PC gaming peripheral maker Razer is the latest hardware manufacturer to get involved in virtual reality. Announced back at CES, Razer’s OSVR (Open-Source Virtual Reality) hardware seeks to standardize some aspects of VR tech so as not to alienate consumers with incompatibilities. Basically it’s virtual reality’s “We get one shot at selling this to consumers, or this technology goes back in the box for a decade” Hail Mary pass.
In support of this, Razer just announced a ton of new partners for OSVR, including Jaunt (maker of virtual reality films), 3DRudder (lets you use your feet in VR), Pixel Titans (the team behind the game STRAFE), and a bunch of others. This is, of course, in addition to OSVR’s original slew of partners Unity, Unreal, Intel, Sixense, Leapmotion and Gearbox.
But it’s Razer’s other newly announced effort that may do even more for the future of virtual reality.
Once the OSVR launches, Razer will now provide ten of its headsets for absolutely free to any eligible university setting up a VR lab. The programme sounds great for the VR ecosystem as a whole. Razer’s offer drastically lowers the barrier for students to hack together VR software and hardware, which could be a huge boon for the market.
Of course, it could reap big rewards for Razer and the OSVR initiative specifically going forward, too – getting Macintosh computers into classrooms was an early coup for Apple, and the same when Microsoft cut in with Windows 95 machines.
Regardless of motive, the Razer’s goal of “an ecosystem designed to set an open standard for virtual reality input devices, games and output to provide the best possible VR game experience” is noble. All we need is a platform to use them with.
PCWorld
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