During yesterday’s I/O Keynote Google announced that standalone Daydream VR headset were heading our way later this year. One of the two partners announced for the hardware was VR Headset heavyweight HTC’s Vive brand.
Today HTC have added the standalone headset to their site under the hopeful heading of ‘coming soon’.
There’s not a lot of details on the headset other than it will be Vive branded, be completely wire free and be powered by Google’s Daydream VR platform with the new WorldSense tracking for precise real world head and movement tracking without external sensors.
However, with HTC now stepping forward as one of the initial launch manufacturer of Standalone Daydream headsets we may just see HTC working with existing content manufactures for the HTC Vive to port over experiences for the new headset. This could be a massive boon to the nascent Daydream platform, which is seeing steady growth but would benefit from some of the Vive’s back catalogue.
Thanks to Qualcomm, and confirmation by Clay Bavor, we’re also certain that the first Standalone Daydream Headsets will be powered by the Snapdragon 835 VR platform SOC, and thanks to some under the hood enhancements discussed at today’s VR session at IO we should expect the fidelity and response from Daydream to continue to improve.
As of right now the HTC Standalone Daydream Headset just jumped to the top of my want list.
