The VR industry isn’t without its fair share of oddities. The previous king of the bizarre was undoubtedly Starbreeze’s StarVR HMD, but that crown might have just been passed to the Infinitus PRIME tVR.
Announced this month by Infinitus Global, the Infinitus PRIME tVR seemingly came out of nowhere to call itself “the World’s Most Advanced and Visually Striking virtual reality Headset”. That’s quite a mouthful – and a bold one at that – but the company has a specs sheets and infographics that it thinks back up its claims. The PRIME tVR consists of a 5K IPS LCD display with a field of view (FOV) of 140 degrees. As seen below, it’s more than happy to prop those specs up against the Gear VR, Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, though that also reveals the 60Hz refresh rate that’s bested on both of the latter devices.
Much of this spec sheet gets pretty specific. The PC-based HMD offers switchable lenses and programmable LEDs, but is also boasts of “hardware and software customisation”, perhaps suggesting that it’s open to modification. It also comes with a display case which is good news, we guess. There’s no mention of tracking systems, though, so we don’t know where it fits between Gear’s head-tracking and Vive’s Room Scale capabilities right now.
But while it may compare itself to consumer HMDs, that’s not necessarily the market PRIME tVR is really reaching for from the off. Instead, Infinitus Global sees the kit being used across education, advertising, tourism, design and engineering. As such, it wants its device to be picked up by early adopters, visionaries, content creators and business users.
There’s no hint of release dates or anything along those lines right now, though. Pricing information is also under wraps. PRIME tVR will have a priority pre-order campaign before the launch of a general version later down the line though, again, it’s not clear how it will designate who gets in on that. A new website for the kit should be going live at midnight PST today, so hopefully we’ll have some more information to go on then.
That said, you can already head to the current site to enquire after pre-ordering a kit. That might sound a little fast, but PRIME tVR has apparently already been in the works for three years across 10 partner organizations with the help of eight engineers, five software developers and three designers.
An loaded spec sheet is one thing, but we all know that doesn’t necessarily translate into a smooth VR experience. PRIME tVR is going to need more than that prove its worth in an already crowded market. Is Infinitus Global onto something special here? Or is this VR’s new red-headed stepchild?
