AntVR, an early VR startup which struggled with several XR headset projects that ultimately didn’t find traction, has reemerged with novel optics which can instantly transition between AR and VR modes.
And now the company is back with something that’s actually quite interesting. At CES 2023, AntVR was showing off its ‘mixed waveguide AR optics’, which uses a novel approach to keep a slim profile, while at the same time including a dimming feature to instantly switch between see-through AR and full VR modes. Although the company demonstrated their tech working in a pair of glasses frames, AntVR doesn’t plan to manufacture its own headset this time around, but instead is hoping another company will license the optical design and integrate it into their own headset.
AntVR was showing three different sizes of its optics, a 6mm thick version with a claimed 56° field-of-view, a 9mm thick version with an 85° field-of-view, and a 10.5mm thick version with a 120° field-of-view.
AntVR’s 120° field-of-view prototype | Photo by Road to VR
Naturally, the most visually immersive among them (the 120° FoV) was the most interesting to me, and it also stands apart from the other two because it uses two displays per-eye (or you might call it two halves of a display, per-eye). Near as I can tell, this is how it works:
Diagram by Road to VR
There’s essentially half of a display above the eye, and half of a display below. Both images are guided through the lens, then fused to form a single image as the light heads toward the eye. It’s a neat approach because it means the width of the whole display pipeline can essentially be cut in half, which is how these optics manage to stay relatively thin while providing a wide field-of-view. Granted, at 10.5mm, these are definitely still thicker than glasses lenses (which other companies have achieved), but certainly more compact than many birdbath optics that we see with top-mounted displays.
And the AntVR optics have another little trick up their sleeve: an instant dimming function which allows you to switch between transparent AR and full VR at the press of a button.
While the dimming didn’t cut out 100% of the incoming light, it was definitely up there at maybe 90%, which provided an effective backdrop to focus on the virtual content in front of you without being distracted at what’s on the other side of the glasses.
This kind of dimming isn’t new (almost certainly achieved with LCD), but it ‘s interesting to see it in action and imagine the possibilities of a future headset that might include this instant switching functionality.
The AntVR prototypes were rather crude, and there’s a lot of questions left to be answered before knowing if they’d be truly practical in a headset; things like maximum transparency, distortion of the real world, color-reproduction, power consumption, cost, if they can be canted, and how much of a seam between the two images will be apparent in real-world use (the demos at CES were mounted in place, so there was no head-tracking to test with). And frankly, one serious potential challenge with this setup is how much it may distort the user’s eyes when see by outsiders—nobody wants to walk around with that ‘coke bottle glasses’ look.
Still, the compact form-factor spurred by the half-and-half display layout, and the combination of instant opacity switching makes these quite interesting and something I’ll be keeping my eye on.
At CES 2023 HTC revealed its new Vive XR Elite headset which is positioned as a Quest Pro competitor. In terms of features and hardware, the headset is largely a refinement of formfactor over anything else; and while it’s undoubtedly compact and lightweight, it may be hampered by an unclear value proposition and some ergonomic details that went overlooked.
Everyone’s head shape, nose size, and eye positions are different. That said, the first time I put on Vive XR Elite it was clear to me that there wasn’t nearly enough room for my nose… something that I have no issue with on almost every other major headset on the market (even HTC’s other VR headsets).
It’s not that it’s impossible to get the pressure off your nose—the optional top-strap (which HTC smartly included) makes this easy enough—but the problem is that if I raise the headset up to get weight off of my nose, my eyes are no longer in the sweet spot of the lens, making the view through the headset sub-par. More padding around the nose would have a similar issue of moving the lenses out of the sweet spot.
While I didn’t get to use the headset for an extended period of time, I have a strong suspicion that the nose thing is going to be a literal and figurative pain point on this headset. And as someone who doesn’t have a particularly large nose, I can’t imagine I’m going to be the only person with this issue.
Photo by Road to VR
The nose thing isn’t the only ergonomic oversight that was immediately apparent. There’s also the fact that the rear pad, which is designed to cup the back of your head, doesn’t cushion your head enough to prevent contact between your skull and the battery on the back. That means that as you tighten the headset you can feel a big, flat, plastic surface pushing against your head. That’s compared to something like the Quest 2 Elite Strap (which the rear of Vive XR Elite appears to emulate), where I can only feel the pads hugging the back of my head, but never the battery behind them.
