StarVR One, the ultra-wide field of view (FOV) VR headset, has traveled a long and winding path on its way to launch since it was first announced in late 2018 that developers and enterprise would be able to apply for hardware. Now the Taipei-based company has detailed price and availability in the US, Europe and Asia.

Update (May 4th, 2020): StarVR has detailed its official pricing, stating that their wide FOV headset is now available for purchase by enterprise customers for $3,200 or €2,800, which includes shipping, but excludes local taxes. The news was first reported by MRTV’s Sebastian Ang.

StarVR tells MRTV that since the headset is a b2b product, that price may skew lower based on order quantity. The company further confirmed that although StarVR One is indeed supported through OpenVR, however the number of viewports needed requires software-side changes for the sake of compatibility.

Furthermore, StarVR tells Ang that it’s headset is strictly meant for qualified enterprise customers, and interested parties will have to go through a selection process first (i.e. no prosumers). The original article follows below.

Original Article (April 9th, 2020): StarVR is now available in Japan and Taiwan through a handful of companies, including ELSA Japan Inc., Cybenet Systems, Access Co, and ASK Corporation in Japan, and Ability International Tenancy Co, Otsuka Information Technology Corp. and Axis3D Technology Co. in Taiwan. Availability in mainland China is marked as “coming soon”.

The news was first reported by Mixed Reality TV’s Sebastian Ang.

Pricing is still unclear, although we wouldn’t expect it to stray too far from its originally quoted $3,200 price tag when it was first offered through the developer program in November 2018 (see update). StarVR’s developer program was however indefinitely put on hold a short time afterwards, which was a direct result of its delisting from the Taipei stock exchange and subsequent reorganization from a public to private entity.

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StarVR One, once the result of a partnership between Acer and game developers Starbreeze, is still likely well outside of the reach of consumers, appealing instead to businesses such as VR arcade operators, design firms, and other industrial use cases.

Just the same, when we tried it last back in September 2018 Road to VR Execute Editor Ben Lang was pretty impressed with what he saw:

“From my hands-on time with the headset, StarVR has done a great job of achieving optical comfort. The field of view feels immensely wide, reaching to the ends of your horizontal peripheral vision, without introducing eye-strain or edge distortions that are overtly distracting. The projection of the virtual world feels correct in a way that leaves the user free to soak in the added immersion that comes with such a wide field of view. Getting all of this right is key to Presence—that uniquely deep state of immersion,” said Lang.

The headset’s claim to fame invariably rests on its absolutely massive 210 × 130 degree FOV, dual custom AMOLED displays boasting 1,830 × 1,464 per lens resolution (total of 16 million sub-pixels), and eye-tracking from Swedish firm Tobii.

Check the specs and minimum requirements below:

StarVR One Specs

  • Panel – 2 x 4.77” AMOLED
  • Display resolution – 1,830 × 1,464 per lens resolution, total 16 million sub-pixels
  • Refresh rate – 90Hz low persistence
  • Lens type – Custom Fresnel lenses
  • Field of view – 210-degree horizontal FOV, 130-degree vertical FOV
  • Eye-tracking – Fully integrated Tobii eye-tracking, including Dynamic Foveated Rendering
  • IPD measurement – in-software solution
  • Tracking – SteamVR tracking 2.0 up to two Base Stations
  • Connectivity – 2 x 0.9m Type-C cables, 2 x 5m Type-C extension cables, 1 x 3.5mm stereo headphone jack with microphone
  • Port requirements – 2 x DisplayPort, 2 x USB 2.0
  • Total cable length – 5.9m
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Minimum System Requirements

  • Operating system – Windows 10 64bits
  • Processor – Intel core i7-7700
  • Memory – 16GB
  • Graphics – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080Ti or NVIDIA Quadro RTX5000/dedicated internal graphics card
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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.
  • Rudl Za Vedno

    I’ve tried it at Expo in Berlin and could only said WOW, nothing comes close. This is the future of VR that we want. The only downside I can think of is still a bit bulky design (+massive cable) & so so resolution. If panels could be replaced with 2x4K OLED RGB screens, this would be an ultimate VR experience. Just imagine flying ED or FS2020 with this HMD. Immersion would be surreal.

    • James Cobalt

      Considering their SDK supports foveated rendering, it’d have been nice to see higher res panels. I get it though – they are trying to utilize full stripe OLEDs, and those aren’t easy or cheap to come by. This thing was stuck in Starbreeze’s restructuring red tape for so log that the resolution they settled on years ago is no longer a huge impedance. Consumer headsets can push that many pixels now. Probably looks similar to OG Vive clarity but for your entire FOV.

      • burzum793

        Foveated rendering combined with Nvidia DLSS 2.0 should make 90fps possible even at higher resolution. :) Can’t wait for the next gen HMDs to be available.

      • Justin Davis

        It’s RGB stripe, so there’s no way it’s like Vive clarity, which is pentile.

      • Mradr

        Im sure they exist, but the cost of a 4k OLED full RGB would still be pretty high even if they did switch let alone two of them. Even with FOVR – you still only be getting around 20-30% of your performance back (pixels are still easy to render compare to other things going on in the game), so it would still struggle on like a 2080 for example using dual 4k. With DLSS support it might work better once more games support it giving around a stable 35%, but it too would need to support FOVR witch atm doesn’t. With 3000s just around the bin (later this year) FOVR + Eye tracking + VRS + DLSS + Hardware = 60% performance boost for VR in terms of running dual 4k screens. So next year would seem to be the mark to see such a monster of a headset to take over.

        • kontis

          Im sure they exist

          AFAIK no, they don’t (microdisplays and prototype samples don’t count).

