MWC 2015: HTC Unveils Vive Virtual Reality Headset, Made With Help From Valve

Right after HTC One M9 and HTC Grip fitness tracker, HTC continues its assault here at Mobile World Congress 2015 with…a virtual reality headset. Yup, that’s right: the Taiwanese mobile phone company has announced a virtual reality headset called HTC Vive.

Not only that it is not designed to be used with mobile phone, it was created with the help of Valve which explains why HTC Vive is utilizing the famed game company’s SteamVR tracking and input technologies.

Made for PC and Mac, HTC claims that Vive is able to deliver what the company referred to as “Full Room Scale 360 Degree Solution with Tracked Controllers”. In other words, the Vive is able to cover one whole room which subsequently allows its wearer to walk around freely while interacting with the virtual environment as opposed to stationary position. That being said, the first version of Vive apparently will still be wired to computer which means walking around with the headset might be limited to the length of the headset’s cable.

Meanwhile, the Vive is also designed to fit variety of head sizes and can even cater users that wear glasses. HTC also claimed that the headset is able to churn out an excellent frame rate of 90 frame per second as well as good audio capability. To help users interact in the virtual environment through Vive, the Taiwanese company has also come out with a pair of wireless controllers called HTC VR Controllers although they were not shown at today’s launch event.

Since we have yet to tried Vive ourselves, we are not able to tell at the moment if HTC has managed to meet all the claims that it stated above. Nevertheless, consumers and developers alike don’t have to wait long to get their hands on the new Vive though as the company has promised that its new VR headset will be delivered to market in this year itself.

In fact, HTC has aimed to deliver the Vive Developer Edition this coming spring while the Vive Consumer Edition is expected to be out during the year-end holiday season. No mention of price though but we don’t expect it to be cheap anyway. To learn more about HTC Vive VR headset, head on to www.htcvr.com.