Pico Technology, a China-based VR hardware company, today unveiled the latest iteration of their mobile VR headset, the Pico Neo CV. Pico hasn’t published any price information yet, but has stated it will launch in the the US later this year.

Like its predecessor the Neo DK (developer kit), the headset features an all-in-one design based around the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor, the same processor in the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge—meaning it has the onboard power of a quad-core 2.2GHz CPU, Adreno 530 GPU, a battery life-saving Hexagon 680 DSP.

Despite running on the same system on a chip (SoC) as its DK forebear, the newly announced Neo CV is bumping up the resolution to dual 1.5K displays at 90Hz, an improvement over the older Neo DK’s dual 1200 × 1080, 90Hz displays. The Neo CV has also added a ‘safety battery’ (we don’t know either) and a hi-fi speaker to the spec list. No, not headphones. A speaker.

Taking a page out of PlayStation VR’s playbook, Pico Neo CV offers a headstrap in a familiar ‘halo’ configuration, a system that takes weight of the front of your face, (like wearing ski goggles) and applies it evenly around the top of the head.

Missing however is the DK’s gamepad, which helped offload some of its computing guts and battery, effectively rendering the developer kit headset lighter. While the new Neo CV will likely work with bluetooth gamepads, the weight savings in Neo DK really set it apart from the ever-growing mobile VR solutions to come out of China.

pico-vr-dk
Pico Neo DK

What’s more interesting though is Neo CV is said to manage 6 degrees of freedom (6DoF), supposedly allowing the headset positional tracking. How they’ve managed that without an external tracker like Valve’s Light House basestations, or ‘inside-out’ tracking by way of computer vision-capable camera set up, like in the recently announces Lenovo VR headset, Pico has yet to say.

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The company however will be showing off both Neo DK and Neo CV alongside their PC-tethered tracking sensor at this year’s CES, and we’ll be swinging by their booth for a hands-on.

We have feet on the ground at CES in Las Vegas, and will be bringing hands-on articles and breaking news of all the newest AR and VR headsets.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Sponge Bob

    With only internal IMU sensors you can only do a decent job on rotational tracking, not positional tracking

    I propose a simple experiment: try to walk a circle in VR and return to the same point in space using only IMU data – impossible
    it would be a formidable trick even with camera-based inside-out tracking and unlimited CPU/GPU compute power

    You will miss the origin by a large margin, nothing even close to 1 mm accuracy provided by external station(s) based trackers, especially if your room is large and walls are white with no distinctive features

  • Xilence

    With resolutions like that, can I watch movies on it now…? What’s the FOV like?

  • I’ve heard the term “6DoF” abused by some companies who don’t really understand VR. In their minds, they think tracking rotation is enough to qualify. They don’t understand that position is 3 of the 6 in that acronym. They 3 DoF’s short!!! (lol)

    • Sponge Bob

      Oh yes, those CEOs understand it very well

      They usually put it “6DoF enabled”

      When the irate buyer calls their support and complains then he is told that enabled means software-enabled but currently missing in hardware :):):)

      Nod Labs is notorious for this with their nod ring and backspin

      No wonder some positions in tech support for those companies require “excellent customer conflict resolution skills” :):);)

      • Sponge Bob

        Oh, not just that

        They usually advertise 9 DoF sensors !!! :):):)

  • Andrew Jakobs

    And what’s the actual resolution of a 1.5K display?