With a lot of people working from home and companies looking for new ways of connecting employees remotely, virtual reality (VR) has become a handy tool. While there are numerous headsets available, standalone devices are ideal for their ease of use and flexibility. Today, Pico Interactive has officially launched its latest range to help facilitate enterprise VR engagement via its Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye headsets.
Pico Neo 2. Image credit Pico Interactive
Designed with business users in mind, both headsets feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 4K resolution, six degrees of freedom tracking (6DoF), two front-facing cameras, a 75Hz refresh rate and 128GB of storage. Thanks to Boundless XR they can also stream content from a VR Ready PC as well as select existing PC VR platforms.
The main difference between the two is the Neo 2 Eye’s built-in Tobii eye-tracking – making the headset 20g heavier. This is ideal for companies wishing to collect user data to enhance training efficiency or improve productivity for example. Having eye-tracking included also means dynamic foveated rendering, improving graphics and battery performance.
To aid comfort over longer sessions, the Pico Neo range has been balanced so that the headsets aren’t front-heavy like Oculus Quest. The rear of the device houses components like the battery for even weight distribution.
Pico Neo 2 Eye. Image credit Pico Interactive
“We believe the Neo 2 line is helping us achieve our goal to deliver the best standalone VR hardware with AAA enterprise service and options for business,” said Henry Zhou, CEO of Pico Interactive in a statement. “Our hardware is quickly becoming the preferred devices for leading companies in medical, training, marketing and location-based entertainment verticals. We’ve partnered with some great companies to not only help professionals in their day-to-day across a variety of industries but also in times of crisis.”
While Pico partnered with Tobii on the hardware side the company also teamed up with Mozilla to bring its latest Firefox Reality web browser to the platform.
The Pico Neo 2 retails for $699 USD while the Neo 2 Eye is $899. As these are enterprise-focused, the headsets will only be sold directly to companies with enquiries place via the Pico website. For further updates on the latest Pico news, keep reading VRFocus.
Pico Interactive today announced the price and availability of both Pico Neo 2 and its eye-tracking variant, Neo 2 Eye.
Both headsets are available for purchase starting today, with Neo 2 priced at $700 and Neo 2 Eye at $900. With its new Neo 2 headsets, Pico is targeting the enterprise market and will be selling both versions direct to companies.
Outside of Neo 2 Eye’s integrated eye-tracking from Swedish firm Tobii, the two variants differ only slightly in specs. Neo 2 Eye is 20 grams heavier and comes with slightly more RAM than the standard version to account for eye-tracking, something that’s tasked with things like foveated rendering, UI selection, and making social VR more of a natural experience, as a user’s eye movement is translated to a virtual avatar.
Image courtesy Pico Interactive
When we tried out Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye at CES 2020 earlier this year, we called it the next best standalone after Oculus Quest for its comfortable thanks to Pico’s inclusion of a rear-mounted battery, serviceable positional and controller tracking, and overall experience.
The headset’s two motion controllers aren’t tracked optically like, for example, Oculus Quest though, instead using tracking based on a NDI’s Atraxa controller platform which fuses data from an on-board electromagnet (EM) and inertial measurement unit (IMU). This essentially allows Neo 2’s controllers to be immune from controller occlusion.
At CES this week, Pico unveiled a pair of its latest standalone VR headsets, Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye. While the company is targeting enterprise customers in the West, the Neo 2 line is eyeing up the same hardware category as Facebook’s Oculus Quest, and doing a solid job at that.
The only appreciable difference between the the Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye is that the latter includes integrated eye-tracking from Swedish firm Tobii. It also comes with slightly more RAM than the standard version to account for eye-tracking as well as a different color scheme; Neo 2 is white and Neo 2 Eye is dark grey. I’ll get to eye-tracking below, but for now let’s talk about the Neo 2 line in general.
Pico Neo 2
The first thing I noticed about my short time with Neo 2 was how comfortable and well-balanced it was—more so than Quest’s front-heavy design—thanks to Pico’s inclusion of a rear-mounted battery, which is incorporated with the headset’s ratchet system with a single knob. An overhead strap is a rubbery affair that has a few fixed length settings, something I wish was instead a bog standard velcro strap for easier and more accurate fitting, but it did the job.
Photo captured by Road to VR
As a company, Pico has been pretty cognizant about weight distribution in the past with its 2016-era Neo headset, which cleverly housed the battery in a Nintendo-style tethered gamepad, so it’s nice to see the company is still focused on keeping one of the heaviest pieces of a standalone VR headset in good balance.
The second thing I noticed was its slightly mushy, albeit entirely serviceable optical positional tracking. To its credit, Neo 2 wasn’t jittery or too lurchy like the company’s previous Pico Neo from 2017, putting Neo 2 in the ‘acceptable’ range for tracking.
My demo didn’t quite live up to Oculus Quest, which by all accounts is the bar to reach when it comes to inside-out tracking for head and hands, but with a useful guardian system and pass-through capability to boot I was mostly satisfied Neo 2’s 6DOF tracking. Granted, the CES show floor’s bright lights and bustling crowd make for a challenging tracking environment, so I’ll have to reserve my ultimate judgement until I see it in a wider range of environments.
By this point, you’re probably wondering whether this really a hands-on piece or a straight-up comparison to Quest, which sells to consumers starting at $400. And you’d be right in saying its a bit of both. The only other real device in the product category currently is HTC Vive Focus Plus, which hasn’t presented much competition for Quest in the West. That said, Pico Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye are set to launch at some point in the West to businesses for $700 and $900 respectively, both with 128GB internal storage. Meanwhile, Facebook charges $1,000 for the 128GB Quest through it’s ‘Oculus for Business’ program.
