HTC Vive Pro, the company’s higher resolution VR headset targeted at prosumers, isn’t on sale yet, although developers have been receiving Vive Pro as early as mid-February. While there still isn’t a comprehensive look at all of the gubbins to go along with the headset, Cloudgate Studio co-founder Steve Bowler recently tweeted a few snaps of Vive Pro that give us a clearer view of some of the differences coming to the headset’s Link Box.

As first reported by Tom’s Hardware, the Vive Pro has done away with the “3 in, 3 out” cable scheme seen in the original Vive’s Link Box, which features a two-sided suite of ports including spaces for USB, HDMI, and power cables. On the ‘PC side’ of the original there’s also find a mini DisplayPort in addition to the HDMI port.

original Vive Link Box, image courtesy HTC

Now, the Vive Pro’s Link Box features a single proprietary cable leading to the headset that unites power, data, and video, making for a less confusing first-time setup to boot. You’ll also notice a handy blue power button on the ‘VR side’ of the box now.

The Vive Pro’s Link Box has also done away with HDMI, instead only offering DisplayPort as the only video connection option. Considering most VR-capable GPUs have several DisplayPorts, the change shouldn’t be that significant to the end-user.

The bump in resolution from the original Vive’s dual 1080×1200 pixels displays to Vive Pro’s dual 1440×1600 displays is noticeable at 78% more pixels. Vive Pro still doesn’t have a price or specific launch date outside of the ‘late Q1’ mentioned previously by HTC, so in the meantime take a look at our hands-on with Vive Pro from CES 2018 to get an idea of what’s in store hardware-wise.

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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.
  • JJ
  • Harry Cox

    Stop the clocks!

  • Jean-Sebastien Perron

    HTC Vive pro is nothing more than a bulky and ugly Samsung Odyssey immitation with deprecated tracking that will eventually come out next year at a ridiculusly high price. I just hope that this time it will resist mild sweat over 2 months without totally die. High res HMD is old news, Mixed reality did that a year ago.

    • Engineer_92

      Who hurt you?

      • Harry Cox

        his uncle

        • Laurence Nairne

          Uncle Vive.

    • Harry Cox

      scraping the Jean Pool

    • daveinpublic

      Vive Pro looks good, but it is worth noting that the Samsung Odyssey can do everything the Vive Pro can do, including access Steam. The tracking isn’t quiet as robust, but you have a larger area to track, you can use your headset anywhere with a laptop, and there’s no setup, as well. Plus it will probably cost less. Are you guys more excited about the Vive Pro than the Odyssey, and why is that?

      • Daemon Hunt

        I actually agree with you Dave. I have both the Vive and the Samsung Odyssey. Last weekend I spent two sessions of five straight hours in the Odyssey playing Elite Dangerous (on VR Ultra settings) in Steam VR with 2x miltisampling, all on an Alienware R4 17. And apart from those few tracking glitches that the Odyssey has, it was physically the most comfortable experience I have had in VR. I just wish the darn cable was longer for better room scale, it’s ridiculously short!

        Wearing the Vive with the deluxe headstrap is still heavier and less comfortable, but obviously the tracking is smooth as butter.

        Will I be buying the Vive Pro lightly? No, unless my current Vive breaks down, or the price is too good to be true (yeah right). The pro update is just too incremental, and even though the new display tech is “better” it’s like going from the iPhone 6 to the 7 plus. Meh.

        I was more excited about getting the new controllers. Fail.

        • HybridEnergy

          Daemon, the higher res headset is better for cock-pit seated experiences? You don’t say? Is your job in real life being captain obvious ?

      • greenbag

        People have issues with the Odyssey’s headphones.. they don’t fit every head equally, and they’ve even broken off quite easily. Besides that.. the mixed reality controllers don’t get tracked when they’re behind your head or back, or when you’re in a first person shooter.. guns pointed one direction, but you’re looking for enemies coming from another direction. They glitch out. There’s enough video on youtube proving this. One guy couldn’t even throw overhand because of it.. caused his controller to go behind his head while doing so. They had a great idea… but it’s a failure. The Vive Pro also has built-in amplifier… needed for better sound when you go wireless. The Vive itself, even the original, also has a screen to lens adjustment.. no other headset has this. Both the Vives are also built for people who wear glasses.. even having cutouts in the padding to accommodate the arms of the glasses. Other headsets you need to be careful not to scratch the lenses of the headset with your glasses. The Vive is a better design all around.

    • JJ

      whats funny is that you are not trying to be funny and you’re actually serious about your terribly misinformed opinions…

      Pretty much every comment you make on here is backwards and controversial because you’re making such a sad attempt to be funny. If you can’t bring anything useful to the forums stop wasting everyone’s time and space.

      Or you know get a life…

      • Jean-Sebastien Perron

        You cannot argue with facts, frustrated by your own poor buying decisions, you prefer to go into personal attack. I won t lower myself to your standards. I wan VR to move forward and Vive is not.

        • Firestorm185

          “wan”

        • Gabe P

          Fact is Samsung’s head tracking is glitchy at best and lackluster at worst, I’ll pay a little more for good tracking.

