GameFace Labs

GameFace Labs
Information
Industry	Virtual Reality
Founder	Edward Mason
Notable Personnel	Edward Mason (founder and CEO), Bill Rehbock (co-founder and chief strategy officer, Curve Reality)
Products	GameFace standalone VR headset prototypes and Head Mounted Console (HMC) developer kit; CB302B carrier board (as Curve Reality)
Website	https://curvereality.com

GameFace Labs is a hardware company founded by Edward Mason that spent the mid-2010s developing standalone virtual reality headset prototypes: Android-based devices with built-in processors, mostly from NVIDIA, that needed no phone, PC or console to run. The company, which started in London and was described by the press as San Francisco-based from 2014, showed a series of prototypes at CES and E3 between 2014 and 2017.

Its later designs combined standalone Android VR with a tethered mode for PC content through Valve's OpenVR, plus SteamVR Tracking (Lighthouse) hardware running on the headset itself. In May 2018 GameFace opened pre-orders for a US$599 developer kit, the Head Mounted Console (HMC), built on NVIDIA's Jetson TX2 module. As of 2026 the company's website presents it as GameFace Labs, Inc. doing business as Curve Reality, which is preparing a carrier board for NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules and says its work "started in XR".

Reviewed 7 October 2026. Checked every claim against the cited Engadget, Road to VR, HotHardware, Hypergrid Business, TechCrunch, Voices of VR, VG247, Razer, Display Daily, Tom's Hardware, UploadVR and PC Watch articles, the Google Patents records, the Companies House record and the current Curve Reality website. About review dates.

History

Early prototypes (2014)

TechCrunch reported in 2016 that GameFace Labs had been founded in London, with Edward Mason as founder and chief executive. At CES in January 2014 the company demonstrated the Mark IV, a 3D-printed proof of concept that Engadget described as Android-based and standalone, with a 5.2-inch 1,920 x 1,080 panel and an NVIDIA Tegra 4 processor. The demo used a Bluetooth gamepad (a Sony DualShock 3) and ran the Tuscany demo and the game Dead Trigger. GameFace told Engadget it was aiming for retail availability by the end of 2014, was in talks with NVIDIA about the Tegra K1 chip, and planned an Android VR store.

In April 2014 Road to VR reported a newer prototype with a 5.5-inch 2560x1440 LCD panel (about 534 PPI); Mason called the upgrade to 1280 x 1440 per eye "monumental". Earlier GameFace prototypes had used Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 and NVIDIA Tegra 4 chips, and the latest one used a Tegra K1 (Jetson) board. The company targeted a developer kit for the end of 2014. At E3 in June 2014 Road to VR tried the Mark 5 prototype: a 2560x1440 display driven by a Tegra K1, knobs on the sides to adjust eye-to-lens distance and one on top for IPD, new lenses with a large exit pupil, and HDMI out, MicroUSB and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The unit was larger and heavier than earlier versions, and Mason said "the final product will surely be smaller".

In March 2014 VG247 listed Gameface Labs among the members of the Immersive Technology Alliance, the renamed Stereoscopic 3D Gaming Alliance, alongside Oculus VR, Electronic Arts, Epson and others. In a June 2014 interview with the Voices of VR podcast, Mason called the device a "head-mounted console" built on custom Android hardware rather than a smartphone, and said the company planned to release developer kits before seeking formal funding.

The same month, Hypergrid Business described a GameFace operating system built around a virtual living room inspired by Ready Player One, where looking at objects such as arcade machines or a TV launched applications. GameFace said it would support Second Life, High Fidelity and OpenSim worlds, offer SDKs for Unity and C++, and license its OS to other headset makers. The site reported a price of about 500 US dollars, a developer kit in mid-December and a consumer release "sometime in 2015".

OSVR, OpenVR and the developer console (2015-2016)

When Razer and Sensics announced the OSVR open-source VR platform on 6 January 2015, GameFace was listed among the head-mounted display makers supporting it. At E3 2015 the company showed its "Developer Console" (GFLDC), a prototype that it called a head mounted console (HMC) and that ran standalone on a Tegra K1 but could also connect to a PC through Valve's OpenVR API for SteamVR games and Lighthouse tracking. Its listed specifications included a 75Hz 2560 x 1440 OLED display, a 140-degree field of view, 4GB of DDR4 memory, Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0, 9-axis orientation sensors and wide-angle stereo cameras, with availability expected in the second quarter of 2016. Mason said: "We believe Virtual Reality should be an untethered experience and our console brings that reality a step closer."

In December 2015 Hypergrid Business reported that the San Francisco-based company was joining Valve's ecosystem. The prototype at that point had a 110-degree field of view, a 6-inch 2.5K display and a battery life of about seven hours, and development kits were scheduled to ship from January 2016. GameFace was interviewed on the TechCrunch Hardware Battlefield stage at CES 2016, where TechCrunch said its first device would ship in 2017.

EP1 and the shift to developers (2017)

At E3 2017 GameFace showed the EP1 prototype. Display Daily reported a 2560 x 1440 display (90Hz planned for the final developer version) and SteamVR Tracking that ran on the headset itself, so it did not need an external PC for tracking. The company described two versions: the GF-LD, with SteamVR Tracking and optional PC connection through OpenVR, and the lower-cost GF-DD, which used a Google Daydream controller and lacked SteamVR support. Both were to include gaze recognition with foveated rendering.

