HTC Vive XR Elite: Another mixed reality headset coming before Apple

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VR has suddenly become more expensive. It seems like the worst possible timing, but HTC’s new high-end headset announced at CES, the Vive XR Elite, follows a similar playbook to Meta’s recent Quest Pro, and perhaps even Apple’s eagerly awaited device. It raises a question: Are we really ready for the rise of $1,000+ VR platforms? The standalone Vive XR Elite is sleek and looks much more compact than the Quest Pro and is looking to test the high-end waters.

The $1,099 headset, available for pre-order Thursday, will arrive by the end of February, very early for a CES product. This means that it will be available alongside Sony’s PlayStation 5 connected PSVR 2. While it’s less expensive than the Quest Pro, the price of the XR Elite is about as much as buying a PS5 and PSVR 2 together. It’s anything but an impulse buy. But the hardware, which reduces the VR form to an almost goggle-like pair of goggles and includes mixed reality capabilities that could enable AR apps, appears to solve how we’ll use the metaverse for more to our lives than just games. , simulation and fitness.

Read more: The wonders of CES 2023: 3D laptops, wireless TVs and shape-shifting screens

No other company has truly overcome this challenge. But this Vive headset looks, more than ever, like a stepping stone to future AR glasses.

The XR Elite’s battery strap comes off, and instead, goggle-like arms can be added to further reduce the size.

HTC

“Let’s see where mixed reality will create a whole new suite of use cases. We know the VR use cases are great. I think the AR side is great too,” Dan O’Brien, general manager of Vive at HTC, he told me in a conversation at CES in Las Vegas. He acknowledged that HTC tried to make an AR device in 2015 but stopped due to complications. O’Brien sees 5G and cloud computing as a key next step. “You need a 5G network, really robust for AR to go to scale. You need a cloud infrastructure to provide those types of wearables.”

The XR Elite is primarily a standalone VR headset, and looks like an impressive piece of tech: It has a familiar Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 chip that’s very similar to the Meta Quest 2, Quest Pro, and Vive’s current business-focused Focus 3. 110 degree high resolution field of view, 2K resolution LCD display per eye that can operate at 90Hz. There is also a boost of 12GB of RAM along with 128GB of storage. It can connect to PCs to run SteamVR or HTC’s VivePort software, or connect with Android phones. But its potential as a bridge to AR experiences feels like the most impressive feature.

Those are just specifics, though. The XR Elite is a VR headset with a similar proposition to previous models, but with expanded capabilities. Its compact size is the most surprising part: at 340 grams, it’s less than half the weight of the Quest Pro. The hot-swappable rear battery offers approximately two hours of battery life. It gets even smaller by unsnapping the rear battery strap and adding goggle arms that can turn the headset into a modified pair of VR goggles, which could simply be plugged into an external USB-C charger or battery for power. It’s small enough to fit in a compact briefcase.

The XR Elite in its carrying case, which feels more portable than any other VR headset I’ve ever seen.

HTC

But that compact size has a twist: Instead of fitting over glasses, the XR Elite uses adjustment dials, or diopters, that can change your lens prescription on the fly without you having to wear glasses — for some people, at least. . The diopters only fit a -6 prescription, but my vision is better than -8 for myopia. It’s a challenge HTC faced with its even smaller VR glasses attached to the Vive Flow phone, which also opted for the glasses-free approach.

The XR Elite has a dedicated depth sensor up front, along with color passthrough cameras that can optionally show mixed reality experiences, similar to the Quest Pro. The Quest Pro doesn’t have the Elite’s added depth sensor, but it does pleases with its on-board cameras.

A front-facing camera (part of a motion-tracking array) and also a depth sensor to measure spaces and layer AR.

HTC

The XR Elite could also fit further. While the hardware doesn’t have its own built-in eye tracking tools, eye and face tracking add-ons are coming later in the year. The headset controllers are the same standard HTC has for the Vive Focus 3, following the same game controller-like playbook as the Meta Quest 2 and others. But HTC already has its own line of body trackers and wearable VR wristbands, and more accessories could follow.

O’Brien acknowledges that the gooey, mass-market appeal of VR and AR hasn’t arrived yet. “I think developers will use cloud computing, being able to actually get their content into the metaverse much faster and much more efficiently,” she said. “If you think about the streaming business, these streamers, these TikTokkers, all these guys creating really compelling and fun experiences that keep pulling you in? This isn’t in the metaverse today, we need to create more opportunities for less sophisticated immersive content creators to get involved and then create more [of an] economy.”

O’Brien sees cloud computing, driven by eye tracking’s ability to compress graphics data via a technology called foveated rendering, as a way to eventually shrink the processors on future headsets, making them smaller and fitting more people.

The headset doesn’t work with eyeglasses: Instead, it has diopter dials inside for prescription adjustment.

HTC

My concern is with the limited prescribing options at the moment. “As we get to much lighter eyewear, people will likely carry more of their prescriptions in the future,” says O’Brien. “For now, what we can do is just try to address as much of the market as best we can with these types of setting changes, because we need to make headphones lighter. We need to make them more comfortable. And if you’re going to have these large areas of eye relief inside these goggles, they’re going to stay really big.”

O’Brien sees that the included VR controllers could become optional someday, maybe even be left out of the box and purchased separately, but not yet. Hand tracking is not reliable enough. “Hand tracking needs to make huge strides over the next two to three years to really become a much more natural input tool.” But O’Brien suggests it’s a way for future earphones to become more affordable. “If a user can just put on the glasses and interact with the content [with their hands]it will be a much less expensive product.”

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