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Acer and Starbreeze have spoken about their virtual reality ambitions after their respective board of directors approved the StarVR joint venture, first outlined last month.
The pair will develop and launch the StarVR virtual reality head-mounted display, targeting professionals and the entertainment market, such as cinemas, gaming arcades automotive retail and aviation training.
A small volume of units is expected to ship this year, while mass production is scheduled for 2017.
StarVR features an ultra-wide 210-degree horizontal field of view, with custom optics that deliver the image across the eye’s natural vision. This allows users to move their eyes freely in any direction, without the sensation of wearing blinders that conventional VR displays bring. It has a total panoramic definition of 5120×1440 pixels.
The new company is provisionally named Acer Starbreeze Corporation, with an authorised capital of up to $25 million shared equally between the companies. It’s expected to be incorporated in Taiwan in the third quarter of this year subject to necessary approvals from regulators.
Acer and Starbreeze will each be holding 50 per cent of the total shares and incrementally invest more money into the joint venture based on capital needs and planned schedule.
Acer CEO Jason Chen (pictured left) and Starbreeze CEO Bo Andersson Klint (right) spoke about the initiative.
“The joint venture with Starbreeze highlights Acer’s commitment of bringing premium user experiences in time to the market,” said Chen.
“Combining Starbreeze’s industry-leading VR technology, and Acer’s established experience in hardware and computing, we will bring VR experiences to new heights with StarVR."
Klint added: "Our strategic alignment with Acer is going to exponentially improve the StarVR HMD in terms of quality, execution and market reach.
"Together, we will keep pushing the frontier of VR technology. With the Acer production partnership for the StarVR headset, our joint venture with IMAX for location-based entertainment, and the content platform collaboration with Smilegate, we now have a perfect ecosystem for our VR centers.”
