The Vive’s Lighthouse tracking system is an impressive piece of tech, considering it boasts sub-millimeter, 3D room-scale positional tracking for a VR headset and hand controllers using lasers. But haven’t you ever wished the Vive controllers could be used for more than just hand tracking? Maybe you want a Lighthouse-compatible harness for your dog, a cool gun accessory, or maybe you just want to keep track of your beer while in VR? Now’s your chance to pitch your crazy accessory idea to HTC.

HTC will be running the accessory contest through its Viveport community forum, and letting members vote on their favorite entries. The top three ideas—whether they’re created for the Vive headset, controllers, base stations, or all three—get a free HTC Vive system. The grand prize? The lucky winner could have their idea 3D printed into reality.

Potential designers may want to get out their reading glasses however. HTC maintains in their lengthy contest rules that the winner’s design is to exceed no more than $1,600 USD in cost when it comes time to 3D print—but doesn’t clearly say whether you’re allowed to slap on Lighthouse sensors to everyday objects or not. Considering the rules explicitly state that all aspects of the design “must be solely owned by or licensed to [you] or in the public domain,” it’s safe to say most people won’t be able to just pop on individual sensors to everyday items like a beer koozie. After all, Valve’s Lighthouse sensor technology is protected under a royalty-free license, but you can only obtain it after going through a $3,000 course.

See Also: New Images for 2nd HTC Vive Developer Kit Supposedly LeakedSo you’re probably better off designing around the hardware than making your own from the ground up.

SEE ALSO
HTC Vive Accessory Store Now Stocks Things You Actually Need

Design submissions must be uploaded to the Viveport Community by October 30th with the contest officially ending on November 7th.

HTC Vive Accessory Contest

Note: Only legal residents (18+) of the following countries can enter to win: United States, Canada (excluding Quebec), United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Poland, Austria, Belgium, Russia, Thailand, Singapore, India, Mexico and Japan.

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.


Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • RipVoid

    Things like this is why I give HTC and Valve accolades. They are actually open to new ideas and want to push the boundaries of VR.

    • ShiftyInc

      While true, it’s also very lazy behavior to let others come up with ideas for your company.

      • Bryan Ischo

        False dichotomy. Try again.

      • RipVoid

        I think its commendable. They don’t act like they have all the answers and dictate what they think the community wants. They are engaged with the community.

        • Get Schwifty!

          Methinks the naivete runs deep in this one…. if you cant see that the primary purpose of this is to get some essentially free buzz around Vive while the Touch is in progress along with Oculus Connect and the PSVR news to boot you are blind. Not saying it’s necessarily a bad idea or not worthwhile, but you would have to be kidding yourself that there isn’t another point to the exercise. HTC/Vive are not “progressive minded, good guys” LOL.

          • RipVoid

            Of course they want buzz. That is why you do a contest. I didn’t say they were “progressive minded good guys.” That is you putting words in my mouth. They want to make a profit just like any other business.

            But, I will say, HTC/Vive is the system that is setting the standard for the industry right now. And the ‘buzz’ they are creating is positive, unlike some others.

      • David Herrington

        LOL… Valve and HTC have already used their own ideas. Why handicap your company by only using 2-4 designers, when you can have 100’s to 1000’s.
        A very smart person once said, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

        • Blake Schreurs

          You appear to be equating ideation with design. The two are very different ideas in very significant ways.

          • David Herrington

            Yes yes, your hate is noted. Please see above post.

      • Moose

        You are implying that HTC is only doing that. Please drink bleach.

      • Blake Schreurs

        I work for a research facility. I have learned some ugly truths about ideas.

        Ideas are cheap. I come up with ideas all the time and give them away for free. They take almost nothing to create, nothing to distribute, and interesting ideas are remarkably common.

        Making actual things from ideas is both risky and expensive. In technology, it takes dedicated teams with special skills to come up with even simple products.

  • The contest itself is kinda…. shady. They encourage you to get “Friends and Family” to upvote your entry, and leave the entire contest to the “community”. I don’t think they are interested in anyone’s ideas, the whole contest is just a silly promotion. I wouldn’t put too much work into this if I were you. I think alot of brilliant and hardworking people will find themselves very disillusioned by the results of this contest.

