The Oculus Rift might just have met its match. Starbreeze, the Swedish game studio behind The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, unveils its own virtual reality headset, and it has some interesting features not even the Oculus Rift can match.
Dubbed the StarVR, the new headset is set to be unwrapped at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) happening right now in Los Angeles, in a demo showcasing Overkill Software's upcoming shooter adaptation of The Walking Dead.
While a number of VR headsets designed for gaming have cropped up in the wake of the Oculus Rift, such as HTC's SteamVR-powered Vive and Sony's Project Morpheus, Starbreeze's latest entry could prove to be the headset that gives the highly publicized Oculus VR a run for its money.
Sporting a field of vision of 210 degrees, the StarVR promises to give its user the widest field of vision in the industry. By comparison, the Oculus Rift and the Vive only offer a limited field of vision at 100 degrees, which does not make them truly as immersive as the StarVR, says Starbreeze.
"People say immersive all the time, but they don't really understand what that means. This is immersive," says Tyler Sparks, Starbreeze producer, in a video introducing the new headset. "What makes StarVR so unique is its wide field of view. A lot of headsets, they're very narrow, it's like a horse with blinders on, so it's not a very immersive experience. But for us, we get to actually have 210 degrees, so you have your full field of peripheral vision, the whole deal. It's like being inside the game."
Accompanying the wide field of vision are two massive 5.5-inch panels with a resolution of 5,120 x 1,440, much more than the Oculus Rift's 2,160 x 1,200. With its pair of Quad HD panels, it is expected that the StarVR will deliver a high level of visual splendor to match the Oculus Rift.
However, Mike Futter of Game Informer, who has had time sampling what the StarVR has to offer, says the new headset has a couple of issues that need to be addressed. An almost inevitable issue that arises with a headset equipped with so many components is the weight of the device. Futter says the StarVR is too heavy to be strapped to the head for hours.
He also notices some pixelation and the screen door effect, where the lines separating the images become visible as in a screen door. Oculus VR had to contend with such problems in the past but has found a solution, which it demoed last year. Starbreeze, meanwhile, has been working on the StarVR for only a year, and it is likely that the firm will add improvements to the headset as it goes.
StarVR is the result of Starbreeze's acquisition of French VR firm InfinitEye. The headset runs on the Valhalla engine, which "supports not only 3D but is fully virtual reality ready, and proofed on several headsets currently on the market."
