Hello & HTC Vive - Out of the Box

Introduction

Hello everyone, to my brand new blog.

I've been considering starting a blog for some time. Partly inspired by my wife, who has been running her own blog for 6-12 months, and partly because I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things and would probably enjoy getting that out there.

What has stopped me until now is considering what would make my blog interesting to anyone versus anyone else's. If I maintain a blog I want to know it's of interest to at least some folks, so I'm not really happy to just write about the same old crap as someone else or just have a blog offering opinions with no substance. Why does anyone want to read my thoughts on Brexit or Trump or anything else as opposed to the millions of other people on social media who like to infect the world with their nonsense?

So I've been waiting for that "killer app", which I now have, in the form of an HTC Vive headset. The VR industry is very new, really only 1 year old from the customers' perspective, and still too expensive for most people, and so I feel here is an area where I could help inform people about some things that might be of particular interest.

So there's a point to note about me, I do love my gadgets. I also love my car, and my house so maybe I'll talk about those later as well.

I should hasten to add I also love my wife above all else of course, but I'm not going to start writing blog posts about my wife so that's why she didn't get a mention before now (hello wife).

I've been building up to buying the HTC Vive for several months, which has given me time to:

1. Do a lot of research
2. Try out some cheaper stuff whilst I build up to the expensive full blown VR system

Right now I've had the headset for only 3 days and I already have loads to talk about, so expect my first few blog posts to be on this subject.

So... heading into blog post #1 properly like.....

HTC Vive - Out of the Box

Very First Impressions

HTC Vive Box in the Delivery Box

Having dropped £759 buying this from PC World (and not Game, another blog post there), anyone would obviously be keen to be reassured that they can see where their money went, and first impressions are good.

The box itself looks good quality, opening it up reveals a introduction note on the top, underneath the note is a nicely padded interior with many sections containing the many pieces of equipment. So it is quite a joy to take all the pieces out and inspect them one by one. A quick inspection of the note is urging you to go to a website to walk you through the setup process (another blog post, spot the theme).

HTC Vive Box - Exciting!

Most of the bags are mainly opaque, you can only see a little of the interior, but it's obvious which bag contains the headset, so obviously you'll head there to get a great first view of the main piece of kit you spent all that money on.

Overall, I must say, HTC have done a great job of laying out the packaging so that you continue with the sense of excitement (and relief) to make you happy that you just spent so much money.

Introduction Note

 

What's in the Box

The highlights are:

• The introduction note right on the top, referring you to website to walk you through the setup process.
• The main headset of course
• The other main pieces of equipment are the 2 hand controls, 2 room-scale trackers and the video/USB junction box.



Nicely laid out contents

• And you also get a lot cables and plugs in various bags as well

Overall, you get a lot of bags of equipment, and you might start to get daunted as to how complicated this is going to be to setup, but I can assure you now, you can place your faith in the walk through process. The most complicated bit, and definitely something you should consider, is the requirements for room scale. Regarding the hardware, it is the problem of setting up the room scale trackers. The reason this is tricky is that you either need 2 metre tripods or be handy drilling holes. There are one or two other major points regarding setup, but you can check my blog post on that for more details.
All I will say now is I did find one very important thing missing from the box contents that may be a stumbling point for many people, and that is a DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort cable. More to cover there when I talk about installation in the next post.

You might also ask why I bought the HTC Vive rather than the Oculus Rift, considering the price drop and hand controls added to the Rift. There'll be more on that later as well.

Overall

The HTC Vive does say "quality", which is what you'd expect for the cost, but nonetheless it is still gratifying to actually get it. I'm not so easily impressed myself, I like to think I take a more objective viewpoint than most, which is why I say that as well as generally being happy myself with the grand opening of my latest investment, I can see that clearly a lot of thought has gone into the design of the packaging and the overall experience of the user when they first unveil their latest gadget. The VR industry is still very young, and a lot of doom sayers will tell you it will go the way of 3DTV, so it is vital that this stuff sells to people as much as possible. It's good to see HTC doing well here.

Coming Soon

Stay tuned for more exciting installments of Work to Live. :)

• HTC Vive - Installation
• HTC Vive - First Few Days Impressions
• VorpX - Any Good? (Your Older Games in VR)
• No Wonder Game Are Struggling
• Google Cardboard - How Does it Compare to Full VR?