Intel demonstrated an interesting new proof-of-concept at last week’s O’Reilly AI Conference in San Francisco.
According to Road to VR, the company’s new Portal Ridge system has been designed to make VR more accessible and affordable for consumers.
Using a system made up of a powerful host PC running Steam, a Google Pixel smartphone and Daydream headset, plus HTC Vive trackers and controllers, Intel were able to stream SteamVR games to the smartphone over Wi-Fi.
Road to VR’s Ben Lang commented that the set-up was slightly hampered by latency and compression, but overall he was impressed by the experience. He also pointed out that Intel’s approach could reduce the system requirements of a host PC by using more of the smartphone’s hardware.
Intel isn’t planning on marketing the concept at the moment, but the company is open to discussing future developments with partners. As smartphones become more advanced and begin to take on features including inside-out and hand tracking, it could be possible to eliminate some of the hardware used in the trial, such as the HTC Vive devices.
