HTC’s new headset will have an additional depth sensor for efficient positioning and motion tracking.
The Taiwanese consumer electronics company HTC is reportedly scheduled to unveil its new mixed reality headset on January 5 at the Consumer Electronics Show 2023, according to a report by The Verge. The upcoming headset with virtual reality and augmented reality is claimed to compete with Meta’s Quest lineup.
“It’s about taking all of these advances that we made in not only the design aspects, but also the technology aspects, and building it into something that’s meaningful and that’s appealing for consumers,” the company’s global head of product Shen Ye told The Verge.
According to an image shared by the media organization, the device features a goggles-like design with front- and side-facing cameras. Apart from gaming, entertainment, and exercise, the unnamed headset can be used for “even some of the more powerful use cases,” including productivity and enterprise tools, Ye said. In terms of battery, the headset can go on for up to two hours and support controllers with six degrees of freedom and hand tracking.
Further, one of the important features of the AR/VR headset is expected to be the outward-facing cameras. This will pass a color video feed to users’ screens, allowing for mixed reality experiences. While Meta’s latest Quest Pro headset also offers color passthrough, Ye says that HTC’s device will have an additional depth sensor for efficient positioning and motion tracking. Furthermore, the device will have a better dynamic range in color passthrough and would aid let users in reading text on a laptop or phone through HTC’s cameras.
Although the weight of the device is not yet known, Ye claims it to be “one of the lightest that’s on the market.” He also implied that the new HTC headset will be more expensive than Meta Quest 2, which starts at $399 (roughly Rs 33,000) for the 128GB variant.
“We’re in an era when consumer VR headsets have been massively subsidized by companies that are trying to vacuum up and take personal data to provide to advertisers,” HTC’s Ye said. “We don’t believe the way that we want to approach it is to compromise on privacy,” he added.
Meanwhile, Meta unveiled its high-end virtual and mixed reality headset – Quest Pro for $1500, whoopingly pricier than Quest 2 by almost three times, in October this year. Meta claims that the headset is the first-ever device powered by the new Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ platform and comes with 12GB RAM, 256GB storage, and 10 high-res sensors for enhanced immersive experiences. Meta Quest Pro is the slimmest and most balanced VR device the American multinational tech giant has made so far.