          • Mradr

            Micro-displays count so long as they are in mass production. Agree on prototypes and samples. Also, I did read some where someone was in production of them I just can’t remember who that said they will be out later in 2021.

    • How does it compare to Pimax especially the 8KX?

      • James Cobalt

        They are very different. Despite Pimax’s problems, their Vision line of HMDs is probably the better option for consumers seeking ultra-wide FOV. Each has its pros and cons but this headset’s pros are aimed at enterprise and location-based entertainment companies.

        For example, Pimax has a mechanical IPD. That’s great for a private user who will be in the headset a long time. StarVR One has automatic software IPD. That’s great for a business that cycles users through the headset frequently in short stints.

        StarVR One is RGB-stripe OLED and a larger FOV… but with clarity probably close to the original Vive. Pimax uses lower-contrast LCD and a smaller FOV… but with super high sharpness. Is this for a 15 minute cinematic experience or hours in a flight simulator?

        • Zantetsu

          Most Pimax headsets are LCD too. That’s a big difference.

    • Rosko

      What’s so good about it if its so so resolution?

      • Bumpy

        Yeah, with only ‘mainstream’ resolution, I don’t get the excitement.

        • Mradr

          At the time – it was boasting one of the highest resolutions. From being delayed that number doesn’t look as good as it did back then for the price. One thing it still does have is higher FOV, Eye tracking, and even though it doesn’t have the highest res – it still higher than most HMD out there right now.

          • Nowry85

            People tend to have less bulkier more compact headsets (look for Huawei glasses and the success they made in China: that is a very good indicator of what people want) than what we have now and that is why this kind of headset like Pimax and this one are not going to be the norm, maybe only a few minority will buy it.

          • Mradr

            I say headsets will still be the norm in terms of Oculus Quest than glasses for a while in terms of high performance devices. Glasses still are not ready at small form factor device. It will however be the direction VR/AR will move towards as the future of both.

          • Nowry85

            The ones we will see starting from Q1 2021 are going to be compact form like Vive Proton prototype. Oculus will most probably use this compact form as well the same period.

          • hydzior

            With this fov it’ll be lower for the eye than on current headsets.

    • Can’t believe we haven’t seen a STARVR TWO yet with all the major elements even further upgraded. Just imagine what these guys could achieve four years later. :-o

  • 3872Orcs

    This is a headset I would buy in an instant almost no matter the cost. Though seems like it’s not available in my region, same as Valve Index :(

  • MRobinson

    1464 pixel vertically sounds fine until you consider the vertical FOV is 130 instead of 100,110 for Rift/Vive/Index or 120 for Pimax. 1464 at 130 degrees pixel density is as good as PSVR.

    And would I want the remaining vertical FOV for the added bulkiness? I’m not so certain. We all want more FOV but I think at some point ergonomics and comfort become more important than ability to see the extreme edges of your vision.

    • Mei Ling

      “We all want more FOV but I think at some point ergonomics and comfort become more important than ability to see the extreme edges of your vision.”

      Right I agree. I think that’s where companies with a lot of cash in hand and manpower (like Facebook and Valve) come in; they do the scientific research and R&D necessary to design the optics necessary to allow near-human FOV whilst retaining a small form-factor design.

      Smaller companies like the one that released this headset is obviously “brute-forcing” the solution by jamming in enormous lenses in a huge and bulky design. That’s easy. What’s hard is what the companies I mentioned before are trying to solve.

      • Leon

        That would make sense… except the Index and Quest are so front heavy and uncomfortable for me. Then you try the Pimax and it’s easy lighter despite the look.

        • Mei Ling

          It does make sense because that’s where things are headed. So it seems you’re arguing against having a small form factor, and a bigger fov which doesn’t make sense at all unless you prefer big and bulky looking devices to clamp on your head. That would you put in the minority. Minority doesn’t sell devices.

          The Quest and Index are very early devices in this emerging industry which has only just begun officially a few years ago so obviously weight, and form factor is still an ongoing issue.

          Big and bulky isn’t the only solution to a lighter weight and you better believe companies like Apple and Facebook will not be happy stopping all of their billions of dollars of R&D investments just so they could take the easy route and start selling StarVR one looking devices to the masses.

          • Leon

            That makes sense except I own a Quest, Index and Pimax and know what feels best. And you are just talking.

          • Mei Ling

            Tell that to Bob and Sally who would absolutely love to put enormous devices over their head without having tried VR before.

          • Leon

            Or you. That’s my point all their R&D didn’t make the Quest comfortable or thankfully VR Balance wouldn’t exist.

          • Mei Ling

            What on earth are you talking about? It’s very obvious now that you haven’t been paying any attention to my responses otherwise you would make actual sense.

          • Leon

            Just saying I wish Quest and Index were not so front heavy and felt like I had a giant bulky device attached to my face and wish they were light like the Pimax. Why can’t I wish that?

          • Bob

            Quest is a standalone device buddy so that’s why it’s heavier. Not exactly comparing apples to apples here.

          • Timothy Bank

            I put a Vive audio strap on my Quest and WOW does that make it better…but then I just added $100 to the cost of my Quest.

          • Leon

            VRbalance was even better and much less expensive. ;)

          • mepy

            The headsets can surely become less bulky in width, but not in length and heigth. Vality has an example of how the form factor can become more sleek.

      • James Cobalt

        Pretty sure all the previewers commented this headset was the most comfortable of all the ultra-wide FOV headsets on the market or being developed. Maybe that’s changed with Pimax’s comfort kit.

        • Mei Ling

          There’s no argument against the user experience or comfortableness of this device.

          The point being made here is how major companies are avoiding the development of these big and bulky looking devices in order to appeal to the masses by investing in R&D for the longer term.

