Many companies are still trying to make VR happen, though it feels like those couple of years when 3D TVs were being pushed and then completely disappeared. If you ask me, there's merit to the immersive experience of VR in certain situations, but the wider and easier adoption will be for AR when it's commoditized. But I digress. We've been keeping an eye on HTC's VIVE and Oculus for a while, even though they're not technically related to Android, but for the sake of information here are the two companies' CES 2018 news.
HTC is introducing a few new things at CES. The first one is an improved VIVE Pro with 78% increase in resolution thanks to dual-OLED displays at 2880 x 1600 combined. It also has integrated headphones with a built-in amp, a new more comfortable headstrap, dual microphones with ANC, and dual front-facing cams. Pricing and availability weren't disclosed. Also coming in Q3 is a new VIVE Wireless Adaptor that uses Intel's WiGig tech and operates on the interference-free 60GHz band, but there's no pricing info. And finally the Viveport catalog is now available in VR as well and Vive Video includes Vimeo videos now.
As for Oculus, the company is collaborating with Xiaomi and Qualcomm to build its own upcoming Oculus Go headset, and is jointly launching the Mi VR Standalone in China. The two headsets look the same, as shows in the image at the top of this post, and both use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 Mobile VR Platform. The Oculus Go was previously announced in October and said to be compatible with both the Oculus Mobile SDK and Gear VR. As for the Mi VR, a smartphone-dependent version was launched in October as well, but this one is the standalone version and should work without any phone strapped in. It supports the Oculus Mobile SDK but will use the Mi VR platform in China for the software's distribution. Xiaomi will be pushing devs to localize popular Oculus Store content and bring it to the Mi VR platform. And if you've failed to see the link, this does seem like an indirect way for Facebook to sneak into a small part of the Chinese market.