Photo by Road to VR
Beyond these worrying ergonomic subtleties, the headset’s fundamentals feel solid across the board, making the Vive XR Elite the company’s most refined standalone to date. But from a feature and performance standpoint, the headset feels more like Quest 2 than Quest Pro, which puts it in an awkward place with its $1,100 pricetag.
Visually, Vive XR Elite’s pancake lenses are pretty good on the clarity front, with good edge-to-edge clarity, though falling short of the excellent lenses on Quest Pro. The use of non-Fresnel lenses means a reduction in glare and god rays compared to Quest 2, though the resolution and visibility of the screen door is about the same between the two headsets (1,920 × 1,920 vs. 1,920 × 1,832). And while the peripheral field of view feels a little tight, the added dioptre control (for changing the focus of each lens) will be welcomed by those with glasses, and even those without will be served well by the continuous IPD adjustment (which includes an on-screen measurement readout and calibration pop-up).
Photo by Road to VR
Inside-out head-tracking feels pretty good and is surely ‘good enough’, though the instantaneous rotational latency doesn’t feel as tight as Meta’s bar-setting inside-out solution. Importantly, the tracking feels better than Vive Flow, which in my experience has too much latency for long-term comfort. Controller-tracking on Vive XR Elite also feels solid, and with cameras on each side pointed almost entirely to your left and right, coverage ought to be good (potentially surpassing Vive Focus 3).
As the name implies, the HTC is pushing the XR Elite as a headset that does passthrough AR in addition to VR. The headset’s color pass-through view isn’t stellar. Similar to Meta’s headsets, the XR Elite attempts to rebuild the depth of the real world virtually to provide geometric correction and depth cues, but even with a depth-sensor on-board (which Quest Pro lacks), my experience with the headset’s passthrough AR showed a lot of warping due to incorrect depth-mapping.
Without being able to do a direct side-by-side comparison, my impression was that XR Elite wasn’t quite as sharp as Quest Pro when it comes to passthrough AR. Granted, the passthrough AR on both headsets headsets is definitely in the same approximate ‘class’ (not sharp enough to read text from your smartphone and quite poor dynamic range at that).
Photo by Road to VR
Just like with Quest Pro, the quality and application of passthrough AR feels entirely undercooked, with the handful of AR apps I tried on the headset not sufficiently answering the question ‘why AR?’. But now that another headset on the market is embracing and enhancing this capability, perhaps the answers to that question will come a bit sooner.
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Photo by Road to VR
Considering its performance and features, Vive XR Elite seems to share the same core problem as Quest Pro—and that’s the value proposition. Even if we ignore any potential ergonomic mishaps… at best Vive XR Elite is akin to a somewhat more compact version of Quest 2. And even if we ignore that Quest 2 has a much more extensive content library… it’s difficult to see how, for most people, Vive XR Elite can justify an $1,100 price tag compared to Quest 2 at $400.
Quest 2 users have a few choices when it comes to cutting the cable and playing PC VR games over Wi-Fi. You can opt for something like a dedicated dongle, or simply configure your network for the most optimal Wi-Fi setup, which usually means having your PC connected directly to the 2.4/5Ghz router with an Ethernet cable and maintaining line of sight with the router. If your PC has Intel’s latest Wi-Fi 6e AX1690 card though, that’s about to change.
Intel announced at CES 2023 that they’ve partnered with Meta to make better use of its flagship Wi-Fi card by optimizing it for use with Quest 2, which means reduced latency and no need for Ethernet cables connecting to your PC.
As reported by Wi-Fi Now, Intel says its Killer Wi-Fi 6e AX1690 card is now capable of using its Double Connect Technology (DCT) for VR headsets like Quest 2. Although the product of an Intel/Meta partnership, Intel’s it’s likely other standalone headsets will benefit too, including Pico 4 and the newly unveiled Vive XR Elite too.
Intel says AX1690, which is compatible with the Intel’s 13th-gen Core HX platform, is capable of reducing overall wireless PC VR gaming latency from 30ms to just 5ms, essentially making it indistinguishable from conventional wired connections, such as Link. We haven’t seen it in action yet, so we’re reserving judgment for now, but it basically seems like having all the functionality of that slick $99 dongle from D-Link, albeit built into your PC gaming rig.
Image courtesy Intel
“I’m a firm believer that pushing the boundaries of wireless in VR and AR will only be possible if the whole industry work together,” said Meta Reality Labs Wireless Technology chief Bruno Cendon Martin. “I’m extremely happy to see the announce today by Intel Corporation Wireless CTO Carlos Cordeiro of the work we’ve been doing together to get Wireless PC VR to the next level with Meta Quest and Intel Killer.”
