HTC Vive Focus stand-alone VR headset announced alongside Vive Wave development platform

HTC announced a stand-alone VR (virtual reality) headset and new VR development platform at the Vive Developer Conference in China.

The new VR headset is called the Vive Focus, and unlike the regular Vive, offers a stand-alone, untethered VR experience. The headset is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 platform and supports inside-out tracking to enable 6 DOF (degrees of freedom) tracking in real time and without additional trackers. HTC is calling this ‘world-scale tracking’. From the teaser videos, the headset seems to be using stereo cameras mounted on the front of the device to do the tracking.

Not much else is known about this new headset, but Tom’s Hardware seems to think that the headset is exclusive to the Chinese market. No launch price or date has been announced, though developers can sign up for a development kit on HTC’s Vive Focus page .

Supporting this headset and the VR world in general is Vive Wave , which is, according to HTC , “an open platform and toolset that will enable easy Mobile VR content development and high-performance device optimisation for third-party partners”.

The platform is designed to simplify development and enable support for multiple, cross-platform VR devices. The platform uses the OpenVR API to enable developers to easily port existing VR apps to the Wave platform.

HTC suggests that multiple computing platforms are supported by Wave, but clearly states that this VR platform is optimised for the Qualcomm Snapdragon mobile platform.