It was only very recently that the HTC Vive made it to South Africa (officially) and now we’ve got something else to look forward to. At CES this year HTC and Valve took the wraps off the second iteration of their already impressive VR headset, called the HTC Vive Pro. And it’s going to be going wireless. Eventually.
Before it does, though, it’ll arrive in a more traditional format with some wires connecting it to your PC but it’ll also be chucking out that ratty old 2,160 x 1,200 display in favour of a new 2,880 x 1,600 screen — that’s 78% more screen (adding up to 1,440 x 1,600 per eye).
Plus there are a few other goodies therein, like built-in headphones (which can be removed if you’re partial to your current pair), an additional noise-cancelling mic, a new camera on the headset itself (looking outwards, for better obstacle tracking), and lighter construction — because adding all those extras in was bound to get heavy. Oh, and it’s also mostly blue now.
The Vive Pro will launch as a standalone headset first and it’ll be compatible with first-gen peripherals and base stations. A revamped full edition will come later, consisting of the Vive Pro, and updated base stations. Updated controllers too? They haven’t mentioned if that is the case.
The bane of VR, large ropes of wire, will also be a thing of the past soon. Vive has got a Wireless Adaptor on the way which uses Intel’s WiGig tech to stream video to the Vive Pro headset without needing to connect the user to a PC. It’ll be operating on the 60GHz band, which HTC says equates to “…lower latency and better performance.” Nice.
Pricing for the Vive Pro and the Vive Wireless Adaptor haven’t been made known but we’ve got delivery estimates for the pair. The new headset is expected to launch in Q1 and the wireless tech will land in Q3 2018.
Source: HTC
