Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Vive XR Elite: Is This The Start Of VR Glasses?”.
When I think about the future of VR and AR I think about glasses and with Apple’s headset, apparently coming out around the corner and aiming to be smaller, what sort of devices should we expect? Well HTC’s headset kind of points a little bit in that direction. When I got the HTC Vive XR Elite and unboxed it at home, it came in this little drawstring bag. I tried this at CES, but taking it out and finding what is a foldable pair of VR glasses feels pretty awesome and magical. I mean these look really small compared to most VR headsets and something you could actually take in your bag.
Could it really be that device? Well, it’s a little too good to be true, because the vivexr elite does require some other accessories for you to use it. The vivexr elite is an over thousand dollar headset that is competing with the metaquest pro in a territory that most people don’t want to spend for in a VR headset. This is a lot more expensive than a Quest 2 and met his quest 3. That’S coming in the fall most likely is probably going to cost more like 500, whereas this is eleven hundred dollars and the metaquest pro is a thousand dollars. Apple’S headset could be more expensive than that, and probably the prices are going to keep going up, because the way that these are being shrunken down with all that technology inside that doesn’t come cheap.
But the vivexr elite is trying to bridge the gap to where VR and AR might start feeling more glasses. Like like. I said this does fold down, but this doesn’t have its own battery inside. You would need to plug it in with USBC and connect it to a battery pack in order to use it in a size, this small or plug it right into a laptop.
The other thing is that this foam eyepiece and these and these uh design here it doesn’t fit over regular glasses. In fact, when I tried it at CES, it didn’t work at all, and I still can’t put these over my glasses, but if you have a prescription that goes up to -6, this actually does have a prescription dial that adjusts that’s a cool idea as long as You have a prescription that supports it. If you don’t, then you’re going to be in trouble, good thing is HTC actually sent me an early version of a bracket that fits on this that will allow it to fit over my glasses.
These magnetic foam Pieces come off and the other piece goes on and I can put it on and basically look around like. I have a floating pair of goggles on my face so now in this form with the battery attached. It’S bigger right, but it’s a smaller version of the quest Pro something like that and now I can actually loosen this and and gently put this on my face rest it on my forehead, tighten it and basically feels like it’s hovering over my glasses, a little bit A little bit close to my glasses, but fine and it’s almost like a pair of VR bifocals. You know I can see the bottom uh of the world and I can see everything around me, but I can also see VR hovering in front of me kind of in this, like you know, as if it’s Being Framed in a pair of lenses, that’s kind of The same feeling that the quest pro has but there’s even more exposed space around this, the idea is that this will work also for mixed reality, similar to The Quest bro. The vivexr elite has pass-through cameras that look at the world with color video and will show an extension of basically what you’re seeing there, but could float VR objects into that world.
Basically, looking like AR, except it’s mixed reality, where it’s putting VR objects into this video pass-through mode, that’s exactly the type of thing that Apple’s expected to have and that the quest priority has the Optics on this felt a little distorted to me at times. But I got used to it and the display resolution is crisp it’s about as crisp as the quest Pro. It looks more than good enough to read things and look at VR and it’s using the same xr2 chip. That’S in the quest Pro and the Quest 2.
So it’s that same territory of processor and performance by the way I can actually use my hands here and use hand tracking and control things with my hands, but you probably would want to use these controllers for just about everything else. That means a lot of gear. So if you’re going to be carrying this around with you at least, the good news is that this can pack flat it can detach, and it’s kind of like a deconstructed, VR headset. You could put this in a bag and take it with you. That’S different than the quest Pro, which has all the pieces. You know solidified in there and you can’t pull them apart.
I, like the modular, feel here, although got a little worried about how I snapped these on and worried that maybe over time something might break it. Freaked me out how this got a little flexi here. I do appreciate that it’s very small, the thing that’s not so small.
These controllers, these controllers are big. These are you know, existing Vive controllers that they use for the focus 3 that they just included with the XR Elite compared to the metaquest pro controllers. Those are a lot smaller and also denser.
They also have the ability to track everything with their own built-in cameras. I wish that these controllers had gotten smaller to match the compact nature of the headset, because, if you’re taking this around with you, I’d like to put it to a really small bag, there’s no included bag with the XR Elite that I’ve been looking at so far, Except for that little drawstring one, so you could protect the glasses, but then you’d have to bring all these other bits and gears and cables with you. If you want to travel, you know it can fit into a backpack, but it’s a lot of little bits and pieces sitting next to a quest Pro with all the stuff attached.
You can see these definitely look like similar types of devices, and I would call these mixed reality. Vr headsets ones that are capable of blending the real world in the virtual, with what could be a growing number of apps, and I think that’s exactly the territory that apple is going to be entering and that a lot of other companies are going to be entering The question, though, is how fast will those mixed reality apps arrive, because right now for both the quest Pro and the vivexr elite, there really aren’t that many, a lot of it is VR, and so your mileage is really going to vary as to why you would Buy these particular pieces of Hardware versus using what you’ve already got or waiting for what comes next. This is where the technology feels like it’s in a transition period, kind of like before the iPhone, whereas before VR headsets, all kind of look like the Quest 2 or the Oculus Rift. Now they look like they’re kind of flexing into something else, and this wild modular design shows that people are trying to aim for something else, and it may take a number of years. But before everyone gets it right, you might want to wait and see where it all shakes out and see how these things pair, with your phones better, because right now, these really don’t connect with phones, all that fantastically they can to some degree, especially Android phones, and They can connect with PCS, but we haven’t reached that super smooth, peripheral type of thing that I’m dreaming of that will hopefully come in the future and you got to get smaller than these controllers.
So that’s my thought so far about the vivexr elite compared to the metaquest pro and we’re only in April, there’s going to be a lot more VR hardware and AR Hardware to come. If you have any questions or comments below, please do share them and hey thanks for watching make sure to like And subscribe. .