vrgineers xtal (11) — Image courtesy VRgineers

VRgineers Reveals Improved ‘XTAL’ Professional Headset with Wider FOV

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Dec 11, 2018

VRgineers, a Czech Republic-based startup building enterprise VR headsets, today announced a more advanced version of their wide field of view (FOV) professional headset XTAL. The new version, which features a wider FOV thanks to a new pair of non-Fresnel lenses, will be making its debut at CES 2019.

The upcoming version is said to incorporate proprietary non-Fresnel lenses that the company says will deliver “the clearest, most immersive VR experience to date.” With the new lenses come a reduction in distortion, improved FOV, a picture increased by 50 percent, and an eye box size expanded by 20 percent.

The headset is touted for its pair of 2,560 × 1,440 OLED displays, delivering what the company now claims is a 180 degree diagonal field of view—10 more degrees than the penultimate version.

Image courtesy VRgineers

Image courtesy VRgineers

Image courtesy VRgineers

The most recent hardware revisions brought automatic IPD adjustment, an embedded Leap Motion sensor for wide FOV hand-tracking, and reduced weight and size.

“XTAL’s new non-fresnel lenses will deliver a wider field of view and binocular overlap, a bigger sweet spot, and much less distortion compared to the existing model,” explained Marek Polcak, CEO & Co-Founder of VRgineers. “This is critically important to our customers. When prototyping a new automobile design, for instance, they’ll be able to see more of the vehicle at once, and come closer than ever to a true-to-life image. We’ve getting ever closer to our goal – which is to make virtual reality indistinguishable from reality itself.”

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VRgineers are showing XTAL at the Showstoppers press event at CES 2019, taking place in Las Vegas on January 8th, 2019.

The company is specially targeting the professional and enterprise sectors with XTAL—at $5,800 so much is clear. The company is taking orders for XTAL as of today; XTAL professional support package customers that purchased the previous version can upgrade their device free of charge via a lens-swap program.

JesuSaveSouls

Wow, that is very inexpensive.
- jj
  
  …what are you on about? this is clearly for high end enterprise people. Like expensive companies that want to show things off in vr with fine quality. It is not for commercial home use and clearly not for people like you who wouldn’t be able to afford this and complain about prices instantly, without looking in to things. Or wait, why didn’t jesus provide you with enough wealth to buy this? ill send more thoughts n prayers because they clearly arent doing anything.
  
  So ALL of your posts about the Mirage, oculus psvr and their prices are irrelevant and you just put out three independent posts on here all lead by, and leading others, to lead with misinformation.
  
  in other words, turn your brain on before you post.
  
  and as always HAIL SATAN the real savior of souls.
  - Bryan Ischo
    
    Why do you have to agitate with that last line? You’re no better than the Jesus lovers at this point.
    - jj
      
      why is it agitating if i’m spreading a religion that isnt Christianity?? JSS gets to spread her/his religion all day even to the point where their user name is 100% religious yet if i mention my religion i get yelled at?
      
      the answer to your question is simple.
      Simple, because if someones going to shove their religion down my throat, i’m going to show them how it feels. which jss does more than anybody and continues to do with a name like that, to the majority of us who don’t care to have their religious beliefs imposed upon us during our vr discussions.
      
      so until she/he comes back without a name like JESUSSAVESOULS im going to continue to share my religious beliefs and throw them in his/her face, just like he/she does.
      
      plus “no better” is relative when your measurement of good is based off who is and isn’t preaching, especially when that measurement is thwarted when someone tries to reciprocate the annoyance back to the dealer….
      - gothicvillas
        
        But Jesus is a Satan spawn
      - Bryan Ischo
        
        oooh you’re so clever.
      - wcalderini
        
        So if JSS jumped off a bridge……
      - jj
        
        Why would that matter to me? I’m not mimicking everything JSS does, just the stuff thats being annoyingly forced into our conversations. So next time instead of trying a very basic attempt at an edgy comment, actually put in some effort.
        
        and trust me i know i’m being more annoying than JSS at this point. Its just that loud christians are an easy target and represent a very close minded mindset that i feel contributes to a lot of pain and suffering in the world.
        
