Thursday, October 15, 2015
Valve room scale survey
Earlier this week Valve published the results
of a "Room Scale VR Survey" completed by 2008 members of its VR
Community. The findings: 860 (~43%) of respondents said their gaming PC
was in their bedroom and 1,393 (~69%) said they were not willing to move
their PC to accommodate a VR experience. The average space respondents feel they can devote to VR is about 8.5'x 9'. Why does this matter? Well, last March, Valve and HTC debuted the HTV Vive virtual reality system
consisting of a VR visor, a couple of custom controllers and a tracking
system the allows the user to wander around a 15'x15' area. 'While the
Vive system certainly sounds impressive I've had questions about how
practical it'll be,' writes Peter Smith. 'How many people have a 15'x15'
clear area in front of their PC? Turns out, not many.' 'According to
this survey at least, using all of the 15'x15' space the system can
track is going to leave most users frustrated,' adds Smith.