It was only a few weeks ago that we saw our first SteamVR 2.0 base station in the wild, shown off at this year’s CES working with Vive Pro, HTC’s upcoming high-resolution VR headset. Now, it appears some developers are already receiving the 2.0 base stations from Valve.

GameFace Labs, the makers of a hybrid standalone VR headset that uses SteamVR positional tracking, tweeted out a picture of the 2.0 base stations (also called ‘Lighthouse’) earlier today. The 2.0 base stations are dubbed ‘Next Generation SteamVR Base Stations’ according to the inside of the box.

The outside of the box designates the base stations as “Prototype – Not For Sale”. It appears GameFace Labs has a haul of 4 boxes, each with presumably two base stations inside.

There’s still no telling when the general public will be able to purchase the 2.0 base stations, which are not backwards compatible with 1.0 sensors – meaning the new 2.0 base stations won’t be compatible with existing HTC Vives or Vive Trackers since they use a different method for sync timing. Newer headsets and accessories using 2.0 sensors, such as HTC Vive Pro the newly revealed Vive Tracker, however will be able to take full advantage of the 2.0 base stations.

Valve previously said they expect 2.0 base stations to ship to licensees in early 2018, but noted that supply will likely be limited initially. Valve further said OEMs will be able to order the 2.0 base stations in bulk (at $60/unit + shipping) from Valve and repackage them as part of their products. HTC currently sells replacement 1.0 base stations for $135/unit + shipping, which could give us some indication of the cost savings from the new base stations.

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Though the bulk units sold to OEMs won’t include any mounting solution, Valve’s Joe Ludwig writes that Valve is “creating a custom wall/ceiling mounting solution,” which they’ll talk more about in 2018. It still isn’t clear if Valve plans to sell 2.0 base stations directly to consumers, or simply though OEMs.

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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.
  • Piotrek

    When do you thing (realistically) Vive Pro will be available to general public? I operate VR Arcade in Poland and want to expand with newest hardware. Thanks in advance – Peter

    • HTC said Q2 of this year… but maybe there will be some little delay

      • mareknr

        I remember, that they was talking about Q1 2018. Not Q2…

      • G-man

        They said q1

  • Wow, they cost HALF of the price… this is impressive!

    • Abloobloo

      Well no that’s just for the stores to get the freaking thing. Store price will always be higher. Probably $80-$90

      so they can make a profit.

      • G-man

        But they will be bundled with a headset too so they wont HAVE to add to the cost of these, they will be adding cost just for their bundle. So their bundle will be cheaper with $60 basestations than it would be with $100 ones

  • DanDei

    Shameless cat-clickbaiting brought me here.

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  • Jean-Sebastien Perron

    Watch” My Experience With HTC Vive Customer Service: A Nightmare – Find Out Why ” on youtube and tell me that you really want to buy a VR from a Scam Company like HTC that take hostage your HMD. Vive will stop working in 2 months if you sweat, so you can’t play games like Gorn with Vive cause you will sweat and it will stop working.

    • RagnarLothbrok

      I have sweated a lot but never caused any problem for over a year so far. There are other major flaws that needs to be fixed with the pro though. And yeah Customer Service is at very poor level, but that’s not a news either. I believe though that with the time they gonna focus more on the flaws and CS. Oculus also has it’s flaws as I have a friend who had to RMA 2 rifts for 1 month.

    • Ian Shook

      I’m pretty sure millions of people, including myself, disagree with you.

    • mellott124

      Never had any issues like you mention.

    • Piotrek

      I totally disagree.
      As I stated above, I run VR Arcade in Poland.
      People very often sweat a lot, especially in the type of games like shooters (Space Pirate Training comes to mind).
      Besides exchanging facemasks, I never had any problems with hardware not working because of sweat.

    • Dafoe

      I have masturbated several times with my Vive on and I’ve gotten some sweat on my headset pads. (Which I throw away and replace after cleaning the headset sparkly clean). No problems over here.

      • Jean-Sebastien Perron

        .. I love your cum-ment, I have not the problem myself because I am not stupid enough to pay 400$ more than an Oculus for an inferior product. But I was sharing a video that I found on youtube. The sweat may not always be the problem, but you got to admit that the HTC support is horrible and probably illegal. The have zero respect for their customers.

        • jj

          yeahh…. no. Nobodys going to spend the time making a video when customer support goes well it only happens when something goes wrong. Fun fact, HTC has a main warehouse in Texas and was hit by i think a hurricane or at least a huge storm that took the building and entire town out. So pretty hard to meet peoples needs when your main warehouse, all the products and all your customers products are 6 feet under water…

    • jj

      we disagree. No headset on the current market has protection against water or sweat. The same conditions that would harm a vive will harm a rift, odyssey and even hololens. And for HTC to be a scam company would be pretty funny cause without them pushing the envelope on vr technologies 4-5 years ago ahead of everyone else, we wouldn’t even have this big of a market.

  • Da Mo (JFlash)

    Is there any reason to buy these if you have V1’s ?

    • JustNiz

      The only thing they improve on over the V1 lighthouses is support for giant play areas by supporting more than 2 lighthouses per setup. Other than that, nothing more.

      • dogtato

        They’ll track better because with 4 lighthouses you won’t have occlusion problems where a device only sees 1 lighthouse.

        So it would also let you use multiple headsets in the same space. I’ve got a big enough area to divide it in two, but if I had two people in vr at once they would occlude each other with just two stations.

      • G-man

        And the fact these have one motor will make them more stable and should reduce the micro wobble that makes using sniper rifles in h3vr difficult

  • brubble

    Yeah yeah new gear……..tell us more about the cat.