HP Z VR AND OMEN X BACKPACK CONNECTIVITY WITH HTC VIVE PRO

vrfocus | January 25, 2019

Launched last year during CES, the HTC Vive Pro upgraded the original headset with better resolution and the Deluxe Audio Strap already built-in. To begin with, just the headset was available then HTC Vive confused things by releasing a ‘starter kit’ in North America, while European customers got the ‘full kit’. Today, just to even things out a little, the HTC Vive Pro Starter Kit has now been made available for pre-ordering in the UK.The HTC Vive Pro Starter Kit is retailing for £1,119 GBP, coming complete with a Vive Pro headset, two Lighthouse base stations 1.0, two controllers 1.0 and the link box. You’ll also get a free 2-month Viveport trial subscription to start you off. The official website doesn’t say when shipping will begin, but it does list everything as ‘in stock’, so customers will likely get a date when completing the transaction.For comparison, the HTC Vive Pro Full Kit which has been available on the site for a while now retails for £1,299, and comes with two Lighthouse base stations 2.0, ideal for much larger installations such as location-based entertainment (LBE) centres. The kit also comes with some snazzy blue controllers to match the headset. Currently, the HTC Vive Pro Full Kit is out of stock on the official UK website.HTC Vive has yet to confirm when or if the HTC Vive Pro Full Kit will be made available in other territories such as North America.

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Venturebeat | January 10, 2019

Unexpectedly announced at an early CES 2019 media event, HTC’s latest and highest-end VR headset is the Vive Pro Eye — an upgraded version of the already premium Vive Pro with integrated eye-tracking hardware. The eye tracking can be leveraged for in-app controls, analysis of user attention during training sessions, and foveated rendering.If you’re not already familiar with foveated rendering, it’s about to be a big deal for VR. Cameras inside a headset precisely and quickly track the position of your pupils, enabling the GPU to know where it needs to focus its rendering resources — and where it can skimp. One Vive Pro Eye developer said that with foveated rendering the GPU was saving 30 percent of its power over standard rendering, performance that can be saved to conserve energy or used to increase detail within the area viewed by the pupil.The technology would be ideal for high-resolution gaming, but Vive Pro Eye is specifically being marketed at enterprise customers, and HTC suggests the still-unconfirmed price will be another step up from Vive Pro. Most gamers aren’t willing to pay extra for the standard Vive Pro, so game developers won’t likely make eye-tracking games for the Vive Pro Eye.

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VRFocus | January 11, 2019

When it comes to designing a controller for a virtual reality (VR) head-mount display (HMD) which features inside-out tracking, there’s one design that’s proven to be almost universal. If you follow VR news with any regularity you’ll know what this design looks like. Commercially seen for the first time in conjunction with Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headsets, at CES 2019 this week VRFocus came across the prototype pair of controllers for HTC’s standalone headset, Vive Focus.Vive Focus is the company’s standalone headset that’s currently only available in China. While the headset has 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF), the supplied controller is only 3DoF – much like the Oculus Go controller.But HTC Vive has been working on a 6DoF version, which AMD had on demonstration with an HTC Vive Focus to showcase its ReLive livestreaming technology.

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