Surreal Contact is a Kickstarter-backed third-party movement controller for Imaginative and prescient Professional. The primary batch of controllers started delivery in December (proper on time), and early impressions are beginning to roll out.
XR trade veteran Nima Zeighami is the creator of the Imaginative and prescient Professional Homeowners Membership on Twitter, and backer #130 of the Surreal Contact Kickstarter, which raised $127,000 to fund the controllers. Zeighami was among the many first to obtain the manufacturing model of the controllers and kindly shared his impressions with us.
The Surreal Contact Imaginative and prescient Professional controllers use on-board cameras to trace their place and report it to the headset, much like Meta’s Contact Professional controllers. An upcoming SDK guarantees to permit builders to construct VisionOS apps that help the controllers immediately. Within the meantime, the controllers additionally embrace software program for Home windows which lets you stream PC VR content material to Imaginative and prescient Professional, making it doable to play SteamVR content material with correct controller help.
Zeighami mentioned a spotlight of the controllers was the seamless PC VR streaming due to Surreal’s personal streaming software program. That features the Surreal Hyperlink app on Imaginative and prescient Professional itself, and the Surreal Streamer app put in onto the PC.
It took simply 10 minutes for the preliminary setup to play SteamVR video games on Imaginative and prescient Professional with the Surreal Contact controllers, Zeighami mentioned. “Surreal Hyperlink is perhaps the most effective and lowest friction expertise I’ve ever had with wi-fi VR,” he mentioned. After the preliminary setup, leaping again into SteamVR content material with the controllers took a couple of minute whole. All-in all, Zeighami was impressed with the software program expertise.
“I can’t harp on this sufficient: the actual magic of Surreal Contact is the software program expertise extra so than the {hardware} high quality or monitoring high quality. Delivering a high-tech movement controller is a colossal job, however delivering a easy wi-fi VR streaming app that really ‘simply works’ is sort of extra spectacular,” he mentioned.
However the precise high quality of the controller monitoring appears to be one other query. Zeighami mentioned he was pleased with the latency of the controllers, however not as a lot with the positional accuracy.
“[Surreal] claims lower than 10mm positional monitoring accuracy and fewer than 1° rotational monitoring accuracy. Whereas I didn’t actually discover any points with rotational accuracy, I did have frequent points with positional accuracy. I typically discovered that the place was a lot additional off than 10mm or 1cm, typically nearer to round 10cm or in uncommon cases much more. This appears to occur in adversarial eventualities, the place the controller could also be pointed at a featureless airplane like a plain white ceiling or a big reflective black flat display screen TV that’s off. Or when the controller is held in a method the place the cameras on it are blocked by one thing or pointed at my different hand or arm,” he mentioned.
Right here’s a have a look at Surreal Contact being on Imaginative and prescient Professional enjoying Vertigo 2 on SteamVR:
He in contrast the monitoring high quality to that of the unique Magic Leap, which shipped with a magnetically-tracked controller.
“[…] Surreal Contact feels jogs my memory of Magic Leap 1’s controller. It really works wonderful in most eventualities, however you possibly can see it jitter and drift to an offset of some centimeters fairly consistently. It’s completely wonderful for many apps and video games however makes aggressive video games unplayable {and professional} artistic instruments unusable.”
For video games with slower hand actions, Zeighami maintains the controllers work properly. However for video games with a number of quick hand actions, the controllers are prone to frustrate. Beat Saber was rendered almost unplayable because of the controller’s tendency to lose place and drift far-off from the participant.
Monitoring high quality apart, Zeighami offers the controllers a thumbs up on construct high quality and really feel.
“They don’t really feel too heavy, and the joystick, buttons, and triggers really feel nice,” he mentioned. Although he additionally famous some polish points.
“Regardless of the largely premium-feeling construct, the engineering tolerances aren’t excellent, with the plastic on my left controller not aligning correctly with the physique, resulting in a little bit of plastic protruding barely reasonably than sitting flush. As well as, the grip triggers creak when pressed all the best way.”
And there’s some lacking particulars, like an absence of capacitive sensing which might enable the controllers to trace which buttons or sticks the consumer is touching. Granted, most VR content material doesn’t make use of this characteristic even on controllers that do help it.
Whereas PC VR streaming works properly Zeighami’s account, utilizing the controllers natively with VisionOS (which isn’t designed with controllers in thoughts) is a distinct story.
Zeighami says you possibly can activate a “cursor mode,” which lets you intention a cursor with the controller so you possibly can management Imaginative and prescient Professional’s interface. Nonetheless, as an alternative of working like a laser pointer (as most controller-based VR interfaces do), the controller appears to emulate a related mouse, the place the rotation of the controller is used to find out the route the cursor strikes.
Additional, there’s apparently no option to set off the ‘House’ motion utilizing the controllers, which implies it’s good to attain your hand as much as press the button on the highest of the headset, or dangle the controller from the wrist strap and use your hand to do the VisionOS ‘House’ gesture.
At this early stage there’s not a single native VisionOS app that really helps the controllers. And Zeighami doesn’t count on there ever will likely be a lot traction on that entrance.
“Virtually no builders on Imaginative and prescient Professional will help the Surreal SDK as a result of homeowners of Imaginative and prescient Professional with Surreal Contact are a tiny area of interest inside a tiny area of interest. SteamVR is basically the rationale this exists, so don’t purchase these controllers anticipating all the most effective Imaginative and prescient Professional video games to start out supporting Surreal Contact,” he advises.
Past being controllers for Imaginative and prescient Professional, there’s the chance that Surreal Contact may grow to be the defacto ‘open’ third-party movement controller for any variety of VR headsets. That’s doable as a result of the controllers are self-tracked utilizing their very own on-board cameras, as an alternative of counting on proprietary monitoring algorithms that tie most VR controllers to their respective headset. However the firm has but to launch a public native SDK, which implies that’s nonetheless a pipe dream in the interim.
One place the place the controllers get a thumbs up (with no caveats) is their on-time supply. We’ve seen greater than our fair proportion of Kickstarter initiatives that ended up months or years overdue. For what seems to be the corporate’s first-ever product, their go-to-market execution was spot-on.
Zeighami additionally mused on whether or not or not he thinks the Surreal Contact controllers for Imaginative and prescient Professional are value it, contemplating the present $300 value.
“So what all of it actually comes all the way down to is a straightforward query: is it value [$300] for a pair of controllers simply to play SteamVR video games in your Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional? Sure, completely. That is extra of a operate of the Imaginative and prescient Professional than the Surreal Contact, however even 2016-era VR video games on SteamVR when performed on the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional look higher than all however the top-tier video games on a Quest 3 […]” he mentioned.”
“So which means that if you’re the sort of one who purchased a Imaginative and prescient Professional over a Quest, or you might have each headsets and wish to spend dozens of hours or extra enjoying PC VR experiences just like the superior model of VRChat, Half-Life: Alyx, Resonite, Boneworks, Skyrim VR, Fallout 4 VR, and so forth. then Surreal Contact is the plain selection,” Zeighami mentioned. “It’s not excellent, the monitoring high quality is beneath most different leaders available in the market, and Surreal Interactive has loads of room for enchancment within the total high quality of their providing. And but even with these points, I nonetheless suppose it’s an ideal expertise. That means, I not solely suppose it crosses the minimal threshold for usability, I believe that it’s a must-buy for anybody fascinated by experiencing the SteamVR ecosystem on their Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional.”
