The Extended Reality Industry is heating up with #Meta gearing up to launch its new XR headset Meta Cambria in October, #JIO is working on launching its Mixed Reality Jio Glass lite & Jio Glass Pro also in the month of October, SONY's PlayStation VR 2 is scheduled for early 2023 & so is the Rumored #apple Glasses.
Meta, JIO & many others are building ecosystems to leverage the $8 trillion market opportunity of the Metaverse,.
#ByteDance backed Chinese company #PicoXR have just unveiled their offering Pico 4 VR headset
Meta's #oculusquest has been a game changer for the #virtualreality ecosystem and have enjoyed a leadership position for the longest time but things are changing very fast, we have startups in the hardware space around the world building XR headsets that is challenging the status quo of Oculus Quest and giving consumers as well as enterprise a wider choice.
PicoVR4 is being touted as a Oculus Competitor
In many ways, the Quest 2 and Pico 4 are very similar devices. Both headsets are standalone , and both offer inside-out tracking for 6DoF VR experiences. Just slip either device on and you can wander around and interact with a VR space as if it were real; minimal setup is required.
What’s more, each headset comes with two storage options:128GB or 256GB. Both even use identical Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 CPUs and offer controller-free experiences. But that’s about it as far as similarities go since the Pico 4 headset pulls ahead of the competition in almost every other regard.
The new Pico 4 offers 8GB RAM to the Quest 2’s 6GB; it uses a higher-resolution display that gives users 2,160 x 2,160 pixels per eye instead of just 1832 × 1920 pixels per eye; and it uses a larger 5300mAh battery – compared to Quest 2’s 3,640 mAh.
Despite these upgrades, because of the Pico 4’s pancake lenses – a slimmer form of optics being used by next-generation VR headsets – the headset is only marginally heavier than the Quest 2, at 586g compared to 503g. You might not even notice that extra weight since the Pico 4 places its battery at the back of your head – the opposite side to its display – as opposed to Quest 2’s front-loaded design.
Last, but not least, the Pico 4 will include a 16MP RGB camera that facilitates full-color passthrough. This means it can record a full-color video of the real world around you, whereas the Oculus Quest 2 can only show you the real world in grayscale.
Full-color passthrough is set to be a major feature on the Quest 2’s premium successor (Project Cambria) as it will allow developers to create more realistic and engaging AR experiences.
Pico 4 headset will cost you £379 for its 128GB version and £449 for the 256GB version. That's £20 and £50 cheaper than the equivalent Oculus Quest 2 models.
Preorders for the new headset are available now for people in Europe’s Neo3 Link beta program and will be open to the general public in the UK, Europe, and Asia at some point in October.