    I’m also *kinda* wondering what would stop this contest from being rigged? Use a bot-network, go flood it. I don’t think they care about the results at all.

    • RipVoid

      I think you’re missing the point. This is more about community engagement. They want to see where the ‘VR enthusiast’ wants the technology to go.

      • OgreTactics

        Obviously they don’t. And you’re right, this is what I call “momentum” ie. not just a vague “enthusiast” party where everybody is drinking the Montain-Candy-View kool-aid waiting for miracles by taking random and frantically stupid marketing and conception decisions, but the real-world ticking market clocks that won’t wait another 2 years for VR to pick-up before it falls in oblivion again.

        Ask your friends if they’ve heard about VR, 99% of them will tell you “yes”, ask even your parents, they might have heard of it so much it’s been around in popular culture. So not only are people not “waiting” to get into VR, but if they don’t actually start seing reasons and practical entertainment, creative or work usage…they’ll simply give-up and dub it a fad.

    • OgreTactics

      Yup, hate that sort of contest. In fact it’s pretty stupid knowing that they’re potentially getting 000,000 or even millions dollars patent ideas from people on the internet, just so that it can be ruined by one of those counter-productive vote system?

      • RipVoid

        Are you serious? If you have a “million dollar patent idea” don’t be an idiot and submit it to a contest. Ideas can’t be patented anyway. As someone below noted, ideas are easy. Its the development of those ideas that is hard and risky.

        • OgreTactics

          Ideas can be patented in China and in the US…no wonder they are the most competitive and innovative countries of the world. An idea is EVERYTHING when executed. That’s 60% of start-up and companies fail after a year or so in most countries: most people don’t have ideas, and the whole conception that goes behind (that’s the real work).

          • RipVoid

            As you said, “when executed” (isn’t that the same as developed?) An idea by itself is worth nothing.

            Most people do have ideas; lots of ideas. Most of them suck and even the ones that don’t, most people will never invest the time or resources to “execute.” Start ups fail because they lack the funding and competence to “execute.” Executing on the idea is where the value is, not the idea itself.

            I don’t know about China but ideas alone can’t be patented in the US. Inventions are patented. Develop (execute) the idea into a design or prototype. If the developed idea is new and not obvious then perhaps it can be patented.

            If you have a great idea that you plan to develop into a million dollar business then please don’t submit it to a contest. If you don’t plan to execute it then you might as well.

          • OgreTactics

            1. That’s a completely different and interesting conversation. But I’m going to go completely of-rails: I don’t believe in idea, competence or entrepreneurship. I believe in 50% conception, which spans from the initial idea to the planification of it’s strategy, execution and communication in the real-world, and 50% execution of that conception. Most start-up fail because they don’t know shit about conception, and sell you non-sensical service and product that had 10/30% of failing from the beginning, while you could tell for most start-ups or products (except Snapchat) that they had a 80-90% chance of succeeding because they were well conceive horizontally and vertically.

            2. You can patent anything, even concepts like shapes or colours in US, and China just aligned itself. Only in Europe can you not patent ideas and concepts. And by ideas, I don’t mean words, I mean a described concept or design.

  • Can someone please submit and win with

    – Headset holder, and controller charger stand (i.e. like the PSVR charger stands)
    – Ring of sensors that fits around a camera lens, for mixed reality filming
    OR
    – A $10 moulded bit of plastic to holster a controller in, that I can mount securely above a camera for mixed reality filming (better than our current velcro straps we’re using).

    Edit: If anyone fancies modelling the last one and putting it on thingiverse for 3D printing that would be great. :-)

  • Blake Schreurs

    Accessory ideas:

    1) Wrist straps which are manufactured correctly
    2) Spare controllers
    3) Customer service that isn’t crap

    Not that I’m bitter or anything.

    • J.C.

      1: $5 on Nintendo’s site gets you a pair of good straps, shipped.
      2: They already sell spare controllers. $129.
      3: Yeah, can’t help you there. It really is garbage.

