Augmented and virtual reality headsets - we’ve been hearing about them for years, but they still haven’t caught on with everyday consumers. But HTC is hoping its Vive focus headset bucks that trend. TheStreet's Conway Gittens got his hands on one and entered the virtual world to see what it could do.
Transcript:
Conway Gittens: Augmented and virtual reality headsets - we’ve been hearing about them for years - but they still haven’t caught on with everyday consumers.
There’s a wide variety when it comes to price. On the high-end, you have the Apple Pro Vision, which will set you back $3500. And on the low-end, you have the Meta Quest 3 for $299. And somewhere in the middle you have HTC. Its Vive Focus Vision is $999 and $1299 for the pro model. For Dan O'Brien, that’s the sweet spot for gamers and people who just wanna have fun.
Dan O'Brien: You're getting a headset that connects to all of your PC gaming, if you so wish to use it that way, you can use it as a standalone headset, and it has applications across thousands of different gaming applications. Anything from zombie to fitness to playful architecture games and things of that nature. And there's a lot of different gaming applications that could be a lot of fun and very entertaining, even mental health applications.
We're definitely targeting a high end PC gamer. So very high 5K visuals, very easy to use. You no longer need external tracking. Now it's all embedded on the headset, so it's very, very easy to use. We've now even included things like auto IPD, so the lenses inside the headset actually adjust to your pupils. So you always get the best visual quality and fidelity. And so from a consumer standpoint, we've really designed it for that. Again, that PC Gamer, high end gamer, and that's a growing market. You have over 180 million active SteamVR PC gamers, right. That's a very, very healthy market to serve with that headset.
Conway Gittens: All right, cool. Well, let's have some fun. That's it. Let's show me how these headsets work.
The set-up is more than just putting on headsets. The technology within the headset has to acclimate to your eyesight, your height, and set safety boundaries. There’s also the motion sensors so that when you move physically, you move within the software. There are also handsets for spatial concerns that allow you to push and move things within the virtual world.
I’ve been able to test the HTC Focus Vision - you really, really feel like you're in another place.”
The HTC headset, however, is more than just fun and games. It’s being used to aid in physical and mental therapy, in manufacturing facilities to train employees on new technologies, to train a police force in Mexico, and it’s being used in the space industry. O’Brien is proudest of how VIVE Focus Vision is being used in the medical field.
Dan O'Brien: So you can train people over and over and over again and they get through the training faster and they retain it at a much higher level. So retention is at 75% versus a lecture style at 5% or reading at 15% So really a lot of improvements there in those couple of industries. But we've also seen in the health care training and simulation with different doctors like Yale University, they're getting their doctors or their student doctors through the surgeries 29% faster, and they're making six times fewer errors. So really significant impacts.
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