And we're off to the races. Ahead of this week's Game Developer Conference, phone maker HTC announced that it would be manufacturing Valve's SteamVR virtual reality headset, named Vive. The news came during Mobile World Congress, where competitor Samsung also announced a second GearVR headset for its upcoming Galaxy S6 smartphones (lighter, USB-power). While Vive will be presumably demoed for the press and public at GDC, we're already getting details about how this HMD and VR experience will differ from Oculus. Vive uses two 1200x1080 displays running at 90Hz, as opposed to the 75Hz OLED display on the current Oculus Development Kit 2. The use of two screens theoretically offers a wider field of view than the DK2, with the same vertical resolution. Oculus hasn't said what display or lens technology is in its Crescent Bay prototype, which also runs at 90Hz.

In addition to your typical IMU sensors for 360 degree positional tracking, Vive will also connect to a 'SteamVR base station' that allows tracking in spaces up to 15 by 15 feet. That's a lot larger than the tracking area we've seen in the Crescent Bay demo from last Fall, and Oculus hasn't confirmed that its consumer product would be designed for anything but a sitting experience. Audio will be provided by an headphone jack on the headset, and HTC is developing wireless motion controllers for gaming.

Developer support wasn't a big part of the announcement, but Valve announced its unified VR API a year ago and has been working with game developers to produce demos for GDC. One anticipated demo is The Gallery by Cloudhead Games, an adventure game that makes use of room tracking.

Valve and HTC say that a developers kit will be available this spring, with Vive shipping by the end of the year. I don't see this affecting Oculus' product timeline or production plans, but between SteamVR, Razer's OSVR initiative, and Sony's Morpheus project, the VR landscape is already feeling crowded before a single mainstream consumer product has shipped (GearVR counting as a dev kit). John Carmack's recent tweet may give the most indication about how team Oculus feels about their position in VR enthusiast mind share.