Overview
Let's be honest: virtual reality (VR) is a nascent market for consumers and nearly non-existent for businesses. VR technology is led by Oculus's Rift Crescent Bay, which still isn't ready for mass consumption, but offers users an immersive environment with high definition imagery and the best movement tracking on the market.
Sony's Morpheus headset should be ready as a PS4 connector this year, but Sony won't commit to a release date, and even if they did, the Morpheus user experience isn't as visually stimulating as Rift Crescent Bay's, and movement tracking is incredibly flawed.
Samsung Gear VR ($249, £157, AU$285) is the most complete VR device on the market, but it only works with the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and is uncomfortable to wear.
With so many possibilities available for consumers and enterprises to make use of VR technology, it's a shame there aren't more devices available. In comes HP…
The HP Zvr Virtual Reality Display (pricing TBD) is a desktop monitor that, when paired with 3D glasses, can provide real-time virtual experiences. Built with four cameras that connect with sensors built into complementary 3D glasses and a stylus pen, the 23.6-inch full HD, stereoscopic monitor tracks your head and hand movements in order to enable you to manipulate on-screen content.
Users can rotate, manipulate, navigate, and zoom in and out of every detail of on-screen content by using the stylus in concert with head movements. For example: if you're staring at a medieval castle on your desktop, you could go around to the side of the castle, you could open the castle's door and enter, you could lift the castle and place it in a different position, among many other possibilities.
Specifically designed for architectural, computer-aided design, education, and scientific content, the Zvr display makes teaching, practicing and demoing more realistic than traditional 2D displays. HP says they envision students learning how to dissect frogs on the machine without having to actually take a scalpel to poor Kermit.
During the middle of 2015 HP says you will be able to project your 3D models to a 2D screen for easy team collaboration. So when the aforementioned student moves the virtual frog's heart and kidneys (in his/her 3D virtual environment), his/her class will be able to watch the dissection in standard 2D.
User experience and early verdict
First off, I darn near broke the display by poking the stylus too hard into the monitor. You have to get pretty close to the unit to see/interact with the screen properly. Once you've situated yourself in the correct position, it's pretty easy to get going. Unfortunately, I sat a little too far away and reached too far forward and poked the monitor with the stylus.
Although HP has a ton of complex use cases planned for the monitor, I was only able to play a very simple VR game that allowed me to rotate objects, move them across the screen, and into portals, where I wound up being transported to alternate environments. The environment was so simplistic, and the objects so undetailed, it's hard for me to determine whether or not surgeons will actually be able to use this tool to navigate the ultra-detailed confines of organs, capillaries and veins.
My movements were tracked fluidly on the headset and with the stylus. There was hardly any lag time and after a few minutes of poking and prodding at the virtual environment you forget you're wearing 3D glasses.
Grabbing objects with the click-and-grab stylus will take some getting used to (almost like using chopsticks), so look for major upgrades to how you handle objects as the display ages. HP is going to want to introduce a wireless stylus for this device at some point - the wire makes object manipulation somewhat uncomfortable because you have to be careful not to pull on the wire that connects from the stylus to the display.
The biggest catch is that the HP Zvr is going to cost somewhere in the mid five figures, according to an HP spokesman. Pricing will be available in the Spring of 2015 and we'll be sure to update this review when more information is available. But if the price stands at mid five figures, you're probably not going to buy this display to play PC games. The Zvr is going to be purchased solely for enterprise use (unless you're just ballin' like that and want to get way, way ahead of the VR curve).
Early verdict
HP's addition to the virtual reality marketplace is a good one. Its 3D glasses, stylus pen and monitor/sensor-based approach to virtual environments provides fluid movements and an immersive experience. Unfortunately, the games I tested on the device were made for child's play, so it's not possible for me to say whether or not it can be used for more complex demoing and teaching. The mid five-figure price tag is going to severely limit the display's market, so we're back where we were prior to this device's unveiling: plenty of hope for virtual reality, but not much available technology.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1IeDKFR
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