HTC Vive pre-orders opened February 29 — the spring VR race was on

HTC confirmed its virtual-reality headset, the Vive, would open for pre-orders on February 29, 2016 — with no price attached and an April launch on the calendar.

Anyone anchoring expectations to the competition already had a number: the Oculus Rift was listed at €699 for its launch configurations, and the Vive, built with Valve and packing even more technology, was never going to undercut it.

The most interesting piece was the front camera. The Vive was originally meant to ship at the end of 2015, but HTC delayed it deliberately for what it called “a technical breakthrough” — the addition of a camera that could blend real-world passthrough into the virtual space, an early bridge between VR and augmented reality.

The timelines stacked up into a frantic spring: the first Oculus Rift units left warehouses March 28, the Vive followed in April — a launch window VR enthusiasts still remember as the great headsets race. Context for how hot demand ran: Oculus’s first shipment batch sold out in 15 minutes on January 6.

The Vive went on to anchor room-scale VR for years. Its successors and rivals still compete for the shelf space in our VR picks.