Razer VR Headset for $199 Unveiled at CES 2015 – Details

We had seen almost half a dozen Virtual Reality headsets come out since June last year, when Google rewarded it’s I/O attendees with a DIY Google Cardboard VR headset. Although, Oculus has been developing its VR kit since quite a long time, it can be said that they are the first to get into this business of VR headset as far the prototypes go. But it is not alone in this category now.

Jumping back to today, the Razer has unveiled its a VR headset of its own, which is the talk of the CES, as it is being called as the Android of Virtual Reality. In a surprising move, company has announced their new VR headset to be an Open-Source.

The OSVR is a $199 virtual reality headset with head-tracking capabilities and a 1080×1920 display. The open-source development kit can work with “all VR devices, including the Oculus DK 2”. That means the engines and software built with Oculus in mind are theoretically supported.

Company says the OSVR will be released at least as a developer kit in June this year. The headset can carry two 5.5-inch display, as well as 100-degree field of view, and internal sensors for head tracking including accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass.

All this specs puts OSVR in a close alignment with Oculus Rift, though; the Facebook-owned headset in its most recent incarnation features a seven-inch display.

It is also partnering with a host of companies to create an open-source VR ecosystem, which it says will allow developers to freely create code for the headset, which can work across many operating systems, including Windows, Android, and Linux.

The OSVR dev kit will cost $199 that’s $150 less than the Oculus Dev Kit. So, it would be interesting to see how developer community takes this as.