Engadget's July 2017 report listed dual 90Hz 2,560 x 1,440 displays on custom Samsung panels, a 120-degree field of view, NVIDIA Tegra processors, Intel RealSense cameras, Leap Motion hand-tracking sensors, an eight-hour battery and a built-in fan. It said the headset supported SteamVR content, Oculus content through the ReVive compatibility layer, and Daydream and Google Cardboard apps natively, and called it the first standalone Android headset with Lighthouse positional tracking. Developer models were priced at about 500 US dollars (GF-DD) and 700 US dollars (GF-LD). According to Engadget, GameFace had dropped its plan to put the headset in stores and instead positioned itself as a "VR-enabling company" that would license its technology to OEMs. Mason said: "What we're trying to do is build one headset that is trying to unify a rapidly fragmenting industry."

Head Mounted Console developer kit (2018)

In May 2018 GameFace opened pre-orders for the Head Mounted Console (HMC) developer kit at US$599, available to developers approved through an application process. Buyers were also promised a retail HMC when the consumer version launched later that year. The kit ran Android 7.0 Nougat standalone and could be tethered to a PC to play SteamVR content through OpenVR. GameFace worked with Triad Semiconductor on compatibility with SteamVR (Lighthouse) Tracking, and the kit came with Lighthouse base stations. Tom's Hardware listed a pair of 6DoF tracked controllers, while UploadVR reported a single 6DoF controller. Road to VR noted that one device covering both mobile and PC VR development could cost developers less than buying a separate headset for each.

Component	HMC developer kit (Tom's Hardware listing)
Compute	NVIDIA Jetson TX2 module
GPU	NVIDIA Pascal, 256 CUDA cores
CPU	HMP Dual Denver 2/2 MB L2 + Quad ARM A57/2 MB L2
Memory	8GB 128-bit DDR4
Storage	32GB eMMC 5.1
Display	2560x1440 WQHD low-persistence OLED, sub-20 ms latency
Connectivity	802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet
Power	19V AC adaptor or battery pack
Tracking	Valve SteamVR (Lighthouse) 6DoF tracking
Software	Standalone: Android 7.0 and native GameFace Labs content; tethered: SteamVR content via OpenVR

Source: Tom's Hardware. Japan's PC Watch reported the same TX2 configuration and the US$599 price.

Patents and later activity

GameFace Labs Inc is the assignee of US patent 11,669,993 B2, "Systems and methods for position and pose determination and tracking", granted on 6 June 2023 with a priority date of 7 July 2017. It names Edward Mason, Aidan Delaney and Brady James Riddle as inventors and covers tracking objects for VR and AR from emitted and sensed light signals, refined with inertial data. A later application, published as US 2022/0347562 A1 ("Electronic consoles, assemblies, and devices for extended reality applications", filed 19 April 2022), describes a modular console with hot-swappable battery portions that can run in an extended reality mode, a desktop mode or a television set-top box mode; its inventors are Edward Mason, William Edward Rehbock and Kasper John Hunt. It was granted as US patent 12,337,229 B2 on 24 June 2025.

In the United Kingdom, GameFace Labs Limited (company number 09908774), with Edward Mason as a director, was incorporated on 9 December 2015 and dissolved through voluntary strike-off on 13 June 2023.

As of October 2026 the gamefacelabs.com domain redirects to the website of Curve Reality, whose footer identifies the business as GameFace Labs, Inc. DBA Curve Reality. The site lists Ed Mason as founder and CEO and Bill Rehbock, described as NVIDIA's former head of developer relations, as co-founder and chief strategy officer. Curve Reality's main product is the CB302B, a battery-powered carrier board for NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX modules, offered bare or as part of a developer kit; the site states that it is not yet shipping and takes reservations for the first production run. The company says it "began with wearable and spatial computing infrastructure" and now applies that modular design to ARM desktop and edge AI computing.

Products

Product	Year shown	Notes
Mark IV prototype	CES, January 2014	3D-printed, Android, 5.2-inch 1,920 x 1,080 panel, Tegra 4
2.5K prototype	April 2014	5.5-inch 2560x1440 LCD (about 534 PPI); Tegra K1 board
Mark 5 prototype	E3, June 2014	2560x1440 display, Tegra K1, IPD and eye-relief knobs
Developer Console (GFLDC)	E3, June 2015	Tegra K1, 75Hz 2560 x 1440 OLED, 140-degree FOV, OpenVR PC tethering
EP1 (GF-LD and GF-DD)	E3, June 2017	SteamVR Tracking on the headset (GF-LD), Daydream controller (GF-DD)
Head Mounted Console (HMC) developer kit	May 2018	NVIDIA Jetson TX2, Android 7.0, Lighthouse tracking, US$599
CB302B carrier board (as Curve Reality)	2026	Carrier board for NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano and Orin NX; reservations only, not yet shipping

See also

• Standalone VR
• OpenVR
• OSVR
• SteamVR Tracking