There was an area of the show that was devoted to Chinese companies. One had nobody that could speak French or English, at least when we went by, so we weren’t sure quite why they were there.
Goertek’s Cool1 uses a Samsung processor and an OLED display. Image:Meko
Goertek had quite a lot of technology at the show. The company, which is based in China, claims to be the biggest OEM maker of headsets for VR and was showing a number of new headsets, including the Parrot Bebop 2, which it makes for Parrot.
The first headset we looked at was the ‘Cool1’ which is a fully integrated system based on the Samsung Exynos8890 AP and using a 5.7″ AMOLED display with 2560 x 1440 Hz at a refresh rate of 70Hz. The headset has a field of view of 100º and uses an ‘inside out’ tracking system from Ximmers and also has a gesture system from LeapMotion. Latency is quoted at <18ms.
Goertek’s VR 820 uses a Snapdragon AP and is a reference design for Qualcomm. Image:Meko
The VR820 is also self-contained and has the same display as the Cool1, but the application processor is a Snapdragon 820 and is used as the reference design by Qualcomm, we heard. It uses four microphones for noise cancelling and is said to have especially accurate 6DOF movement tracking. The headset uses eye-tracking to optimise GPU rendering. Goertek is working with Qualcomm on the new VRDK development kit based on the Snapdragon 835. (Qualcomm-based VRDK Headset to be Launched in 2H 2017)
Goertek had a prototype system that used gaze, based on internally developed technology, to operate a game. I spent some time getting the hand tracker on, but the prototype was playing up – I had to look a long way from the target to get the cursor on the right spot. Staff told me ‘the gaze is set up for Asian faces’, but I suspect that it was more likely to be a problem with the system, which was a shame.
Pico’s Neo headset uses a battery in the controller. Image:Meko
Also on the booth was Pico Technology, which is a Chinese brand that sells hardware from Goertek. The Neo is based on the Snapdragon 820/Adreno 530 with dual 1200 x 1080 AMOLEDs with 102º FOV. The two part design allows a bigger battery without excessive weight (it’s 5,000mAh giving three hours of life).
HeiVR (Qingdao HeiVR Technology Co., Ltd) was showing software for education use. The company told us that 30% of children in China use the firm’s software in the education system.