      • Blake Schreurs

        1) It’s $6 as of last week (I think Nintendo caught on that other folks were buying the straps and moved from near-cost to small profit margins). A cheap fix to be sure, but I would have preferred the ounce of prevention over the pound of cure… Which really boils down to #3.

        2) The controllers have yet to be in stock from my experience, which is indistinguishable from not having them… Which also basically boils down to #3.

        So I guess the #1 accessory that I’ve just asked for three times is better customer service.

  • David Herrington

    Is every VR company in this to make money and further their idea of VR? Absolutely.

    But while companies like Oculus and Sony are all about “exclusives” and exclusivity. Valve is taking another step toward inclusion. Does anyone REALLY believe that this is Valve’s best idea to further development, OR is it mainly just about sending a message that they love their fans and want to show some love and inclusion of a MINOR development decision?

    In their case this is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation. Inclusion of fans, check. Drum up good PR, check. Come up with a fantastic accessory idea, very possibly. Infuriate haters of Valve and open development, (we will see who responds to my post ;)

  • Off the top of my head…

    1. Wearable cable management pole that lifts the cables away from you (uses rotary joint to allow continuous 360 turning).

    2. Tracking paint or ink. You just put the special paint/ink on something and it can be detected and tracked, allows for tracking multiple markers.

    3. Body avatar – software app + camera that allows you to 3D body scan yourself and use as your 3D avatar linked to steam account, games via SDK can represent the real you in them rather than a 3D generic model.

    4. Wireless HDMI & USB sender/receiver with wearable battery pack to power the headset

    Geoff

    • Douill’ Jbt

      Hey, take a look at uraniom.co for #3 ;)

      • Ha, All they need now is for games to support the SDK so you can use your own avatar. Or portals to allow you to upload it as your profile model (instead of pic).

  • zoie

    decals that make the headset and controllers light up sold for $5 to $10

    • zoie

      actually $1 to $5

  • disqus_JUditrzDyn

    Gloves that attach to the vibe controllers

  • John Louie Muncada

    How about customize your own htc vive but have a charge of $10 or have character design like pikachu edition htc vive joystick

  • Daylan

    1)Something like weights to put on the controllers due to the fact that many people complain about how shooting with light controllers is confusing
    2)Boots to kick things around in VR
    3)Arm and leg pads so the game will have a better understanding of what your doing with your legs

  • carmine

    hi my name is carmine and i gust see this new pruduct on youtube and is umbelivoble e will but need same work not the grafic the grafic is porfect ,the equement are missing same parts like i think will be better whet same glovs for game tuching game or same a simulate pistolrifle for action game, sorry for my englisch,

  • Pie Guy

    Definitely some spare controllers, and also a small camera (that you can disable) to see the outside world, while in gameplay.

  • Grayson David

    a car seat with a petal set and wheel with full car things like gear shifter windsheld wiper thing just every thing btw im 11

  • Martin Švihora

    I think it should be cool if they will be a cover on a nose and thanks to that cover,you can smell things in the game

  • TheRed PandaGamers

    Accessory idea. 1.Make a camera on the HTC vive so people can record from that because It sounds like a good idea to me.

  • M.H.

    1) Vive Hoverboard
    2)Case for Controller and Vive
    3)Player Tracking Camera Robot for more humans
    4)Immersive Floor
    5)Analogous Cup-and-Ball for HTC Vive Controllers

  • bobross

    less cables

  • soufiane

    i think legs controller will be nice

  • soufiane

    skin games for the vr like minecraft

  • Chicken

    Custom Headsets and controllers Along with a vr treadmill

  • John sibi

    OMG! THE Accessory ideas IS WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Wrist straps which are manufactured correctly Spare controllers Customer service IS REALLY GOOD. I REALLY LOVE THE HTC VIVE my friend have it i wish i have it

  • DUDE

    Hi! I have an idea about special gloves that make it feel like your touching something but really its just in the game. With this idea, the price for the HTC vive could go from $499 to $999! I think this would be a really good improvement to not only have more people buy it, but also get more when they do buy it. Please respond even if you don’t like this idea, just so I know you saw it. Thanks in advance!