HTC and Intel Join Hands for WiGig Powered Wireless VR Solution

Image credit: HTC

HTC has recently announced the release of its standalone VR headset later this year in partnership with Google. The VR headset is expected to bring along many new goodies to the platform and we might see it featuring some top of the line specs in terms of display, tracking, and other VR-Tech features.

However, knowing the fact that the company’s HTC Vive headset enjoys a prime position among its other competitor VR headsets, HTC has some special plans for its existing Vive users.

The latest reports from the industry show that HTC has recently joined hands with chip maker Intel to introduce a powerful wireless functionality to its HTC Vive using the WiGig powered wireless solution. HTC is already working on a TPCAST wireless add-on, which is expected to be released soon. This certainly raises the most pertinent question that when HTC has already designed a wireless solution using TPCAST, what is the need for it to consider Intel’s WiGig powered wireless VR solution?

Although both TPCAST and Intel’s solution use the same 60Ghz to broadcast content to and from a PC based station, both are still different in terms of few operational boundaries and the standards used. The TPCAST makes use of the ‘WirelessHD’ standard while Intel’s solution is based on the WiGig standard.

Understanding the Differences between ‘WirelessHD’ and ‘WiGig’

Wireless HD – This is one of the oldest standards which is designed for exclusively transmitting video over short distances. Solutions that use the Wireless HD consist of two boxes – transmitter and receiver – each of which is dedicatedly used for transmitting video and audio between the source and destination. Unlike the WiGig solution, WirelessHD doesn’t let you copy any other sort of files or browse the Internet through it. While the other difference is that WirelessHD lets you transmit data at higher rates of 28 Gigabytes, much above the WiGig data rates. WirelessHD is a proprietary solution opposed to WiGig being an IEEE standard solution.

Image credit: HTC

WiGig – This is a wireless multi-gigabit networking standard and has helped define the IEEE 802.11ad 60GHz standard. Over short distance transmissions, WiGig helps to considerably improve over-the-air bandwidth over WiFi and lets users broadcast multi-gigabytes of video and audio content. Just like other WiFi standards, WiGig is a high-speed general-purpose network standard. Moreover, with any 80.11ad compatible router, WiGig offers additional bandwidth to transfer any other sort of data apart from just video and audio, which is its major advantage over WirelessHD. However, the data rates offered are lower with 7 gigabytes per channel.

HTC states, “To create this high-end VR experience, Intel and HTC recognized the need to better integrate the HMD with high-computing capabilities. The WiGig technology, based on 802.11ad standard, works solely in the interference- free 60GHz band, and enables high throughput and low latency in both directions, from the PC to HMD and from HMD to PC. This means pristine video quality with <7ms latency in any environment, supporting multiple users sharing the same space. All of this results in the seamless wireless VR with the Vive.”

TP-Link WiGig Router Image credit: TP-Link

This shows some considerable advantages and the versatility of file transfer that WiGig offers over the WirelessHD solutions. Moreover, in few years, WiGig routers are said to occupy the corners of every household and thus this might be a major reason for HTC to consider this alternative.

This shows that HTC is still very diligently committed to improving its HTC Vive platform by bringing new features as well improvising the existing solutions and adopting more open and long-term solutions. The new WiGig Solution by HTC and Intel will be showcased at the upcoming E3 Convention starting June 13th.