have a higher chance to receive one of the developer kits. HTC VIVE reserves the right to recall the VIVE Trackers at our discretion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3dRGoD_EXQ
Interactive Design & Production Studio – DotDotDash – was the first to get its hands on the Vive Tracker. The company has created its own camera accessory compatible with the Vive Tracker. This accessory lets users take physical photos of the VR experiences. It offers multiple overlays and tooltips – like adjusting filtering effects and changing zoom – which you don’t find on the physical device. Take a look at the above video to get a better idea regarding this.
HTC is also considering to open a formal certification process for developers who wants to build their own accessories compatible with the Vive Tracker. However, currently there are slim details regarding this and we would wait for HTC to come up with some concrete plan ahead in this regard.
So, VR Tech geeks and developers out there, this is a great opportunity for you to showcase your talent, get known for the good work and be a proud contributor to this speedily evolving VR tech community.
many companies do launch SDK but do not provide great support which is very discouraging for developers and I hope HTC does not do that becasue I have used this product once and it can be superb for war games specially.
This is something much appreciated! HTC doing it the Google way
I prefer Oculus in general because it just works better, BUT, Vive’s tracking system is waaay better than the Rift’s.