It's been some 10 months since HTC and Valve first announced the HTC Vive. And in that time we've talked a good bit about this whole-room virtual reality experience. How practical it might be. (Or not.) How much it'll cost. (We still don't know.) Or — and this one from the more skeptical among us — whether this promise of a a futuristic VR will ever really come to fruition. While inexpensive (and much more simple) VR experiences from Google Cardboard and Samsung's Gear VR (powered by Oculus, which is finally opening up preorders for the Oculus Rift) have been available for some time now, a good number of us have been waiting (not so) patiently for this virtual future we've been promised. Verizon is offering the Pixel 4a for just $10/mo on new Unlimited lines It's not here yet. At least not for the paying public. But with the announcement of the HTC Vive Pre — the next-generation prototype from HTC and Valve — we're getting much closer. I took the Vive Pre for a spin here at CES 2016 in Las Vegas. This is what the future is like.

HTC Vive has progressed a lot in a year. And the reality of a usable whole-room VR experience has increased along with it.

Funny thing about the brain. It remembers. My second time demoing Vive was a good bit easier than the first, some 10 months ago in Barcelona. This time as I slid into the new Vive visor, I knew what I was getting into. As I stood once again on the deck of a sunken pirate ship and looked over the railing to the sea floor below, I knew I wasn't going to fall off. I worried less about the Aperture Robot Repair plant actually hurting me. That doesn't mean it was any less impressive, though. The improved visor is a big part of the new experience. First is that it's been slimmed down a good bit, with a new head strap and gasket — the part that actually rests against your face — making it much more comfortable to wear. (And HTC says there will be multiple gasket sizes available when Vive launches in April.) It also looks far less like an oddly diamond-studded faceplate, with the tracking components no longer visible.

The first HTC Vive prototype we used in February 2015, and the new HTC Vive Pre.