Who Is This Headset REALLY For? (HTC Vive XR Elite)
Vložit
- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
- HTC is back in the game with their latest standalone VR headset, the Vive XR Elite. This product combines many features from the Vive Flow and the Vive Focus 3 to create a high-end and potentially next-generation headset. But the real question is, who is this actually for?
Join me as we cover HTC's announcement of the Vive XR Elite, and discuss what it's place in the market truly is, comparing the device to the Quest Pro and the Pico 4. Should you pick one up, or wait for something better to come along?
Check out the HTC Vive XR Elite on VRcompare: vr-compare.com/headset/htcviv...
► Compare VR & AR headsets: vr-compare.com
Follow VRcompare on social media
-------------------------------------------------
Twitter: / vrcompare
Instagram: / vrcompare
Facebook: / vrcompare
TikTok: / vrcompare
Reddit: / vrcompare
Chapters
-------------------------------------------------
0:00 Intro (HTC takes on the Quest Pro)
0:27 Main features
1:30 Similarities with other HTC headsets
2:08 Comparison vs Quest Pro
3:45 Comparison vs Pico 4
4:21 My thoughts on the XR Elite
5:02 Conclusion - Věda a technologie
An important correction: As people have pointed out, the Quest Pro Controllers have a battery life of 8 hours rather than the 4 hours listed in the video. This number came from a Tweet from Boz (Meta CTO) and was later corrected. The point made in the video about battery life still stands, but it's absolutely important that you know the correct figures here. Cheers!
I see such a weird split regarding this headset in terms of people's critique or praise of it.
I'm pretty definite I'm going to buy one at launch and I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of the people buying are people like myself who have had a Quest 2 since close to launch and primarily use it for PCVR using Virtual Desktop and have become accustomed to wireless VR, but desperately want something a bit more modular and closer in line with the PC-first focus of the Index and HTC's headsets in the past.
There's definitely a large portion of people who have used wired solutions for ages and can't seem to accept that for a lot of people a (well set-up) wireless solution works fantastically well for them and I think people underestimate the size of this demo., given the number of people who have likely been fed into it via using the Quest 2 (especially given that by-far the largest market in the VR space are non-latency or fidelity critical games like VRChat & RecRoom, where even a non-ideal wireless PCVR setup likely works to an adequate degree for most of these people).
That very well could have been Deckard if it wasn't being developed on Valve-time, but I think this fits that niche really well actually, as much as it is still billed as a standalone headset, compared to something like the Quest Pro, HTC seem a lot more accepting of it being used as a wireless PCVR solution and seem to have taken the right steps to focus on it being A) Probably the most comfortable VR solution out there and B) extremely flexible, mostly wrt the battery/headstrap flexibility & the OPTION of buying a discrete looking face tracker in the future, which I think makes a lot more sense rn than having this additional cost built-in at the time of purchase like the Quest Pro so u can enjoy having expressions in 3 years when this functionality finally gets integrated into more games that people actually play.
I also think the trustworthiness of HTC as one of really only 3 consistently reputable brands in the space (out of Meta, Valve, and HTC) is something people need to give more weight to in their expectations of how well a multi-hundred £/$ investment has on consumers.
Pico may be gradually joining that trio of companies, and the Pico 4 especially seems to have now reached that standard, the fact of the matter is that people are less likely to trust one of many Chinese VR companies who started off with a 'copy Meta, but make it cheaper' approach and given the fact that the Pico 4 isn't available in all markets yet, so they're really not fully there yet.
And as much as people go on about Pimax, and they do at least have a history of (EVENTUALLY) releasing products; I think they generally have a 'janky' headset reputation and have an awful track record wrt delivering products on time, maybe the Crystal is going to be when they finally manage to transition into the mainstream headset market, but so far at the very least their PR and marketing still really don't help their image.
In summary, as much as people have every right to be frustrated that wired PCVR has essentially stalled, it seems pretty clear to me the the market, in general, is converging on a [Standalone + Wireless PCVR] approach at essentially every price-point, which I, in my aforementioned^ probably somewhat biased opinion, honestly doesn't seem like too bad of a compromise; however, I really do find it super encouraging to see HTC take a much more open and modular approach, more similar to their past wired offerings, to compete with Meta's current strangle-hold on that segment, and if an upper-middle-end price-point is what's required to achieve that without a 'post-unit sale' revenue strategy (a-la Meta) then I for one am glad to see it and I guess we'll just have to see if enough of the market agrees for it to be successful. 🤷♂
Also, @VRcompare, thank you for allowing me to use your comments section for my TEDx talk. 😅
Shen Ye, the head of HTC product had explained in his interview: XR 2 plus is only a modified version that Qualcomm make to better solve the thermo issue.As HTC has a heritage of manufacturing cell phone, they’re far more capable solving that than meta( no need to under-clocking the chip)
Shen didn’t say the reason not using DP, but he said XR Elite support up to Wi-Fi 6 and so the delay and compression issue effect little when connecting to a PC.
