An enhanced version of the company’s new VR headset, The HP Reverb G2 Omnicept Edition is scheduled to launch next month, priced at $1,249.
The company confirmed the news today, saying that customer will be able to order the headset from their official website. The enhanced vision edition headset dds sensors to track pupil size and eye movement, as well as the user’s heart rate and even facial expressions with the help of a unit mounted on the bottom of the device. As HP says, the sensory data is used to enhance the effectiveness of VR training solutions and measure how users respond in certain situations.
Previously, the company said that eye-tracking is another option that could be used to enable foveated rendering which fully renders the are of a VR display the user is looking at. This would reduce the demand on the compute powering the experience.
An additional update is coming to the Omnicept Edition today as well, which will include extra support for spatial audio to its Omnicept SDK (software development kit). This uses head-related-transfer-functions (HRTFs), a technique for delivering sound at pinpoint locations for more immersive VR audio. The SDK will also arrive in May and will support both Unity and Unreal.
The price of $1,249 (which is $600 more than the $599 base G2) tells of the target audience of the Omnicept Edition. Its additions are aimed at delivering more data than they are necessarily enhancing immersion.
Students and educators will also have free access, with 2% of revenue share from any profit made from its use going to HP. The same share is asked of any developers who are using the kit in their products. The full $1,499 Enterprise tier includes a permanent license and a service pack, with additional costs for run time licenses.
