HTC Vive Focus 3
This smart and stylish headset is a leap forward forf virtual reality technology ini the workplace
SCORE★★★★☆ PRICE £1,060 (£1,272 inc VAT) from vive.com/uk
V irtual reality is a Peter Pan technology: it never seems to grow up. While the first few generations of VR headsets were initially impressive, the “wow” fac factor quickly faded and wider adoption has been hampered by several key factors. These include awkward setup, a limited number of apps, and the need to be tethered to a bulky PC – unless you’re willing to accept a significant drop in performance and quality.
HTC has been doing its level best to change that, however. Unlike Facebook’s Oculus Quest headsets, which have taken a more consumerfriendly approach, HTC’s Vive family has its sights set on the high-end “prosumer” and business market. We gave the Vive Pro 2 ( see issue 324, p46) a cautious welcome last month, but this time it’s the turn of the Vive Focus 3: a standalone enterprise VR headset.
Third-gen improvements
The most significant improvements from previous iterations of the Focus come in the form of its design. VR headsets – particularly standalone units that require onboard compute hardware – have typically been bulky and uncomfortable affairs, but the Focus 3 bucks this trend. The visor is noticeably more compact than its predecessor, the Vive Focus Plus, and it’s more comfortable to wear for extended periods without getting physically tiring.
This is in spite of the fact that, at 785g, it’s around 100g heavier than the HTC Vive Focus Plus; the trick is that the weight has been distributed more evenly between the front and back of the headset, via a battery pack at the rear, which provides a counterweight.
Another key positive for businesses is that when the battery dies, you can swap it out for another fully charged battery on the fly. If you’re doing a long day of demos or workshops, the last thing you want to do is set aside hours to periodically recharge the entire headset.
The gaskets around the edge of the visor are also removable, allowing them to be swapped out and cleaned between users for comfort and hygiene. Both they and the battery packs are magnetically attached, and removing them is simplicity itself. So much so, in fact, that I often accidentally knocked them loose when handling the Focus 3 – although since they clip straight back on again, this isn’t really an issue.
The headset itself is easy to get on and off, with a quick-release catch at the back to loosen the fit, and an adjustment knob to tighten it, both of which are easy to operate with the headset on. As with all of HTC’s recent headsets, it can be used with glasses, but I found it easy to overtighten the fit, which made my spectacles dig uncomfortably into the bridge of my nose.
Sight to see
One more point of importance, albeit purely aesthetic, is that it looks a lot less silly than HTC’s previous headsets. The black colour scheme is not only much more sophisticated than the white Focus Plus, it helps hide the lenses that stud the visor to support its inside-out tracking. While units such as the Vive Pro 2 have a vaguely insectile air about them – or, in the case of the Focus Plus, the look of a pair of googly eyes stuck to the front of your visor – the Focus 3 looks appealingly sleek and futuristic.
The screen has also seen big improvements. It uses a pair of 2.88in LCD panels, each with a resolution of 2,448 x 2,448. That translates to a 5K resolution across both eyes, and HTC has also bumped up the field of view to 120° and boosted the refresh rate to 90Hz. That’s up from 110° and
75Hz on the Focus Plus and matches the PC-driven Vive Pro 2 on all but the refresh rate.
Those are impressive numbers and, in practice, the screen looks noticeably sharper than previous iterations. In-app text is easier to read, smaller details are easier to pick out and the overall visuals are smoother and more expansive. For practical purposes, this will be a differentiator for anyone wanting to use VR for design or prototyping work, but it also makes using the Focus 3 more pleasant across the board.
The specs’ specs
Built on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 platform, the Focus 3 promises impressive performance – and it delivers. The headset can run graphically complex VR apps with no trouble, and I saw no stuttering, lag or slowdown. That’s partly due to the Focus 3’s active cooling system, which uses a combination of heatpipes and fans to keep the silicon from overheating.
These fans kick in during most operations, but they’re not loud enough to be distracting and work admirably well for maintaining stable performance across the board. Even the PC-streaming feature – which I will cover in more detail shortly – managed to keep a solid and consistent frame rate.
Of course, all of this performance has to take its toll somewhere, and the battery life isn’t lengthy. After roughly an hour of use, the Focus 3 lost a third of its charge; if you started using it at 9am, I’d be surprised if it lasted past lunchtime. Each battery includes a handy indicator so you can see how much charge is left.