Intel also released a video to demonstrate the benefits of using two simultaneous Wi-Fi connections which enable VR headsets to wirelessly access data directly from a PC (1-hop) vs. through an access point (2-hops) for reduced latency and better PC VR gaming experiences throughout the home.
Vrgineers, the team behind enterprise-focused wide-FOV VR headsets, announced at CES 2023 this week that it’s releasing a wireless version of its latest XTAL VR headset.
To realize the newest flavor of XTAL coming to enterprise, the company worked with IMRNext to create a belt-style Wi-Fi transmission module that includes what Vrgineers call “a powerful battery pack.”
Vrgineers XTAL natively runs 4K resolution per eye, making it a tough feat to transmit via Wi-Fi. To get around this, the companies developed a special mode running a compressed resolution of 2,560 × 1,440 at 70 Hz per eye, which is then transmitted via Wi-Fi 6E to a dedicated receiver plugged into the workstation.
A belt-worn solution is probably for the best, since the XTAL headset is already fairly bulky in size, although not terribly heavy at only 600g (~1.3lbs) without the headstrap. A prototype of the belt-worn transmitter is available at CES 2023, which is said to weigh 920 grams. The final version is slated to weight in nearly half that, which would nearly double the weight of the headset if the company opted to mount it to, say, the back of XTAL’s headstrap.
The receiver module, a proprietary Wi-Fi access point from IMRNext, connects to a single USB and Display Port from the GPU, and then converts the signal into Wi-Fi 6E and streams it directly to the on-belt module.
We’re here in Las Vegas, and will be visiting the Vrgineers/Somnium booth to gather our impressions.
Here’s a look at the latest ‘XTAL 3 Virtual Reality’ specs, which will remain the same with the new module, which is said to ship to pre-order customers in Q3 2023. There’s no public pricing available, so enterprise customers will need to reach out to [email protected] to order.
RESOLUTION
3840×2160 per eye
DISPLAYS
Two fast-switching 4K LCD displays for virtual reality
Razer is getting into the VR accessory game soon, as the company announced at CES 2023 that it’s selling a head strap system and facial interface built specifically for Meta Quest 2.
The accessories were built by Razer in collaboration with ResMed, a San Diego, California-based medical equipment company that knows its way around all-day comfort.
“Designed for long-lasting comfort and weight-balanced support, the Razer Adjustable Head Strap System was created with all head shapes in mind. The high-performance nylon material provides reliability, comfort, and durability while the optimized weight distribution allows for more balance during active gameplay. The soft adjustable straps will help gamers find their perfect fit and quick slip-on design ensures little interruption in resuming gameplay,” Razer says in a press statement.
Image courtesy Razer
Razer’s headstrap is said to be made from a high-performance nylon material that ensures optimized weight distribution, a slip-on design, and soft adjustable straps.
The Razer Facial Interface is said to offer extended comfort and optimized support, owing to its “ultra-thin textured and profiled membranes,” the Razer Facial Interface is said to eliminate facial pressure. Made from medical grade, hypoallergenic materials, the interface blocks light while still providing ventilation.
Image courtesy Razer
Both of Razer’s VR peripherals for Quest 2 are slated to launch in the US sometime in Q1 2023, with plans to expand into other regions in the future, the company says. There’s no word on pricing, but knowing Razer, it’s definitely going to beat the third-party white label products awash on Amazon and eBay.
HTC officially unveiled its next consumer-focused headset at CES 2023 today. Called Vive XR Elite, the standalone mixed reality device boasts a feature set that positions HTC to go toe-to-toe with Meta’s Quest Pro, but at a notably cheaper price of $1,100.
The moniker ‘Flowcus’, a portmanteau coined by VR analyst and YouTuber Brad Lynch when the headset’s design was initially leaked in November, seems to ring true with Vive XR Elite. The design seems very much like a mashup of Vive Flow, a casual VR content viewer using pancake lenses, and Vive Focus 3, the company’s enterprise-focused standalone.
Vive XR Elite is starting pre-orders today, with shipping slated for sometime in late February. There’s no exact launch date on the books, so in the meantime let’s talk about some of the features HTC announced today, some key specs still in need of clarification, and the headset’s slew of gaming-focused content.
But first, the trailer:
Features
Unlike HTC products in recent memory, Vive XR Elite is specifically targeting gaming, fitness, productivity and on-the-go content consumption, the latter of which is thanks to a convertible battery headstrap that can be unplugged in favor of a glasses-like temple pieces.
