Another player has joined the VR bandwagon, and the company is called Pico. The company is based in China and has recently unveiled its Pico Neo VR headset. It is an Android-based device, and its processor is located on the controller that comes along with it.
The Pico Neo's headset is not much different from the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive. It features two 3.8-inch 90 Hz AMOLED display screens that can produce 1200 x 1080 (1K) resolution on each eye. The company boasts its customized screens that reduce the blue lightband, helping to protect the eyes. Field of view is at 102 degrees, 54 to 73 mm pupillary distance range, and 0 to 800 sight adjustment range. Nothing is contained on the headset except for the display screens, a gyroscope accelerometer and a magnetometer.
Here is the interesting part: the Pico Neo comes with a game pad, which contains all the electronics that is needed by headset, and it has its own processor. Everything is crammed on the bundled gamepad: it has a 2.2 Ghz Snapdragon 820 64-bit quad-core chip that comes with an Adreno 530 GPU, a 4 GB DDR4 RAM, Hexagon 680 DSP and a 32 GB eMMC5.1 flash storage. A microSD slot is available for storage expansion, which can accommodate up to 128 GB microSD. It also has its own gyroscope acceleromter.
The company says on its website, "Traditional VR console puts all the units inside the helmet, causing more heating and overweight. We developed a new structure, which allows us to build the whole mainframe right in the gamepad, provides a better mobile VR experience."
It also houses a 5,000 mAh battery that can provide up to three hours of use and supports Qualcomm's QuickCharge. A double haptics engine produces vibration feedback, and a Hi-Fi sound algorithm is produced by the AM3D audio technology.
The headset and the gamepad also have their own USB Type-C port and the system uses an Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system and Pico's open-source VR app.
Aside from the gamepad, the Pico Neo has an optional add-on TrackingKit, which includes two tracking controllers and two tracking cameras.
Tom's Guide added that the headset can be directly plugged into a PC to access more games. However, it is not all too clear yet about the processes involved.
The Pico Neo is available for pre-order and costs US$525 for the headset and gamepad, while the headset can also be purchased separately for US$295.
