HTC’s Vive Focus 3 replace might free arcades from VR backpacks

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HTC is including a couple of massive updates to its Vive Focus 3 digital actuality headset, aiming to make it higher for giant, free-roaming multiplayer VR video games.
The Vive Focus 3 — a $1,300 non-consumer-focused wi-fi headset — is including a brand new characteristic referred to as Location Based mostly Leisure, or LBE Mode. LBE Mode drastically expands the headset’s monitoring distance to 33 by 30 meters. In the meantime, an extra characteristic referred to as Map Sharing lets a number of headsets share the identical digital world in the identical location.
Collectively, these options imply the Focus 3 can extra simply assist the group VR classes you’d discover at an immersive free-roam arcade house like Zero Latency or The Void. HTC has additionally added a couple of different choices. There’s a mode that instantly calibrates the headset when a brand new consumer places it on as an alternative of requiring a short setup course of, which is designed to assist arcades put individuals into experiences extra rapidly. An extra calibration mode will let headsets monitor objects moreover the Focus 3 controller, together with the Vive Tracker puck. And the headset will quickly assist the WiFi 6E normal.
The Focus 3 was launched earlier this yr
Location-based VR leisure — the sort the place customers transfer round an actual, bodily area with different individuals reasonably than standing in a stationary house — usually depends on plugging headsets like the unique HTC Vive into wearable backpack computer systems. That has a number of disadvantages: it takes time to place individuals within the backpacks, the backpack strap methods might match some customers poorly, and so they make the expertise much less comfy for everybody. A number of the headsets additionally require exterior monitoring beacons like HTC and Valve’s Lighthouse system, which have to be arrange overhead and will be unintentionally blocked by different gamers.
Absolutely self-contained methods that incorporate monitoring cameras and computing energy into the headset can change that. However they’ve solely been extensively out there for a few years, and the largest one, the Oculus Quest from Fb / Meta, is primarily aimed toward house use. The Vive Focus 3 has an analogous characteristic set to the Quest, however it’s tailor-made for companies, and this replace bolsters HTC’s longtime presence within the VR location-based leisure and arcade market. It might additionally make VR arcades, which have suffered in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, extra enjoyable and handy locations to go to.

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