Our Rating

Freedom to shape the future, open access for everyone to the next stage of technology to a reality you can help create.

OSVR stands for Open source virtual reality. It is the open standard for the development of both software and hardware for Virtual reality.

It consist of 3 things that can be taken into consideration.

1)Open Source : All the hardware and software designs are completely open for anyone or everyone to develop upon.

2) Supported by leading companies: Supported by leading companies in the industries today and those are the companies which are committed to support the virtual reality otoy, gearbox PrioVR etc and keeping it free and open for all.

3) Primarily for gaming : While the work done for OSVR can be used for pretty much everything, the main motive of OSVR is to create the best and immersive gaming experience.

However there are many things OSVR is not, for starters , as it is not controlled by single or group of company. The OSVR software license uses the apache 2.0 license, the same license that Android is licensed on.

It is like the open platform android is for smart phones, OSVR is to Virtual reality. Further OSVR is not a standalone OS at the moment it runs on Linux, Android, Windows.

OSVR is not a competitor to existing players in the market (say to SteamVR), in fact OSVR is designed to work with all HMDs and that it can be hoped that OSVR can lead to the better VR devices in the future. (Like OSVR Razer HDK2 working with StemVR & OSVR

Why OSVR?

As virtual reality is an exciting platform for the future, it is still quite a ways away from becoming a consumer product everyone can use and lots of work, still remains to be done not by one or few companies but the constant effort of community and developers will be able to achieve an incredible VR experience, sooner rather than later.

Problems or constraints with other VR devices.

1)Hardware and software fragmentation

2)Industry Adoption

3)Lack of access to VR development platform

How OSVR helps to solve above three Problems?

Hardware and software fragmentation : There are hundreds of VR Devices, each sending and receiving data in different way, so supporting them would mean development efforts would be required for every single device.With OSVR each device and software would now be able to connect on a single open standard and immediately become compatible with each other , dramatically reducing development efforts both with Hardware and software developers.

Industry adoption : OSVR was built for everyone who have access too, as such some of the world’s leader in VR has come together to adopt OSVR.

Access to VR development : From VR glasses, motion sensing controllers, cameras, eye tracking and leading game engines, adoption of OSVR is growing at an incredible rate due to it open nature.

To provide an open development platform for hardware OSVR is providing the OSVR Hacker Development kit,a completely open source kit will allow hardware hackers to plugin and connect their devices, without having to built their own HMD or allow software developers to get up and run a developing for VR immediately. All the designs and schematics for the OSVR hacker development kit at completely open source and available for the download at the OSVR site. Any user who has access to the 3D printer and the material can now build his or her own hacker development kit at home.

In the event, developer don’t have access to the resources to build a hacker developer kit razer(Razer HDK2) would be taking pre-order for the kit

Join the cause for an Open standard & find out more about OSVR & the Hacker development kit below.