HTC Offers First Look At Light-weight Meta Quest Professional Competitor

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In response to The Verge, which was supplied with a render of the new hardware, HTC is planning to disclose yet one more consumer-focused digital actuality and augmented actuality headset at CES 2023 subsequent month, with options that can probably rival the recently-announced Meta Quest Professional, together with full-color passthrough video.

Though the total announcement and reveal continues to be a number of weeks away, HTC teased some early details concerning the unannounced {hardware} to The Verge. Just like the Meta Quest Professional and older Quest fashions, the headset can be a self-contained, all-in-one unit (in contrast to most of HTC’s different choices, which requires a everlasting connection to a gaming PC) with roughly two hours of battery life and help for controllers with six-degrees of detected movement, plus hand-tracking.

The unnamed headset can even embrace front-facing and side-facing cameras, permitting the wearer to nonetheless see their environment in full shade, facilitating augmented actuality and blended actuality experiences. That was arguably probably the most compelling purpose to splurge on the just lately introduced, $1,500 Quest Professional, as Meta’s older headsets solely present a grainy, black and white video feed of a person’s environment to assist guarantee they don’t crash into something (or anybody). Nonetheless, the brand new HTC headset will probably outperform the competitors, with HTC promising sufficient element to permit customers to nonetheless learn textual content on computer systems and smartphones by way of the passthrough video, whereas the addition of a depth sensor can even make it significantly better at precisely mapping a person’s environment and inserting digital content material into it.

The render of the brand new headset doesn’t present too many extra particulars, though it doesn’t look considerably totally different to the current HTC Vive Circulate, which regarded like an over-sized pair of security glasses. That goes with hints HTC posted this October that its subsequent massive product can be compact and light-weight.

HTC can even reveal particulars concerning the new headset’s pricing at CES, however Shen Ye, the corporate’s world head of product, advised The Verge that it doesn’t plan to subsidize the {hardware} by amassing and promoting customers’ information, and consequently the brand new {hardware} will in all probability be significantly costlier than the $400 Meta Quest 2. That’s excellent news for many who worth their privateness, however it may make the brand new headset a troublesome promote for many customers, who appear blissful to commerce privateness for closely discounted {hardware}.”

Replace 12/16/22 at 2:05 PM:

This text initially acknowledged that the Vive Focus 3 required a PC connection, which isn’t the case. We remorse the error.