Having arrived in Europe just under a month ago, HTC today launches the Vive Pro Eye in the US. The enterprise-level VR headset costs $1,599.
Vive Pro Eye improves upon the original Vive with an upgraded screen resolution (2880 x 1600 pixels), and also succeeds the first Vive Pro with integrated eye-tracking. Eye-tracking with the headset can be used as a form of input or, more interestingly, for foveated rendering. This is a technique that only fully renders the area of a screen the user is looking at. The rest of the display is blurred, reducing processing power on the PC running the headset.
For $1,599, you get the headset, two SteamVR 2.0 base stations and two Vive controllers.
As we said up top, though, Vive Pro Eye is very much an enterprise-level headset. At $1,599, it’s around $600 more than the consumer-focused Valve Index and $1,200 more than an Oculus Rift S or Oculus Quest. We likely won’t see many SteamVR or Viveport games integrate eye-tracking in the near future, then. But HTC is already working with a slate of companies on dedicated apps and services that utilize the tech.
HTC is shaping up to take another shot at the consumer VR market, though, with its mysterious Vive Cosmos headset. The device offers inside-out tracking and HTC is teasing a modular component that might let it run on both PCs and smartphones among other devices. We’re expecting it to launch later this year, though details are thin on the ground right now. We’ll keep you updated with any more news.
