HTC, Meta & Apple as well. Soon we'll all be wearing VR equipment & live in fantasy land.
HTC's New Standalone VR Headset Is Like Nothing We've Ever Seen
The compact, depth-sensing, $1,099 headset arrives in February. Vive boss Dan O'Brien explains the strategy.
Scott Stein
http://www.twitter.com/jetscott
Jan. 6, 2023 10:22 a.m. PT
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VR has suddenly
gotten more expensive. It seems like the worst possible timing, but HTC's newest high-end headset announced at
CES, the Vive XR Elite, follows a similar playbook to Meta's recent
Quest Pro, and possibly Apple's
awaited device as well. It raises a question: Are we truly ready for the rise of the $1,000-plus VR rigs? The standalone Vive XR Elite is sleek and looks a lot more compact than the Quest Pro, and is trying to test the higher-end waters.
The $1,099 headset, available for preorder Thursday, is arriving by the end of February -- remarkably soon for a CES product. That means it'll be available alongside Sony's PlayStation 5-connected
PSVR 2. While less expensive than the Quest Pro, the XR Elite's price costs about as much as buying a PS5 and a PSVR 2 together. It's far from an impulse purchase. But the hardware, which shrinks down the VR form to a pair of nearly glasses-like goggles and includes mixed-reality capabilities that could allow for AR apps, looks to solve how we'll be using
the metaverse for more in our lives than just games, simulation and fitness.
Read more:
The Wonders of CES 2023: 3D Laptops, Wireless TV and Shape-Shifting Screens
No other company has really cracked this challenge either. But this Vive headset looks, more than ever, like it's a stepping stone to future AR glasses.
"We see where mixed reality is going to create a whole new suite of use cases. We know the virtual reality use cases are great. I think the AR side is amazing, too," Dan O'Brien, HTC's general manager of Vive, told me in a conversation at CES in Las Vegas. He acknowledged that HTC tried to make an AR device in 2015 but stopped because of the complications. O'Brien sees 5G and cloud computing as a key next step. "You need a 5G network, a really robust one to make AR go to scale -- you need a cloud infrastructure to deliver to those types of wearables."
The XR Elite is primarily a standalone VR headset, and it looks like an impressive piece of tech: It has a familiar Qualcomm
Snapdragon XR2 chip much like the
Meta Quest 2, Quest Pro and Vive's existing business-focused
Focus 3. But it adds a higher-resolution 110-degree field of view, LCD displays with 2K resolution per eye that can run at 90Hz. There's also a boosted 12GB of RAM along with 128GB of storage. It can connect to PCs to run SteamVR or HTC's VivePort software, or connect with Android phones. But its potential as a bridge to AR experiences seems like the most impressive feature.
Those are just specs, though. The XR Elite is a VR headset with a similar proposition to previous models, but with expanded capabilities. Its compact size is the most surprising part: At 340 grams, it's less than half the weight of the Quest Pro. The rear hot-swappable battery gives about two hours of life. It gets even smaller by unclipping the back battery strap and adding glasses arms that can turn the headset into a modified pair of VR glasses, which could just plug into an external USB-C charger or battery for power. It's small enough to fit in a compact carrying case tube.
But that compact size comes with a twist: Instead of fitting on top of glasses, the XR Elite uses adjusting dials, or diopters, which can change the lens prescription on the fly without you needing to wear glasses at all -- for some people, at least. The diopters only accommodate up to a -6 prescription, but my own vision is over -8 for nearsightedness. It's a challenge HTC faced with its even smaller Vive Flow phone-connected VR goggles, which also went for the glasses-free approach.
The XR Elite has a dedicated depth sensor on the front, along with color passthrough cameras that can eventually show mixed reality-experiences, similar to the Quest Pro. The Quest Pro doesn't have the Elite's added depth sensor, but it accommodates for that with its onboard cameras.
The XR Elite could also adapt further. While the hardware doesn't have its own eye-tracking tools onboard, eye- and face-tracking add-ons are coming later in the year. The headset's controllers are the same standard ones that HTC has for the Vive Focus 3, which follow the same game controller-like playbook as the Meta Quest 2 and others. But HTC already has its own line of wearable VR body trackers and wristbands, and more accessories could follow.
O'Brien acknowledges that the sticky, mass-market appeal of VR and AR aren't here yet. "I think developers will be using cloud computing, being able to actually get their content into the metaverse much faster, and much more efficiently," he said. "If you think about the streaming business, these streamers, these TikTokkers, all these kids that create the really compelling, fun experiences that just keep drawing you back in? That's not in the metaverse today, We need to create more opportunities for less sophisticated immersive content creators to get involved, and then create more [of an] economy."