It’s an interesting feature that’s a first for any major VR headset, which would hypothetically allow you to lean back in a seat without having a bulky back-mounted battery to contend with.
Of course, you’ll need some other power source to run the Vive XR Elite if you opt to remove the battery, be it a separate powerbank or a USB cable connected to the mains.
What’s more, Vive XR Elite is a mixed reality device, meaning it can switch between standard VR games and those that use color passthrough AR, putting it in the same category as its chief competitor Meta Quest Pro. And like Quest Pro, Vive XR Elite can be connected to a PC via USB-C for PC VR content, as well as wirelessly over WiFi, with support up to WiFi 6E. We’ll talk a little more about content in a bit.
Below, you’ll see the headset has four room-tracking camera sensors, one on each side and one hidden respectively under each faceplate. In the center is a single RGB camera for color passthrough as well as a depth sensor, which in theory would increase accuracy of room-scale tracking and object recognition.
Image courtesy HTC
Vive XR Elite also boasts Android app streaming, letting you interact with Android apps and games on a virtual cinema screen of “300 inches,” the company says. Users can also link Bluetooth gamepads to their phones for a fuller mobile gaming experience. That’s probably the only way you’d catch us playing Fortnite on a VR headset like this, since manipulating controls on the phone’s touch surface probably wouldn’t be effective.
Here’s a top-down look at the headset, which gives you a good view of how the back-mounted battery attaches, a look at the tightening twist knob, a clear look at the battery’s USB-C charging port. It’s also impressively slim, owing to the inclusion of pancake lenses.
Image courtesy HTC
In addition to supporting the same controllers that come with Vive Focus 3, the headset also supports Vive Wrist Tracker, a hand-tracking device that can be attached to the user’s wrist, or to objects like gun controllers, Ping-Pong paddles, or tools.
Here’s a view that shows headset’s diopter settings for its pancake lenses, which ostensibly allows near-sighted users to go without glasses, going up to -6D independently for both eyes. That little slider below the right lens is a mechanical IPD adjuster going from 54-73mm; nope, no eye-tracking here, at least not without the optional eye-tracking module that’s arriving at some point this year.
Image courtesy HTC
Audio is served up via two open-ear speakers integrated into the arms of the headset. We’ve poured over all product images and have yet to see space for a 3.5mm audio jack for external audio. That hole near the bridge of the headset appears to be an attach point for the forthcoming facial-tracking module, which is also slate to arrive sometime this year. We’re currently at CES, so we’re adding that to our list of features in need of clarification.
With a consumer target clearly in its sights, HTC is offering up a slew of gaming-focused content for Vive XR Elite (full list below) that includes what the company says is “100 new pieces of MR and VR content” including Demeo, Hubris, Yuki, Maestro, Les Mills Body Combat, FigminXR, Unplugged, Finger Gun, and more.
Post-launch content will include Everslaught: Invasion, and later in the year full MR games like Eggscape. As you know, a consumer VR headset is nothing without games, so it’s good to see HTC do its due diligence to attract some of the top games to the headset. No Beat Saber, but we wouldn’t expect Meta to prioritize porting the popular block-slashing rhythm game to such a direct competitor.
Image courtesy HTC
The company says Vive XR Elite will also be available for enterprise users at some point, with more information coming later this year.
Vive XR Elite also has connectors for both face and eye-tracking modules, which are set to launch separately sometime in 2023. We’ll be going hands-on at CES 2023, so make sure to check back for our full impressions of HTC’s next big leap into consumer VR. We won’t be able to say just how good a proposition Vive XR Elite truly is until we get our hands on it, and see if it really stacks up to the competition. As it is, it lacks eye-tracking for out of the box social presence and foveated rendering, and we still don’t know how it goes mano a mano with Quest Pro in the passthrough department with its single RGB passthrough camera.
Key Specs
Here’s an abridged spec breakdown. We’re working to get a more detailed list once we go hands-on here at CES 2023. We’ve included question marks (?) where we’ll probe for more detail in-person:
External Battery – removable and hot-swappable, 30W fast charge, 26.6Wh, mAh(?), typical playtime(?)
Price
One of the biggest selling points is HTC Vive XR Elite’s price, which although clearly not near the sub-$500 console price that typically gets us excited, it’s coming in a fair bit cheaper than the $1,500 Meta Quest Pro.