        Again this wouldn’t be the case if they weren’t trying to inject Christianity into our non-religious discussions, and i consider having a name JSS alone is a crusade into our discussion with the intent to convert it into a religious agenda.
      - Bryan Ischo
        
        JSS didn’t mention religion this time, you did; which makes you as bad as they are when it comes to propogating this bullshit that is not related to VR in any way.
      - jj
        
        yeah but her/his comment was a waist of space and like i said before, having a name like that is just begging for opposition. Not to mention JSS has posted religious youtube videos in these comments before and i’m not just going to act like those never happened
      - Mateusz Pawluczuk
        
        There’s a lot of people here with various nicknames, some have Occult/Satanic nicknames and no one cares or claims that they’re injecting anything, so I’m sorry but I have to agree with Bryan.
- MosBen
  
  So does a dump truck compared to a Honda Civic, but then, they’re not really the same product targeting the same market.
JesuSaveSouls

Buy oculus with games included,controls and sensors only around 350.Go wmr for much cheaper.Btw go psvr path and get a used ps4 and psvr for a few hundred.
JesuSaveSouls

Mirage ar with your own phone,almost any phone with the free jedi challenges download and get a really high quality ar game with multiple star wars themes to play for around 100 bucks new.Compared to hololens or magic leap which cost over 2k and have basically no software to play.
- Bryan Ischo
  
  Well except Hololens and Magic Leap are not made for gaming, so picking on them for not having good games is kinda missing the point.
  
  That being said, AR kinda sucks and is way too expensive at the moment.
Tom Szaw

Is it rocket science to put inside two LCD/AMOLED panels which display image from computer + add gyroscope etc? Oculus is CRAP now. It was maybe acceptable in 2014, but not in 2018. They keep selling this thing for hundreds eur. That’s why VR did not took of yet. Terrible visual quality of Oculus and Vive + price. Only Odyssey+ is a step forward, but a smaller step.
- Bob
  
  Oculus is focusing on the real world aspects of VR whilst at the same time they are also focusing on the core technical issues for the longer term; better resolution, better tracking etc.
  
  Real world in this case primarily means the ergonomics, the mobility, the software ecosystem and the price. Their goal is to get 1 billion people in VR and in order to accelerate progress these are the issues that must be tackled first.
  - Arashi
    
    Yeah they seem to think that if they just make it affordable that they’ll win over the world. But like Palmer said, free isn’t cheap enough. Luckily other companies actually ARE focusing on innovation.
- jj
  
  ok if its not hard then why don’t you do it and become a millionaire?
  - Tom Szaw
    
    I am not a big company with funds. Also, why should I do it? Maybe I am not interested in making VR headsets?
    - MosBen
      
      Maybe it isn’t rocket science but is harder than you think and/or too expensive for a consumer-targeted product.
    - Andrew Jakobs
      
      If it were that easy, we would have seen many companies already shipping headsets like that. But again, what’s the use of a high resolution headset if there aren’t any affordable GPU’s.. people bitch about a headset of $5000+ but don’t even consider the thousands of dollars GPU needed to drive the headset..
      And yes, lensdesign isn’t the easiest thing, it’s like rocket science, but then again, how hard is rocketscience, it’s just building a simple rocket which can take us to mars.. how hard can that be…
      - dsadas
        
        the resolution will be of absolutely no problem if they bother to integrated FR. Until they do that they will keep failling.
- Arashi
  
  I actually think the Odyssey+ is quite a big step forward, their anti-SDE tech is really wonderful
  - Tom Szaw
    
    Yes I know. I have it.
- crim3
  
  Aparently, fooling the human visual system with technology isn’t that easy.
Freshboy

I just want a light weight 200° or higher fov headset, The other stuff I’m ok missing out on
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  I don’t want a higher fov headset, I want a device I can put against the back of my neck and transport me to a virtual world with me feeling like I’m really there just like a dream.. oh, wait, now I have to get realistic again, that’s not possible for the time being….
  - dsadas
    
    well fov is probably the most important thing for this to happen so?
get lost

Jesus AND satan ARE JUST AMAGINARY FRIENDS FOR DELUTIONAL IDIOTS!!!!!
- Jesus
  
  aww man :(
- Satan
  
  Seriously? just going ta throw me under the bus like that?
- Bryan Ischo
  
  Your comment is not related to VR. get lost.
  - sfmike
    
    I think he was just trying to beat JesuSaveSouls to the punch.
- Tags I812
  
  get lost. :O) i bet you heat that a lot huh.
- charlesbalzotti
  
  marcionaboagmailcom yes
brandon9271

Awesome! Another company cock-teasing “enterprise” VR gear that nobody can afford. I wonder how soon until they fold under?
- Andrew Jakobs
  
  Well, enterprises can afford it. It’s not cock-teasing as they just released a public newsitem about it to their customers which R2VR just picked up.
  - brandon9271
    
    Just because enterprise can afford it doesn’t mean it will sell. StarVR got into financial trouble lately and they were selling a similar device for nearly half the price as this one.
    - Tags I812
      
      no , word has it they got caught for insider trading.
      - brandon9271
        
        They were insider trading because they were going bankrupt and trying to dump worthless stocks
  - sfmike
    
    Enterprise needs only so many HMDs. The market is just not that big. Bankruptcy ensues.
    - brandon9271
      
