Razer seems to surprise us year after year with forays into gaming beyond their b’n’b mice and keyboard products. Today, they unveiled two such products: OSVR and the Razer Forge TV.
You are more likely to get a Razer Forge TV soon. It’s a $ 100 Android microconsole which will also allow you to stream your PC games directly to your TV. Supporting the console are the Serval and the Turret. The Serval is a Bluetooth Razer Sabertooth controller, made by the same team that developed the Xbox 360 controller. The Razer Turret is a wireless keyboard / touchpad of sorts that you can lay on your lap for complete living room usability.
The OSVR is the more ambitious project, literally Open Source Virtual Reality. Razer is developing the platform with the help of VR company Sensics.
OSVR hopes to build a truly open platform, that will work with multiple game engines, including Unity and Unreal, support multiple devices, like Oculus DK 2 and the Vrvana Totem, and work with any OS, between Windows, Android, and Linux.
The initial product, the OSVR Hacker Dev Kit, lowers the ceiling for dev accessibility with high quality, low-distortion optics. This tech reduces the need for color and distortion correction, and minimizes the dev work needed for VR. True to its word, Razer and Sensics are sharing a 3D blueprint of their glasses that anyone (who can afford it) can print. The OSVR Hacker Dev Kit will be available this June for only $ 199.99.
