All Mode
It’s been almost a year now since HTC announced its Vive VR Headset back in April 2016 in partnership with Valve. Superior VR technology and good design involved in making the Vive VR Headsets has put HTC at a very dominant position in the VR market and is competing tooth-and-nail with other industry giants like Oculus.
However, the Vive VR headsets from HTC are priced for around $700 and require an additional high-end gaming PC to work along with it. This takes the overall cost of HTC’s Vive experience to be much high.
Industry players like Samsung and Google cited this cost hurdle early, and came up with their mobile VR headsets like Gear VR and Google Daydream that offer a much cheaper alternative taking the cost to almost half. However, there is no doubt to it that the Vive headsets are technologically far more superior than the existing mobile VR headsets.
Wireless is the future
One of the major issues with the Vive and other high-end VR headsets is those cable attachments that are required to draw additional power and content from the connected PCs/Laptops. This not only makes it clumsy to handle your VR headset but also limits your movements creating a barrier for room-scale experiences.
Industry giants like Intel – with its Project Alloy – and many others have already started working in this direction and now HTC too is citing a potential opportunity in mobile VR headset solutions. However, unlike the existing mobile VR Headset solutions, HTC’s solution is supposed to be quite different.
Image Credit: YouTube
In the latest interview, HTC’s president of global sales, Chia-lin Chang said “We have a good plan in terms of combining mobility with VR. “Vive is very top end, and in the coming months you’ll see our plans in terms of mobility and VR, and it’s not a phone slapped onto a headset. It’d be a different thing.”
So if this is not going to be a smartphone attached solution, we can expect something like Intel’s Project Alloy. In this case, HTC will come with a complete standalone solution with all the computing power baked-in within the headset itself.
This is not for the first time that HTC has been talking about such a solution. Last year at the MWC 2017, the company said that they have plans to combine their mobile and VR businesses.
Recently, HTC CEO Cher Wang disclosed the company’s fourth quarter results and highlighted the company’s approach towards their VR business and plans ahead. She says “We have learned much from our entrance into the world of virtual reality, and we believe our focused approach to building the ecosystem is the right strategy to enable the whole industry to expand through the creation of compelling content and rich experiences.”
I tried their VIVE and it was amazing and I hope this one too has some great features.
It’s been a long wait of wireless headsets from HTC, specially when other players have already started substantial amount of work in that direction… We expect something big from HTC after this news
Very cool, looking forward to hearing more about this.