          Facebook could easily do something like this but they don’t and hopefully you should have figured out why.

          There’s always a place for these sort of form factor HMD’s (enthusiast market) and I’m not arguing against that so some of the people on here need to stop taking things too personally.

          • mepy

            I think if Oculus still owned Oculus they would have been making a professional version also, but that’s not where Facebook wanted to put it’s R&D resources.

        • MRobinson

          “Pretty sure all the previewers commented this headset was the most comfortable of all the ultra-wide FOV headsets” – of which there are only 3 (Pimax, XTAL, StarVR). Winning first prize in a 3 person race isn’t that impressive or telling.
          I’m sure it’s still bulky and heavy.

      • mepy

        You know I’d rather have 140-150° FOV and better pixel density, than 180-200° FOV and more fuzziness in the when looking at somewhere in VR.

        • Zantetsu

          Have you tried both? If not it’s just conjecture.

          • mepy

            It’s a trade off between a) Higher price b) Lower pixel density c) More peripheral vision for immersion. I “think” 140-160° FOV would be sufficient and thus give a good balance.

    • impurekind

      Well, as long as it’s comfortable then I’d take the bulk over making it smaller but sacrificing everything that actually takes the immersion to the next level, because that’s ultimately the whole point of VR.

      • MRobinson

        Hence why I said there comes a point when bulk becomes more important than FOV.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          mwa not really, I still have the VFX-1 and it’s bulky as hell, but if they can add decent resolution displays in there with wide FOV I won’t mind, even if it becomes as bulky as a motorhelm..

          • MRobinson

            Hi Andrew. All your responses have been your personal preferences, which is fine, but those are your preferences and the majority of consumer market doesn’t share them.

        • impurekind

          OK, your sentence structure is a little confusing to me.

          I’m saying that I think we need to keep increasing the FOV towards the max 220 degrees of the horizontal human field of view (that’s the max number for both eyes together) for the best immersion possible, and we need to worry less about reducing the size of the headset (for now).

          Are you saying the same or not?

          • MRobinson

            The thing is I don’t see any way of increasing the horizontal FOV without increasing the headset dimensions, let alone decreasing it. My experience is direct with optical engineers. Not pin mirrors, nor waveguides, nor polarizer lenses (“pancake”) can both provide the needed FOV as well as optical efficiency.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Well, the image of the PSVR is great, so no problem here.. And bulkiness isn’t a problem as long as the weightdistribution is done properly.

      • MRobinson

        PSVR is better compared to Vive and Rift CV1, worse than 1440p+ OLED or LCD.

      • Zantetsu

        The PSVR lenses are best in class. It’s easier for them because their FoV is slightly lower than PC FoV but … crystal clear from edge to edge and great colors. That’s the benefit of real actual glass lenses instead of the fresnel garbage we’ve been suffering through. The Valve Index compound lenses are better than standard fresnel in terms of edge to edge clarity, but still not as good as PSVR (again with the caveat of having to support a wider FoV necessarily a fair comparison), and the Index has significant glare.

  • gothicvillas

    I will give them 1000usd, no more

    • jimmy

      you wont get it then

      • Hacker4748

        But at least they’ll have the $1000.

        • Priorpeter

          This is like a conversation between Jim and Dwight on The Office.

    • mepy

      I’d pay 1299,- for the headset only.

    • Andres Velasco

      You are not their market.

  • James Cobalt

    I had to check the article date to make sure this wasn’t published on April 1st and I simply missed it.
    WHAT?!

    • Andres Velasco

      Not a prank. I got reply from them already

      • Bob Smith

        What was your question and what was the response.

  • Bro-tastic

    Very hard to understand what person in their right mind would buy a VR headset for 3,200 dollars thats the price of a used car, or 2 rifts 3 quest, 1 valve index and a Samsung odyssey.. or several plane tickets,

    • Leon

      A Business that’s a drop in the bucket… that is why they aim at Enterprise and not consumers. Apparently the Airforce ordered a bunch of XTAL headsets and those are $8000.

    • James Cobalt

      It’s not for consumers. You, as a consumer, get little value from auto-IPD adjustment or machine washable face gaskets. But a business cycling through many users a day? That adds up. And if you’re in LBE, you want to offer an experience people can’t get at home. Why go to IMAX when you can watch Netflix? Because IMAX is promising a different experience.

      • Moe Curley

        I can imagine quite a few businesses that would get $3,000 in value out of this many times over. Real Estate, Architecture, Automobile, Training… It’s endless, Just a matter of the apps being made.

        But me the consumer, Gimme those panels and lenses please.

    • victor

      never mind the 3200$, you need to spend another 5000$ min on PC to run any half-decent games!

      • Bob Smith

        Not true.

        • victor

          are you speaking from PERSONAL experience? Cuz I am!

          • Bob Smith

            @victor: What does that mean, exactly? Are you claiming to own a StarVR?

    • Andrew Jakobs

      An operation where wide FOV is more important?

    • mepy

      Is it really any more strange than somebody buying an 8K TV, an expensive carbon bike or a motorcycle for fun?

  • Altman

    I have tried and worked with the StarVR. The vertical resolution does not matter even for a 130° Vertical FOV because of the unique pixel alignment and density of the panels. You can’t compare the StarVR with any other headsets, simply because the panel technology used in the StarVR which is unique. Also, you will forget the so called bulkiness from the moment you will get lost in VR.
    It was the best headset in the world back in 2018, and it is still the case in 2020.
    Now, you can all say I will buy or not buy it, it’s too expensive, blah blah… None of you will have one unless you are a business and a VR professional. The headset was SteamVR compatible, but I’m sure it is no longer the case.

    • 3872Orcs

      Why do you think it’s no longer SteamVR compatible? It says it is in both the article and on their website.

