HTC announces the Vive Focus Vision with color passthrough and an eye on gaming

HTC has announced the Vive Focus Vision, a new VR headset that builds on the Vive Focus 3 with features like color passthrough and better PC tethering support. The $999 Focus Vision is available for preorder from now until October 17th on HTC’s website.

The Focus Vision can be used either as a standalone device or tethered to your PC using USB-C. It’s essentially a beefed-up version of the Focus 3, which the company released in 2021 — it has the same 2448 x 2448 per-eye resolution and 120-degree field of view and also uses a Snapdragon XR2 chip. But it gains features like dual 16MP cameras with color passthrough, and it can now automatically adjust the lenses to compensate for the distance between your eyes.

HTC is going for gamers with this headset. Part of that is the inclusion of foveated rendering, meaning it can focus its graphical resources only where you’re looking instead of across your whole field of view at once. “Now, PC gamers can bring the same high-end headsets used in VR arcades into their homes,” Shen Ye, HTC Vive’s global head of product, said in a press release.

The Focus Vision also adds DisplayPort support via USB-C, which HTC says enables a lossless connection when tethered to your PC. And after an update later this year, DisplayPort tethering will allow the displays’ refresh rate to go from the normal 90Hz to 120Hz. The Focus Vision has 128GB of storage (with a microSD slot for up to 2TB more), and 12GB of RAM, up from the 8GB of its predecessor. The headset also supports all Focus 3 accessories.

A built-in battery can keep the Focus Vision going for 20 minutes, giving you time to swap out the main power pack if you burn through its about two-hour battery life. Additionally, the headset has a new fan that will pull 30 percent more air through for better cooling, according to the company.

The head strap got some love, too. “Users can be pretty abusive,” said Dan O’Brien, HTC president of Americas. But that showed the company where there were “weak points” in the Focus 3’s design, and as a result of that, HTC “improved the metal hook for the back, topside handling, as well as the side arms.”

The Vive Focus Vision aims right at the consumer market that HTC’s Focus 3, with its Quest 2-style controllers, seemed to flirt with. (Previous Focus headsets were heavily business-oriented.) Other headsets from HTC have also targeted consumers, like last year’s Vive XR Elite, a lighter, $1,099 headset that also has color passthrough video but uses lower resolution screens than the Vision.

Anyone who preorders before October 17th will get a free kit that includes a 5-meter USB-C cable with DP 1.4 alternate mode support, as well as multiple adapters for PC VR streaming. The company also says it’s tossing in a “choice of three popular game bundles.”