Somnium Space, the Prague, Czechia-based social platform creator, has officially begun launching its PC VR headset, Somnium VR1, in the US. Additionally, the company announced its streamlining the number of available variants, bringing it to just three consumer-focused versions, and also increasing prices soon on its higher-end units.

The company says it’s now discontinuing a number of previously offered configurations of Somnium VR1, including Striker Edition, Classic Edition, Specter Edition, and Translucent Edition.

The Classic Edition was previously its entry level, priced at €1,900 (~$1,980 USD), which didn’t include eye-tracking. Now the company’s cheapest VR1 is the Visionary Edition, which does include eye-tracking, and is priced at €2,499 (~$2,600 USD). Notably, these prices don’t include local tax.

Image courtesy Somnium Space

“For those who have already purchased these discontinued editions — don’t worry, your orders are safe, and you will receive them as planned,” the company says in a new announcement. “In fact, owning one of these variants will make your headset even more exclusive and unique.”

Continuing, the company outlines the reasoning behind discontinuing those versions:

“This decision allows us to focus our efforts on delivering the Visionary, Ultimate, and Titan Editions faster and more efficiently, while continuing to meet the highest standards of quality you expect from us.”

Somnium Space Founder & CEO Artur Sychov conducting quality assurance

Somnium Space is also increasing prices of its Visionary, Ultimate, and Titan Editions. For now, it’s unclear what those new prices will be. The company says it’s keeping current prices until January 16th, 2025. Thereafter, new pricing will be announced and become effective on January 16th, 2025, the company says.

Here’s a recap of its variants and pricing structure as it stands today (tax not included):

  • Visionary Edition (VR, eye-tracking): €2,499 (~$2,600 USD)
  • Titan Edition (VR, eye-tracking, hand-tracking): €2,899 (~$3,020 USD)
  • Ultimate Edition (VR, eye-tracking, hand-tracking, MR passthrough): €3,499 (~$3,659 USD)
  • Military Edition (VR, eye-tracking, hand-tracking, MR passthrough): ???
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“While we strive to make Somnium VR1 as affordable as possible, we also refuse to compromise on quality. The production process for these headsets has turned out to be far more complex than initially anticipated. As a result, we will be increasing prices for the Visionary, Ultimate, and Titan Editions,” the company says.

Somnium Space maintains orders made today are currently estimated to arrive in February – March 2025, with shipping regions including most of Europe, the UK and US.

Moving forward into 2025, the Somnium Space says it plans to eventually sell spare parts for the Somnium VR1, including items such as optical modules, main boards, electronics, cables, screens, and more.

Somnium VR1 Specs

  • Display: QLED Mini-Led Fast LCD – 2,880 × 2,880 per-eye
  • Field of view: 130° horizontal, 105° vertical. The VR1 can render up to 140° horizontally, though the actual FOV may vary slightly depending on face and eye shape.
  • Refresh rate: 72 Hz, 90 Hz, upgradeable to 120 and 144 Hz (experimental)
  • Local dimming zones: 576 per eye
  • Eye tracking: 120 Hz, with an open-sourced algorithm that can be used and modified for any use case
  • Connectivity: USB-C, DisplayPort 1.4, 3.5mm audio jack
  • IPD Range: 57 to 76 mm

Looking for a more in-depth look at Somnium VR1? Check out our hands-on from July 2024 to hear our impressions.

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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.
  • Michael Speth

    You can see the prices of these headsets and then understand why Meta loses billions per month selling their garbage hardware.

    There is simply no way Meta would sell even 1/10th of their hardware at actual costs let alone at profit.

    • Darren

      What's your point, exactly? The hardware is expensive to produce and most people are not able to afford it unless they are priced for the retail market. Is that news for you?

      Microsoft and Sony have historically sold their consoles at a loss in the early stages of the consoles lifecycle due to the high cost of producing these products.

      • Michael Speth

        Meta has always sold their Garbage Mobile headsets at a massive loss so much that they lose billions per month and that is taking into account the software sales on the meta store.

        The point is meta has retarded VR industry by selling garbage that nobody would buy if it was priced at break even. Meta has and is destroying VR in order to bring about surveillance and control over the future generations.

        • FRISH

          Honestly most of your arguments come off as petty. VR could easily have gone the way of 3D where it sounds novel, but there isn't enough investment to actually make it worthwhile. If people want performance, they can quite easily stream it from their own hardware. Clearly it's only an enthusiast market. Your last point is a very solid and underrated concern. That is clearly the direction we're going and I've already seen people dismiss privacy concerns because "lol you're in public". Of course we have home devices that listen in too…

          You only need to look at the player count for Half Life Alyx, considered to be the best quality VR game to know that it simply is not feasible to dedicate resources purely to high quality VR. Frankly I think it's impressive what can be done on mobile chips. Most of us managed to enjoy games with the fraction of the amount of pixels when we were younger. What happened?

          • Michael Speth

            Have you ever played PSVR2? Sony made PSVR1 without Meta Quest 2 garbage marketshare. Sony would have continued with their PSVR2 regardless if meta entered the market or not.

            Horizon Call of the Mountain is a great VR game and the eye tracking is amazing.

            What Meta has done is invited garbageware mobile developers in. They even got devs like Vertigo Games who made PC VR to target mobile trash which is why Metro is a massive downgrade from their previous great game Arizona Sunshine 2.

            My points are 100% valid.

        • NicoleJsd
          • Michael Speth

            Can you actually do anything with the headset without Meta's Operating System? IE, can you replace the OS? Have you tried?

  • dextrovix

    Someone's forgotten to take their medication again…

  • xyzs

    So far, the most interesting headset is the bigscreen beyond.
    If they had their own tracking and controllers, that would be the obvious choice for every advanced pcvr user.

    • Mike

      Yeah, and its new competitor, the Pimax Dream Air. But after trying the Beyond, I'm looking forward to its next iteration.

  • Christian Schildwaechter

    I still wonder how many they expect to sell, but one aspect is very interesting: the open source eye tracking, apparently already announced in 2023-09 with the following features:

    – Refresh rate up to 120Hz
    -Ability to discern between open and closed-eye gaze
    – Heat map visualization
    – Foveated rendering
    – Full access to raw data

    The last two points will be the most interesting, as there aren't any commercial grade free solutions available for those. I'd expect one reason for Somnium going open source to be their hope to outsource (some of) the expensive development in what will be a patent minefield, so this won't provide any plug'n'play solutions. And I couldn't find any of the source or even hints how to get it anywhere.

    But if it indeed exists and is/becomes available, it could allow for a number of nifty things:

    – adding new experimental ET UI/ETFR performance functionality for existing/upcoming VR HMDs with limited Tobii licenses like the Pimax Crystal.
    – full access including (very privacy sensitive) raw tracking data that Meta/Apple etc. keep under lock, giving devs mostly virtual "clicks", not how users got there, which enables a number of interesting and valid, not invasive data hoarding use cases.
    – maybe even re-implementing the ETFR that Sony left out of the PSVR2 PC support, which allows the PS5 GPU to kick way above its weight class in VR.

  • NicoleJsd

    Weren’t they supposed to release it like a year or more ago for few hundreds of dollars less?

    It sounds like a vapourware at this point

  • NicoleJsd
  • NicoleJsd