• HTC delivers wireless VR experiences on par with PCVR, powered by private 5G and edge computing in partnership with Lumen Technologies, helping organizations deploy and scale VR experiences in a portable way.
• The all new VIVE Wrist Tracker is the first inside-out tracker for VIVE Focus 3, delivering more accurate tracking for occluded objects and hand tracking, available in Q1 2022.
• Launching new content with XRHealth and MyndVR to improve delivery of care and treatments on VIVE Focus 3 and expanding enterprise capabilities on VIVE Flow.

This year, HTC continues to break down the barriers between the real and virtual worlds as part of its Viverse strategy. We are excited to introduce new products and capabilities that make it easier for enterprises and consumers to access high-fidelity VR experiences across different devices, enhance training outcomes, and explore the ever-expanding metaverse.

In working with partners across many verticals including healthcare, training, and entertainment HTC VIVE is forming a comprehensive ecosystem that enables people to create, discover, and connect in meaningful ways.

“From the beginning, we have instilled openness and inclusion into everything we do. Today’s announcements illustrate our ongoing commitment to providing seamless experiences for all, no matter their race, gender, income or age. By making VR and immersive experiences more accessible, we’re creating new opportunities to explore, learn and unwind, and advancing how people experience XR technology,” said Cher Wang, Co-Founder and Chairwoman, HTC.

New Wireless VR Experience Powered by Private 5G and Edge Computing

The 4th Industrial Revolution is here and is driving new technologies, powered by huge amounts of data, that are changing the way we live and work. Now, organizations can feel confident transforming their operational functions to better tap into these high-touch training, assisted operations, and continuous workforce improvement technologies. High-fidelity, low-latency wireless VR experiences can be run anytime, nearly anywhere – giving organizations a real tool to move enterprise training, operations, and collaboration forward.

HTC will debut its first portable, private 5G experience with Lumen Technologies, enabled by edge remote rendering and private 5G on a wireless all-in-one headset, VIVE Focus 3. The Lumen low latency edge platform, focused on supporting performance-intensive workloads of the 4th Industrial Revolution, helps HTC support transformational use cases like enterprise training, assisted operations, and virtual collaboration.

Users can now access a high-quality, wireless VR experience that is seamlessly streamed in the cloud and is easily scalable – without a wired connection to a PC or server. Traditionally, the highest fidelity VR content is delivered to a VR headset by connecting directly to a high-powered PC or a rendering server. The quality of rendering through this new 5G solution is unparalleled because of its low-latency links to GPU processing power. Alternatively, content can be loaded onto a wireless, all-in-one HMD and rendered locally, but the rendering is subject to the headset’s chipset GPU limitations. In both cases, the user requires a wired connection, which introduces economic and physical limitations, and limits the use cases for organizations.

However, by using a wireless all-in-one headset like VIVE Focus 3 with HTC’s private 5G and the Lumen fiber network with edge computing built-in, rendering can be offloaded from the headset. This new approach from HTC and Lumen delivers the dependability of a connected experience through an ultra-reliable and low-latency private 5G connection coupled with the performance and scalability of edge remote rendering. It also helps enable the next generation of HMD use cases, as more complementary applications get offloaded to the edge.

VIVE Focus 3 Adds New Tracker and Deeper Integrations Across Healthcare, Training

Since the launch of our wireless all-in-one headset VIVE Focus 3 last year, powered by the Snapdragon® XR2 platform, we continue to add even more capabilities and functionality that deliver even greater accuracy and enable more use cases.

Today, we’re unveiling VIVE Wrist Tracker, the first inside-out tracker for an all-in-one headset, plus new accessories for VIVE Focus 3, as well as new functionality across healthcare, entertainment and training environments.

VIVE Wrist Tracker makes accurate tracking easier from the fingertips to the elbow on VIVE Focus 3 — even when the headset can’t see the tracker or a user’s hands occlude a handheld object. VIVE Wrist Tracker is lightweight, intuitive and easy to set up. Simply turn it on and connect it wirelessly to the VIVE Focus 3. Designed to be worn on the wrist, VIVE Wrist Tracker is 85% smaller and 50% lighter than a VIVE Focus 3 controller, and can also be attached to objects for highly accurate 6DoF tracking in a wide variety of VR scenarios.

“When it comes to virtual reality training, few things are more important than creating a seamless and immersive user experience. That’s why we’re so excited to incorporate HTC VIVE’s Wrist Tracker into Axon’s latest training platform. The VIVE Wrist Tracker makes VR training more seamless, more immersive, and thus more effective,” said Rick Smith, CEO of AXON. “Axon was a key development partner for the VIVE Wrist Tracker from concept to prototype to production. The VIVE Wrist Tracker is key for enabling the most accurate tracking of objects that an officer is holding like a TASER device, beyond the capabilities of Hand Tracking alone. This is an amazing development for de-escalation training which relies on handheld objects.”

