Acer this week hosted an event to show off its latest gadgets, and we got a chance to test drive the Acer Windows Mixed Reality Head Mounted Display.
In essence, it's a VR headset that doesn't require the use of external infrared illuminators, which provide spatial awareness over six axes of movement (up/down, left/right, forward/back). It follows the HoloLens project as a less expensive way to work in the virtual world, and is the first in Microsoft's move to bring VR tech to a wider audience.
The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive are good VR helmets, but they are tethered to PCs with cables due to battery and performance constraints. They also require IR illuminators mounted on tripods, or drilled into your walls, for precise head tracking.
The big innovation for Acer's solution is that it does away with the IR illuminators by taking positioning technology from the $3,000 HoloLens project and adding it to a product that is expected to be just as affordable as the Rift and Vive.
The collaboration with Microsoft also means that Acer's headset will be compatible with devices from other manufacturers that use Redmond's tech. Other VR helmets are closed environments, so games and programs are only compatible in multiplayer mode if everyone has the same headset. Windows brings cross-manufacturer compatibility to the mix—the Acer headset is essentially a fancy display for a PC running Windows 10 Creators Update. Drivers are built in, and you can run any Windows-compatible program on virtual screens in the environment; we demoed an experience called "Cliff House." So if your buddy buys a Lenovo-branded headset down the line, you can play together on a single PC or in a shared game, on the same server online.
Acer's head-mounted display is lighter than the Rift or the Vive and is a lot less fussy to wear. Only one ratcheted strap tightens the harness to your head, so it's easy to adjust compared to other headsets. The HoloLens has a clear lens so you see the real world, but the Acer headset is opaque. For ease of use, Acer lets the user to flip the screen up, so they can grab an Xbox controller or interact with friends before going back in.
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Using the Xbox controller may come more naturally to gamers than using the Vive's wand-shaped controllers, though that means you don't have "hands" in your virtual environment. That said, I was able to easily move around the room, look closely at things by just moving closer, and "teleport" from room to room in the Cliff House.
Microsoft set up a virtual desk in the house, with multiple large screen monitors showing Edge and a Movie Player, demonstrating that you can just drop Windows programs into a mixed reality environment. Viewing a GoPro-shot movie looked great, though the source video had a noticeable parallax error, which was magnified by the twin eyepieces.
All in all, the Acer Windows Mixed Reality Head Mounted Display is a fully baked kit for developers, and we're excited to see what the final consumer-grade model will look like. Indications are that it will appear on shelves later this year, hopefully in time for the holiday shopping season.