After a decade on the back burner, virtual reality is hot again. Most of this resurgence is down to Oculus, the headset maker that Facebook acquired
for $2 billion this past March, but Sony is also making waves with a forthcoming headset called Project Morpheus.
The rub is that the Oculus only runs games designed specifically for its hardware, and Morpheus won’t work with anything but the PlayStation 4. That limits the number of games available to players, and creates more work for the developers interested in creating these types of immersive games.
But a Chinese company called ANTVR thinks it has hit upon a winning strategy for attracting more game developers to this new breed of VR headsets. It’s open sourcing part of its headset technology so that it can plug into multiple gaming consoles and even accommodate other kinds of hardware.
The designs for the ANTVR headset itself and its nifty convertible game controller are proprietary technology. But the designs and firmware for the wireless receiver–which sits between the headset, the controller, and the gaming console–are open source. That opens up a range of possibilities, such as creating custom controllers or using the ANTVR controller to control other devices.
For example, ANTVR co-founder Qin Zheng says you could write software for using ANTVR to control a Roomba vacuum cleaner robot, perhaps using the headset to watch the feed from the bot’s on-board camera. You could also make your own version of the receiver specifically designed to work with a game console or device not officially supported by ANTVR. “You can use the signal straight from the USB port,” Zheng says. “We will give the developer all the documentation and libraries.”
But open source isn’t the only way ANTVR plans to attract players and developers. The controller, which can be converted from a directional pad into a gun or light saber, is a major attraction. And Zheng says the headset’s aspherical lens will make it possible to display games that weren’t designed to work with ANTVR, which is something that Oculus can’t do because the spherical lens used by Oculuss distort normal images.
That also makes it harder to develop Oculus games, Zheng says. “It takes [developers] a lot of work to make their images work with Oculus,” he says. The aspherical lens should also make it far easier for developer to design games that work with the system. And since it will support Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, and Android out of the box, both players and developers will have plenty of options.
One challenge the company will face, though, is building trust as a newcomer to market. And after the Oculus acquisition, you might expect the gaming community to be cautious about crowdfunding another virtual reality platform. Zheng downplays that possibility. “We won’t sell the company,” he says. “I don’t think there is a very appropriate company who can work with us to finish our dream of the virtual reality.”
We’ll have to wait and see about that, but ANTVR has already raised over $177,000 dollars on Kickstarter and is well on its way to raising its goal of $200,000. That may have something to do with the price: the sets are being pre-sold at cost, which is $300, in order to get a foothold in the market.
Next, Zheng says the company will bring its own smart glasses product to market, which is what he actually set out to do a few years ago when he started working with head mounted displays. The glasses and the virtual reality system share the same goal. “I want it to be universal hardware for a lot of developers, makers and ordinary gamers,” he says. “I wanted it to be open for everyone.”
