Google’s currently holding its annual I/O conference today detailing plenty of plans for the future. Saving virtual reality (VR) to the end the company has announced a brand new head-mounted display (HMD) that’s completely standalone.
Making the reveal was Clay Bavor, vice president of VR at Google, who said the company had been working alongside Qualcomm Technologies on the headset. It’ll be completely free of cables, smartphones and PC’s, with all the technology built into the device. One piece of tech the headset will feature is inside-out tracking that Google is calling World Sense, developed from Tango, meaning no additional cameras are needed to track the device, sounding very similar to Microsoft’s HMDs.
But possibly even bigger news is the fact that Google has been working with HTC and Lenovo to build the HMD. Essentially meaning a mobile standalone Vive.
On HTC’s blog the company said: “We have been working closely with developers and consumers to define the best VR experiences over the past few years, and we are perfectly positioned to deliver the most premium standalone headset and user experience. Vive’s standalone VR headset will provide a deeper and more immersive portable VR experience than ever before.”
“We are thrilled to once again work with Google and offer a powerful premium Snapdragon experience for devices on the Daydream platform,” said Keith Kressin, senior vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc in a statement. “Our companies share the same vision: to make it possible for everyone to enjoy rich and immersive VR experiences on a smartphone device or a dedicated VR head-mounted display while being fully mobile, rather than being restricted by cables or limited to predefined rooms setup for outside-in tracking.”
“The Daydream standalone headset reference design created in close partnership with Qualcomm will enable manufacturers to build a whole new category of VR devices,” said Bavor. “These headsets have everything needed for VR, built right into the headset itself and are as easy to use as picking them up. They’ll feature WorldSense for positional tracking right out of the box without any external equipment. We’re thrilled that headsets will begin to hit shelves later this year.”
The standalone headset will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 platform and is scheduled to launch later this year.
As further details are released VRFocus will keep you updated.