HTC goes to space. The corporate announced today that on a planned November seventh NASA resupply launch, a tweaked, microgravity-friendly version of its Vive Focus 3 VR headset can be sent to the International Space Station. Once it’s there, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will test the Focus 3’s viability for helping alleviate the mental stress that NASA says comes from the “lack of privacy, high and variable workloads, and separation from family members” inherent to work in space.
HTC partnered with a virtual reality therapy company called XRHealth to work on a “virtual assistance mental balance initiative” by aeronautics R&D company Nord-Space ApS to try to fulfill astronauts’ unique needs. HTC believes its tweaked headset Vive Focus 3 won’t make astronauts change into disoriented or lose their lunch unlike past attempts at using VR in space, where the dearth of gravity needed to present a VR headset its directional frame of reference can change into nauseatingly out of sync with its wearer’s movements.
Thomas Drexmier, HTC Vive’s assistant vp, told in an interview that, besides software changes and a few mandatory power management adjustments, the Vive Focus 3 Mogensen will test is otherwise the identical one it sells here on Earth.
The corporate says it addressed the spatial orientation problem in software, tying its tracking algorithms to certainly one of the controllers, which is stationary and tracked by the cameras and proximity sensor of the headset. That offers the Focus 3 the relative positioning it must match its motion to the wearer. At the identical time, the wearer can navigate menus either using eye-tracking or the opposite controller.
The months-long stay can be a giant test of whether HTC’s approach works. Until now, HTC says the headset has only been weightless for about 20 seconds at a time, through the simulated orbital freefall aboard parabolic flights. If the Focus 3 proves resilient on this mission, it could open the door to a more robust space-based VR experience targeted at longer missions — including a possible two-year round-trip voyage to Mars.
Accompanying HTC’s tweaks on the mission is the VR software built by XRHealth. Eran Orr, the corporate’s founder and CEO, said that Mogensen can have access to about 10 primarily 360-degree videos, including some from Denmark, where he’s from, “with the thought of trying to present [him] a way of home.” The software will even offer short respiration and meditation exercises, while further updates may bring more features after the headset is on the station.
But this, as with the Vive hardware, is just a test — there isn’t any treatment aspect. It’s a “very small step forward,” Orr told me, “however the vision is a magnitude greater than what we’re doing now.” Eventually, XRHealth hopes for astronauts to make use of the headset to attach with people back on Earth, including therapists and coaches.