As if there was any doubt about HTC teasing a new VR headset late last week, the company also reconfirmed that it’s definitely on the way with an image of the device sitting under a veil.

A blogpost titled “VR Headset?” featuring the image was released on the same day as the Tweet that saw wider circulation.

The only text to go along with the image was: “VR Headset – Confirmed”.

Image courtesy HTC

As far as veiled images go, there’s little to tell from this image alone. The headset appears to be propped up internally by a box, so it’s difficult to tell whether it indeed has a rigid strap system or not.

The only other image we have of the device for now was released via Twitter last week, showing what appears to be a rendering of the top-left corner of the headset’s faceplate and revealing a single optical sensor.

Image courtesy HTC

HTC has done these sort of Twitter teases in the past, the most recent of which was right before the company launched new VR accessories.

The phrase from last week’s tweet: “now that the accessories are out of the way, let’s get down to business,” could mean that company is getting ready to release a business-focused headset instead of one for consumers. This would track fairly well with its past strategy of releasing its Vive Focus standalone headsets in China for consumers, and pitching the same hardware outside of that country for business.

What do you think is under the veil? PC VR? Standalone? Let us know in the comments below!

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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.
  • rfanck

    The veiled will be available for consumers and business edition …SOON !

    • Jan Ciger

      The question is whether anyone will care, esp. on the business side. Pico is eating both Quest and original Vive Focus for lunch in the business space due to their hw not being tied to any mandatory subscriptions and management services.

      Which 90% deployments don’t need but it often makes them unviable when suddenly the budget (made based on the consumer prices) is blown up at least 3x (2x cost of the hw + mandatory per-device annual sub + forced integration with some 3rd-party management portal).

      Also Pico has clear pricing, including various customization and branding optionson the hw and even possibility to have system access (effectively
      “root”).

      • Also Pico is not available in the Western Hemisphere…..

  • Jan Ciger

    Most likely Vive Focus 2, the standalone that has been rumored, and kinda announced but never delivered and always delayed last year already.

    The specs were to be very similar to Quest 2 (Snapdragon XR 2), just more expensive, too late to the game and lacking the Oculus content library.

    • g-man

      If it does wireless PCVR with no FB login requirement and the price isn’t ludicrous it will sell.

  • wheeler

    Hopefully they’ve addressed the issues with tracking. Since they need to make a profit off of hardware they’ll probably have to sell it at a minimum of $500. However, the “for business” suggestions make me think it could be much more expensive.

    If they’ve addressed the major problems of the earlier devices, they may have some inroads with PCVR users that want an alternative to Facebook (especially if they officially support integrated wireless). However, there are hints that Facebook is considering a “Quest 2 Pro,” which they’d presumably subsidize to a predatory level again to ensure HTC remains irrelevant even here.

    As for standalone, without subsidization they couldn’t compete with Facebook even if they could manage feature parity–in the US. But Facebook isn’t allowed in China so there may be opportunities there. If they can make it as simple as possible to port from the Quest 2 hardware, I could see a lot of poor VR devs taking interest in access to a Chinese VR market (side note: yay, another wave of ports…)

    A lot of “if”s and “hopefully”s. It would be easier to root for HTC if they could at least nail the fundamentals and if it were just price where they were not competitive. Because to a large extent there’s not much they can do about price without having the benefit of a large tech monopoly to subsidize the device and ecosystem with.

    • Jan Ciger

      HTC is not a big player in China. They are a Taiwanese company, not (mainland) Chinese. That makes a huge difference (yay politics).

      In China the main players are domestic ones – e.g. Pico Interactive with their Neo 2 and recently announced Neo 3.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        But the HTC Focus is mainly for the chinese market, and they seem to sell them reasonable.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Except Facebook sells their Quest 2 not subsidized. They don’t make a big profit on the headset itself, but they don’t sell it at loss..

      • Says who, call bs..

        • Andrew Jakobs

          Says who, call bs..

          • Just to replace the two controllers are half the price of the headset.
            It’s a VR-headsetet, with controllers and a high end chipset from Qualcomm for 300usd.
            And resellers aren’t selling them at a lose.
            So I call BS.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        They may sell it at or above the costs of the materials and assembly, but they still subsidize it, simply because they do not (yet) recoup all the development and marketing costs. Facebook could pay USD 2B for Oculus and continue to pump hundreds of millions into it for years without having to get that money back from customers. That is a luxury most companies cannot afford.

