HTC And Valve Are Taking Vive VR On The Road

Virtual Reality has been making huge waves in the news for the last couple of years. This year we've seen rapid advancements in VR hardware design, and launch windows for two competing headsets have been announced. There's still a glaring problem when it comes to selling the world on VR, though. It truly is impossible to describe the experience.

Even those who think they get it really probably don't. Experiencing virtual reality is simply the only way you can really understand what the buzz is all about. As someone who has had many hours of experience with both Rift dev kits, and shown them to countless people, I can tell you this for certain. HTC aims to get more people experiencing VR with its HTC Vive World Tour.

The company is taking a mobile VR experience on the road to various cities in the U.S. and Europe. The tour kicked off yesterday in San Diego alongside Comic Con. The HTC tour truck is open for walk-ins on a first come, first serve basis, and it can be found on the corner of Island and 6th in San Diego, CA through Sunday.

Currently, the tour is making stops in 11 cities. Nine of those locations will be in the U.S., and the other two will be in Germany and France. Here's the current list of tour locations and dates.

  • July 9-12, Island St & 6th Ave, San Diego, CA, USA
  • July 17-19, Forecastle Festival [Invite Only], Louisville, KY, USA
  • July 21-23, Navy Pier, Chicago, IL, USA
  • July 25-28, specific location TBD, Kansas City, KS, USA
  • August 2-8, The International, Seattle, WA, USA
  • August 5-9, Gamescom, Cologne, Germany
  • August 13-16, specific location TBD, San Francisco, CA, USA
  • August 20-23, specific location TBD, Portland, OR, USA
  • August 28-31, PAX Prime, Seattle, WA, USA
  • September 4-9, IFA, Berlin, Germany
  • October 28-November 1, Paris Games Week, Paris, France

HTC has noted that tour dates and locations are subject to change, so if your city isn't on the list now, maybe it will be there later.

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 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

  • Cash091
    Nothing on the east coast? I'd make a drive to Boston to try this out. I have a DK2, but not quite sure if I want to upgrade to this or the Rift quite yet.
    Reply
  • kryojenix
    USA, Germany, France ... whoa - that's *virtually* eveyrwhere, man! (sic)
    Reply
  • uglyduckling81
    A North American and Couple of Euro country tour. No Australia, No Asia. Please don't refer to it as a world tour when it's only going to be taken to countries holding about 500-600 million people total combined.
    Reply
  • Alec Mowat
    A North American and Couple of Euro country tour. No Australia, No Asia. Please don't refer to it as a world tour when it's only going to be taken to countries holding about 500-600 million people total combined.

    The "Safe and reasonably affordable" world tour
    Reply