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HTC Vive Headsets Lineup Explained: Should You Wait For Cosmos?

HTC’s line-up of VR headsets is steadily growing. What’s the difference between the Vive and Vive Focus? What’s the Vive Cosmos? Which should you buy? Read on for our rundown of the current Vive line-up.Vive is a room scale VR headset powered by your gaming PC. At $499 it’s the most affordable headset in HTC’s lineup. It comes with two fully tracked controllers.The Vive cannot operate without a gaming PC, and won’t work on most laptops. It comes with two SteamVR “Lighthouse” base stations which must be set up in your room for positional tracking.Originally released in 2016 for $799, the OG Vive remains today as HTC’s entry level PC VR option.

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Wasserman

Wasserman is a culture-centric agency, serving the best talent, brands and properties in the world. Founded in 2002 with roots in sports and entertainment, Wasserman has evolved beyond those categories. They are an agency not just of advisors, but creators, developers, influencers and innovators who work across music, art, entertainment, social, tech, content and beyond.

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Technologies

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This time Amazon really does have Bond in its sights

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Video streaming services have achieved mainstream engagement, with binge viewing now eclipsing linear TV viewing as the leading form of TV show consumption. While the digital disruptors may revel in their newfound status as the masters of TV consumption, and the TV and film industry are forced to adapt to this new reality, a subtler shift in mindset needs to occur. Streaming services, led by subscription video on demand (SVOD) hegemon Netflix, still operate in the mindset of having a digital native consumer base. For these streaming incumbents, the success of SVOD still rests upon their ability to appeal to younger consumer bases who have a) grown up in a digital environment, and b) are by definition young and eager for new and constantly evolving consumer experiences. Add to this the post-second world war presumption that popular entertainment should always be youth-centric focused, and streaming is still de-facto a youth-orientated proposition.

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Technologies

Live Sports TV Executive Predictions: Cloud-Based Production Is the Future

Article | February 14, 2022

For online gamers, in-game purchases made to buy special swords, guns, or other add-ons to play their adventure, warfare, and other games are one-time, non-transferable investments that lock them into their pretend worlds. That's something companies like Polyient Games want to change by registering those purchases using blockchain and transforming the previously one-way transactions into liquid assets which are transferable for cash.

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MGM, which holds the largest film and TV library in Hollywood, is finally in play – and likely to be acquired by tech major and video streaming behemoth Amazon. With a rumoured price tag of $9 billion, the deal, while substantial, is merely equivalent to 8.3% of Amazon’s Q1 2021 earnings of $108.5 billion. Indeed, the 44% year-on-year (YoY) increase for its Q1 results alone would pay for the deal more than four times over. When it comes to investment capital to deploy, the tech majors led by Amazon and Apple are in a financial class of their own. This is the kind of deal that helps to explain why AT&T was so keen cut its losses and incur a $66 billion loss on its Warner Media assets by merging the former Time Warner media major with Discovery for $43 billion in cash and receiving 71% in equity in the new combined entity in return. It also follows on from Amazon’s 15.4x increase in what it is willing to pay to secure exclusive NFL Thursday Night Football coverage for its US Amazon Prime customers.

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Why video streaming needs to stop fighting the last consumer war

Article | May 28, 2021

Video streaming services have achieved mainstream engagement, with binge viewing now eclipsing linear TV viewing as the leading form of TV show consumption. While the digital disruptors may revel in their newfound status as the masters of TV consumption, and the TV and film industry are forced to adapt to this new reality, a subtler shift in mindset needs to occur. Streaming services, led by subscription video on demand (SVOD) hegemon Netflix, still operate in the mindset of having a digital native consumer base. For these streaming incumbents, the success of SVOD still rests upon their ability to appeal to younger consumer bases who have a) grown up in a digital environment, and b) are by definition young and eager for new and constantly evolving consumer experiences. Add to this the post-second world war presumption that popular entertainment should always be youth-centric focused, and streaming is still de-facto a youth-orientated proposition.

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Spotlight

Wasserman

Wasserman is a culture-centric agency, serving the best talent, brands and properties in the world. Founded in 2002 with roots in sports and entertainment, Wasserman has evolved beyond those categories. They are an agency not just of advisors, but creators, developers, influencers and innovators who work across music, art, entertainment, social, tech, content and beyond.

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HTC Vive Pro Starter Kit Now Available To Pre-Order In UK

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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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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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HTC Vive Pro Starter Kit Now Available To Pre-Order In UK

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.

Read More

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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.

Read More

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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.

Read More

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