Note: many regions include taxes calculated in the final price above (UK, EU, AUS, etc) but a notable exception is the US. Sales tax varies widely through the US based on each state, so the final price in USD could range from exactly $1,099 in a minority of states with little to no sales tax to around $1,240 in states on the higher end of the range. Here’s the regional price breakdown:
US $1,099 exc. VAT
UK £1,299 inc. VAT
DE/FR €1,399 inc. VAT
NO 15,499 NOK
SWE 16,299 SEK
DK 11,099 DKK
A$ 2,099 inc. GST
NZ$ 2,299 inc. GST
Content
HTC provided a full content lineup, although the company hasn’t made it entirely clear which games are considered launch-day titles and which will come post-launch. HTC is calling the list below “launch window content,” so we’re checking with them now and will update once we know.
In any case, you’ll see a lot of overlap between the latest games on Quest 2 here. Highlights include Demeo, Green Hell VR, Les Mills Bodycombat, Unplugged, Hubris, Ancient Dungeon, The Last Clockwinder, and Ultrawings 2 to name a few.
We have boots on the ground at CES 2023, so check back soon for our impressions of Vive XR Elite and all things AR/VR for this year’s biggest consumer electronics show.
MeganeX, the SteamVR-compatible headset from Panasonic’s Shiftall, made its big debut back at CES 2020, and after years of iterations shown at various trade shows, the company says it’s finally nearing launch.
Shiftall is set to sell two flavors of MeganeX, a consumer version priced at $1,699 and a Business Edition, the pricing of which is still to be determined.
MeganeX includes the option to use both inside-out roomscale tracking and SteamVR base stations (1.0 and 2.0), providing 2,560 × 2,560 per eye via two independent 1.3-inch micro OLED displays, which were built by Kopin. Owing to its slim profile are the headsets pancake lenses, which were created by parent company Panasonic.
Image courtesy Shiftall
Although it includes onboard processing thanks to a Snapdragon XR1, it cannot operate in standalone mode (re: only tethered PC VR). The wing-like attachable module seen above on the consumer version is for SteamVR base stations.
“These [two headsets] will deliver the world’s highest level of viewing experience and black expression that only OLED can provide,” the company says in a press statement. “A folding frame with built-in speakers makes it easy to carry around. It supports 6DoF and lets you enjoy a variety of SteamVR-enabled VR applications.”
The consumer version, which offers a wider IPD over the Business Edition at a range of 56-72mm, includes a glasses adapter to accommodate bespectacled users of all sorts. The Business Edition however includes built-in diopter adjustments for near-sighted users, supporting a range of up to -7D, which comes as an addition to the platform’s glasses adapter.
Both the consumer and enterprise version are said to go on sale around April or March of this year, with the consumer version set to launch direct on Shiftall’s website. Check out the specs for both versions below:
MeganeX Specs
Image courtesy Shiftall
We have boots on the ground at CES 2023 in Las Vegas this year, so check back for all the latest AR/VR news this week as we get knee deep in emerging tech on the tradeshow floor.
AI SILK is a Japanese wearable-tech startup that’s set to unveil a new haptic glove at CES 2023 next month which approaches both haptic feedback and finger-tracking in a different way altogether.
AI SILK is a Tohoku University spinoff that develops wearable products using their patented technology to produce smooth conductive fiber, turning them into electrodes that can be used for a number of things.
Called Lead Skin, the controller houses these conductive fibers, which not only provides finger-tracking and control buttons on the back of the gauntlet-style controller, but also an electrical haptic pulse that aims to simulate manipulating virtual objects.
Image courtesy AI SILK
Weighing in at 380g (~13.5oz), or about the weight of two Quest 2 controllers with batteries included, Lead Skin is said to measure the current impedance from the expansion and contraction of the fabric within, and then through deep machine learning-developed algorithms “understand the intended actions from glove wearers’ physical finger movements,” AI Silk says in a press statement.
Image courtesy AI SILK
Electrical pulses are sent to both the palm and fingers, which is a decidedly shocking departure from the standard haptic motor buzzes that we’ve seen in other VR gloves.
While specs are still thin on the ground, the flashy promo video is certainly something to behold, if not only for its peek inside the Japanese idol industry, which regularly host handshake events. It’s not clear how resistance training and face-punching fit into Lead Skin’s actual feature set, but the spot certainly looks electrifying, as our protagonist is recognized as the idol’s online training partner.
AI Silk’s Lead Skin haptic gloves will debut at CES 2023 between January 5-8, where we’ll have feet on the ground. Check back soon for more info on Lead Skin and all of the latest AR/VR tech out there at the biggest trade shows of the year.
