HTC Announces Vive Focus Standalone VR Headset, Cancels Daydream Headset With Google

HTC has announced a new standalone virtual reality headset called the HTC Vive Focus. The VR headset is aimed at Chinese markets and its Western counterpart, which is supposed to be made in collaboration with Google, has been canceled.

The HTC Vive Focus was revealed by HTC during the company’s Vive Developers Conference in Beijing. The Vive Focus is a standalone VR headset, which means it doesn’t need a connected PC or a smartphone in order to work. The new VR headset also features inside-out positional tracking, so that it is able to track the user’s head movements without the need of external sensor.

“In the past, standalones have always kind of represented a mediocre balance, where you don't have much content and you can only do rotational, and it's not that much different than Cardboard except now you have one individual machine,” HTC Vive’s China President Alvin Wang Graylin told Engadget. “Now you can essentially do most of the things that you could do on a high-end machine on a standalone.”