    • James Cobalt

      All the marketing material states it’s SteamVR compatible.
      The dev tools require SteamVR and OpenVR to operate.
      The headset uses SteamVR tracking sensors.

      It’s probably SteamVR compatible…

    • MRobinson

      It doesn’t matter if their pixel alignment was even stacked 3d and had 100% fill factor, as long as it’s 1464 pixels across 130 degrees, it’s not enough.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        Have you had the headset on lately? or are you just going on the technical specs.. I believe the latter… I’d rather have a wide FOV with a bit lower resolution (still up from the original Vive/Rift), then a poststamp image with a very high resolution..

        • Zantetsu

          Hey Andrew! We agree on something!

    • Zantetsu

      I will pay $3,000 for this headset. And I am not joking. VR is a hobby of mine and money is for spending to increase the enjoyment of your life, not hoarding. Perhaps I find it easier to spend this money because I have saved money on not updating my phone every year (still using an Android phone from 2013) and other places where I maximize my value while minimizing my cost. I will give some of that back for VR and be happy to do it.

  • Mei Ling

    Well you won’t find RGB OLED anywhere else with VR other than PSVR at the moment but that’s obviously no comparison to the added clarity and sharpness and FOV offered by this device.

    • mepy

      Could be the next Vive Pro has them maybe?

  • mellott124

    I tried this just before they went under. Truly impressive. They were using dual Titan GPUs to run it though.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      And that’s what will hold it back for the time being, the needed GPU power to drive these headsets..

      • Fabian

        It has a few pixels more than any other HMD but enables foveated rendering, it should run well on a potato.

        • James Cobalt

          Might have less of a need for supersampling too thanks to the subpixel layout. Not to mention, they debuted the first version of their headset years ago. GPUs have come a long way since. The Pimax headsets push more pixels than this.

        • Mradr

          FOV-Rendering still requires a pretty buffy potato still. FOVR is only a 20-35% improvement at best. Maybe with DLSS 2.0 (3.0) we could see as high as 40%.

      • Immersive Computing

        2080Ti user here; the GPU power is available at a price, it’s powering my Index very capably and should work well with the StarVR. For high end PCVR it’s just an unavoidable part of the set-up cost. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/021d012e23bedbeb387f65c6e57111667631b42e56cbc5ac2b43637ed6870ead.jpg

      • Andres Velasco

        It will run fine with a RTX 2080ti

  • James Cobalt

    So it appears that it’s still RGB-stripe style OLED, making it (I believe) the only headset besides PSVR to offer this display technology. Summarized the more nuanced tech specs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualreality/comments/fxwiud/starvr_one_detailed_tech_specs/

    • mfx

      Unfortunately, many people think that OLED = Pentile and LCD = RGB.
      And unfortunately, those OLED RGB are way too rare yeah..

  • impurekind

    Very impressive with the field of view, especially if there really is very little distortion at the edges and to the point it’s negligible.

    • hydzior

      To have this zero distortion fov needs to be made for starvr with eye tracking and multi-view rendering (not two images to render like now but four that will task the gpu more).

  • johann jensson

    Aaand, still low resolution. Sigh…

    • TheReduxPL

      Look at the minimum requirements, raise the resolution and you’ll see a 2080 Ti in there instead…

  • Timothy Bank

    I find it interesting that companies put so much stock in high resolution at the edge of FOV. The human eye has very poor resolution at the edges of your vision and is more sensitive to motion than anything else. The natural reaction to seeing something in the edge of your vision is to TURN YOUR HEAD to orient to the motion (that is unless you have a neck issue and can’t turn your head.) Your eyes want to look straight ahead because that is where the eye muscles are relaxed so you will naturally orient your head to accommodate this.
    Why not make a much less bulky headset with a smaller screen and a secondary method for stimulating the peripheral vision (low res, high-speed LED). It would take much less processing power, weigh less and be much more compact…and maybe even remove the screen door effect while you are at it.
    Behemoth HMDs like this are now old technology. It is like buying a DLP projection TV today. It was cool to see and had a great picture but better will be here sooner than we think.

    • mfx

      Just because your eyes have the possibility to turn, the entire FOV need to me max definition -possibly-. When you look in the mirror of a car, you don’t turn you head, you turn your eyes strong and you still need high definition in your peripheral FOV.

      • MRobinson

        False. The eye cannot rotate across your entire FOV. Maybe possessed people in horror movies can, but scientific literature mentions the maximum angles average eyeballs can rotate on each side.

      • Timothy Bank

        Please do try this (but be careful when you do because you are driving), pay attention to what your eyes and head are doing when you look into the mirror of your car. You will be surprised.
        Also try this: Sit down and look around your room. Try to keep your head still and facing front. Try and figure out just how much FOV you have based on your fovea (center of your vision.) Yes, you can see things outside of your fovea, but the resolution is much less.
        Can you spot the blind spot in your vision where the optic nerve occludes the retina?

        • Moe Curley

          I can’t believe you’re even arguing for low resolution peripher in headset. It so obviously incorrect to anyone who has used VR headset.

          • Sven Viking

            Not sure but it seems like people in this argument may be talking about different things when they say “periphery”? There’s peripheral vision beyond what your eye can turn to look at, and that’s the periphery that would presumably make sense to display in low resolution.

          • Moe Curley

            You don’t have to only blur what is out of your vision. Your eyes only actively “see” a very small circle at the center of your vision clearly. You don’t even realize if the area out side that relatively small circle is blurred. That’s what foviated rendering does. The point is if you permanently blur any area of the panel that your eyes cal be turned to it would ruin the immersion when you do.

