We have known beforehand that HTC wasn’t going to put out a refresh of the PC-powered Vive virtual reality (VR) headset for 2016. So people were interested to see if the Taiwan-based company was going to follow up with its intentions to put out a standalone VR headset, and it looks like they have every intention of doing that. It might be called the “HTC Vive Focus” – if the company’s patent applications were to be believed.
It has been uncovered that HTC has filed applications in the European Union Intellectual Property Office and the United States Patent And Trademark Office a week ago for what is officially a “head mounted display” called the HTC Vive Focus. The only VR headset that we have heard of is the plan to put out a standalone unit, not connected to a PC and not powered by a smartphone.
It looks like the Vive Focus is going to be running on the Google Daydream platform, and it’s going to follow the reference design made by Qualcomm. Expect the device to be running with the Snapdragon 835 chipset, offering six degrees of freedom (6DOF) positional tracking and 3DOF motion controls, if the reference design is going to be followed.
It might be launching soon as well, with Google planning a press event on October 4 to possibly launch the new Pixel smartphones. Don’t be surprised if the HTC Vive Focus will piggyback on that event. At any rate, we should hear about this soon.
VIA: Upload VR
