Wednesday, September 18th 2024
HTC VIVE Launches VIVE Focus Vision XR Headset for Gaming
HTC VIVE, the global leader in premium XR solutions, today launches its new cutting-edge headset VIVE Focus Vision. The new Extended Reality (XR) headset is the latest in HTC VIVE's highly popular VIVE Focus Series, with a wealth of improvements and new features to give gamers and enterprise users alike the best possible immersive experience for PCVR and standalone gaming, as well as Location-Based Experiences (LBE), industrial training, collaboration, and mixed reality applications.
"VIVE Focus Vision gives you the best of both worlds, with outstanding standalone capabilities, and DisplayPort mode support for visually lossless PCVR experiences," said Shen Ye, Global Head of Product at HTC VIVE. "Now, PC gamers can bring the same high-end headsets used in VR arcades into their homes. We're taking everything to the next level with built-in eye-tracking, stereo color passthrough cameras for depth-correct Mixed Reality, and even an infra-red sensor for enhanced hand tracking in low-light conditions."
VIVE Focus Vision takes the popular VIVE Focus 3 platform and expands upon it with significant updates in visuals and comfort, as well as improvements in operational efficiency and headset sharing for multi-user scenarios. Such multi-user setups are popular with businesses like VR arcades, and employee training for healthcare, defense, finance, manufacturing, and other sectors.
VIVE Focus Vision features DisplayPort mode for PCVR, enabling lossless visuals by connecting the headset directly to a PC graphics card. With DisplayPort, gamers and enterprise users alike can enjoy content exactly as the developers intended, without degradation of quality. This is perfect for PCVR gamers who have SteamVR game collections, as well as enterprise organizations who want to deliver a powerful immersive experience.
VIVE Focus Vision has auto-IPD adjustment with integrated eye tracking, so users can easily share the headset with friends, family, and colleagues, and it will automatically adjust the interpupillary distance of the lenses for crystal-clear visuals every time. Auto-IPD is also perfect for high-user turnover environments, like LBEs and training events.
Two front-facing color cameras enable stereoscopic passthrough, so users can see the world with natural depth perception while wearing the headset, making Mixed Reality experiences even more realistic. VIVE Focus Vision features a revamped cooling system, allowing for highly comfortable sessions. It also has a built-in sub-battery to keep the device running for up to 20 minutes while swapping batteries, so users never lose their place in an XR experience.
Highlighted features include:
Source:
HTV VIVE
"VIVE Focus Vision gives you the best of both worlds, with outstanding standalone capabilities, and DisplayPort mode support for visually lossless PCVR experiences," said Shen Ye, Global Head of Product at HTC VIVE. "Now, PC gamers can bring the same high-end headsets used in VR arcades into their homes. We're taking everything to the next level with built-in eye-tracking, stereo color passthrough cameras for depth-correct Mixed Reality, and even an infra-red sensor for enhanced hand tracking in low-light conditions."
VIVE Focus Vision features DisplayPort mode for PCVR, enabling lossless visuals by connecting the headset directly to a PC graphics card. With DisplayPort, gamers and enterprise users alike can enjoy content exactly as the developers intended, without degradation of quality. This is perfect for PCVR gamers who have SteamVR game collections, as well as enterprise organizations who want to deliver a powerful immersive experience.
VIVE Focus Vision has auto-IPD adjustment with integrated eye tracking, so users can easily share the headset with friends, family, and colleagues, and it will automatically adjust the interpupillary distance of the lenses for crystal-clear visuals every time. Auto-IPD is also perfect for high-user turnover environments, like LBEs and training events.
Two front-facing color cameras enable stereoscopic passthrough, so users can see the world with natural depth perception while wearing the headset, making Mixed Reality experiences even more realistic. VIVE Focus Vision features a revamped cooling system, allowing for highly comfortable sessions. It also has a built-in sub-battery to keep the device running for up to 20 minutes while swapping batteries, so users never lose their place in an XR experience.
- Built-in eye tracking and motorized auto-IPD adjustment
- DisplayPort mode for stunning, visually lossless PCVR experiences
- Dual 16MP color cameras for stereoscopic full color passthrough
- Up to 120-degree FOV and 90 Hz refresh rate. Support for 120 Hz refresh rate via DisplayPort mode coming late 2024.
- Combined 5k resolution across both eyes
- Depth sensor for scene recognition
- Infra-red sensor for enhanced tracking in low-light conditions
17 Comments on HTC VIVE Launches VIVE Focus Vision XR Headset for Gaming
"Sharp" headset displays today reach 4096x4096 per eye and there's quite a road ahead from there.
Just...beatsaber?
Also, I don't think there will be many people willing to invest into VR, since games are getting more and more demanding regarding GPU power, and we're "beyond Moore's Law", in the time where you will pay for increase in performance with increase in price. Expect $1800 RTX 5080, 50 % faster than RTX 4080 with 50% higher price, and we will be told by reviewers why this is a good thing!
But no pancake lenses in 2024 is a miss oportunity to make it better in term of image quality. It's not a bad headset, just build like an enterprise headset from 2020, so a lot of tech but nothing cuting edge or very recent. I would love it without the standalone hardware, a lot cheaper and lighter with a good feature set.
For $999, 2.8K per eye is still going to suffer from SDE, and that's really the only issue with older/cheaper headsets. Why spend this much if you're not going to get rid of the biggest downside of headsets half the price?
Or are pancake lenses something else?
That said, this has slightly less resolution than the Reverb G2. That would be fine with me if this had pancake lenses, but it most likely does not. I would like to replace my Reverb G2 since WMR is dying, but its fresnel lenses are by far that headset's biggest drawback (other than the controller tracking, which I don't care about for sim usage) and I won't replace it with another headset using that lens type.