HTC has been a busy bee today, announcing not only new touch controllers for the upcoming HTC Vive Cosmos, but also a new standalone headset.
Meet HTC’s newly announced headset is the Focus Plus and its main focus *rimshot* is it now comes with dual six-degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers for a much more immersive, completely untethered VR experience.
The original HTC Vive Focus only came with a single three-degrees of freedom (3DoF) controller that only offered rotational tracking (i.e. up, down, left and right). This new headset’s controllers will allow for a full transitional movement, which includes tracking whether the user has stepped forward, backward, side-to-side or shifted vertically.
Other than those new ultrasonically tracked controllers, not much has changed on the virtual reality headset itself. The Vive Focus Plus still features a 2,880 × 1,600 (1,660 × 1,600 per lens) resolution AMOLED display. You'll also find the same underlying Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor power this headset to deliver completely self-driven VR experiences.
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Engadget reports the Vive Focus Plus will feature "next-gen" lens for “no more god rays." However, we’ve also seen a conflicting article from Road to VR that speculates HTC will stick to the same Fresnel lenses as found on the original Vive Focus.
We’ve reached out to HTC for more clarity on the lenses and will update this article as soon as we hear back.
The HTC Vive Focus Plus is slated to launch in Q2 of 2019, but has yet to announce pricing. We'll also have to see and wait about whether this headset will come to mass market as it's currently only marketed to the enterprise sector.
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