          • Sven Viking

            Yup, that’s what I’m saying. It allows for much more aggressive foveated rendering than Fixed Foveated Rendering and therefore much, much greater potential performance gains.

            FFR does lightly blur areas you can look at, though, and while not ideal, it’s a valid trade-off to concentrate resolution in the areas people are most commonly looking at if eye tracking isn’t available.

          • Moe Curley

            I never thought of it that way before. Once they solve for eye tracking and application it could be way more aggressively applied to the reducing the GPU workload.

          • Sven Viking

            Michael Abrash was estimating a 20x reduction in the number of real pixels that would need to be rendered, though unfortunately there do seem to be a number of complications still standing in the way of that.

          • Mei Ling

            20x but it will be much, much more as time goes by and things become more streamlined and optimized.

        • Leon

          Anyways you are describing the Varjo headsetwhich has a separate high resolution panel in the middle. Pimax does fixed foveated rendering abs not only does it look bad. It doesn’t increase performance very much. I don’t mind how large the Pimax is because it’s so light (I have the DAS with my VR Balance counterweight). So having played Alyx with both pimax 8k+ and Quest all I can say is peripheral awareness is huge.

          • Timothy Bank

            yes, peripheral awareness is very important. I am waiting for hardware developers to implement it better.

    • Sofian

      Fixed foveated rendering is the future, dynamic foveated rendering is old technology?
      You spend your time moving your eyes and don’t realize it, otherwise you need to see a doctor.

      • Timothy Bank

        Actually, your eyes are in constant motion. They make microsaccades to present to the retina slightly different version of what you are seeing. The brain then assembles this into a very high resolution version of what you are looking at.
        Foveated rendering is a technology that will help bring the rendering requirements down significantly once we get HMDs with eye tracking standard.

        • Moe Curley

          Tim, we’re gonna have do agree to disagree on this one. Anyone who thinks that” a secondary method for stimulating the peripheral vision (low res, high-speed LED)” is going to make a better user experience than a headset with high resolution panels with eye tracked foviated rendering that can render any point within a user full field of view in high resolution wherever they are looking at any given time does not truly understand the advantages of eye tracked foviated rendering and the advancement it will bring to the experience.

          • Timothy Bank

            Agreed, foveated rendering will likely be a huge boost especially when the 8K HMDs come out. My point is that so much emphasis is being put on FOV that some companies have gone to the extreme to try and make that number as big as they can. There are obvious trade offs and I am more interested in making an HMD that has as small a form factor as possible while maintaining a high level of immersion. That is how we will get more market penetration and wider VR use.
            There is always a market for hardware like this but the average consumer will never see it.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        But foveated rendering depends on eyetracking, and eyetracking is still not at the point where it can track your eyemovements without a hitch, so if you look very fast to the right, the eyetracking may lag behind and it would give not so good results with the rendering.. foveated rendering is nice for lowend gear to keep up, but I’d rather forgo with the whole foveated rendering.

        • Mradr

          Actually eye tracking is already good enough from a lot of demos on the market that uses it. The problem stims from the fact we could spend the money else where still and still increase resolution for main-stream – thus no one uses – yet – to counter that performance leak.

        • Mei Ling

          ” eyetracking is still not at the point where it can track your eyemovements without a hitch”

          Flawless eye tracking has already been solved by a private Canadian company that I cannot recall (and most likely solved by FRL). It was referenced here or some other VR website at one point two years ago. Their solution was novel and didn’t involve cameras at all.

    • Moe Curley

      Do you scan with your head when you read a book? What you say sounds interesting but is not correct your eyes scan constantly and will always notice anomalies at the peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is much more acute than central vision in regards to motion. and you scan with your eyes far more than you scan with your head.

      • Timothy Bank

        Actually what I say is correct (I have actually researched it). Yes, when you read you scan right and left and do not move your head, but that is because you are at a close focal length and the delta from normal is very small (15 deg in either direction). You are also in constant motion through a very small arc.
        When you are looking at an environment, there are a few things in play that will cause you to change your attention: high contrast items, lines (edges), and motion. All of these are actually hard wired into the visual system and will cause you to focus on them. The natural reaction is to reorient your head to one of these attractors, thus bringing your fovea to bear on the object.

        Try this, walk around outside and pay very close attention to how your eyes react to stimuli. Watch how your head reacts as well. Try and walk around with your head pointed straight ahead and move just your eyes. Try and look away from straight ahead and hold it for more than a few seconds. Where do your eyes want to return to? It is actually really cool to see how the visual system actually works.

    • Zantetsu

      Have you ever actually used a VR headset? Peripheral vision is important for immersion and to allow natural gaze instead of being forced to turn your head in situations where you normally wouldn’t, but have to learn to because of reduces peripheral vision. Which is annoying and immersion breaking.

      • Timothy Bank

        Yes. Started doing DoD research in 2000 studying human perception of 3D and effects of peripheral stumili using eye tracking. My latest gig was doing user research on new hardware and software at Oculus. Do you have 20 years of research experience in VR and a Cognitive Science background as well?

        • Zantetsu

          So you are saying that your research led you to believe that peripheral vision is not important for immersion? Astounding. I must be an outlier.

          • Timothy Bank

            It is impressive how people will spin anything that is said and follow a myopic understanding. Never did I say that peripheral vision is not important, quite the contrary. My findings were that it is very important, but the resolution and color is not. Peripheral vision is based on movement and triggers a natural response to reorient the head towards the stimuli. It also helps with tracking of moving objects to reorient the fovea, but the eye will naturally want to return to rest so the head will adjust to accommodate this.

            If you are really interested, look up magnocellular pathway to understand how the peripheral visual system actually works.

