HTC Vive Flowcus: Official render and hardware details teased for Meta Quest Pro competitor ahead of CES 2023 showcase
HTC has begun teasing its return to the consumer VR market, having released the business-focused Vive Focus 3 last year. According to Shen Ye, HTC Vive's Global Head of Product, the unnamed VR headset will be 'one of the lightest that's on the market' with mixed VR support thanks to colour video pass-through. Additionally, the headset will be self-contained and will support 6DOF controllers with optical hand tracking. Eye tracking remains unknown at this stage, although Brad Lynch asserted last month that this functionality would be available eventually via a dedicated module.
Ye adds that the headset will launch with front and side-facing cameras but only up to two hours of battery life. The executive also commented on pricing, which The Verge expects to be between US$500 and US$1,300, putting it in Meta Quest Pro territory:
We're in an era when consumer VR headsets have been massively subsidized by companies that are trying to vacuum up and take personal data to provide to advertisers...We don't believe the way that we want to approach it is to compromise on privacy.
HTC will present the unnamed VR headset on January 5 at CES 2023 in Las Vegas. Reputedly, the headset will launch as the Vive Flowcus with a Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chipset, 8 GB of DDR5 RAM, active cooling and a depth sensor. Brad Lynch claims that the Vive Flowcus features a 16 MP RGB camera too, as well as LCDs that run at up to 120 Hz while providing 1,920 x 1,920 pixels per eye. In short, HTC's next VR headset will be a prosumer device rather than a mainstream alternative to the Meta Quest 2.
Source(s)
The Verge via GSMArena & Road to VR, Brad Lynch - Image credit