“Another key positive for businesses is that when the battery dies, you can swap it out for another fully charged battery on the fly”
On the other hand, this isn’t a headset that’s designed for all-day use, and outside of demo experiences you’re unlikely to need that much continual use. Besides, this is where the swappable batteries come into play. You’ll have to buy additional batteries and charging cradles (prices are yet to be confirmed).
Charging the headset itself is nice and convenient, with a single cable going into the device and it takes less than two hours to fully power the unit. Even better, the Focus 3’s two rechargeable controllers don’t require a separate power socket. The headset comes bundled with a double-headed USB-C cable; one end goes into the USB-C port on the headset’s right-hand side, and the two split ends go into the controllers – both of which also feature LED battery indicators. It’s a clever and convenient solution.
Features galore
The Focus 3 is packed with similar quality-of-life improvements, one of which is the boundary system. If you start to stray outside the defined usage area, a wireframe boundary appears; once you cross the threshold, it uses the passthrough feature
(which feeds footage from the external tracking cameras to the screen) to effectively create a portal into the real world.
Elsewhere, the audio deserves special mention. The Focus 3 uses open-backed dual-driver speakers built into the headband, as opposed to headphones, and they’re clear and high-quality. They’re also great at delivering 3D spatial sound for added immersion. Where they really excel, though, is the “Audio privacy” feature.
This is designed to help stop people around you from listening in to whatever may be happening in your virtual environment – a sensitive meeting, perhaps, or confidential training. It uses the same principle as active noise cancelling on high-end headphones, but turned outwards, and works very well; it’s genuinely difficult to hear what’s happening within the headset, even when you’re right next to whoever’s using it.
App limitations
The biggest issue is still the app store; as with almost all VR platforms, the selection available on the Vive Business App Store is extremely limited, with a few too many gimmicky “experiences” that are more akin to theme park simulator rides than useful business tools. That said, there has been improvement. I found a handful of genuinely useful enterprise apps, including conflict resolution simulations, hazard awareness training, a handful of desktop virtualisation programmes and HTC’s excellent Vive Sync app for virtual conference calls.
These improvements don’t extend to the store user interface, which is still clunky and awful, and only allows you to browse available apps rather than install them. To do that, you have to head to the web store on a smartphone or PC, find the app you want (and pay for it, in many cases) then put the headset back on, head to your library and download it from there.
It’s an arcane and obtuse process, but fortunately many business users can bypass it thanks to the management tools that HTC provides. These allow IT admins to manage a fleet of headsets, including tracking and locating devices, and updating their firmware. It’s also compatible with third-party Android Enterprise MDM solutions. These management tools can be used to remotely load apps onto the headset. Alternatively, you can use the microSD card slot to install them, as well as expanding the Focus 3’s storage beyond its 128GB capacity.
If the apps you need to use are PC-based, however, there’s another option, which is the PC Streaming app. This essentially uses a PC on your network to host a VR app, and then streams it to your headset, either wirelessly or via a USB-C cable. This works very well, streaming demanding VR content from my PC to my headset wirelessly with a minimal amount of stuttering and dropped frames. It’s not ideal for anything requiring absolute precision, but as a method for increasing the Focus 3’s versatility, it’s superb.
“What really sets the
Vive Focus 3 apart is the array of smart design choices that HTC has made in its construction”
Tap to buy?
There’s no question that virtual reality remains a long way away from being a universally applicable technology. While there are an increasing number of use cases for the hardware – particularly with remote working now firmly entrenched – it’s just not relevant to a large proportion of organisations.
For those that do need it, however, HTC’s Vive Focus 3 is a generational leap forward. The specs and performance are powerful enough to keep up with demanding apps, the display looks breathtaking and for when you need extra grunt, the PC-streaming feature is genuinely astonishing.
What really sets this device apart, however, is the array of smart design choices that HTC has made in its construction. The removable battery packs and gaskets are a stroke of genius, and it’s the most comfortable VR headset I’ve worn by a country mile. Add neat charging options and intelligent noise cancelling, and you’ve got a transformative package.
At £1,060 before tax, this isn’t an investment that you’ll be making lightly. That’s before you factor in the cost of additional battery packs. And I still can’t believe how unintuitive the app store is when compared with the polish of the actual headset. Despite the cost and the niggles, however, this headset is a must-have for any organisation that’s considering VR. The technology might not have fully grown up yet, but the Vive Focus 3 shows that it’s no longer a childish novelty.