Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

Andrew Williams

BARCELONA, Spain—VR has the potential to be a very exciting technological domain, but it's lumbered with numerous problems: high price, low performance, and generally the sheer pain-in-the-backside factor, particularly with more advanced setups like the HTC Vive or Oculus Rift. At MWC 2017 we tried two solutions that evaporate the physical connection between headset and PC, mostly mitigating the last of those three issues.

The two solutions are DisplayLink XR, made by DisplayLink, and TPCast, which appears to be made by a company called TPCast. We wrote about the latter back in November 2016 when it was first announced in China. Now we’ve physically tried them both.

These are two visions of how wireless VR will work, so let’s talk similarities and differences. The first is a positive. Trying out the TPCast and DisplayLink XR sets within an hour of each other, both seemed to perform just fine. Neither introduces very obvious lag, and DisplayLink claims its current demo suffers from around just 5ms of additional delay, which it aims to improve in the future.

Anecdotally, it seemed to me that the DisplayLink XR solution may introduce less lag than the TPCast, but as I played a different game with each, it’s hardly a credible test.

The way the two streamers work is similar too. They transmit video over the 60GHz wireless band—though it isn't clear if they're using 802.11ad/WiGig, or their own proprietary tech. TPCast used a little transmitter attached to the wall, mounted as you might attach an HTC Vive room sensor. DisplayLink XR used a PCI card in the PC running the VR game with a transmitter wired up in the ceiling. It claims the signal should not have problems transmitting through walls, though.

In both demos, we used a wired-up battery that either slips in a pocket or clips onto your trousers. However, DisplayLink also showed us its latest "reference" design, a unit with a much smaller battery that clips onto the head-mounted unit itself. The DisplayLink XR head-mounted battery is apparently good for 180 minutes, while a version of the TPCast with a head-mounted battery version only lasts 90 minutes.

DisplayLink's latest XR prototype is a little more polished too, but TPCast’s solution is much closer to launch. It says it plans to release the HTC Vive accessory in the second quarter of 2017, and has backing from HTC itself.

DisplayLink reference model is just that. It doesn’t aspire to release its own hardware, but wants to sell the components required for the tech to work, whether to headset makers or accessory makers like TPCast. It does expect hardware featuring its technology to be available “by Christmas," though.

It "owns" the encoding and decoding processes at work, and the chipsets designed to cope with them. DisplayLink XR marketing director Andrew Davis says it is working with partners already but “can’t announce them." It’s not unfathomable that TPCast may already use DisplayLink's technology.

Either way, while wireless video transmission was sorely missed from VR headsets like the HTC Vive at launch, Davis says DisplayLink XR is already prepared for future VR hardware. “We have headroom in the current chipset here to do at least two more generations of headset… We can already do dual 4K at 60p.”

This is largely because the software at its core is already mature, used in DisplayLink's everyday business of enterprise solutions. Davis told us the same “DL3” dynamically-adjusting video codec is used in Lenovo’s and Dell’s wireless display docks, for example.

For me, these wireless solutions removed the anxiety of wired VR, which at present doesn’t fade like the fear of walking into your lounge’s walls. The remaining concern is whether this zapping of one problem will exacerbate another: the cost of VR.

DisplayLink XR has nothing to add here, as a maker of the building blocks rather than buildings, so to speak, but the TPCast accessory will cost about £200/$200. It’s a painful bolt-on to an already expensive headset, and another reminder that perhaps today's headsets are a little half-baked.

But hey, progress is coming: maybe second-gen VR headsets will have wireless functionality built-in.

Listing image by Andrew Williams