        In February Facebook announced that the top 35 games on the Quest generated about USD 150M in revenue. Let’s be extremely generous and assume that all the other apps made more than twice that for a total of USD 500M, 30%/USD150M of which would go to Facebook. Which is most likely more profit than they made from selling headsets. That is a couple of billions short if you look at the actual costs, not just the materials, so they are selling at a loss.

  • 3872Orcs

    I’ll get it if it’s a wireless PC VR headset with similar or better specs than Index or if it’s a real contender to the Quest 2 with a similar library of content. Price really doesn’t matter too much for me as long as I can order it in Norway. Around 1000 dollars is well within my price range and I can stretch it further depending on the specs.

    • Well unfortunately the rest of us aren’t rich, so price really DOES matter to us.

      • Wild Dog

        Well if vive makes an expensive headset that does everything people want it to do, that’s gonna set a precedent.

        And when newer, even more deluxe features come along, it’ll get cheaper. It’s like we’re all climbing a ladder.

      • FalconLX 911

        Price = value. I would love it to be sub $500. But if it out preforms the reverb G2 with near perfect inside out tracking. Has maybe a viveport library for stand alone, AND connects to a PC wirelessly (via dongle?) I would value it more than an Index and would defiantly pay $800-$900. I’m not rich either, but their is a market for the 1k headset (see Index & Pimax) but it has to be worth it

  • Adrian Meredith

    It’s looks VERY thin. There looks to be noticeably less face area compared to quest. Colour me interested…

    • mepy

      It also looks wider and taller than the quest.

      • ShaneMcGrath

        Wider might be a good sign, I want a little more FOV in any of these wireless headsets.
        Resolution is already decent enough on most of them, They should focus more on FOV so it doesn’t look like a pair of swimming goggles or binoculars when viewing VR.

  • If only they had an Appstore ecosystem comparable to Oculus/facebook – the market is in need of competitors!

    • xyzs

      World doesn’t need a new closed ecosystem…
      World needs PC VR wireless connection for any existing store/VR games people have.

      • Geoff

        No, the world doesn’t, but the world didn’t move so Oculus/FB filled that gap and it is what it is now.

      • No, but it’s the only way to keep the prices down on the headset.
        The success of the Quest 2 is because of its price and HTC is almost bankrupt already.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Well, they have VivePort which supports multiple headsets, and they have the Infinity subscription.

    • Vivewave for standalone, Viveport for PCVR.

      https://developer.vive.com/us/wave/

      Been using Viveport (for free) to access online immersive festivals, works very well, integrates with steamVR.

      I’ve used vivewave on a HTC Vive Focus setup for Chinese consumers, there seemed to be a good number of applications on there

      HTC have done a good job building their appstore around subscription model

  • Chris

    Take my money, get on with the roll out….

  • Foreign Devil

    Are we going to have an HMD striptease? show just a little bit of plastic at a time!

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Oh come on, this is already 3 days old, come on HTC reveal the bugger already..

    • Jistuce

      My theory is HTC is watching the rumors that kick up when they announce they’re going to announce a product, so they know where to direct their R&D.

      It is the only explanation that makes sense.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        R&D on this headset is already done. And reading the other article on the announcement of the vive presentation next month, I think we’ll have to wait another month before we get to see the bugger.

  • Holdup

    If a it’s a standalone like quest I’ll get it if it comes with a real IPD adjustment

    • Geoff

      The quest 2 has real IPD adjustment, it’s just 3 steps of lens shift but you can do half steps if you are careful :)

  • deHavilland

    If it has the unmatched resolution/picture quality of the Reverb without all the hazards of WMR (and I think especially of the WMR-for-SteamVR-«Integration») it is a certain buy for me. And, well, it’s NOT fb/oculus, so plus-plus!

  • Rupert Jung

    Looks like another top-strap design. Was hoping there would implement a halo strap.

  • Lucidfeuer

    HTC can’t design shit. They’ve kicked themselves out of the smartphone market because they were horrendous. When you are that clueless you deserve to die as a company. And for VR unfortunately it’s no better. Even chinese companies understand how to reverse-engineer products but also get a clue about design, as a western corporation there’s no excuse. So let’s wait, see and be not surprised…

  • Geoff

    Why did they put a load of cables right behind it in the photo! Now I am thinking is that the PC on the other desk or something going to or from the headset!

    • Because they still haven’t figured out good PR…?

  • I can’t wait to see what this will be about. The Neo 3 from Pico looks interesting, I hope this will be great, too

  • okExpression

    If someone had the time they could use the lens distortion of the camera and the Apple monitor dimensions to approximate the dimensions of the headset to determine if it’s the Vive or Proton form factor.
    But this is HTC so nobody cares.