But with the xr2 you'll be limited by it's decode speed
The cable going straight up makes sense if you can hang the cable down from the roof. Keeps it out of the way while playing.
This video started autoplaying while I wasn't looking and I thought I was listening to a tutorial on making VRChat worlds when the music kicked in at 0:27
I returned the Quest Pro and will likely be purchasing this. Form factor is more important than people generally think it is. And it’s much more important than face and eye tracking, at least for the average user. I used the Vive Flow and how light and easy it is to put on and take off is a game changer.
The question is, how important are the features to the target user, not necessarily which has the most features. I think people will find that they will take lighter form factor over face and eye tracking, except for hardcore enthusiasts.
For me the selling point are the diopter lenses
Your site is unmatched, idk how you have so little subs on here
Great video! Can only hope we’ll see the hot swappable batteries in their more consumer focused products since standalone battery life is still a big concern
Highly addictive context, keep it up!
I pre-ordered. Having a battery that isnt directly on the headset is a huge selling point for me since I use the Katwalk c and can just attach a battery to the waist strap :D Great video! I subed ;D
Thank u for the villager sound when showing off the face tracker XD
Love the comparisons! Keep doing these videos! :)
Thank you for this high quality video!
I pre-ordered it. Looking forward to this headset
thank you for this video ! I was looking to change my old htc vive for PCVR gaming and was waiting this new headset.
so maybe wait for another stuff (in plus I want something with eyes and face tracking)
Another great video. PPD, FOV, Resolution, and lack of DP port/Eye tracking. If I could squash the Quest Pro, AjnaXR, and Vive XR to make a single headset I would be interested. I prefer a lot of the features of the AjnaXR Enterprise Edition to this headset. AjnaXR is 400g, though the company is unproven outside of India.
AjnaXR is definitely a really interesting product. I think we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out, because as you mentioned, they're really a new player in the space. Totally agree with your point though, there's features of all three that would make for a great product if mixed together.
Glad you enjoyed the vid!
Excellent video except for one thing. The loud music in the background is really annoying. It interferes with your talking points. 🤨
Great content! 🎉
So curious, what would be an upgrade to my valve index?
Serious question... does face tracking matter? it seems gimmicky, mainly used for mouth sync in chat programs, does it have another practical use (eye tracking on the other hand CAN have a few useful applications)
Cool monitor setup. What size screens are you using?
Thanks! I originally had a pair of 27 inch Samsungs that were my main monitors but recently picked up a 39 inch LG C2, so now I have the other two vertical on the side. Works great for coding and I've got the big screen for flatscreen gaming 😁
2:49 I wasn't the only one who thought about this! XD
Also, you couldn't of said it better in looking out for more next-gen PCVR headsets.
great video!
As someone who buys all his games via Steam, and is very anti-facebook/meta, this is ideal for me, already preordered (really hoping the deckard is a long way off and doesnt make me regret this)
I'm coming from FPV and the adjustable diopters for me are the selling point .
Port is perfectly placed for someone using a cable management pulley system from their ceiling. Which a lot of vr users do.
That's a really good point! I totally agree here, using a pulley system actually makes the port placement ideal. Thanks for sharing this!
@@rangerkayla8824 if you don't mind compression. On the quest that is. I prefer wired since I have psvr2 and quest 2. The compression you get on the quest doesn't out weigh the fidelity I get with the cable on my PSVR2. But to each their own.
@@rangerkayla8824 all good points.
@@rangerkayla8824 exactly! I think everyone playing together is what's important as exclusives and segmentation is the last thing vr needs.
great video
You got the controller battery life wrong for the Quest Pro, its closer to 8 hours of life than 4 (its also wrong on your website)
Thanks very much for bringing this up! I've left a pinned comment explaining the situation, and updated the site pages as well.
As a person who's saving up for a headset, what do you think I should get or wait for?
