HTC’s Quest Professional competitor is Vive XR Elite, transport in February for $1100.
The corporate was teasing a brand new headset in tweets for over two months with captions corresponding to “go small or go house”, and already hinted it will likely be bought to customers.
Vive XR Elite has a compact design achieved by way of the usage of pancake lenses, which look to be the identical as Vive Circulate’s from late 2021. It’s powered by the identical Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 processor seen in most different standalone headsets.
Like Quest Professional it helps combined actuality by way of coloration passthrough. HTC pitches Vive XR Elite’s passthrough as noticeably superior, with greater decision and dynamic vary. UploadVR’s Ian Hamilton went hands-on with Vive XR Elite throughout restricted demo time at CES and did come away with the general impression of a lot clearer combined actuality than Quest Professional. HTC pitches the passthrough as excessive sufficient high quality to learn your laptop computer or cellphone display screen with out taking the headset off, however we’ll want extra time testing to evaluate whether or not that’s actually usable. It additionally contains a depth sensor (dropped from Quest Professional within the months earlier than launch) to routinely mesh your room so digital objects can collide with actual objects.
Vive XR Elite comes with Quest 2 fashion tracked controllers, and likewise helps controller-free hand monitoring.
The lens separation is adjustable by way of a slider on the outside of the headset for IPDs between 54-73mm, however there’s no built-in eye monitoring so your IPD isn’t measured. The lenses even have diopter adjustment for individuals with impaired imaginative and prescient, so some glasses wearers gained’t want them to get a transparent picture.
Vive XR Elite’s included battery is within the rear of the strap, however it may be indifferent so you should use another USB energy supply, corresponding to a battery pack, airliner/practice seat, or wall adapter. This allows you to lean again in opposition to a seat or couch, one thing not potential with headsets like Quest Professional or Pico 4.
A novel characteristic of Vive XR Elite’s OS in comparison with Quest or Pico is you may stream the display screen of appropriate Android telephones into VR, so you may view apps like Disney+ or play cellular video games on a private cinema display screen.
From the built-in Viveport Retailer HTC lists a variety of Quest ports coming within the “launch window” together with Demeo, Unplugged, Inexperienced Hell VR, Les Mills Bodycombat, Figmin, Historic Dungeon, The Final Clockwinder, Ultrawings 2, Gravity Sketch, Warplanes WW1 Fighters, RuinsMagus, Immersed, Tokyo Chronos, TRIPP, Puzzling Locations, Disaster Brigade 2, and even Digital Desktop. Vive XR Elite is HTC’s first totally standalone headset for customers. It guarantees superior combined actuality to Quest Professional in a extra compact design for $400 much less. However Quest Professional’s power lies in its big library of video games. Will HTC have the ability to appeal to sufficient builders to make it a really viable different?
Preorders can be found now from the HTC Vive web site for transport in “late February”.
