HTC unveils standalone, wireless Vive Focus with 'world-scale' tracking

HTC announced a completely wireless Vive VR head unit this evening in China, called the Vive Focus. While details are still unclear of how it'll work, the unit contains a Snapdragon 835 VR CPU as well as a high-resolution AMOLED screen.

YouTube YouTube
Watch On

HTC did not spill the beans on the unit's resolution, but we reckon it'll be in line with Oculus's Santa Cruz wireless Rift—that is, 1080x1200 per eye, which you get now.

Other details include complete inside-out tracking with 6-degrees of freedom. Vive is calling this "world-scale" tracking, essentially giving the Vive Focus the ability to roam around without a fixed boundary. 

HTC has completely changed the head mount from the original Vive, which previously put the bulk of the headset's weight on the front of the user's face. The new Vive Focus adds counter balance to eliminate strain.

The Vive Focus will run games and programs loaded directly to the headset, similar to what you would do on a Samsung Gear VR, powered by a phone. In the Vive Focus's case however, the computing component is built into the headset. However, the Vive Focus will eliminate the PC completely, which isn't really what PC gamers are looking for. The ultimate goal is to get PC games running on a VR headset wirelessly, but as I mentioned previously, getting content and a headset to the masses is of critical importance.

Tuan Nguyen
Tuan is the Editor-in-Chief of Maximum PC, and loves all things tech. He's been building PCs and ruffling feathers in the industry for 20 years, and isn't afraid to call out bad products and services. In fact, it's very common to hear the words "this is shit" escape his lips. If you want to know if something is "Kick-Ass" or not, email or tweet him.
Latest in VR Hardware
Varjo Aero
Nvidia confirms 'open issue' with Varjo Aero VR headsets and RTX 50-series graphics cards after affected users ask for help
A "sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting," or essentially a virtual reality tongue in an artificial mouth
Would you like to taste fish soup in VR? Me neither, but this electronic tongue does it anyway
Varjo Aero
Varjo Aero VR headsets seem to be not working on RTX 5090s, and its community is opting for strange solutions while waiting for an Nvidia driver release to fix it
A still from a YouTube video showing The Swedish Maker cutting a piece of wood with power tools while wearing a Meta Quest 3 VR headset.
YouTuber The Swedish Maker wears a Meta Quest 3 VR headset for his entire woodworking project and miraculously emerges with all fingers intact
The HTC Vive XR Elite front three quarter angle
Google is bulk buying HTC Vive engineers to help Android XR become a platform that can rival Meta's VR/AR dominance
Meta Horizon OS on a box.
The upcoming Asus VR project is rumoured to have eye and face tracking, yet the thing I'm most excited about is its OS
Latest in News
Naoe and Yasuke pose against the backdrop of a burning building.
After Ubi came crawlin' back to Steam, Assassin's Creed Shadows blasts past a million players in under 24 hours and has already smashed Valhalla's player record
Gabe Newell in a Valve promotional video, on a yacht.
Valve CMO threatened the company would walk away from games if it didn't own the rights to Half-Life—'It wasn't an idle threat—we weren't going to take on all of the risk to make other people rich'
Uplifted chimp Penn and cyber-rat Trip in the key art for Animal Use Protocol
Animal Use Protocol's dysfunctional chimp-rat alliance drags the Stasis series into a horrible new first-person era
A woman with short hair stands next to a pot plant, provocatively
GOG's version of Silent Hill 4 has been updated with missing content from the original console game
A blue dragon rises into storm clouds
Wizards of the Coast throws a bone to players who miss vanilla Magic: The Gathering with a dragon-themed set called Tarkir: Dragonstorm
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders
Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders is getting a new mountain next month and a whole bunch more throughout the year, including a game editor