I am a big fan of open source stuff, so when I heard that Razer and Sensics have decided to team up to bring an open source virtual reality platform to the VR space, I knew I had to talk to them.

Rev VR Podcast – Episode 93

According to Yuval Boger, CEO of Sensics, his company has over ten years of virtual reality work under its belt, mostly in commercial and military areas. Chris Mitchell, Product Manager at Razer, explains how his company’s continued success in the high-end peripheral area made this partnership an obvious one.

There are two parts to OSVR, the hardware and the software. On the hardware side, you have the Hacker Development Kit, which will give hardware developers a chance to tinker and exchange components to see what they can do to improve on it. On the software side, you have OSVR acting as a sort of middleware, a communication driver between software and (hopefully) any type of VR peripheral you can imagine. To me, OSVR’s software sounds like a logical option for game developers who are struggling to decide which VR devices to support.

The ultimate goal of OSVR is to offer developers a “buffet” of options to choose from when considering their VR hardware and software. Ultimately, an open source platform will grow VR into a consumer ready industry that will be ripe for the picking.

With their unveiling at CES, and the recent announcement of 13 new partners (now totaling 38), OSVR is ramping up and ready to show off their goods at GDC 2015.

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If you are interested in partnering with OSVR, or would like more information about this project, visit their website, their Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter.

I want to thank Yuval and Chris for taking the time to share this exciting project with me and the community.

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Direct download of episode 93: MP3 Download

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Reverend Kyle
  • Alkapwn

    Another great podcast! I’m surprised that nobody has commented on this one yet. It was very informative and cleared up a lot of the questions that I personally had about this whole OSVR thing.

    I do have one question in regards to compatibility, if anyone from OSVR can chime in. With things that are specific to certain pieces of hardware, for example the Oculus Rift’s low persistence and time-warp, how does that get handled? Is that handled by OSVR or Oculus runtime?