StarVR One headset revealed – Features “nearly” human FoV

StarVR, a joint venture between Acer and Starbreeze, has revealed their StarVR One headset, a “next-generation” design that features support for SteamVR Tracking 2.0, an Ultra-Wide 210-degree field of view (FoV) and support for Tobii eye-tracking and foveated rendering. 

One of the key features of the StarVR One is its “nearly 100-percent human” Field of View, a feature which should provide players with a more immersive VR experience. The 210-degree field of view on offer is significantly wider than the 110-degree FoV that is provided by Oculus’ Rift and HTC’s Vive headsets, providing users with peripheral vision and removes the “tunnel vision” effect that is seen in most VR headsets. 

The displays within this VR headset both offer a resolution of 1830×1464, which gives users a total of 5.4 million pixels. While this is higher than the total pixel count of HTC’s Vive Pro, it is worth noting that StarVR One shows these pixels across a wider FoV. The StarVR headset will operate at 90Hz and use custom AMOLED displays, which are coupled with custom Fresnel lenses to offer optimal image clarity. 

The StarVR One’s high pixel count and FoV makes the headset extremely demanding on modern gaming PCs, with Starbreeze listing a GTX 1080 as the headset’s minimum system requirement. To counteract this, the StarVR One headset supports a feature called foveated rendering, which relies on Tobii eye-tracking to track the movement of the user’s eyes and prioritise high-resolution gameplay on specific areas of the VR headset. This feature is designed to make VR gaming a lot less computationally expensive, though this requires Tobii’s eye-tracking software to be configured on a per-user basis.