Microsoft Debuts Acer-Made Mixed Reality HMD Dev Kit (Updated)

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The "phased rollout" of these dev kits, starting with those who received a "golden ticket" for attending the Windows Mixed Reality session at GDC, will begin later this month. The kits include Acer's HMD as well as "documentation and access to Windows 10 Insider preview builds and the software development kit (SDK) to enable developers to build mixed reality applications." Microsoft said in a blog post that it plans to bring MR to more devices in the future:

Since we first published this article, we had a chance to see the HMD up close and in person--but under glass. Microsoft even had a security guard posted to make sure people (cough, like us, cough) didn’t try to remove it. He wouldn't let me take his picture. There's not too much more we could glean from seeing the HMD this closely. You can see the simple clasping mechanism that goes around the back of your head. Notably, there is no strap that goes on top of your head, so the whole thing needs to stay up just from the friction around the front, sides, and back of your head.

It's unclear how exactly and to what extent this Acer device will do mixed reality. Clearly, there are a pair of cameras on the front. As we noted in our coverage of LG's new high-end VR HMD prototype, these could be used to toggle on a "real world" view, perform some of the inside-out tracking, let you toggle between fully occluded VR and MR, or create a merged reality environment. At the very least, it will obviously make use of Microsoft's Holographic Shell, and Microsoft confirmed that it will offer inside-out tracking. (We assume that will be 6DoF, but that detail remains unconfirmed.)

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Seth Colaner previously served as News Director at Tom's Hardware. He covered technology news, focusing on keyboards, virtual reality, and wearables.

7 Comments Comment from the forums

itsmedatguy

What kind of head tracking does it have? Any word on controllers?
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cryoburner

These headsets apparently use inside-out tracking, using cameras on the headset itself to track movement within the environment, combined with motion sensors. And it sounds like there will be a variety of compatible controllers, although I suspect Acer will offer their own branded ones. It's possible that the headset and controllers will ship separately though, since not everyone will necessarily need the same kind of input method, depending on what they are doing with their headset. See the first link in the article for more details on these Windows VR headsets.
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grimfox

And here I was just saying that LG might lead the pack of second gen HMDs. But this looks really promising too. I'd be interested to see if they have or will have steamVR capabilities or if M$ is going to lock it down to their winstore. If it's the latter I could see this HMD struggling.
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itsmedatguy

Excited to see a bump in display resolution per eye over the Vive. The kind of work I'm doing in VR will really come to fruition as the resolution increases. Also interested to learn more about inside-out tracking, and how it compares to the Vive's lighthouses
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wifiburger

early obscure technology, this AR / VR will never go mainstream but watch them trying to push it early and wasting billions of their money !
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scolaner

19370815 said:
Excited to see a bump in display resolution per eye over the Vive. The kind of work I'm doing in VR will really come to fruition as the resolution increases. Also interested to learn more about inside-out tracking, and how it compares to the Vive's lighthouses

What work are you doing in VR?

We're keen to learn more about what specifically they're going to be doing with inside-out tracking, too. There are better and worse ways to do it--and those are make-or-break decision IMHO.
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chemy

OK I want one, I don't know why I have no time but I want to try all :) I only have the Rift and the PSVR
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