By enabling kinesthetic learning, training becomes more effective, engaging and more scalable for organizations. FLAIM develops multi-sensory immersive learning solutions for training in emergency and mission critical situations. The National Fire Protection Association found that in the US, over 80 percent of fires could be contained to the point of origin if people had access to or were trained in the use of a fire extinguisher. With the VIVE Wrist Tracker, FLAIM is able to provide more effective fire extinguisher trainings – all while reducing costs, risks, time needed to deliver training and certification, and increase the ease, safety, compliance and effectiveness.

“Integrating VIVE Wrist Trackers with VIVE Focus 3 is such a game changer and enables immersive kinesthetic and tactile experiences in a natural way.  VIVE Wrist Trackers enable a deeper learning element, which means that you retain more and ultimately have a better learning outcome, without the risk of harm or exposure to the hazard,” said James Mullins, Founder and CTO of FLAIM Systems. “We’ve already seen how kinesthetic learning improves focus and attention on learning the task, and VIVE Wrist Trackers makes VR training even more natural and immersive for organizations that want to improve training frequency and throughput per session.”

In addition to the VIVE Wrist Tracker, we will/have released new charging accessories for VIVE Focus 3 including a Multi Battery Charger and a Charging Case — enabling Location Based Entertainment (LBE) businesses like arcades to easily swap out drained batteries for fully-charged ones, without long pauses in between games or training sessions.

Learn more about the VIVE Wrist Tracker and additional VIVE Focus 3 updates here.

Providing Greater Access to Healthcare Treatments and New Enterprise Applications on VIVE Flow

HTC VIVE is working with XRHealth, the leader in extended reality and therapeutic applications, to provide greater access to care with new virtual treatment rooms. The rooms will offer a variety of treatments including physical therapy, occupational therapy, and pain management.

“As the metaverse builds momentum, providing virtual treatment rooms will be paramount,” says Eran Orr, CEO of XRHealth. “Providing virtual treatment for patients is going to enhance all clinician practices by offering the most innovative solutions to anyone, anywhere.”

HTC’s new immersive glasses VIVE Flow is also making healthcare applications and well-being more accessible for people to enjoy anytime, anywhere. Since launching in October 2021, VIVE Flow has dozens of new titles and experiences like Healium that helps you improve your mood, or Color Connect that lets you kick back after a long day and immerse yourself in 360-degree puzzles. HTC is also working with  MyndVR, the largest developer of virtual reality solutions for older adults in the United States, to reduce isolation and improve mood with its new reminiscence therapy app, MyndVR Originals, on VIVE Flow in early 2022.

HTC VIVE also recently released a software update that provides greater accessibility and improvements to the overall user experience of VIVE Flow.

Delivering Best in Class Immersion

The CES Innovation Awards named VIVE Pro 2 as an Honoree for its crystal clear and super smooth animations. With a stunning 5K resolution display and ultra-wide 120-degree field of view, VIVE Pro 2 pushes the boundaries of productivity, creation and play – delivering seamless high-fidelity experiences like After the Fall, one of the newest titles on VIVEPORT and a visual showcase for high-end PCVR gaming.

Viveport and VIVE Business Training Continue to Expand Into the Metaverse

VIVE Business Training is a “one-to-many” control software that allows an administrator to easily launch VR experiences on many headsets at the same time, and remotely guide people in real-time through VR scenarios. HTC is also developing VIVE Creator, which will allow users to generate their own VR experiences in just a few simple steps. The user only needs to upload an image or video, place 3D models, then publish the VR experience to the VIVE Business Training platform. VIVE Creator greatly reduces the development barrier for VR, thus making it much easier to build content for the metaverse. Additionally, HTC is now developing a new feature to help parents ensure that their children’s VR content is safe and family friendly.

Likewise, Viveport, HTC’s VR app store, continues to embrace cutting-edge technology which makes it easier for developers to publish their content across more devices. Viveport supports OpenXR, which is expected to become the industry standard in 2022. Developers can currently deploy OpenXR-compliant applications to a wide range of devices, and upload OpenXR versions of their content directly to Viveport.

For example, the latest hit VR games available on Viveport Infinity, such as Swarm and Zombieland: Headshot Fever, are all OpenXR-ready. Throughout 2022, it’s expected that significantly more OpenXR-compliant content will become available on Viveport, all-in-one versions of select VR apps are expected to arrive in mid 2022.

Viveport, the world’s only subscription-based VR content platform, will keep supporting our developers worldwide, and will continue to provide the revenue share model of 80/20 (developers receive 80%, and Viveport receives 20%) this year.

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