WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

VR headsets are getting smaller and slimmer and it’s only a matter of time now before we see the first VR glasses.

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In the future today’s big and bulky Virtual Reality (VR) headsets will just be a pair of glasses – until that is the images are just beamed straight into your eyes Minority Report style or beamed directly into our brains. And now, after releases and teasers from Facebook and Panasonic, HTC have announced they’re planning to release a new slimline VR headset and that they’re also working on their own metaverse-like virtual world, according to a report from Protocol.

Let’s start first with that new headset. It’s reportedly a standalone VR headset no larger than a pair of sports glasses called the Vive Flow and is intended to be a media consumption device “with access to some casual gaming,” Protocol says. However, it won’t ship with controllers and will be less powerful than the Oculus Quest 2, Protocol reports.

Hands on with the Vive Flow

The new metaverse space is apparently called Viveport Verse. According to a site about the service, you’ll be able to make your own 3D avatar and explore “a variety of events,” but the space will also have an “NFT Showroom” and user-generated content “Available Soon.” You also won’t need a VR device to visit Vivepoint Verse though sicne the website says it will be compatible with desktop devices, laptops, mobile devices, tablets, and VR headsets. Which is handy.

At the moment though it’s unclear how this new Viveport Verse space would differ from the enterprise-focused Vive Sync experience though. It seems like Viveport Verse could be more of a series of virtual worlds of many kinds, perhaps similar to Facebook’s Horizon Worlds, as opposed to Sync’s virtual meeting spaces intended for work.