This year’s HTC Vive conference in China has begun today, broadcasting its opening keynote, which contained a reveal about the standalone headset, the HTC Vive Focus. HTC President Alvin Graylin showed the audience the first look at the HTC Vive Focus as part of his keynote speech at the conference. Graylin also spoke about the substantial changes taking place in the virtual reality industry and the long-term plans HTC Vive has for VR.
The device is completely untethered, not requiring any wires or a separate smartphone device. The headset is powered by a system called Vive Wave, which seems to be acting as the content platform, and possible also the on-board operating system. Over 100 developers are already working on content for the HTC Vive Focus.
As reported previously, the HTC Vive Focus is aimed at the Chinese market, with a different headset intended for the North American and European markets. The European and North American version is rumoured to be titled the HTC Vive Eclipse, though there has been no official confirmation of this as of yet.
A particular point was raised which emphasised the intention for the HTC Vive Focus to act as an educational device. Several companies, including Microsoft and Samsung have taken an interest in providing VR content aimed towards educational content, particularly for schools and other educational centres, and the company are hoping that the HTC Vive Focus will be a practical option for this area, which up until now has mostly been dominated by smartphone-based VR devices, particularly inexpensive options such as Google Cardboard.
By introducing the HTC Vive Focus, the gap between high-end PC VR provided by the HTC Vive and smartphone-based VR is being filled. Audience reaction to the device was fairly enthusiastic.
Regarding content, it is hoped by HTC that the Vive Wave platform will provide a solution to the building fragmentation of the VR platform, by providing a standard interface and tools for content developers.
No release date or price has yet been confirmed for the HTC Vive Focus.
VRFocus will continue to bring you the latest from the HTC Vive conference.