    • HybridEnergy

      I’ve had my VIVE since release, same HMD. I sweat in it all the time as I’m an active gamer and nothing has happened to it yet. Are people going scuba diving in them or something ? Either way, stop trying to justify your purchase of the Odyssey so desperately, it just makes you look like a fanboy. The Odyssey is still one of the heaviest and uncomfortable head-sets out there at 645g and it’s all uncomfortably sitting on your forehead.

      • greenbag

        There’s been quite a few posts on Reddit about Vives dying, going as far back as August 2016. Tribalinstincts on youtube had his die when a friend was using it.. he got a bit sweaty playing some game. People are different, everyone sweats at different rates. Even people careful to wipe it dry periodically.. still have them die on them. HTC used to cover it in the warranty… anything but ‘moisture other than perspiration’. It now just says ‘moisture’. Any game you move a lot, you will sweat… Sparc was one of them, and now Sprint Vector seems to be the killer. It’s a design flaw to start with… I’ve never heard of an Oculus dying from sweat. They need to either use some kind of rubber barrier to protect the circuit board, or they should spray the board with an isolate.

        • HybridEnergy

          I’ve seen Tribalinstincts video on that. It was a shame, but it hasn’t been my experience. I literally have the fat cable early dev kit model of the VIVE, 15% more weight than the current ones. I’ve had SPARC for it since release and in-fact funny you should mention as that is one of my games I regularly play. I’m even in the SPL (Sparc Players League). Sound boxing and even Racket NX, I do sweat often in it. I’ve come to the conclusion the factor must be the way people take their head-sets off, I take it up keeping it horizontal, there is no chance of water to seep into the headset rather it drains out. People must be facing the headset down when they take it off and all the water pours inside it but I’m just theorizing for the experience others have had I guess here.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      As long as there is no decend inside out tracking for controllers, there is nothing really deprecated about the vive tracking. At the moment it’s still the better tracking of all consumer headsets out there..

      • greenbag

        The Vive actually does use inside out tracking.. just not the same way the mixed reality headsets do. The Vive’s trackers are in the controllers and headsets.. the light it tracks is in the lighthouses. They just don’t use built-in cameras to track them.

  • Lucidfeuer

    Do we actually know what this link-box ever was for? What operation does it do that a single split cable end doesn’t? Also the addition for DisplayPort is a nice idea.

    • Firestorm185

      Kinda find it funny that they still haven’t gotten it powered off of USB yet.

      • Lucidfeuer

        Yes, that also. Didn’t even think about it so much it’s stupid they haven’t implemented it unless it really does something like the PSVR breakout-box (which isn’t very ergonomic or preferable either).

        • Mable Sharkfin

          How the hell is a VR headset like that going to be powered by USB??? what garbage…

    • greenbag

      As far as I’ve heard, the linkbox has bluetooth needed to communicate with the lighthouses.

      • Lucidfeuer

        It seems odd, especially if it’s bluetooth, that you would need that additional breakout box.

    • Ben Bethel

      Power….

      • David Att

        Hey Ben,

        I have actually the same issue with my laptop. Did you find a good cable that i could use to run my vive pro ?
        thank you

  • Niilomaan

    Might want to fix that: “dual 2880×1600 display”

    • Hi Niilomaan. That certainly snuck by me, so thanks for catching it!

  • HybridEnergy

    What about us who want to swap between old VIVE and the PRO ? I have a DAS+VIVE also and I was planning on using for the sweaty games like SPARC reg Vive and keeping my PRO for the higher end stuff where I give a damn about visuals.

    • HybridEnergy

      I guess I can just swap out the entire link box ?

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Nice..

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  • Brandon Coyle

    I have the original Vive (one of the first consumer ones delivered) with a TPCAST for wireless and the deluxe audio strap. It has worked perfectly from day 1 and I could not be happier with it. That said the Pro looks pretty nice. I would love a res bump and I still have the 1.0 base stations. The other thing I like about the pro is the support for 4 base stations. I have a 20×20 room and I cannot use the whole room without some tracking issues. 4 stations will solve this. I will sell my current setup and go with the Pro if I can get the whole package for around 1200. That would be what I have spent on my current setup. 800 Vive + 300 TPCast + 100 Deluxe Strap = 1200. Since the prices on the main unit have gone down I hope the Pro fill in the same gap and starts at 800 + 200 for 2 more base stations + 200 for wireless. That is me hoping, but my guess would be a bit higher.

  • Ben Bethel

    Here’s my big beef…. the HTC VIVE PRO comes with just one video cable: mini displayport to regular displayport… however the newest GTC 1080 laptop cards only have HDMI and mini displayport…. so I need a new ‘mini displayport to mini displayport’ cord. Well, ordered one on Amazon but won’t be here until Monday (small mountain town here in Flagstaff, Arizona)… so I went off to Best Buy where I’d pre-ordered a mini displayport to hdmi cable hoping that would work… but while there saw a thunderbolt to thunderbolt cable and thought it would work… nope. Anyone know if that hdmi to mini displayport cable would work with the Vive Pro? Guess I’ll be waiting until Monday for this cable to arrive. I think it was a big oversight to not include the cables we’d need to hook up to GTX 1080 laptops.

    • David Att

      Hey ben,
      I have exactly the same issue. did you find a good cable ?

      Thank you