            Now, if your neck is fused and you are unable to move your head, then you might have adopted a coping mechanism to allow you to see better. This mechanism could consists of JUST MOVING YOUR EYES. In this case, you are an outlier

          • Zantetsu

            You know it’s just as simple as this: I owe you an apology because I kinda stopped reading your post after the first sentence or two when I incorrectly concluded that you were saying that peripheral is not important at all.

            That wasn’t fair to you because your posts were thorough and well reasoned and I just completely misinterpreted them mostly due to laziness.

            My sincere apologies.

          • Timothy Bank

            Thank you.

            Yes, that is the rub there. Do we build a display that covers the whole perceivable visual field at the highest resolution, or do we make something that is less but still delivers a great experience.

            If the eye can rotate 25 deg out from center and the fovea is a very narrow arc with our sharpest vision, then we are looking at the center of the fovea spanning an arc of about 50 degrees (though I have heard the number 55 deg bantered about a lot.) Let’s just say the effective foveal arc is 20 degrees (it is actually way smaller), that would make the effective area 75 degrees at most. This is where we need to have a retina display (unable to discern individual pixels.) Outside of this, it is more important to have high speed, high contrast pixels because it is mostly rods.
            Rendering high resolution/quality outside of the effective area is just a waste of processing power and you would not be able to tell the difference.

            Now, in the “old days” when head tracking was fairly poor and caused us to get motion sickness, we could not rely on effective head tracking and “naturally” accommodating imagery in our peripheral vision by turning our heads. With effective head tracking and systems that respond quick enough to eliminate visual lag, we can now use a smaller FOV and have no loss to immersion.

  • Son of man

    The resolution/SDE may be last generation VR though for that FOV.

    • Justin Davis

      It’s RGB stripe, not pentile.

      • Sion12

        RGB doesn’t magically make it doesn’t matter.

        • Justin Davis

          It makes SDE magically better.

          • Sion12

            Not when its low resolution, LCD is RGB, at this resolutions, it still blurry. else PSVR would be super sharp

          • Mradr

            What you call low resolution I assume isn’t from actually low resolution. What you are seeing is the problem of SDE, pixel smear, and text – readability. Real res problems come in the higher end of FOV needing more pixels to spread the work. Games also don’t focus on rendering like real life with a bit more of a cartoon feel and look more simple. Same as saying Minecraft needs more res when it really doesn’t.

            LCD is not necessarily RGB – OLED and LCD both come in a form of RGB or Pen-tile. Pen-tile doesn’t have as many subpixels – thus going full RGB for OLED does look a lot better because OLED already has a smaller pixel pitch than LCD thus would look magically better over the same LCD configuration.

        • Mradr

          It magically does make it better,

  • mepy

    I wonder how it compares to the XTAL, the XTAL doesn’t have eye tracking though, but it does have hand tracking and OLED. And then there is the Pimax 5K Plus which is also OLED. Both have a better resolution than the Star VR. I wonder what Vive is upto, when will there be a new Vive Pro, it’s been over two years? Also the Reverb 2 HP is working on seems interesting too.

    • Rudl Za Vedno

      Pimax 5K Plus is LCD, PIMAX 5K XR is OLED but it’s panels are pentile not RGB (1/3 less subpixels) and way worse panels pixel % utilization.

      • mepy

        I haven’t tried either. But the Pimax 5K XR does have the correct price range for large number sales. For instance look at how many Indexes have been sold for $999, quite a few of those surely upgrades for existing Vive and Oculus owners.

        • Andres Velasco

          I own the XR, and hope to purchase the StarVR. Gladly pay extra

        • Zantetsu

          I would happily try out the Pimax units but I have heard that they are very fidgety to use given that they require custom workarounds almost on a per-game basis. I do not know if this is true but I have heard it multiple times. Take it for what it’s worth.

          I personally want a solution that Just Works, I assume that for the price the StarVR One does, but again I wouldn’t know until someone reviews it.

          • James Cobalt

            From what I’ve gathered, StarVR uses middleware similar to Pimax’s PiTool. And unlike Pimax, StarVR probably doesn’t support wide FOV for most titles. The wide FOV as demo’d requires both eye tracking and multi-view rendering support in the given title. That means only titles made with StarVR in mind will take full advantage of the headset.

            The headset does have a fallback for 110° FOV, but then visually you’re no better off than with a Vive Pro for 1/4th the price (assuming the price remains the same as the price from 2 years ago). If they’ve developed a different fallback approach like Pimax did, you could play all the SteamVR games with a wider FOV, but with the same drawbacks that Pimax’s HMDs have – periphery distortion and poor binocular overlap.

          • Christopher John

            Finally someone who understands, some people act as if you just plug this thing in it will just run any steamVR game on the market.

    • MRobinson

      XTAL is only 80 degrees vertical FOV (less than Rift). They never mention this themselves…

      • mepy

        Oh, that won’t do. More than 110 degrees looks necessary to me.

      • RagnarLothbrok

        XTAL has much wider FOV , you’re thinking about Varjo’s HMD that has 80 degrees FOV.

        • MRobinson

          No. XTAL has wide horizontal FOV but narrow vertical FOV. I even have the lens ray diagram from the optical design program they shared in a presentation. The reason the vertical FOV is narrow is because they use a single aspheric lens and have near perfect pixel utilization which they boast about, resulting in the lens having to be much smaller than the display panel and farther from it than other headsets, hence why it is even bulkier.

    • Bob Smith

      Someone beat me to it.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      HTC has it’s cosmos now, don’t expect a new headset for at least another year, or at least until the end of the year.
      I agree with you, the RTX3000 series will be the first series to actually be able to drive these high resolution headsets at full fps, but I gather only the highend versions 3080..