Somnium VR1 Headset
Who is this for? Well for one, people like me who dont want to support Facebook/Meta.
I'm more and more in love with this headset. The Quest Pro is a joke and I never considered buying one, although I'd accept one for review 😝
Quest Pro is stunningly good. Where's the joke?! 🤔
Also no self tracking controllers. If you like golf, mini golf and table tennis its a huge deal.
Hello! How can this channel have so few followers?! I don’t understand :)
Bump 4 de algorithm
It's a prototype for future AR glasses. It's not meant to be some high end gaming headset, but its also not quite there as a standard consumer smartphone replacement yet . It's not that deep. Settle down. Go ahead and buy it, but you'll probably get hit with the "early adopters" dissatisfaction, unless you're okay with where this tech is at currently.
Please compare to psvr2 for gamers
The Vive XR might have 15 hours of battery life on the controllers, but that is pretty bad compared to the Touch controller battery life, any of them. Both Rifts,
Quest 1 and Quest 2.
Its also important to note that so far HTC has not managed to match the tracking quality of the Quest headsets with their inside out tracking.
The depth sensor is not going to help the passthrough, it might help with XR apps though, helping them know where objects are to do better AR / MR. But given it only uses one color camera for the passthrough the Vive XR Elites passthrough lacks depth. That is why the Quest Pro uses two cameras for passthrough and then overlays the black and white passthrough with colors from the color camera.
im not a tech person but you say i cant display my phone with the c cable to the headset to watch movies from my phone
The quest pro controller battery life is close to eight hours
What's the chip set on this!?!? How powerful is it!?!? Why would you not touch on that!?!? Kind of important.
Same chip as quest 2. XR2.
As mentioned in the video at 0:32, it's got an XR2 chipset, much like most other current gen standalones. Performance isn't really something we can determine from their announcement, as it's highly dependent on the thermals of the headset.
HTC VIVE No eye tracking is a deal breaker.
This is exactly what I needed to see. Great video 🫡
Just give us the Quest 3 already.
What we want is : pico 4 design, and performance, with large pancake lenses with oled high res displays, and do over usb type c and hot swappable batteries. For those features I'd pay 2k easy.
at this point I don't WTF meta is doing right now
"High resolution" As if. They're the same as a quest 2 in resolution.
Maybe I'm getting old but I still consider the Quest 2 to be high res for now. Remember that a lot of people are still recommending the Index, which is significantly lower res than the products we see nowadays. Anything higher than 2K per-eye is usually prohibitively expensive or not really all that accessible to consumers.
"Elite"
I think it's pretty clear that the ones who made this headset didn't put a whole lot of thought into making it worth its price. It falls short in features to be a proper Quest Pro alternative. But doesn't offer enough to be a high-end alternative to the Pico 4 and Quest 2 (and still doesn't offer every good feature they have).
The hot swappable battery is decent, but that's basically the only advantage it has above the Pico 4, but it's worse in almost every other way.
Quite honestly, I can't think of any reason to recommend this to anyone. I think it's a missed opportunity. If you're gonna tout a 'prosumer' pricetag, you have to make sure to offer 'prosumer' value. Offering 'casualsumer' value for a 'prosumer' price doesn't quite cut it.
Pico 4 DO NOT have a XR2. It has a XR1 (same as Quest 2 but it's clocked a bit higher bc heat managment is better). I have a Pico4 is it has a XR1!!!
You may be confusing the XR1, XR2, and XR2+ here. Pico 4 definitely does have an XR2 chipset (see www.picoxr.com/uk/products/pico4/specs ), the XR1 chipset is lower powered and generally used in smartglasses. Side note, the XR2+ (found in the Quest Pro) is essentially the same chip just with better thermals.
Wait, are you somehow assuming that ANYONE still uses a wired connection for pc vr anymore? Nobody cares if it's usbc. Especially since it comes with virtual desktop already installed, and that gives you the best wireless PC gaming anyway.
XR2 chip in 2023? It's a 2019 chip
Pico is a complete nonstarter for me. It's bad enough giving Meta my data. I do not want the CCP potentially being able to track what I'm doing using a bytedance headset. No thank you.
1920 low res paired with 90hz low refresh rate, who could've seen this coming
If I have to get up or move around to play a game then I will never buy vr. I lounge on my sofa with my PC and my ps5 hooked up to my LG G2 83 oled. I'm not spending a grand to inconvenience and downgrade the experience I have