Vive Pro Eye

I’m really interested in the eye tracking on this and how well the foveated rendering gets adopted, etc. But it’s not an instabuy for me for those very reasons. I am not sure but bet applications will need to support that feature and if so, that will make for a patchwork of support. Need to know more before I can get excited but it could be a game changer and finally start drawing a line on compute requirements.

It also throws up questions about those leaked Valve headset pictures. JDI is supposedly shipping displays in bulk Q2 to a VR headset manufacturer and this would seem to indicate it’s not HTC.

I have a Pro already and get good frames in the applications I run. I don’t see upgrading to an Eye for me just for the eye tracking if the resolution is the same. Maybe foveated rendering will be a driver-supported thing and if so, it might make it worthwhile.

But I’m really curious who will be making headsets with the 4k JDI displays.

Eye tracking and foveated rendering will be essential to take resolutions beyond the Pro/Eye/Odyssey level. Support will probably eventually be ubiquitous even if it has to be done app by app.

If it can be handled in the driver - and maybe it can - that would be ideal and really help with adoption since there would be real incentive for people to get headsets with eye tracking as soon as they are available.

Time will tell. I want eye tracking, foveated rendering, and high resolution. That will make sims crazy. We’re getting closer...

What games can the eye tracking system play? Do you buy vive pro or wait for vive pro eye?

This is a hard one. I don’t know what has been announced or if anything has. Also don’t know if support has to be provided in the application or if it’s a driver thing.

If it’s app by app support, I’d bet it’s going to be a while to see it supported much and possibly a number of apps won’t ever support it. I don’t know but my guess is it will take driver support and then app support.

This is the problem with new features like this. Without wide support there won’t be much market for headsets that support it. And without good market share, devs don’t have much motivation to support it.

So in short, who knows? Maybe others here have heard something but I haven’t.

OTOH, Japan Display said in a financial statement last year that they would start production-level shipments late this month of 4k panels to a VR headset manufacturer. Valve "leaked" photos of VR headsets in test that had a monitor with a July 25, 2018 date visible that had JDI written on labels. The only way I can see to use 4k displays at full resolution is with eye tracking, foveated rendering, and using the VirtualLink port on 20 series video cards.

If that’s all correct, then we should see Valve, or some company associated with Valve, announcing another headset sometime soonish with foveated rendering and eye tracking besides HTC and the Vive Pro Eye. That could be really good as Valve pushing Nvidia and publishers both coukd get support everywhere we need it to get it more widely accepted but I’d still guess that it would be a while to get widespread support.

Now might be a good time to wait if you are looking at the high end but no idea if that’s even good advice. Don’t know when or even if the mystery headset is still on track or how much it will cost. And don’t even know when or how expensive the Eye will be. I can tell you the Vive Pro is a good headset. The Eye is probably even better even if you can’t use the tracking for a while. Other than that, who knows?

If I was looking at the Eye, I’d consider waiting to see if anything shakes loose on the mystery headset. You can’t get the Eye yet anyway.