The playing field of VR is getting wider and wider with the passage of time. Companies such as HTC and Oculus are speeding the process through continuous innovations. Just recently, Oculus announced its wireless headset Quest that has become a focal point for VR users. Not long after, HTC is getting its Vive Wave out to 3rd party sources.
Shadow VR is the standalone headset unveiled by the Chinese manufacturer – Shadow Creator. The way it is designed places it on the same ground as Vive Focus by HTC and Quest by Oculus.
One thing common in all these headsets is that they are standalone and unlike Rift and Vive, they don’t need any PC or phones to run. The brains of Shadow VR is in the headset itself, with a 3,400 mAh battery and a Snapdragon 835 processor. On top of that, since it doesn’t need to be plugged to an external source, Shadow VR is completely cordless.
With an inside-out tracking option, Shadow VR has removed the need to set up external sensors such as PC-based rigs. This means that it can keep an eye on motion controllers and watch out for hurdles with all the sensors in the visor itself. In terms of movement, the headset and its controllers support six degrees of freedom.
“We’re still talking about an early adopter consumer mix, we’re not at early mass yet. Products like Quest and some of the Wave platforms like Shadow VR will teach us a lot about those price points and adoption levels. We’re really focused on the products that we are delivering, like Focus, on giving a complete Enterprise solution and answering a lot of the problems we see out there.”
~ Dan O’Brien, HTC General Manager
However, Shadow VR isn’t the only competitor of Quest, other headsets like Pico’s G2 are also getting traction. G2 is another all-in-one headset that has partnered with HTC Vive and promises to provide a premium viewing experience to the user. That makes it highly probable that competition in Virtual Reality market will increase, which might be better for commercial VR in the long run.