Skip to main content

Sony details its impressive Vision Pro competitor

The Sony XR headset being worn on a someone's face.
Sony

Sony’s latest XR Headset for the enterprise space was officially announced at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Long Beach, California, earlier this week, showcasing the company’s collaboration with prominent technology brands such as Qualcomm.

The headset, which is being called the “Spatial Content Creation System,” has a number of highlight features and functions, including 4K OLED micro-displays for each eye, an individual headset powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 AI-chip, a ring controller, and a pointing controller.

https://twitter.com/Dilmerv/status/1803463844863541680

Sony first announced the system at CES 2024 in early January, as an exclusive partnership with the health and automation brand Siemens. Sony noted the hardware would be available to “creators and developers in a diverse range of industries, including entertainment.”

Its 4K OLED micro-displays are head-mounted onto the headset and have a video see-through function. They feature large-size, high-definition 1.3-type OLED micro-displays with 4K resolution and a wide color gamut that covers up to 96% of DCI-P3.

Users can also pair the headset with its controllers for interacting with 3D objects and exact pointing. The system includes a total of six cameras and sensors, which allows for features such as heightened spatial recognition, giving users an increased ease to use peripherals in a virtual space to create with precision. This allows users to easily create, view, and edit 3D models in extended reality (XR).

The Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 enables the power of the system, from the image quality of the 4K OLED micro-displays to the tracking for XR experiences.

The ring controller provides a navigation tool to instinctively direct objects in XR, while the pointing controller allows you to be deliberate with your actions in a virtual space. The pointing controller is guided by the dominant hand and the ring controller by the opposite hand. For additional guidance, creators can use a keyboard in addition to the controllers while utilizing the head-mounted display.

While Sony has now showcased the Spatial Content Creation System at AWE, the brand and its partners have not yet shared any further details about the XR headset, such as more detailed specs, launch date and regions, pricing, sales channels, or software compatibility.

Fionna Agomuoh
Fionna Agomuoh is a technology journalist with over a decade of experience writing about various consumer electronics topics…
The gloves are off as The Zuck lays into Apple’s Vision Pro
Mark Zuckerberg discussing the Quest 3 and Vision Pro.

Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg took to Instagram on Tuesday to knock Apple’s new Vision Pro headset while singing the praises of his own company’s Quest 3 alternative.

In a video lasting 3 minutes and 40 seconds and shot entirely on the Quest 3, The Zuck only had two positive things to say about the Vision Pro, praising its higher screen resolution and its “really nice” eye-tracking. For the rest of it, he lauds Meta’s Quest 3 headset while at the same time tearing into Apple’s competing device, which launched earlier this month.

Read more
Vision Pro App Store reaches early milestone, Apple reveals
A person tilts their head while wearing the Apple Vision Pro.

One of the drawbacks of Apple’s new Vision Pro headset is the small number of available apps. Sure, you can load most iPad apps onto the mixed-reality headset, but it’s the tailor-made apps that really bring out the best in the Vision Pro.

The good news is that the Vision Pro App Store now has 1,000 visionOS apps ready for download by owners of the face-based computer, which started shipping for $3,499 on February 2.

Read more
Vision Pro could take ‘four generations’ to reach ideal form
The front visor of the Vision Pro on display at an Apple Store.

Apple employees working closely with the new Vision Pro mixed-reality headset believe it could take “four generations before the device reaches its ideal form,” according to prominent Apple tipster Mark Gurman.

In his weekly Power On newsletter for Bloomberg, Gurman cited his source as “some people in [Apple’s] Vision Products Group" who work directly on the headset.

Read more