After teasing an announcement for the previous few weeks, HTC has lastly unveiled the Vive XR Elite, an AR- and VR-focused headset that sounds fairly just like the Meta Quest Professional launched late final 12 months.
Just like the Quest Professional, the Vive XR Elite is targeted totally on augmented actuality whereas additionally offering a stable digital actuality expertise. It achieves this through the mix of 4 huge FOV cameras with full-colour passthrough, 6DoF monitoring, and most significantly a depth sensor – one thing lacking from Meta’s high-end headset.
The inclusion of a devoted depth sensor ought to permit the Vive XR Elite to higher sense your surroundings, translating to a extra immersive AR expertise with digital objects staying put in the actual world as you stroll round – however we’ll need to see how nicely it performs as soon as it’s obtainable.
In fact, content material is the place Meta has the higher hand, leveraging its years of shopper VR headsets to supply high-end VR and AR apps for the Quest Professional from day one. HTC, however, has primarily targeted on the B2B marketplace for its standalone headsets, and meaning there’s not fairly as a lot content material obtainable from HTC’s Viverse.
HTC
The corporate claims that the launch of the headset will coincide with the discharge of over 100 blended and digital actuality apps together with Demeo, Les Mills Physique Fight, FigminXR, and Unplugged, however it’ll nonetheless lack key Meta-exclusive video games like Beat Saber and Resident Evil 4 VR.
You may hook the headset as much as a PC for VR gaming, and in contrast to Meta’s headset, you may wirelessly mirror your Android smartphone’s show to the headset to get pleasure from streaming apps like Netflix and Disney+ on an enormous show, primarily turning the headset into the Vive Stream.
There’s assist for each controllers and hand-tracking, with HTC planning to launch a wrist tracker later this 12 months to additional enhance the hand-tracking accuracy for AR video games and apps.
It’s pretty glossy in design too, coming in at a comparatively light-weight 620g, and a modular design implies that it may simply change from an ordinary VR headset design to a glasses-like design just like that of the Vive Stream relying on what you’re doing.
HTC
The show sounds spectacular with key options together with a 110-degree FOV, 4K decision, a fine-adjustable IPD slider, and adjustable lenses that permit glasses-wearers to make use of the headset with out carrying spectacles. It’s a much-loved function of the Vive Stream, and it’s nice to see it right here too.
Battery life is rated at round two hours, the identical because the Quest Professional, although the Vive XR Elite has a hot-swappable battery system that means that you can take away the battery and exchange it as soon as it runs flat. If you happen to don’t wish to fork out for a further battery, you’ve additionally received the choice of hooking up an influence financial institution to increase playtime.
While you’re finished, the bundled 30W charging dock ought to make charging the headset a doddle, and it’ll additionally imply you’re all the time able to go everytime you fancy leaping into an XR session.
HTC
In fact, it’s pricing that’s most necessary to the patron, and HTC has managed to undercut the Meta Quest Professional at $1,099/£1,299 in comparison with $1,499/£1,499 from Meta’s top-end choice.
It’s missing some key options supplied by Meta’s headset, most notably face and eye-tracking, however HTC says these shall be obtainable through an official add-on later in 2023. The primary profit to this strategy is that buyers not within the high-end facial monitoring can merely skip it and save on the headset itself, an additional extension of Vive’s modular technique.
HTC isn’t hanging round both; the Vive XR Elite is accessible to pre-order immediately from the Vive website and choose third-party retailers proper now, with pre-orders set to ship in late February. As soon as it’s obtainable, it’ll seemingly be obtainable from hottest third-party retailers like Amazon as with different headsets in HTC’s VR assortment.
Are you curious about HTC’s newest modular XR headset, or is the established content material library from the Meta Quest 2 and Quest Professional too exhausting to show down? Tell us on Twitter.