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Microsoft VR headset rumoured to arrive at E3 next year

by Mark Tyson on 18 December 2014, 10:05

Tags: Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)

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A new report from Taiwan's DigiTimes suggests that Microsoft is readying to mass produce "a head-worn virtual gaming device". The device is expected debut in June - at the E3 show in LA.

In November we heard that Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick had tried an 'enhanced reality' product at Microsoft HQ. He described it as follows: "The demo that I had was at Microsoft's headquarters in a room given over to this [technology], and you had an immersive headset on, and there are characters that appear to be real, and you're interacting with the characters and they're not real, and it's pretty extraordinary," reports GameSpot.

As is often the case, the DigiTimes sources come from the "upstream supply chain," the contract manufacturer companies in Taiwan. The sources indicate that Microsoft's hardware team, developers of the Surface tablet, are making plans with Taiwan manufacturers to mass produce the head-worn device in time for E3, which takes place in June.

As Sony pushes forward with its Project Morpheus is it believed that head-worn VR products will become a new front line in the competition between the PS4 and Xbox One. It's entirely possible that Sony's VR headset will be readied within a similar timeframe to clash directly with Microsoft's plans.

Microsoft is said to have been planning such a VR/AR device since 2010. Previously seen documents contain an illustration, as above, showing people gathered around a large TV wearing special glasses that wirelessly connect with a games console. Other previous mentions of a Microsoft VR/AR project are tagged by the codename 'Fortaleza,' or 'fortress' in Portuguese.



HEXUS Forums :: 2 Comments

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Its good that Microsoft are getting on board (well based off this rumour) but the problem is that the current gen consoles ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH, sorry but they struggle to play games at 1080p above 30 FPS, most games dont even run at 60FPS yet and with virtual reality you do need a MINIMUM FPS of 75 (preferably 90) not average fps. If you have low FPS its a horrible experience and its one not worth visiting, its also the problem that you need a high density display so for instance the Oculus Rift Dk2 is a 1080p screen but the render of the image is 1440p and the screendoor effect is very prominent and not what I would call a consumer experience so in the consumer version its said to be a 2k screen, this will require you to render the image at 3k! People with 780Ti GPUs are struggling so a console will certainly not be possible.

Hope to god the ps4 and xbox one VR experiences dont ruin it for people because it is one of those things your brain can easily associate with being bad if you have a terrible implementation!
I agree - the consoles aren't really powerful enough. There's no point in a 1080p headset if you're playing a game at 30fps, or even 720p. I'd rather play that on a monitor or TV, where it wouldn't make me feel sick…

If they're going to invest in VR, they should at least make sure the hardware can run the games properly. That's why, at least right now, VR is for PC in my opinion