InfinitEye is back! Today, Starbreeze announces that their VR Headset sporting a mammoth 210 degree horizontal field of view will become ‘StarVR‘.
Well this was a pleasant surprise. Just hours after landing in LA for next week’s E3 Expo, Stephane Portes co-founder of of the ‘long-in-stealth-mode’ InfinitEye project contacts me with some exciting news.
18 months after our exclusive first hands on with the team’s early prototype sporting an impressive super-wide field of view, the team have announced that they’ve been acquired by Starbreeze to form a new project comprising InfinitEye’s technology
The unit claims not only that stellar 210 degree horizontal FOV, but an impressive 130 degrees vertical FOV to match. The unit is comprised of Dual 5.5 inch LCD panels creating a total 5120×1440 resolution (2 x QHD panels). The headset now also features positional head tracking, using what looks to be fiducial markers and an outside-in camera system. The positional tracking extends to 360 degrees.
As before, the headset leverages Fresnel lenses, aligned with the displays in a canted formation to immerse the user’s field of view. Other points of note is the overhauled head harness, which looked altogether more secure and the system now offers a sealed viewing area. During my original play tests the headset was effectively open at the edges leading to light leakage.
Starbreeze Studios is an independent creator, publisher and distributor of high quality entertainment products, headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden. The company’s CEO said of the move “InfinitEye’s team is extremely dedicated and competent. The ultra-wide field-of-view in their HMD corresponds to man’s own, which lays the foundation for an authentic experience. By bringing InfinitEye into Starbreeze and together with our newly acquired Valhalla engine, we will be able to create great entertainment of a kind that has not been experienced before,”
What’s more, the new StarVR system will be available to try at E3 with an impressive sounding exclusive experience based around The Walking Dead. The new game is developed exclusively for the new VR headset by Starbreeze and will leverage that panoramic VR I spoke of 18 months ago to terrify the player.
Speaking to Road to VR, Co-founder Stephane Portes said on behalf of the InfinitEye team “Finally after working in stealth mode for so long we are proud to join Starbreeze to bring you the most immersive experience with kickass content. Visit us at E3 2015 to try out The Walking Dead in VR with a 210° field of view!”
We’ll be going hands-on with the new StarVR headset and the Walking Dead experience very soon – we’ll of course report back our experiences.