Vive Pro available for pre order

drunkmonkey

€879 for the headset only.

Serious chunk of change especially for anyone without a Vive set up already. Is it that much of a graphics boost to justify the price?

https://www.vive.com/eu/product/vive-pro/

Global shipping on the 5th of April

Calibos

Jaysus!! Many thought that the Full kit with Lighthouse 2 coming Q4 would be back up to that price but that is HMD Only!! Truly is 'Only Pro-Sumers need apply'.

Samuel T. Cogley

Very cool and wireless very soon but only for the rich/pro-sumers.

drunkmonkey

Surprised there’s no bundle available, it’s very expensive if you’ve to buy all the parts separate. It sure won’t poach anyone with a rift at those prices.

jumbobreakfast

Crazy price but I suspected HTC might try something like this. For example, the release price of their HTC U Ultra phone was €750 last year but you can get it for €250 this year. Reviewers at the time were not happy about the price considering the specs but HTC were targeting the fans who wanted the flagship at any cost.

Anyway, I'm glad they made my decision easier, I would have spent up to €500 for the Vive Pro but instead today I ordered the Deluxe audio strap for €120. Now I don't have to worry about my 980ti being underpowered for the Pro and I've saved some money.

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Surprised there’s no bundle available, it’s very expensive if you’ve to buy all the parts separate. It sure won’t poach anyone with a rift at those prices.

The Vive Pro is compatible with the new Valve Lighthouse technology so they will wait for those base stations to be released before releasing a bundle I guess. The new tech allows you to chain multiple room-scale areas together and coupled with Intel's new wireless system for Vive will probably make this more atractive for business, arcades and marketing use

mrcheez

In a nutshell what are the main upgrades on this over current?

Will Santa Cruz have same specs?

Calibos

mrcheez wrote: »

In a nutshell what are the main upgrades on this over current?

Will Santa Cruz have same specs?

Santa Cruz not the same product segment as the Rift, Vive nor Vive Pro. Santa Cruz is an Inside/Out Tracked 6DOF HMD&Controller Standalone VR HMD.

Oculus Go is basically a GearVR with a mobile SOC built in. ie. Its 3DOF IMU based tracking Standalone device with a mobile SOC but without all the usual Android OS and Software Bloat and thus has much better battery life, lower heat output and more CPU/GPU resources available for the actual VR Software. Its €199 all in. No $50-$99 GearVR and $700 phone required.

Santa Cruz is another Standalone but with Inside/Out SLAM 6 DOF tracking of the HMD and full 6 DOF Controllers. It has a a higher spec SOC than the Oculus Go and will likely be capable of running some ports of the most resource light Rift Titles. However it still can't compare to PCVR.

Both Go and Santa Cruz may have slightly higher Res screens and gen 2 Oculus Hybrid optics for reduced God Rays but the improvement compared to Rift will be marginal.

There won't be a Rift2/CV2 till middle to end of 2019 at the earliest. We should start hearing spec details for a CV2 around Oculus Connect 5 in Oct/Nov 2018.

Vive Pro finally integrates a decent Headstrap and Integrated Audio but thats something Rift always had and Standard Vive has with the €110 extra DAS (Deluxe Audio Strap). Pro's optics remain the same as Standard Vive but the OLED Panels are higher res and the same Panels used in the WMR Samsung Odyssey HMD. By all accounts the increased Res makes Text a lot easier to read but the increased Res doesn't make a dramatic difference inside games in general. However what difference there is due to the Res is more obvious to Standard Vive owners than Rift owners due to the fact that Vive has more SDE than Rift to begin with. Oculus sacrificed a small amount of FOV compared to Vive and were able to maximise pixel usage (Same panels as Vive) and thus were able to achieve lower SDE than Vive. Thus the resolution increase on Vive Pro would be a bit less noticeable to a Rift user than a Vive user.

Calibos

The more important news from this announcement is the fact that they've also reduced the price of the standard Vive to within spitting distance of Rift which is great news. If only they'd announced that they were now bundling the DAS with the Vive, then the price drop and that would have totally countered any bad feelings about the ridiculous price of the HMD Only Vive Pro and would have made Vive now directly comparable to Rift in Price and in specs.

drunkmonkey

When you say higher res are we taking ps2 to ps4, how less pixilated will it be?

The_Valeyard

Tooooo expensive.

It's not worth the money for those who already have the existing Vive product.

jumbobreakfast

mrcheez wrote: »

In a nutshell what are the main upgrades on this over current?

The Vive Pro has a much more comfortable headset, built in audio (rift has this already) and a better built-in mic (Vive games can involve a lot of moving around due to roomscale capabilities so mic noise cancellation is quite important). The resolution upgrade is a big deal but there is still no clear idea of the minimum GPU required to drive it and with current GPU prices and no new Nvidia cards in sight, I think that the timing is bad here for HTC. You'd probably need a minimum of a 1070 to drive it as opposed to a 970 for standard vive and Rift. It also supports the improved lighthouse 2.0 tech.

Besides the price, the other dissapointment is that it doesnt have improved lenses so you might still see the fresnel rings in high-contrast scenes (although the new headset is supposed to make finding the clarity sweet-spot a lot easier).

The price drop on the standard Vive is great though so if you have minimum room space of 1.5mx2m up to 5m x 5m then you get proper room-scale to move around in and it only requires a 970 or 1060 to drive it. The Rift is still better value if you don't have the room for it though and you get better controllers and more comfortable headset.

Kiith

That's laughably expensive imo. I know they talked about it not being aimed at the general market, but €800 for just the headset is crazy. Apparently it's cheaper to by the normal version and the new one, rather than get the new one and all the peripherals.

Dyr

The improvements are nowhere near to justifying that price tag, everyone is going to keep their powder dry and wait for the 2.0 headsets AND wireless

Get the impression HTC are going for a short term cash grab because they're in trouble

lmimmfn

Its HTC price gouging, can get an MS AR/whatever theyre calling it, Samsung headset with the same rez for less than half the price, OK doesn't have the same IR setup but cmon, 400+ euro for that?