Earlier this year HTC unveiled its own virtual reality headset called HTC Vive. It also showed off a production version of this headset and promised that the Vive would be out for consumers 2016. It was expected that the headset would be released by early next year but the company announced a delay yesterday. What we have today are purported images of the Vive itself and controllers that go along with it.
HTC confirmed yesterday that it won’t be releasing the Vive virtual reality headset to the public in early 2016 as promised, it decided to delay the launch because of a “very, very big technological breakthrough,” at least that’s how HTC CEO Cher Wang describes it. The company now expects to have the headset out by April 2016.
The company did say that it’s going to send out an additional 7,000 new developer kits in the beginning of 2016, the kits are likely to be very close to the final version of this handset and may even feature the SteamVR controllers that will accompany the headset.
Several reddit users claim that they have pulled these images from HTC’s own website, which no longer has them even if that’s really the case. From the looks of it the final version is quite similar to the production version that HTC showed off earlier this year, with markers across the front and a camera in the middle. It does look like some improvements have been made to the controllers with the top plate being replaced with a hoop.
HTC hasn’t said as yet whether or not these pictures represent the final version of the HTC Vive VR headset and its controllers.