waiting can be hard pre-orders went live
for the HTC vive back in February with
the shipping estimate of April we're
getting towards the end of April now and
many people who pre-ordered their vibe
on day one are still anxiously awaiting
them to be shipped well I've got good
news and bad news the good news is we
got our vibe the bad news is you have to
watch us tear it down having just had
the oculus cv1 on our teardown table we
felt pretty confident in our ability to
get the HTC vive up and running what we
didn't plan on was the complexity of
setting it up while the oculus had one
IR camera that just sat on your desk the
vibe requires a bit more installation
two base stations need to be placed on
opposite sides of the play area and then
using the controllers you need to map
out your play area so the vibe can
hopefully prevent you from walking into
anything important while you're using it
after our extended set up we were
running out of time to actually play
with the vibe but inspecting the headset
revealed some interesting differences
from the oculus while the oculus used a
slider to adjust the lens distance the
vive uses a rotating knob that seems to
allow for finer adjustments the vibe
also allows you to easily adjust the
screen distance with just the turn of a
knob while the oculus requires you to
replace the foam inserts to make that
adjustment getting into the vibe proved
easy enough unscrew and remove the
screen distance adjusters remove the
faceplate and pull apart to reveal a
whole lot of sensors 32 in total these
photo diodes take an IR light from the
two lighthouse base stations as they
flash and sweep light across the room
this method is the exact opposite of the
head tracking technique found in the
oculus rift in the rift the death
mounted camera tracked the IR emitters
in the headset whereas in the vibe the
headset sees light from the mounted IR
emitters without actually tracking its
location on to the motherboard we get to
the crowded motherboard and find the
STMicroelectronics arm cortex-m zero
micro controller the toshiba made 4k
HDMI to MIP I dual DSi converter also
found in the oculus rift cv1 and the
Alpha image technology system-on-chip
with image signal processor to see the
full list of chips check out our
teardown
fix it calm after removing a rubber
gasket we get to see the limbs
adjustment mechanism we mentioned
earlier it's a simple threaded rod with
a slider on top while the oculus rift
has something similar this knob can do
finer tuning with less complicated
mechanics once the lenses are separated
we take off the display cover and get a
closer look at the display each display
measures approximately 91 point 8
millimeters diagonally which translates
to approximately 447 pixels per inch
for comparison the Rif cv1 has
approximately 456 pixels per inch due to
a slightly smaller display that still
packs the same resolution as the vibe
finally we pop out the frontal lenses
unlike the hybrid lenses we encountered
in the oculus rift the Vives lenses
appear to have a uniform contour it
seems that HTC opted to control focus
through adjustment of the eye relief
we've come to the end of our teardown
and now we turn our thoughts towards
repairability
how did the HTC vive score it got an 8
out of 10 and here's why on the upside
although it's complicated the headset
breaks down readily and without damage
the head strap and face pads are
removable and don't incorporate any
sensors or electronics that might be
prone to failure standard Philips and
torque screws are used throughout the
headset controllers and base stations
and reuse of the touchpad hardware from
the steam controller means some
replacement components are likely
already available but on the downside
adhesive is used sparingly but secures
the lenses lighthouse space station
covers and sensor arrays and that's our
teardown for the complete teardown
including tons of beautiful high-quality
images and a look inside the controllers
and base stations head on over to
ifixit.com
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