UPDATED 16:51 EDT / JUNE 07 2015

NEWS

Developers unbox recently shipped HTC Vive VR headsets

The ever-amazing and impressive HTC Vive virtual reality (VR) headsets developed by Valve Corporation are now shipping to studios, the company announced on Friday.

The first to receive the Vive Developer Edition include a developers from major movie studios, AAA developers, and small indie teams intent on building their first title. This ship-out is part of Valve’s attempt to get their product out to developers for free to seed the industry and prepare the market for the release of the VR headset.

According to Valve, the developer kit box will include a headset, two Lighthouse base stations (used for positional tracking), two wireless Steam controllers, various cables, and instructions. Essentially everything needed for developers to get started.

Developers who receive the kit will also gain posting rights to the Steam VR Hardware Group forum, a developer community hosted by Valve to facilitate sharing expertise.

The Vive VR headset must compete with a growing potential market of other VR devices such as the Oculus Rift and Sony Corp.’s Project Morpheus. As the VR device market heats up, devices get smaller, lighter, and more comfortable, various companies priming the market must eventually test that market by releasing the device–most plan to do so in early 2016. Oculus Rift already has a massive head start having had a developer kit out for over two years.

Unboxing photos and videos already hitting the web

Devin Reimer of Owlchemy Labs revealed on Twitter that he’s one of the few on the shortlist to receive a Vive Developer Edition.

For readers more interested in seeing the unboxing as a process (in a video) Vancouver Island-based Cloudhead Games published a video unboxing the currently shipped edition of the developer kit.

Cloudhead Games is a gaming studio focused on virtual reality gaming and ran a successful Kickstarter for The Gallery: Six Elements in 2013. The Gallery (official website) at the time was planned for the Oculus Rift, but now that the HTC Vive is prototyping its way onto the market its more than likely the game will also support that device.

Photo Credit: HTC Vive, courtesy of Valve Corporation

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