Innoactive has answered the call of nomadic VR developers on-the-go with a super slick portable pop-up, self-powered Vive station in a case, it’s called the VR Suitcase and it’ll put a serious dent in your wallet.

Whilst the HTC Vive offers incredible room-scale VR experiences, no one could ever describe the SteamVR powered package as compact. In fact, anyone wanting to travel with a Vive system and the requisite PC to power it faces a substantial pile of kit to not only carry, but to setup and tear down for each demo session.

Innoactive saw this as a challenge they wanted to tackle and set about designing and building a portable solution which will allow anyone to travel with and then quickly pop-up a room-scale demo station wherever they are, without the need to search for a PC to hook it all up to or indeed the numerous power outlets to plug it all into. Their solution is now available to buy, is extremely slick and very, very expensive.

03-components-of-vr-suitcase-for-htc-vive

 

The ‘VR Suitcase’ tackles a series of problems with neat solutions. Firstly, delivering a VR Ready laptop, one with a GPU powerful enough to drive a VR experience at the requisite 90FPS. In this case an MSI laptop packing an NVIDIA GTX 1060 GPU.

vr-suite-case-1Next, two telescopic SteamVR base station mounts (either of which can be attached to the docking station for a desk-based sit down configuration). These are not only crafted from lightweight carbon fibre but also include batteries mounted in the base to drive the laser base stations independently for up to 8 hours.

There’s the Vive headset of course, and this plugs into a custom built, battery-packing docking station an integrated Vive link box for it all to plug in to (also encased in carbon fiber). Finally, you of course have the SteamVR controllers. All of this folds neatly into Innoactive’s custom packing base.

It’s a pretty impressive and extremely slickly conceived package all told, but before you get too excited, the VR Suitcase is targeted firmly at businesses. That along with some expensive weight-saving build materials is reflected in the price. If you’d like to own a VR Suitcase, you’ll need to shell out EUR 8499 (around $9500) + VAT + Shipping. Even considering the undeniably expensive included components, that’s a hefty sum indeed. However, Innoactive are clearly confident the undeniable practicality of the system will win out and it’s certainly unique, we’ve not seen another company attempt something similar just yet.

vr-suitcase-interior

Our only concerns other than the price are that the GTX 1060 GPU included in the MSI laptop may be borderline in its ability to power some of the more demanding VR experiences out there.

If you’re interested, head over to Innoactive’s website here to check it out.

Newsletter graphic

This article may contain affiliate links. If you click an affiliate link and buy a product we may receive a small commission which helps support the publication. More information.


Paul James
Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • Riley Prescott

    Seems really cool, but they are asking 8.499,00 EUR or $9,500 USD. There is no way it is worth that much.

    • Bob

      Not sure even a wealthy individual would want to waste their money on this.

      • J.C.

        This isn’t for personal use. It’s for software companies to be able to demo their tech easily. There are conventions going on ALL the time, and this is a fast way to set up and show off VR.

        I agree the 1060 isn’t the right thing to put in here. Most companies showing pre-release software haven’t optimized their code yet and it’d need more to keep the framerate smooth. A laptop with a 1080 in it is AT MAX, $4500. Yes, that’s insane, but whatever.
        I agree that getting a Pelican case and the laptop and setting it up yourself is likely cheaper, and allows flexibility in the laptop you use. But some companies seriously just don’t want to deal with that, and that’s who this thing is for.

  • sirlance

    Way over priced…for a 1060?…no thanks

  • Bankushii

    Or just buy a pelican case and build one on your own.

  • bschuler

    Really cool.. but I’d skip the expensive battery packs and sell just a wired outlet option. I am sure that would be more useful and cheap. And where do they envision you demoing where you can’t even use an extension cord? My Vive setup uses stands too so I can take it on the road..but I haven’t yet.

  • DiGiCT Ltd

    Looks good, but way overpriced.
    The case material cost and manufacturing it are less as $100.
    The real cost are the vive and the notebook, all the other stuff is rather very cheap to buy from suppliers/manufacturers.

    Good luck with your sales, i will for sure skip it for that insane price.

  • wowgivemeabreak

    Typical for items targeted towards businesses as business prices always have a huge mark up. A company could sell a pen to a consumer and it’d be $2 while for a business the same pen would be $4.

    The gouging that exists in the business/commercial world is absurd.

  • PeterW

    Guys, it’s a turnkey, battery-powered portable VR environment. Yes I’m sure you could all build it for 20% of the cost – if your time is worth nothing. The kit cost is a fraction of the manpower and development time that goes into content creation and demo time on the road.

    • RogWilco

      Doesn’t matter if it’s 0.0001x the cost of content creation and demo time on the road, if the alternative is 0.00001x the cost, only orgs with shitty accountability in expensing are going to be paying for it. It’s Innoactive’s market to forego though. Priced at $1000 USD (sans laptop, maybe $5k with?) the market would have been 1-2 orders of magnitude larger, which would have probably netted a greater sum than the tens of orders they might get at the current price.

  • VRDRUMMER

    That’s just dumb! I guess they feel like if we can just sell 1 then that’s our goal. Something tells me that we will see a winter 2016 sale event at 99% off retail.

  • Ryun Patenaude

    Well now I can bring my VR whenever my friends make me go camping with them!

  • TheVillasurfer

    If it’s the 1060 6gb vram version then that’ll be more than enough for vr. The 3 gb version wouldn’t be so great but would still work OK. The price of this package however, even for business use, is insane.

    • Charles

      In my opinion, even my GTX 1080 isn’t “more than enough for VR” for a lot of games, since you need tons of supersampling to eliminate pixel swim, which I think is immersion-breaking.

      • TheVillasurfer

        Then your expectations are higher than the technology that currently exists!

        • Charles

          Haha basically. Well there’s the GTX Titan, but that costs way too much. If everyone were a more efficient coder, the 1080 would be more than enough, but there so many games out there with not-so-advanced graphics that take up tons of resources anyway.

          • Wez Blampied

            Titan in a laptop?

          • Charles

            Oh, I forgot this conversation was about laptops. I was talking about generally.

  • David Glenn

    Well, having a Q4 2015 Alienware Laptop with external Graphics card, Vive Pre with tripod gear, cables and a case to pack it in, I figure was a $7K deal and was less portable that this. Oh and I didn’t even factor the $800 for the Vive given that it was a gift from the nice people at Steam! So $9K is not far off the mark!

  • What’s all the fuss about? It’s not intended to be a consumer product. Yes you could DIY all this together cheaper but that’s not the point. If you’re a company that needs to do VIVE demos next week, you order however many of them, no messing around with multiple bags and things breaking on the road, it’s all in the padded case. Simple, Smart, Done.

  • Alex Benz

    I am building one for VR demoing using a pelican 1650 msi gt83vr with duel 1080s in sli, 50 foot light tether and 8 hour battery’s for the lighthouses. If your trying to set up quickly not having to find power for them is nice. And I still payed less than $6000 us

  • Silithas

    6000 euro? are they fucking mental? o.O

  • Base Reality

    If you are looking for something more practical I made this pelican case https://basereality.co/blogs/guides/the-ultimate-htc-vive-traveling-guide

  • Looking for a cheaper solution, we made this GOVR case in differente size :
    https://www.immersive-display.com/en/p/338-carry-case-htc-vive-headset-s.html

  • Equivalent case for only 600€ > http://bit.ly/2tZkLin

  • It is so interesting I was searching for this topic for a long time. I read this article very carefully and now I got all my best information for writing a blog on stretch film hand roll suppliers. I am so glad that I finally find a blog resemblance to my topic. Thanks for this.