O'Brien sees cloud computing, driven by eye tracking's ability to compress graphics data via a technology called foveated rendering, as a way of eventually shrinking the processors on future headsets, getting smaller and fitting on more people.
My concern is about the limited prescription options at the moment. "As we get to much lighter glasses, people will probably be bringing more of their prescriptions to it in the future," says O'Brien. "For now, what we can do is just try to address the majority of the market as best we can with these types of setting changes, because we have to get the headsets lighter. We've got to get them more comfortable. And if you're going to have these big eye relief areas inside of these headsets, they're going to stay really big."
O'Brien sees the included VR controllers as possibly becoming optional one day, even maybe being left out of the box and bought separately, but not yet. Hand tracking isn't reliable enough. "Hand tracking has to make massive advancements over the next two to three years to really become much more of a natural input tool." But O'Brien suggests it's a way for future headsets to get more affordable. "If a user can just put on glasses and interact with content [with their hands], that's going to be a much less expensive product."
Apple has been working on an AR/VR headset for more than five years now, and 2023 is the year when we're expecting the initial version to finally make an appearance. This will be the first new product category Apple has gotten into since the 2015 launch of the Apple Watch, and it will be Apple's second wearable.
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Like the Apple Watch, the first AR/VR headset will be expensive, available in smaller quantities, and could have limited utility. AR/VR refers to both augmented and virtual reality, a concept known as "mixed" reality. It combines virtual reality and augmented reality, overlaying virtual objects over the real world in some instances, though most rumors suggest it will focus heavily on virtual experiences.
The AR/VR headset could be named the Reality Pro or the Reality One, but final naming is not yet clear.
Design
Apple's AR/VR headset is expected to look like other VR headsets on the market, featuring a curved front display that covers the eyes. The display will sit against the face using a mesh material, and it will feature swappable and adjustable Apple Watch band-like straps. The headset is designed to be lightweight, and it is expected to be lighter than most headsets currently in the market to make it more comfortable to wear.
There could be physical controls and built-in audio capabilities, plus there will be multiple cameras to detect gestures, hand movements, eye movements, and the ambient environment.
Display
The mixed reality headset will include two high-resolution 4K micro OLED displays with up to 3,000 pixels per inch, and there is also rumored to be an external display that will offer exterior indicator information.
Capabilities
Apple is expected to add more than a dozen optical cameras to the headset for mapping the environment, monitoring the user, and projecting visual experiences. In virtual reality apps and games, the headset will be able to capture accurate facial movements, relaying them in video chats and other interactions.
Eight of the cameras will reportedly be used for see-through augmented reality experiences. For example, there will be cameras that are able to detect the people in the room and map surfaces and room dimensions, placing virtual objects in front of and behind real world objects for a seamless experience between the real and the virtual.
A pair of downward-facing cameras could capture leg movement for more accurate motion tracking. As for control, Apple will use eye-tracking, hand gestures, eye tracking, and there could be an attached device component, such as an input accessory worn on the fingers.
Iris scanning could be included as an authentication and security mechanism akin to
Face ID and
Touch ID. Inside, it will be equipped with Apple-designed chips that are on par with the chips used for the
MacBook Air. It will include a high-end main processor along with a less powerful processor for managing the sensors.
Operating System and Functionality
The AR/VR headset will run an operating system that could be named
xrOS, which stands for the extended reality concept that represents both the augmented and virtual reality functions of the device.
Apple is expected to create an
App Store for the headset, with a focus on gaming, streaming video content, and communication. Apple could work with media partners to create content that can be watched in VR, and there could be a VR
FaceTime experience with Animojis that mirror facial expressions.
Apple could also team up with game developers to create VR games for the headset, and it is expected to integrate heavily with existing services like
Apple TV+ and
Apple Arcade.
The headset has been in development for multiple years, and Apple has had to push the release date back several times now as it has worked to overcome design issues and disagreements over the direction of the project, but 2023 is expected to be the launch year.
Pricing and Release Date
The AR/VR headset is expected to cost around $3,000, and the first version won't be aimed at general consumers, instead positioned as a device for developers, content creators, and professionals.
Apple could use the Worldwide Developers Conference to introduce the headset, giving developers time to design apps for the device before a launch in the fall. Apple analyst
Ming-Chi Kuo had said that it could be announced as early as January 2023, but it sounds like that may have been a little optimistic.
Read More
We have
a dedicated roundup where we have aggregated all of the rumors about the AR/VR headset, and it is updated on a regular basis so it is worth checking out if you want to keep up with the news on the headset.
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interesting.
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making an appearance 
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