The VR segment is increasingly evolving and meeting newer competitors who are bringing to the plate what traditional VR solutions could not – portability. Now that smartphones have entered the game it seems odd to buy an expensive tethered piece of equipment to properly use the new medium. HTC have been among the first to pick on this and have created a brand-new version of their Vive VR headset that should make a lot of enthusiasts happy.
HTC has revealed a standalone spinoff to the HTC Vive VR headset that was showcased at ChinaJoy 2017. This headset will not feature any wires and will take away the restriction that most VR users have faced thus far – carrying around heavy equipment and being forced to restrain from moving about so much. This headset will be similar to Google’s Daydream headset and will be powered by the Snapdragon 835 chipset.
The regional president of HTC in China had iterated that the offering will be more affordable than their current generation Vive VR headsets and will allow for the masses in China to be active in the VR scene, thanks to the company’s partnership with Qualcomm.
The headset will be using different tracking tech compared to what it will use when it reaches the US. In China, the new Vive headset will work on the company’s own Viveport content platform that will utilize Qualcomm’s Snapdragon VR tracking tech, whereas in the US, the headset will work on Google’s WorldSense positional tracking, which is based off of the Daydream platform. The existing tethered Vive VR headset runs on the well-received SteamVR platform. Whether it will make an appearance on the next iteration of the headset or on other headsets in the future has not been confirmed yet.
Viveport is HTC’s home-baked content marketplace for gaming and non-gaming applications. The company has also been testing a Viveport launcher using VR through smartphones. While the design for the device will be the same in the US and China, the technology that it will run on in these two countries is completely different.
While Viveport does look like a promising offering, it will be relegated exclusively to the Asian markets, while US market will get to enjoy a wider selection of applications and resources through the Daydream platform. While the Snapdragon 835 cannot be compared to the guts of a PC running dedicated GPUs such as the NVIDIA 1070 or 1080, the graphical prowess of the headset will be lesser, compared to its older predecessor.
Considering the pros and cons of swapping a PC with a mobile chip, the pros out-weigh without much competition as there does not need to be any extra battery backup, there is a lack of wiring and also the graphical abilities of Qualcomm’s chip are still impressive for mobile VR tasks. Availability and pricing for the device are yet to be revealed.
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