HTC is engaged on a standalone AR/VR headset that is designed to be light-weight and self-contained relatively than requiring a PC or cellphone. Sounding greater than a bit like a competitor to the Meta Quest 2, the unnamed headset was revealed to The Verge (opens in new tab) by HTC’s world head of product Shen Ye forward of a full announcement on the CES convention on January 5.
Again in 2019, HTC launched the Vive Cosmos as a light-weight, standalone competitor for the Rift. Sadly it had monitoring issues, which is why the Vive Cosmos Elite went again to base stations for elevated accuracy. (The Cosmos Elite nonetheless sneaks into our record of the perfect VR headsets at quantity 5.)
HTC’s new headset will include outward-facing cameras and shade passthrough for mixed-reality experiences, and a depth sensor for mapping and monitoring your environment extra effectively. It’s going to additionally help controllers with hand–monitoring and 6 levels of freedom, and apparently the battery will final for 2 hours of use.
One space the place it will not have the ability to compete with Meta is the worth. Although he did not say how a lot HTC’s subsequent headset will value, Ye certain made it seem to be it will not be wherever close to as low-cost because the Quest 2 was at launch. “We’re in an period when shopper VR headsets have been massively backed by firms which can be making an attempt to hoover up and take private knowledge to supply to advertisers,” he advised The Verge. “We do not imagine the best way that we wish to strategy it’s to compromise on privateness.”
Meta’s final headset, the Meta Quest Professional, was a pricier piece of substances, however the Meta Quest 3, which is prone to launch in 2023, can be extra consumer-friendly. It is also rumored to help mixed-reality, like Apple’s upcoming AR headset.
In the meantime, John Carmack has departed Meta. The CTO of what was nonetheless referred to as Oculus when he joined, referred to as it “an org that has solely recognized inefficiency.”