Recently, after the good results obtained at home, the Chinese Pico of ByteDance announced the arrival in Europe, starting from Germany, of its new virtual reality viewer, with a library of about 200 contents.
When you think of the social binomial – virtual reality viewers. our thoughts turn to Meta (formerly Facebook Inc) and its Oculus now Meta Quest 2. Yet, Menlo Park could soon have a new competitor in the small Chinese start-up Pico, versed in virtual reality and, from 2021, owned by ByteDance , the same company that controls TikTok and which, in recent days, has confirmed the arrival in Europe of its new Neo 3 Link viewer.
After the first Neo headset model launched in 2016, Pico launched the Goblin model, in Oculus Go style and, subsequently, a 6DOF upgrade of its first headset. In 2020, the second generation of the original headset has arrived. Last year, in China, the third generation was launched, with the Pico Neo 3 Link which, in pre-order from April 15th, will be shipped (in limited quantities in order to collect feedback from the first buyers) in May (the 24) in the Old Continent, starting from Germany (here benefiting from the local non-distribution of Quest 2), Holland, Spain and France, then followed in June by Italy and the United Kingdom. To date, the price for the Teutonic market is known, equal to 449 euros.
Pico Neo 3 Link has is an all-in-one viewer that, having abandoned the electromagnetic tracking of the second model, opts for 4 cameras for inside-out tracking: the visual area of the display ensures a resolution of 3664 × 1920 pixels, with the refresh rate stopped at 90 Hz. In terms of control, the latter occurs through two controllers which, in shape, are practically identical to Meta’s Oculus Touch. To animate it is the same processor of the Quest 2, or the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2, assisted by 6 GB of RAM: the storage, however, does not have the 128 GB cut but only the 256 GB one.
In terms of content library, using the same chip as the rival, it is compatible with the same games and apps, except those obviously exclusive to Meta (eg Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond or Resident Evil 4 VR).
On the other hand, on the Pico platform there are about 200 contents, including games such as Superhot VR, Red Matter, Contractors, already seen at the Asian launch of the product. If desired, it is possible to connect it to the PC to take advantage of the Steam VR games: here another difference emerges with the Quest 2. The connection in question (which can also be done wirelessly) can also take place in wired mode, via DisplayPort, with the cable present in the package , while the rival viewer has to be satisfied with the compressed USB connection, therefore with significantly less qualitative images.
