 Hi, I'm Addie from The Verge, and after making it through several layers of ornate casino doors, I'm trying out the Vive Pre, the second generation development kit for HTC and Valve's virtual reality headset. The Pre is coming at a weird time. It's only going to be around for a few months before the consumer design of the Vive comes out in April. But there's supposedly a good reason for this. The designers came up with a big new feature that they wanted to put in. A front-facing camera that shows you real reality inside virtual reality. If you move outside the space that the Vive's two sensors can map, you'll see a blurry monochrome version of the real world. A feature called chaperone mode lets you see everything like this, so I can see and sit in a chair instead of tripping over it. It's HTC and Valve's answer to how you drink a glass of water in VR. The current demos don't do much with the feature, but developers could also use it to blend real space with a game. Besides the camera, the Vive Pre has redesigned controllers that look a lot more polished, although they work about the same. We don't know how much is going to change between the Pre and the final Vive, but it's at least possible to imagine it as a finished product. If you want to see more cool stuff from CES, check us out at youtube.com slash the verge.
 Hi, I'm Addie from The Verge, and after making it through several layers of ornate casino
 doors, I'm trying out the Vive Pre, the second generation development kit for HTC and Valve's
 virtual reality headset.
 The Pre is coming at a weird time.
 It's only going to be around for a few months before the consumer design of the Vive comes
 out in April.
 But there's supposedly a good reason for this.
 The designers came up with a big new feature that they wanted to put in.
 A front-facing camera that shows you real reality inside virtual reality.
 If you move outside the space that the Vive's two sensors can map, you'll see a blurry monochrome
 version of the real world.
 A feature called chaperone mode lets you see everything like this, so I can see and sit
 in a chair instead of tripping over it.
 It's HTC and Valve's answer to how you drink a glass of water in VR.
 The current demos don't do much with the feature, but developers could also use it to blend
 real space with a game.
 Besides the camera, the Vive Pre has redesigned controllers that look a lot more polished,
 although they work about the same.
 We don't know how much is going to change between the Pre and the final Vive, but it's
 at least possible to imagine it as a finished product.
 If you want to see more cool stuff from CES, check us out at youtube.com slash the verge.