<story><title>HTC’s Vive Pro will add more pixels to an otherwise familiar-looking VR system</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/01/htcs-vive-pro-will-add-more-pixels-to-an-otherwise-familiar-looking-vr-system/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nkurz</author><text>&lt;i&gt;(The Vive Pro will also support a tracking-area boost of up to 10 square meters [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;gaming&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;valve-announces-the-first-big-steamvr-2-0-feature-waaay-more-space&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;gaming&amp;#x2F;2017&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;valve-announces-the-f...&lt;/a&gt;], which requires four 2.0 base stations.)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I read this and thought &amp;quot;Hmm, 10 sq meters sounds small.  That about 3.1m x 3.1m (10 ft x 10 ft), which is about the same maximum as the current Vive&amp;quot;. Not impossible, but an odd boast to make about make about the new Pro unit, and funny that it requires more base stations to be able to match the old one.&lt;p&gt;Then I read the link:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;The new base station protocol will only support two tracking boxes at first (just like the HTC Vive), but Valve promises that they&amp;#x27;ll receive an update in &amp;quot;early 2018&amp;quot; to support two more tracking boxes to grow the total tracking range to 10 meters squared, or 32.8 feet squared (1,075 square feet). That&amp;#x27;s quite the jump from SteamVR&amp;#x27;s current max of 11.5 feet squared&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oh, I see now what&amp;#x27;s happening! Instead of 10 square meters, they mean that you that the new version will support a 10m x 10m room (30 ft x 30 ft), which indeed is much greater than the current 3.5m x 3.5m (11.5 ft x 11.5 ft) max.  But their own earlier writeup was so confusing and innumerate that they couldn&amp;#x27;t figure out what it meant!&lt;p&gt;Maybe &amp;quot;innumerate&amp;quot; is too harsh, but how does a technical site like Ars muck things like this up?  Am I being too optimistic when I still hope that both the author and editor should have caught this? Hurried author and no editor?  Or is someone teaching that &amp;quot;X units squared&amp;quot; is a valid way of specifying a square room of X units per side?</text></comment>
<story><title>HTC’s Vive Pro will add more pixels to an otherwise familiar-looking VR system</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/01/htcs-vive-pro-will-add-more-pixels-to-an-otherwise-familiar-looking-vr-system/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>modeless</author><text>Higher resolution screens are great, but I find that the screens are often not the limiting factor for image quality in my current setup. The optics blur everything outside the central region and introduce light smearing artifacts. The head mount makes it difficult to keep my eyes in the sweet spot of the lenses. My GPU isn&amp;#x27;t powerful enough to drive the supersampling required to reduce aliasing to an acceptable level in many games, because devs aren&amp;#x27;t paying enough attention to aliasing.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ll be interested to see people&amp;#x27;s impressions of the new optics and head mount, but I probably won&amp;#x27;t be buying one until the next generation of GPUs is out, along with the new lighthouses and controllers and wireless support. Maybe a year from now or so.</text></comment>