SIGGRAPH 2018 –VANCOUVER, B.C., Aug. 14, 2018 –StarVR®, the leader in premium virtual reality for the enterprise, today unveiled its next-generation VR headset specifically architected to support the most optimal life-like VR experience to date to meet commercial and enterprise needs and requirements.
Launched today at SIGGRAPH 2018, StarVR One is a one-of-its-kind VR head mounted display that provides nearly 100-percent human viewing angle. StarVR One features key technology innovations critical to redefine what’s possible in virtual reality. Featuring the most advanced optics, VR-optimized displays, integrated eye tracking, and vendor-agnostic tracking architecture, StarVR One is built from the ground up to support the most demanding use cases for both commercial and enterprise sectors.
“StarVR continues its legacy of innovation that pushes past the barriers standing in the way of enterprise-grade VR experiences,” said Emmanuel Marquez, CTO of StarVR Corporation. “StarVR is blazing new trails to deliver break-through technology for a new world of realism to support real business decisioning and value creation. With our StarVR One headset we are conquering the VR final frontier – the enterprise.”
StarVR One features an extensive 210-degree horizontal and 130-degree vertical field-of-view. This breakthrough architecture covers nearly 100 percent of natural human vision. The unparalleled field-of-view supports a new, more expansive user experience, approximating natural human peripheral vision; this opens up what is now possible with StarVR One, including support for rigorous and exacting VR experiences such as driving and flight simulations, and the ability to identify design issues in engineering applications, for example.
StarVR’s custom AMOLED displays serve up 16 million sub-pixels at a refresh rate of 90 framesper second to bring every detail to the eyes. The proprietary displays are designed specifically for VR with a unique full RGB per pixel arrangement to provide a professional-grade color spectrum for real-life color. Coupled with StarVR’s custom-crafted Fresnel lenses, the result is a crystal-clear visual experience within the entire field-of-view. The state-of-the-art lens design and precision manufacturing ensures exceptional contrast and true clean colors in every VR experience.
StarVR One seamlessly integrates Tobii’s industry-leading eye tracking technology. Along with the eye tracking, StarVR One automatically measures Interpupillary Distance (IPD) and instantlyprovides the best image adjusted for every user. Integrated eye tracking empowers dynamic foveated rendering, a break-through rendering technology which concentrates high-quality rendering only where the eyes are focused. As a result, the highest quality imagery is pushed to the eye focus area while maintaining the right amount of peripheral imagery detail. StarVR One eye tracking unleashes a new world of commercial possibilities to leverage user intent data for content gaze analysis and improved interactivity, including heat maps.
StarVR enables a wide variety of use case scenarios. Two product variants are available with two different integrated tracking systems. The StarVR One is out-of-the-box ready for the SteamVR 2.0 tracking solution. Alternatively, the StarVR One XT is embedded with active optical markers for compatibility with optical tracking systems for the most demanding use cases. It is further enhanced with ready-to-use plugins for a variety of tracking systems and provides the additional tools for customization.
The ergonomic headset design supports comfortable wearability. The headset weighs only 450g and the headband evenly distributes the weight to ensure comfort even during extended sessions andlonger use.
StarVR features exceptional extensibility for ease-of-integration with a wide array of components, systems and environments. The StarVR software development kit (SDK) makes developingnew content or upgrading existing VR experience to StarVR’s premium wide-field of view platform seamless. Developers also have the option of leveraging the StarVR One dual-input VR SLI mode, maximizing the rendering performance to deliver the best image quality. The StarVR SDK API is designed to be familiar to developers working with existing industry standards and empowers them with feature sets beyond other platforms.
The development effort that has culminated in the launch of StarVR One has involved extensive collaboration from StarVR’s industry-leading technology partners, including Intel, NVIDIA and Epic Games.
“We are excited to partner with StarVR to combine Intel’s computing performance with StarVR’s advanced commercial VR technology to create incredibly true-to-life virtual experiences that are bound only by one’s imagination,” said Kumar Kaushik, GM, AR/VR , Intel. “VR is destined to transform industries of all kinds, and Intel and StarVR are on the forefront of this wave.”
“StarVR and NVIDIA have collaborated to deliver an innovative, best-in-class solution with the StarVR One platform,” said David Weinstein, NVIDIA’s director of Enterprise VR. “StarVR One is tightly integrated with NVIDIA’s Quadro GPU, leveraging VRWorks and foveated rendering to support the most demanding VR use cases in the commercial and enterprise markets.”
“Unreal Engine is renowned for its ability to render visuals that are unparalleled in quality for immersive VR experiences, many of which are mission-critical and business-priority use cases,” said Simon Jones, director of Unreal Engine Enterprise at Epic Games. “StarVR’s native Unreal plugin gives developers quicker access to premier hardware features, enabling them to manifest their vision of creativity, form and function, and to create business value.”
”Epic is fully invested in advancing the OpenXR standard for cross-platform XR applications, and we’re working with StarVR to combine Unreal Engine 4’s OpenXR application support with StarVR’s preliminary OpenXR runtime and hardware, alongside their existing UE4 plugin. We’re excited to empower developers to build content in a platform-agnostic way, and this is a huge first step towards that,” said Nick Whiting, technical director of VR and AR, Epic Games.
