At a special event today in San Francisco, HTC announced that Vive Focus, the company’s standalone 6DOF headset, is launching for enterprise customers starting today in 37 markets, including North America and Europe.

Vive Focus previously launched in China back in January as a consumer device. Now the company is launching the standalone headset internationally as an enterprise-focused device.

Two specific offerings are on the table; Vive Focus and Vive Focus “Advantage”, the latter of which comes along with a professional services program providing commercial licensing, dedicated support, and service utilities for hardware support. There will also be an “Advantage+” program which presumably offers a more lengthy hardware warranty.

The standard device without additional services is priced at $600, while the Vive Focus Advantage starts at $750. Despite the focus on enterprise, regular consumers won’t be turned away, as it appears the enterprise emphasis is just that at the lower end of the pricing spectrum. It’s stated that it’s for enterprise, but anyone can buy it direct from HTC’s enterprise-facing site.

Image courtesy HTC

The Vive Focus is a standalone headset which means it has everything needed for a VR experience built directly into the device—including the battery, processor, graphics, and display—rather than relying on a docked smartphone. Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 835 chip, the headset boasts a 1,600 × 1,440 OLED display for each lens, 6DOF headset tracking, IPD adjustment, and a single 3DOF controller.

HTC North Americas General Manager Dan O’Brien reinforced that Vive Focus 6DOF controllers are coming, although there’s still no ETA on when these will be available to anyone besides developers at this time.

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Vive Focus is launching internationally running Vive Wave SDK, the company’s mobile platform developed specifically over the Vive Focus’ tenure in China. Content will be sourced from the mobile version of Viveport.

Vive Wave SDK is an open platform that offers interoperability between several classes of mobile VR headsets and accessories, something the company calls a “clear step forward in bringing together the highly fragmented mobile VR market.”

Here’s the specs list in case you haven’t heard:

Tracking technology&sensors: World-Scale tracking(inside-out 6-degree-of-freedom),9-axis sensors, proximity sensor
Display: 3K AMOLED, resolution 2880 x 1600
Refresh rate: 75 Hz
FOV: 110 degrees
Adjustable IPD: Supported
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon™ 835
Storage: MicroSD™ slot,up to 2TB MicroSD™ external memory
For data and device charging: USB Type-C
Audio input/output: Built-in microphones, built-in speakers, 3.5mm stereo audio jack
Wireless: Wi-Fi® 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, support to transmit contents to Miracast™ compatible devices
Power and battery: Built-in rechargeable battery, QC3.0 fast charging, up to 3 hours* of active use time, over one week* standby time

 

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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.
  • VictorBurgos

    https://enterprise.vive.com/us/?segment=viveprofullkit-personal is the link to the Focus… $600 is okay for Enterprise… but not for regular Consumers… so hopefully that will drop down to $400 WITH 6DOF controllers to compete against Quest

    • Nejham Mosquera

      I’m pretty sure they won’t. They didn’t do it with the original vive, so it won’t happen with this one.

  • Nejham Mosquera

    This is even more expensive than the original Vive (-_-) Shame on HTC.

    • this is almost the same spec as the quest but with no 6dof control at a $200 price difference. this is just bad business. it barely got any games for it

  • HomeAudio

    They don’t have ANY chance in competition with Oculus Quest! They lost before even they started competition! Very sad.

  • mellott124

    That’s great and all but where are my SteamVR 2.0 base stations and wands for that Pro HMD I bought…

    • benz145

      2.0 controllers became available recently: https://www.vive.com/us/accessory/controller2018/

      • mellott124

        Wow just looked yesterday and couldn’t find it. Thanks!

      • G-man

        two hundred fucking dollars. for one controoler. that is fucking insane.
        i’m not surpsied though they arent sellng just the lighthouse, valve sell them for like $50, so i dont think they can get away with selling them for the $250 they probably want to.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    Well I got my mirage solo for around 200.It needs more software however.

  • JesuSaveSouls

    One advantage that mirage solo has is that you get access to all google play apps in vr but on a 2d screen.

  • Proof XR Lab

    I’ve used the Vive Focus several times now, including a 1 hour 20 minutes session at Raindance for the “7 Miracles” World premiere.

    Initial impressions are a good build quality, it feels premium, especially compared to the Mirage Solo which feels inexpensive and somewhat creaky. The Mirage Solo does have better tracking with its “Worldsense” system, its more robust and accurate when wandering about, I found Mirage is prone to jitter.

    Both Mirage and Focus do feel weird with their 3DOF hand controllers, it feels very mismatched in VR compared to using a similar controller on Daydream View or Oculus Go where the full 3DOF head / hands synergy works well.

    However, I found the Focus became extremely uncomfortable during my 7 Miracles experience, as despite the thick face cushion, the weight rests on the face, especially the forehead and sinus area, its a heavy headset no doubt and I could feel something hard pressing through the face cushion.

    After 45 minutes I really wanted to remove the Focus, after 1 hour I started getting a headache, at the end of the session I took some painkillers! I found myself constantly moving it around on my face to try and relieve the pressure without much success.

    For short experiences it works, but I would not recommend it for longer sessions. Pricing is what it is, but it will face serious competition from Quest despite the “enterprise” tag HTC have applied to their device, the software ecosystem is also very barren and will need a serious injection of cash.

  • Raphael

    No surprise. While OctopusVR have gotten cheaper and are aiming for the home market with the goal of mass adoption… HTC decided that they don’t really care much about the home users… pro market has more money to spend. It’s very telling that even HTC’s equivalent of Octopus Quest is now aimed at pro market so HTC can justify the inflated pricing.

    I realise that many existing Rift users are disappointed by the recent events at OctopusVR but I don’t think it’s a bad thing to simplify VR and drop the price to a much more affordable level with their Quest.

    The future is a VR headset that includes onboard processing and graphics but can still act as a PC VR system. Why force people to buy multiple headsets?

  • jj

    At our office the vive *focus fits my head suuuuuper nice like 100% contact, thats not the case for anybody else out of the dozen here. plus it does have a very premium and well built feel to it compared to the go or quest. but there is nothing on the app store to even really try aside from literally CHINESE GENITAL VIEWING APPS, and Japanese creeping-on-young-girls app. So its kinda of the joke around the office. I personally hope the focus does well cause the hardware feels premium, but who knows at this point because they have some obvious obstacles to overcome. One of them being getting american devs to produce apps for it because its clear there is an absence of that currently for their vive port focus market .

  • Glad that the Focus is coming here… even if I hoped for a smaller price…