Intel is reportedly dropping plans to release a reference design virtual reality headset, despite working on it for well over a year. Project Alloy was supposed to be a model on which Intel’s partners could build their own self contained VR equipment. However, it would appear that not that many manufacturers are convinced that it would be worth the investment.
Project Alloy was originally announced back in the middle of 2016, with the final product intended to be released in Q4 of 2017. The report from Road to VR suggests that partners were concerned about the cost of building a VR headset. Particularly since many OEMs are already committed to producing Mixed Reality headsets in partnership with Microsoft.
All is not lost for Intel. The company says that it will be building on the knowledge gained Project Alloy. It’s also still committed to designing VR related technologies like RealSense depth sensing and Movidius image processing .
It’s unusual for Intel to drop products this late in the production cycle. Then again, the company has been aggressively restructuring and reorganising priorities. Virtual reality has hardly taken off in the way that people have been expecting, and the loss of Project Alloy probably won’t hurt the company at all.
[Source: Road to VR]