      Look at all the stuff Jaunt is auctioning off. Plenty of expensive gear and not an “enterprise” HMD in sight.
- Lucidfeuer
  
  I (my agency) can afford it. However I don’t have tax money to tech-wash with a pseudo-innovation investment and also I’m not stupid with expenditures.
- TonyVT SkarredGhost
  
  It’s like saying that we don’t need Ferraris and Lamborghinis because we can’t afford them. There are people that can afford them and that love them
  - brandon9271
    
    Not really a fitting analogy. Luxury automobiles are a subset of a HUGE industry with mass appeal. Not everyone can afford them put most people would like to have one. As it is, most people CAN afford VR but VR still makes up less than 1% of steam users. “Luxury VR” is a niche within a niche. Luxury automobiles have a market. Luxury VR is a path to bankruptcy
Sven Viking

“a picture increased by 50 percent” ??
Ombra Alberto

I wait for the same exact characteristics in the oculus Cv 1S for $ 600 in 2019.
- MosBen
  
  I wouldn’t expect a new Rift to have 180 degree FOV, nor for it to come out in 2019. Next year is about the Oculus Quest; Oculus won’t put out any other major products next year. We may, however, start to see products in development at Oculus Connect next Fall that may eventually become the Rift 2, and maybe for a 2020 release.
  - Andrew Jakobs
    
    The only thing I can see Oculus release at about the same time as the Quest is a headset like the quest without the mobile soc.. But I agree, don’t expect Oculus to release a 180 degree FOV headset next year.
  - Tom Szaw
    
    It is such a nonsene these big companies like Facebook, can’t release new HMD every 2 years. What is the damn problem to install better panels in this plastic box? Computer is doing the major work with Geforcre card. Not a rocket science. Oculus Rift should have been retired 2 years ago. New device, with QHD or better, 4k per eye, 180 FOV should have been released long time ago. It is an absurd what these corporations are doing. I only see Samsung to innovate with Odyssey+. They barely presented something and its better than crap Oculus with big screen-door nonsense.
    - brandon9271
      
      Oculus could take Cv1 and add better lenses and better screens but leave everything else exactly the same. Call it Rift Pro or CV1.5.. it would be easy to at least offer some improvements over the original, flawed CV1. I don’t know why they won’t do it but at this point i don’t care. I’m sell my Rift and I’m going to buy a Samsung Odyssey while i wait for Valve or maybe LG to release their rumored VR headsets.
      - Tom Szaw
        
        I bought Odyssey+. It is a fantastic device. Screen-door effect practically non-existing. The only thing I hate is light bleeding. Massive light bleeding around face – sides and bottom. I see floor and people next to me. Face pad replacement is a must. VR Cover will have it soon. Also… these cables going to PC are so annoying moving around head and you need to watch out not to step on them. It kills immersion too. Also… inside-out tracking is problematic In my opinion. It loses pivot point very often. You need to reset position or take it off to calibrate. The ilness of childhood age. Get Apollo 11 HD from Steam once you order Odyssey+. It is a shockingly amazing experience to reach Moon’s orbit and land there feeling being there. cheers.
    - KOSTANTINOS KOD
      
      Samsung did what?? The old odyssey has been created to be used by basketballs. And it doesnt take a rocket scientist to realise the old screen is better than the new ,all they did was adding a blur filter around the same info..(!) its good for selling, since all people talk about is the dots ,but its not better for sure.
VR for the Road

Great. The more VR tech, the better. Most of these companies will eventually go bankrupt, but so what?
Most startups fail anyway. Better if they fail doing VR, than fintech or some other crap.
- Lucidfeuer
  
  That’s a terribly cynical (and true) statement.
sfmike

LOVE the idea of non-Fresnel lens. There has to be a better way.
oompah

$5800 yuk
but 180 deg is soooo much better
rather unbelievable
I can imagine that this can be achieved by curved eyepieces considering that the eyes r not fixed rather moving all the time, so if u move ur eye sideways , it should be able to face the optics and the kind of optics that need implementing is curved ones(combined with curved LCD/LED) which is no rocket science these days.
I encourage others to take notice & implement curved eye pieces.
VR for the Road

Yes, keep them coming.
Lucidfeuer

It’s crazy how many stooges there are still on here trying to come-up with twisted and stupid rationalisation to defend an undefendable price, therefor contributing to the VR market misteps and off-rails…

Keep being okay with crap offers and finding apologises for undefendable things, see where it’s going…
TonyVT SkarredGhost

They also partnered with Neurable to add brainwave reading to their device
Patrick McKee

Yay more content, that is meh. Is this a site about RoadtoEnterpriseVR? seriously!!!