      • mepy

        The Cosmos isn’t a replacement for the Vive Pro, it’s a replacement for the original Vive. Sometime this summer is my guess on when an upgraded Vive Pro Eye will be available.

      • Mei Ling

        The HP Reverb G2 and supposedly Samsung’s newer headset is set to arrive by the end of this year.

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Samsung said last year around this time they would show new VR gear in a couple of months, almost a year later they still haven’t officially announced anything (mind you the headset that was shown in januari wasn’t an official announcement, it was a patent application which a newssite (letsgodigital) did a render of.

          • Mei Ling

            COVID-19 most likely has affected their plans and disrupted their schedule. Once the viral outbreak dissipates expect most major tech companies including Samsung to go all out with announcements in mid June/July. The new VR device will be announced in the process.

    • Johnatan Blogins

      Fyi, Xtal has eye tracking…

      • mepy

        Really? Doesn’t seem to be listed on their webpage as one of the main features? I would think that would be a big selling point if true?

        • Johnatan Blogins

          The auto IPD cameras have eye tracking functionality, as far as I know there’s an early stage api for it, it’s not a ready made commercial solution…

    • Zantetsu

      I thought the eye tracking was what allowed StarVR to eliminate most/all of the distortion at the edges that is caused by eyes needing different barrel distortion fixes depending upon the angle that they are looking through the lenses at. Looking through the edges of the lenses requires significantly different distortion correction than looking through the centers. This difference is greater the wider the field of view.

      So no eye tracking means no such correction, which means that the XTAL must necessarily suffer much worse distortion towards the edges of the display.

  • victor

    never mind the 3200$, you need to spend another 5000$ min on a PC to run any half-decent games!

    • Rudl Za Vedno

      Why? Resolution of these panels is not too high (3260 × 1,464). This can be run at decent fps on mid/high end GPU like 5700XT/1080TI/2070 super and up. Add R5 3600 CPU and 16 GB DDR4 and you’re good to go. You an built such PC for $1K nowdays.

      • victor

        I have pimax 5KPlus and rift , gtx1080ti, 8700K, 32GB, and not smooth at 90HZ for serious games like elite dangerous , DCS, or any flight sim.,etc…

        • Rudl Za Vedno

          Pimax 5KPlus has 7.37 million pixels, StarVR has “only” 4.77 million pixels (65% of 5K+) so it’s much easier on your GPU than 5K+.

          • victor

            I have 8700K cpu, 1080TI, 32GB ssd3, so pretty high end already, and also already using the lowest refresh rate (which is 65 not 60HZ) and yes could get smooth out of it but only in lowest graphics settings like no shadows, no aa, etc….Don’t get me wrong I still would not ever go back to 2D flat world!

          • Andres Velasco

            Blame the Pitools and not the numbers. the Pimax have poor optimization of Parallel projection

          • victor

            As I previously stated I also have rift and it’s same thing! And by the way I don’t use parallel projection.

          • Mradr

            1080ti is consider old now. A lot of hardware already pass it and next release cycle will demand a replacement by then. So you are not consider “high” end because of time atm of your post sadly.

            Rudle is right though – the performance requirements wont be the same. This headset would cost you less performance in its raw form and even less than that because of FOVR. Then we also have DLSS 2.0 and VRS that also helps with performance and image quality.

            Pimax is getting better over the years – but they are also not Oculus or Steam so software tricks to get the most out of the hardware isn’t there – just yet.

          • victor

            1080ti old? only consumer card better is 2080ti from all my research.
            Also as I said before I also have the rift and my rift performance is on par with my pimax from my experience in my heavy duty air sim games., so Oculus or pimax headset argument is moot.

          • Attila Kiss

            A lot of hardware passing 1080ti?
            It is only the 2080ti that can outpace it in games, and not by a huge margin for 3 or 4 times the cost.

          • Fabian

            I tried 60 hz on my Odyssey+ and it’s horrible, it flickers like an old CRT TV, can’t stand it for a minute. But what works wonderully is 90 hz with motion reprojection (45 FPS), I play No Man’s Sky with 300% supersampling and it feels smooth.

    • Andres Velasco

      Erm, what kind of nonsense are you saying?

  • Nako Ukoshi

    I give them some paper I just wiped my ass with.

    • Alexander Vaught

      Preferred the Arsh post more

  • Nako Ukoshi

    I give them some paper I just wiped my arsh with.

    • Sven Viking

      Was it a cheque for $3,200?

  • Well, this surprises me, but it is a welcome surprise. I only hope they have a lower price now. That resolution was great 2 years ago, but now it is pretty standard (the Cosmos has 1700*1440 per eye), and if we mix it with the very wide fov,we obtain a sub-optimal PPI. If we consider eye tracking, that is a plus, I think it should cost somewhere around $1600.

    • Ama Trykowski

      I have not tried this headset but the lenses and the eye tracking are what I have read so far superior to any other headset on the market and also one of the reasons for it price. You

  • JesuSaveSouls

    It’s just not to much bigger than Pimax and Pimax boosts way more res.Much cheaper too with more options.I do remember these guys years ago doing demos.I think Pimax took their idea from StarVr.Jesus loves you !

    • Andres Velasco

      StarVR is much better than the Pimax

    • hydzior

      Pimax with their shitty lcd displays with washed out colors ;]. They’ve the worst dispalys in the hmd industry for me.

    • get lost

      Imaginary geezus can’t love anybody, because it is fictional character. But I am sure that covid-19 loves you!

  • Bumpy

    I don’t care how beautiful those panels are, the resolution is too low.

    The Reverb and 8KX have set the bar, anything less readable is worthless IMO.

