HTC Vive Focus hands-on impressions: No-PC, no-wires VR at a too-steep price - byardhingently
Hayden Dingman/IDG
In 2016 I defended the HTC Vive's brawny $800 price tag. Sure, it was $200 to a higher degree the Oculus Severance, but information technology was also the sole virtual reality headset (at the time) to nail room-scale and hand-tracking. Then originally this year I defended the Vive Pro's $1,100 price. Trustworthy, it's outrageous and showy and nobody should pay for IT, but the Vive Pro is as wel the best VR headset on the market today, bar none.
Only on Thursday HTC announced its standalone Vive Focus headset is advent stateside with a list cost of $599, and well, that's pure hubris with slick standalone rival Eye Quest in order to unveiling at $399 early next year.
Business clock time
Afterward HTC's announcement Thursday I had the chance to put in some hands-on time with the Vive Focal point at an event in San Francisco. In that respect were 2 versions to essa. The original model, released in Nationalist China in the first place this twelvemonth, ships with a small pill-shaped control that resembles the Oculus Go's. At that place's no hand-trailing on it model, however. The early, billed Eastern Samoa a dev outfit, adds cardinal paw-trailing wands similar to the desktop Vive models.
I tested both, merely information technology's hard to really know how the Vive Focus performs because HTC is orientating it, at least for today, as an enterprise-focused device. I can't blame them either. There's more money in that sector, and the audience is presumptively less finicky when it comes to visual fidelity, tracking hiccups, and so connected.
IDG / Hayden Dingman But it does pull through a moment hard to demo the device when you've got the VR equivalent of Microsoft Office as a examination suite. On Thursday I sat through a training video recording for a medical procedure, played one extremely rudimentary "racing" game, and hung out in a virtual meeting room.
Not just Crysis territorial dominion.
Straight then, the Vive Focus had trouble keeping up—and here's the baffling part, determining whether it's the fault of seedy coded demos or genuine ironware limitations. My intestine tells me the last mentioned, but without a standard benchmark (like the ever-face Superhot VR) it's almost impossible to tell.
The frame rate struggled to keep constant though, and in certain demos turning my head lateral-to-side resulted in flickering coloured areas as the headset rushed to draw in the missing information. This was in spades not the extremist-polished experience I had with the Oculus Quest in September.
That's a shame, because theoretically Quest and Focus seem close to identical, at to the lowest degree in opencast-level features. Both boast built-in audio solutions that pipe out of the straps. Both have the same 2,880×1,600 resolution. And spell the Vive Focus currently ships with the non-half-track controller, a full "world-scale" version with hand tracking is planned.
IDG / Hayden Dingman The Quest just does it all improve, and I say that as someone who's ardently advocated for the Vive the past two years. (The Vive Pro is the best VR headset on the market at the moment.) Pursuit feels much powerful, its hardware is sleeker, the demos we saw were more finished, and at $399 it's a full $200 cheaper.
Which is not to say the Vive Focus is irredeemable. I actually like the aim rather a routine, even compared to the current Vive with the snug Deluxe Audio Strap ADD-on. The Focus feels unbelievably lightweight when positioned correctly, combine a rigid redact with a floating dance band design that reminds Maine of Sony's PlayStation VR. I could dress without the Focus's off-white color, which reminds Maine of a mid-'90s desktop PC, only it's surprisingly comfortable.
The hired hand-tracking solution is also stimulating. The Oculus Quest, the like Microsoft's miscellaneous realism headsets, uses internal cameras to map out the room you're in and also hold track of your controllers. The Vive Focus's hand-tracking paradigm triangulates victimisation supersonic frequencies. That's water-cooled! And I was curious to go active, given the tracking problems I've encountered with Windows Mister and Oculus Quest.
It's a backchat though. The Vive Focus's hand tracking does seem harder to fool. I put through my hands seat my back multiple times, and patc the system of rules still became wooly occasionally it wasn't nearly A common as Quest's tracking woes. That's the good news. The bad news is that latency is a lot higher, and control put together jittered a lot while moving, peculiarly at screaky speeds. If I drew a straight line I'd often see jagged edges where the system tried to estimate my lieu and only kind of, sorta got it right.
IDG / Hayden Dingman Does that matter for HTC's enterprise-focused customers? Eh, in all likelihood not. But information technology's another area where Focus falls behind Quest's performance—which, again, raises the question of wherefore information technology costs and so damn often.
Bottom line
That's the sticking direct, for Maine. The HTC Vive Focus isn't a terrible twist. It's not giving me the "Wow, this is the future" feelings that Quest did, but if I look at information technology as a competitor to an untethered Windows Mister headset or the Eye Fail, it seems powdered. Hell, with hand-caterpillar-tracked controllers information technology's one ill-use up from Go.
But $599 is an horrific price for this headset, especially in light of Quest's $399 itemization. I'd atomic number 4 hard-ironed to contend the Vive Focus does anything amend than Quest, certainly not adequate to minimal brain damage up to $200 more—and that's without hand-tracking. The hand-trailing outfit will presumably be oversubscribed as an summate-on when IT's finished, similar to the Deluxe Sound Slash, the Vive wireless transcriber, and other modular add-ons to the innovative Vive. Factor in another $100 to $200 for that.
Maybe Oculus low-balled the Quest's price, but the fact stiff that as of today, information technology's looking ilk both the better and the cheaper option. Of track, Quest won't release until sometime in 2019 at the soonest while Nidus is available now. If IT were me I'd hold though. In that respect's non a good deal to acquire by being first unfashionable the gate this time round.
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Hayden writes about games for PCWorld and doubles as the occupier Zork fancier.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402883/htc-vive-focus-vr-hands-on.html
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