While there’s important platform considerations not to be ignored, here I’m looking mostly at how Neo 2 compares to Quest from a hardware and capabilities standpoint.
Tracking aside, what did fare remarkably well was Neo 2’s 6DOF controllers. Although it doesn’t have the precision or finessed ergonomics of Oculus Touch, its range of motion and overall reliability seems more than acceptable for the headset’s enterprise-focused use-cases.
Unlike Quest, which uses inside-out tracking to track both the headset and Touch controllers, Neo 2’s controller tracking is based on a NDI’s Atraxa controller platform which fuses data from an on-board electromagnet (EM) and inertial measurement unit (IMU), resulting in a positionally tracked controller that doesn’t suffer from occlusion (but may suffer from sources of EM interference). I didn’t get a chance to put it through the ringer with something like Beat Saber (an easy benchmark for latency and accuracy), but it felt more than acceptable throughout.
Photo captured by Road to VR
The controller’s plastic feels a tad on the cheap side, and button placement isn’t the greatest, although I was glad to see thumbsticks instead of touchpads here. Ergonomically it isn’t anything to write home about; it’s more wand-like and uses a ‘click-to-grip’ button, whereas most headsets have moved toward a ‘hold-to-grip’ trigger.
Integrated stereo speakers are very similar to Quest’s (hidden in the head-band), though I couldn’t get a good feel for them considering the noisy show-floor environment.
On both Neo 2 and Neo 2 Eye I played Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs (2019), which I know quite well from my review of the game. Although frame rate wasn’t at all where it needs to be right now on that game in particular, I suspect the Neo 2’s Snapdragon 845 would be more than up to the task after a little bit of headset-specific optimization; in this case it seemed that Pico just grabbed for the nearest game they could to have something to show at CES.
The headset’s Snapdragon 845, which should be capable of running VR apps at an acceptable frame rate for the 3,840 × 2,160 (1,920 × 2,160 per lens) LCD panel, which is clocked at 75Hz. For comparison’s sake, Oculus Quest offers dual panels with a per-lens resolution of 1,440 × 1,600 at 72Hz, driven by the more demure Snapdragon 835.
Image courtesy Pico Interactive
Neo 2 uses a single panel with software-based interpupillary distance (IPD) adjustment, something that Pico says should serve users with an IPD of between 55mm–71mm. My IPD is a smack down the middle at ~63mm, so I didn’t have any issue, but a physical IPD adjustment is greatly preferred for its ability to help a wider range of people get their eyes into the sweet spot of the lens.
Pico Neo 2 Eye
Then there’s the Neo 2 Eye, which integrates Tobii’s eye-tracking tech. I had the opportunity to go through the Neo 2 Eye demo, which was nearly identical to the one I tried at Vive Pro Eye (which also uses Tobii eye-tracking) at CES 2019.
One of the big benefits Pico is trumpeting for Neo 2 Eye is its foveated rendering, which is supposed to improve performance by only rendering the scene at full resolution where your eye is looking, while reducing resolution in the periphery. Unfortunately the lower-resolution in the periphery was more noticeable than I would have hoped for an eye-tracked solution. Ideally you aren’t supposed to notice the edge of the high-resolution center, which should be locked onto the user’s fovea (the center view of the eye which sees in high detail). It was simply too inaccurate a demo for the illusion to work, which is a shame because we’ve seen remarkably solid Tobii eye-tracking in other headsets.
Though the foveated rendering was easily noticeable, it did what foveated rendering is designed to do: allow for higher frame rates and more complex scenes.
To that effect, I was told the headset was using a generalized eye-tracking profile, which was a possible reason why it wasn’t offering the sort of accuracy I’d seen in Tobii’s tech on the PC-tethered Vive Pro Eye. Again, it’s something I’ll have to test in a less hectic environment where we can go through a proper eye-tracking calibration process and see if Pico was truly able to use Tobii’s tech to its fullest on the mobile VR platform.
And while we’re looking forward to testing the Pico Neo 2 in the conditions of our choice, the hardware seems an admirable entry in the 6DOF standalone category. In may not match Oculus Quest in a few categories but businesses looking to get a solid, lower cost 6DOF standalone with slightly more horsepower, resolution, and the option of eye-tracking wouldn’t be remiss by casting a curious gaze at Pico’s latest and greatest.
China-based VR hardware company Pico Interactive announced the specifications and planned prices for its upcoming Neo 2 standalone VR headset. The company also revealed a new model in the line called the Neo 2 Eye which incorporates eye-tracking technology in partnership with Tobii.
The Neo 2 line is a successor to the original Pico Neo headset and the company plans to market this one toward businesses. The Pico Neo 2, now called the Pico Neo 2 Standard, was first revealed in March of 2019 but specifications for the device weren’t revealed until now. The headset is priced around $700 while Pico also plans to sell the Neo 2 Eye for around $900 offering the same specifications with the addition of eye tracking.
The company claims the headset includes a display with 4K resolution, 105 degree field of view and a 90Hz refresh rate powered by a Snapdragon 845 alongside 128 GB storage. Pico also says it is going to separately sell the Pico Stream Box using a 60 GHz wireless connection to play PC VR games via a nearby computer.
Pico claims the Neo 2 Eye model will use eye tracking technology from Tobii to “improve daily enterprise operations and applications.” Tobii is the same company that provided the eye tracking technology for the HTC Vive Pro Eye. We gave our impressions of the technology back at CES this time last year, and Tobii later went on to launch their eye-tracking SDK at GDC a few months later.
The Neo 2 headsets will employ full 6 degrees of freedom with inside out tracking and the company says it uses “electromagnetic” tracking with its controllers, pictured below.
This tracking technology may benefit from resistance to occlusion but may be heavier to hold. We’ll plan to see the device at CES in Las Vegas and hopefully report back more details and impressions.
