Tech journalist Joshua Topolsky appeared on the Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night and gave the energetic late-night host a chance to go hands-on with Valve and a HTC’s Vive headset for the first time. Fallon’s reactions are a great representation of the average user’s first experience with a VR device. Fallon tries Vive three minutes into the video above.
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Fallon experienced the familiar wrong footing as he first entered into the popular demo experience Tilt Brush.
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He slowly got the hang of the new technology and learned how to take advantage of his newly discovered virtual powers.
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Eventually he went from trial and error to creativity and exploration when he signed his own logo onto a digital moon.
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During the show, Topolsky said Vive represents the “most advanced VR technology in the world right now.”
Vive’s biggest competitor, Facebook’s Oculus Rift, has faced criticism for being a less technologically powerful device and Topolsky’s words on the Tonight Show may serve to stoke that fire. The Oculus-powered Gear VR previously appeared on Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show. Both appearances on network television are important for raising awareness of VR.
Topolsky was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Verge, as well as a co-founder of Vox Media. He also served as editor-in-chief of Engadget and in 2014 he accepted a position with Bloomberg as an editor for some of their new online ventures.
The Tonight Show demonstration spotlighted Vive’s much lauded “lighthouse” motion tracking system. The system uses two oscillating laser “lighthouse” boxes and sensors on the headset to render a user’s space in virtual space with millimeter precision and almost zero latency.
Pre-orders for Vive will open on Feb. 29 with a projected ship date in April. Rift pre-orders are currently open and the first shipments are set to go out on March 28.