    • Andres Velasco

      You have no idea what you are talking about

    • Mradr

      Resolution has nothing to do with readable for say – its about the gap between pixels. So, yes, beautiful panels would have a better image than or same as a higher pixel count screen while costing less performance and price. Reason being higher resolution is just the act of trying to fit more pixels while losing the gap between pixels.

      • Nowry85

        Kopin is going to mass produce 2.6K by 2.6K RGB OLED micro displays this year and from what I have been reading, they are going to be used in VR headsets starting from the end of 2020/begining 2021.

        • Mradr

          I saw that as well – it really depends on cost for a company like Oculus to use them though – cost and production numbers. The main reason they switch to fast switching LCD is the fact that LCD is sooo cheap and they have had full RGB from day one. They just don’t look as good as OLED though.

          • Nowry85

            Kopin says it is going to be 50$ per panel, so the price is reasonable.

        • mirak

          Usually they are not used in vr headsets because you can’t get a large fov with them.
          Maybe some optics can handle that but that’s a concern.

          Sony already had micro displays with the HMZ T but they didn’t go this way with psvr.
          Maybe because of costs ?

    • hydzior

      Pimax is wasting a lot of the screen. There was a demo somewehre on youtube showing that how much of the screens are wasted.

  • Gonzax

    Gosh, I’d kill for that FOV. If it were compatible with Index controllers and the image quality was at least as good as Index’s I might even consider buying it though 3k is a lot of money but at 2K I’d probably go for it.
    The lack of audio is a bummer, though.

  • arczi79

    Quest has 1600×1440 per eye (total 2 304 000 pixels per eye). Star VR has 1830×1464 per eye (total 2 679 120 pixels per eye). Additionally Star VR has eye tracking and fovetal rendering which should lower GPU usage. Where from so big requirements for the PC?

    • Jistuce

      Slightly because of higher refresh rates, mostly because of intended use.

      The system requirements quoted on these things are a bit misleading, as they aren’t what you need to use them. They’re what you need for a manufacturer-defined “ideal” experience.

      The actual requirements change depending on what specific titles you’re running and what options you set within those titles. StarVR is very much not targeting customers seeking the same fidelity as Quest, so they’re recommending a system much more powerful than Quest.

      Polygon counts in character models and environments, complexity of lighting and physics, number of objects active at once, these are but a few things that change system requirements drastically but cannot be predicted from the resolution and refresh rate of a display device.

    • mirak

      Most games won’t be able to use any foveated rendering.

    • James Cobalt

      FWIW, foveated rendering must be supported in the title itself. You’d need titles built specifically for this or the Vive Pro Eye.

      As another aside, Quest has a pentile layout, so 9.2 million subpixels total, compared to 16.1 million on StarVR. Quest also usually renders below the native screen resolution, and at 75hz instead of 90hz. But since StarVR has double the FOV, depending on the distortion profile, the center of your vision probably looks similar to the Quest. Maybe a little better… Maybe a little worse. We don’t have proper reviews yet.

      Anyway… Quest titles, in addition to running at a 15% – 30% lower resolution and 17% lower framerate, are also highly optimized for the Quest. That is to say, simpler geometry, simpler shaders, lower ram usage (fewer textures, smaller levels, etc), and so on. PC VR titles are designed to utilize higher spec hardware and do not receive the same degree of optimization; it’s a very expensive process, not to mention harder since all PCs are snowflakes while all Quests are exactly the same.

      It’s also likely StarVR One requires a bit more processing power for the built-in eye tracking and dynamic distortion correction.

  • Sion12

    For 2K plus, thats some mediocre spec outside the FOV, and with that resolution stretched to that FOV, imagine quality is going to be bad. and man 4 cable…

    • Zantetsu

      It doesn’t really matter what spec is the lagging spec for any headset, there will always be 100 posts from people harping on it like a) it’s the most important thing, and b) they are saying something original, and c) their opinion matters without even having tried the device.

      • hydzior

        Thats simple math… screen res not much better than index and fov two times bigger. The clarity will be on Rift S level.

  • Tags I812

    i cant wait to get life back to normal so vr can resume.tech has come a long way in the past two years so i hope acer can push this back into mainstream VR users. i just wish that pimax was a competitor to bring the price down to a reasonable price.

  • Tags I812

    i feel a new PC build coming up :O)

  • Zantetsu

    I personally prefer the OLED of the Vive Pro with its deep blacks to the higher pixel density with and washed out LCD of the Vive Index. So I think I probably would prefer the StarVR One screen, but I wouldn’t know until I tried it.

    Obviously the best would be to have high pixel density and OLED but … baby steps …

  • Christopher John

    But is it really?

  • Rupert Jung

    No audio at all is not what I would call premium, sorry.

  • mellott124

    They’re looking to dump inventory. I asked questions regarding support and they dodged the question and said they support OpenVR. Sounds like you’d be on your own once you got the headset.

  • impurekind

    If we’re hear already with VR then just imagine where proper consumer VR headsets are going to be in a couple of generations. . . .

  • 3872Orcs

    I’m okay with the price considering the specs but if anyone or prosumers can’t use it then it doesn’t matter anyways. Hopefully we see next gen VR for us regular folks in the near future.

  • Selection process? To spend €2800? This is a joke

  • JesuSaveSouls

    Pimax is a good alternative.The artisan is only a fraction less in res and fov for a mere 400.The 5k plus is beyond the starvr res and only 700.I hope starvr makes it public and affordable.Pimax needs next to keep their specs but go like the quest on a standalone version.Perhaps specs like the artisan and have it be standalone but as the quest a pc link and cost only 500.

    • redi

      Lmao pimax worst company ever. They take forever to send a headset. And there support will never answer your email neither your call. If you like troubles order a Chinese pimax.

  • kontis

    STOP UPDATING OLD ARTICLES. IT’S RIDICULOUS.