HTC has announced the Vive Pro Eye is now on sale in Europe, retailing at £1499 on Vive.com and at selected retailers, with other regions rolling out availability over the coming weeks. The Vive Pro Eye, which was unveiled earlier this year at CES 2019, features the latest in eye tracking technology and sets the standard for enterprise VR. For business customers in Europe, the Vive Pro Eye will be bundled with Advantage, an enterprise licence and 2-year warranty for commercial use. Advantage, priced at £165 (excluding VAT) also offers dedicated support and service utilities for Vive Enterprise products.
The next-generation solution for enterprise-grade VR
Building on the design of the award-winning Vive Pro, the Vive Pro Eye has been created with the needs of the professional user in mind. Benefits of Vive Pro’s eye-tracking functionality include:
- Precision Eye Tracking: Create more expressive avatars for immersive virtual interactions in meeting and collaboration tools.
- Dynamic Training Environments: Simulate real-life scenarios and provide users with intelligent performance feedback.
- Deeper Data Analysis: Capture real-time user feedback through heatmapping and gaze tracking to gain insight into user behaviour and decision processes.
- Intuitive User Experiences: Enable gaze-orientated menu navigation to remove the need for controllers and boost convenience of use in environments such as VR arcades or location-based entertainment.
The Vive Pro Eye takes advantage of SteamVR 2.0 tracking technology to enable flexible demo spaces from seated experiences to full 10m x 10m room-scale for multi-user environments. Delivering industry leading performance, the headset features dual-OLED displays with a combined resolution of 2880 x 1600 pixels and improved headphone design.
Graham Wheeler, GM, HTC Europe commented,
“The Vive Pro has been the go-to VR solution for businesses around the world. The Vive Pro Eye takes this technology one step further as the demands for enterprise-grade VR grow and evolve. From more effective training to more insightful data analytics, it provides professional users with the tools to continue improving the way we work through VR”.
Optimising performance with foveated rendering
Through the integration of eye-tracking functionality, users can experience the benefits of foveated rendering – a process which uses eye tracking technology to focus GPU and CPU power on exactly where the user is looking to increase computing efficiency and image quality.
NVIDIA, whose Turing-based RTX™ GPUs provide one of the market-leading solutions for foveated rendering, named the Vive Pro Eye as the preferred VR headset for their Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology earlier this year at GTC. At the show, Vive demoed innovative enterprise experiences from companies including Zerolight, who showcased their BMW M Virtual Experience, developed with NVIDIA and Vive. The experience enables potential customers to configure, explore, and sit inside their digital vehicle on a 1:1 scale.
“The Vive Pro Eye has taken everything that was great about the Vive Pro and pushed it to the next level,” commented Chris O’Connor, Technical Director at Zerolight. “Using this headset’s eye tracking technology, we can add significant extra value to our clients’ projects with foveated rendering and detailed user behaviour insights.”
For more on Vive Enterprise, please visit: www.enterprise.vive.com.
VIVE Pro Eye Specs:
- Screens: Dual AMOLED 3.5’’ diagonal
- Resolution: 1440 x 1600 pixels per eye (2880 x 1600 pixels combined)
- Refresh Rate: 90 Hz
- Field of View: 110 degrees
- Audio: Hi-Res-certified headset, Hi-Res-certified headphones (removable), high-impedance headphone support, enhanced headphone ergonomics
- Input: Dual integrated microphones
- Connections: USB-C 3.0, DP 1.2, Bluetooth
- Sensors: SteamVR™ Tracking, G-sensor, gyroscope, proximity, interpupillary (IPD) sensor, eye tracking
- Ergonomics: Eye relief with lens distance adjustment, adjustable IPD, adjustable headphones, adjustable strap
Eye Tracking Specs:
Gaze data output frequency
- (binocular): 120Hz
- Accuracy: 0.5°–1.1°
- Calibration: 5-point
- Trackable field of view: 110°
- Data output (for each eye): Timestamp (device and system), gaze origin, gaze direction, pupil position, absolute pupil size, eye openness
- Interface: HTC SRanipal SDK
- 3D engine compatibility: Unity, Unreal
