New Vive buyer in education

[alexchaucer]

Hi Stephen,

I'm just getting ready to make our initial purchase of an HTC Vive system. Any tips or recommendations? We are a small college in upstate NY where "Creative Thought Matters" and I think investigating the opportunities for VR in education are vast.

I'm interested in trackers too, as we do have a dance program here, and could see some neat collaborations down the road.

Any advice as I make this initial purchase? I see there is a $100 discount, but can't see that on the website, and also some good deals on subscriptions to the Viveport currently. I also see multiple places to buy a systme, Amazon and others. I don't see the trackers on Amazon, though.

Here's my email alexchaucer@gmail.com, and I am also on Twitter @geoparadigm. Open to a phone call as well if that makes sense. Thanks for wrangling the community :)

 

Alex

[Rockjaw]

Hey ! I moved your post into this forum as it seems more suitable here. :)

 

Our $100 discount was a one-day only offer, so I'm sorry if you missed it. :( You can indeed purchase Vive from various retailers including Amazon, Best Buy etc. If you want a demo before you buy, try Best Buy (call ahead to make sure they're doing demos though).

 

Trackers aren't on sale to the public yet, they're for developers (so they can develop apps!). However with a minimum of programming knowledge it's quite possible you could use them for dance, for example. I'm sure your students will be able to get something out of them!

 

As for general advice, well - make sure you get a PC or laptop powerful enough for VR (you can use the Steam VR Performance Test app for that). Set up a space big enough to allow for room scale, which ideally doesn't get used for much else. If you're unable to wall-mount the lighthouses, or want to move the system around, you might want to look into lightstands as alternate ways to mount them (you'll need to add ball-head mounts too). All together, that should cost less than $50 or so.

 

If you're going to be using the Vive with a number of different people, you might want to invest in a cover. VRcover has a great range - here's the one I use. These can be swapped out, cleaned etc quite easily between users or sessions.

 

Viveport Subscription is a good way to potentially 'try before you buy' on a number of apps that are education focused. There's a great selection in there. Recently, especially for a 'creative' college, I'd recommend MakeVR for sure. There are lots to choose from though. Oh, there's also a VR sale on Steam right now too, so you can pick up more titles for cheap there.

 

Let me know if you have other questions!