HTC to announce Meta Quest VR competitor at CES

(Image Courtesy: The Verge/HTC)

HTC has confirmed that it intends to launch a new AR/VR flagship headset at CES 2023. The company did not reveal any details about the headset but spoke to tech publication The Verge about what it hopes to achieve.

The Taiwanese device manufacturer already has popular VR headsets in the market - HTC Vive Pro 2, Vive Cosmos Elite and Vive Flow.

Shen Ye, global head of product at HTC told The Verge that it wants to introduce "a small, light all-in-one headset that promises full-featured virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR)".

Ye said that the company wanted to take all of its advancement in design and AR/VR technology, and build something "appealing for consumers".

One of the salient features of the new headset will be outward-facing cameras, that can pass a colour feed to the headset's screen. This will enable mixed-reality experiences that combine both VR and AR.

Meta's Quest Pro headset also offers a colour passthrough. But HTC says that its headset will differentiate itself with an added depth sensor that allows for better position and motion tracking.

Ye said that the new headset would have a better dynamic range on the colour passthrough than the competition. Ye made it clear that HTC's headset will be more expensive than Meta's device.

“We’re in an era when consumer VR headsets have been massively subsidized by companies that are trying to vacuum up and take personal data to provide to advertisers,” Ye said.

“We don’t believe the way that we want to approach it is to compromise on privacy.”