It was no secret that Valve was working on a virtual reality headset, and here it is. It will be sold by HTC and will be called Vive. It will let you “truly interact with your surroundings” by tracking your position in a room.

A collaboration between Valve & HTC
Oculus has made headlines for years with its Rift headset, but there is still no consumer version of it. Valve has also been researched virtual reality – or VR – and has even helped Oculus in development of the Rift.

But that has not stopped Valve, the company behind Steam and games such as Half-Life, in developing its own version. The Vive will be produced by HTC and uses two 1200x1080 displays, one in front of each eye, with 90 frames per second refresh to offer a very smooth and judder-free VR experience and “photorealistic imagery”. It needs to be connected to a PC.

- "We believe that virtual reality will totally transform the way that we interact with the world. Virtual reality will become a mainstream technology for the rest of the world. Attending real-time concerts, learning history, reliving memories." said Peter Chou, HTC’s CEO.


Valve and HTC has also developed a game controller and a “base station” that will allow you to get up and walk around in the virtual space by tracking your movement in the real world in spaces up to 15 by 15 feet. It uses several sensors to track you head’s movement accurately to 1/10th of a degree. The controllers will let you manipulate objects in the virtual world, too, HTC says.

Besides HTC’s words there are few details about the Vive headset at the moment. It is unclear how the display technology has been implemented as it is using two displays instead of one in the Oculus Rift. It is also unclear if it uses OLED or LCD technology. HTC says that more details will be announced at the Game Developers Conference later this week.

A developer edition will be available this spring and a consumer version will be released by the end of the year. If you want to know more you can visit HTC’s website here.