Christmas came early, received the HTC Vive dev kit! Yes it’s relatively late compared to when other studios got them, but its infinitely better to have it than to not.
upon first openingupon first openingtypical Valve humor on their manualsthe Vive headset is contained in the box branded HTCit’s interesting to see the effort spent in packaging the HMD despite its developer statusnice smooth bag wrapping the HMDVive controllers in box 1the lighthouses are in box 2here’s everything togetherseems like there were adhesive mounting pads, but I rather not risk itVive controllers, lighthouses, and the HMDLighthouse closeupjust to make sure everything works, I mounetd it on a light stand first, with a ballhead tripod head from my Gorillapodnext came actually mounting it on the wall to ensure stabilitythe mounting bracketthe ball socket is locked in the mounting bracket and tightened with a hex key.since the power cable to the lighthouses are short, to protect the plugs, I made sure the weight hung off something else rather than the plug itselfa similar potentially cord-damaging design was the upwards pointing of the HDMI, USB and power plugs. To prevent all the weight of the long cord hanging on the plugs, I tied it to the side strap and let it bear the weight instead.