pico 4 pro

Pico 4 Shipments Delayed in Europe Due to High Global Demand

October 18, 2022 From roadtovr

Pico released its standalone VR headset Neo 3 Link this summer, marking its first real push to launch a consumer device outside of Asia. Now it’s getting ready to ship the follow-up standalone Pico 4, and the company seems to be struggling to keep up with demand in some regions.

Pico opened up pre-orders of Pico 4 in late September with the aim of initially releasing the headset today across several regions, including 13 European countries, Japan, and Korea.

Note: there’s still no word on whether Pico 4 is coming to the US, although Pico Interactive, owned by TikTok parent ByteDance, is expanding to the US to compete with Meta.

Pico says in a recent tweet however some European customers may see delays in shipment due to high demand:

“Due to unprecedented global demand, there will unfortunately be delays in fulfilling some customer pre-orders in the EU region. We are working tirelessly to ensure that demand is satisfied by the end of October,” Pico says.

Continuing: “We strongly recommend that you keep your back order in place at your preferred retailer as we will be prioritising existing back orders first. If you are affected, please accept our sincerest apologies. We are doing everything we can to resolve it as quickly as possible. In the meantime, if you can’t wait any longer to get your hands on a PICO headset, Neo 3 Link is available and in stock right now.”

In Europe, Pico 4 is strongly positioned to compete with Meta Quest 2. At €430 for the 128GB model and €500 for the 256GB model, Pico 4 not only beats Quest 2 on pricing, but also goes toe-to-toe in the specs department while providing a slimmer profile thanks to the addition of pancake lenses.

Last month the company also announced Pico 4 Pro, an enterprise-focused variant due out later this year which adds three internal cameras for eye and face-tracking. Pricing and launch of that device is still unclear, although it may be looking to take market share away from the recently announced Meta Quest Pro, which is priced at an eye-watering $1,500.

Pico 4 Pro Will Add Eye & Face-tracking with Auto-IPD for Enterprise

September 23, 2022 From roadtovr

In addition to the consumer-focused Pico 4 headset announced this week, the company has also announced a Pico 4 Pro variant aimed at enterprise use-cases.

With the announcement of Pico 4 this week, Pico is squaring up to compete with Meta’s Quest 2. But the company is seemingly also trying to ready itself against Meta’s upcoming Project Cambria, a high-end enterprise-focused standalone headset (which is rumored to be called the Quest Pro).

Alongside the announcement of Pico 4, the company announced Pico 4 Pro. Apparently due out later this year, the headset appears to be largely the same from a hardware perspective but with the addition of three internal cameras for eye and face-tracking.

With eye-tracking, Pico says the Pico 4 Pro will support automatic IPD adjustment by measuring the user’s IPD each time the headset is put on and then adjusting the IPD distance with a motorized drive. While the Pico 4 also includes a motorized drive, it lacks eye-tracking so the IPD value must be set manually.

Pico also claims the internal cameras can be used for “52 points” of face-tracking, though it isn’t clear if most of those are directly sampled or inferred from a model. Face-tracking is difficult to get right (because the results are highly subject to the uncanney valley and getting a clear view of the face is difficult); the only commercial headsets that have attempted face-tracking have had to employ bulky under-slung cameras. It will be interested to see what Pico can achieve from a largely hidden camera (which is presumably aimed down toward the user’s mouth).

Aside from eye and face-tracking, it appears the Pico 4 Pro will be essentially the same hardware otherwise, including a Snapdragon XR2 processor, 2,160 × 2,160 (4.7MP) per-eye resolution, and pancake lenses with a claimed 105° field-of-view. You can see a detailed list of specs for the headsets here.

On the software side, however, Pico 4 Pro will be substantially different. The company says the headset will include an enterprise focused variant of its operating system and won’t require any kind of “personal identification” to operate, which hopefully means no logins.

Pico has yet to announce a specific release date for the Pico 4 Pro, nor a price, though it says the headset will come later this year and will become available in the US at some point.

Pico 4 & Pico 4 Pro Standalone VR Headsets Spotted in FCC Filing

July 25, 2022 From roadtovr

Pico Interactive, the VR hardware subsidiary to Chinese tech giant ByteDance, is apparently getting ready to release a new series of standalone VR headsets.

As first reported by Protocol, Pico filed the devices with the FCC late last week, saying in the filing that it intends to launch both a Pico 4 Pro and Pico 4 standalone headsets.

Both headsets are identical in specs “except additional eye tracking & face tracking function for Pico 4 Pro,” the company says in the filing.

As noted by Protocol, Pico appears to have called the new hardware ‘Phoenix’ in the FCC filing, and it’s reported to run on Android Q via a Qualcomm processor. FCC filings are typically vague as to not give away too much information pre-launch, so we’ll just have to wait to see how much of an upgrade it is over its latest.

It’s uncertain whether ‘Pico 4’ is the final naming scheme, or whether it’s a shorthand for Pico Neo 4, although it’s clear the company is looking to bring competition to basically the only real name in consumer VR standalones: Meta. Since its founding in 2015, Pico pretty much only targeted consumers in China and enterprise users in the West. That was before it released it Neo 3 Link in Europe back in May, a device that features near spec parity with Quest 2.

At the time, we surmised Pico was quickly eyeballing North America with its Neo 3 Link in an attempt to earnestly compete with Meta there, although now it’s possible the company is looking to one-up the competition with the new hardware before it makes landfall on Meta’s home turf.

The filing doesn’t reveal to what extent Pico 4 will be able to match Meta’s upcoming Project Cambria, which is a VR headset capable of doing augmented reality tasks thanks to its mixed reality passthrough camera sensors. The price of Cambria is set to be “significantly higher than $800” though, so there may be some wiggle room from a name that’s so far unknown to consumers in the US.

Cambria is said to include both eye and face-tracking, so it will be interesting to see how Pico intends on competing (likely with Pico 4 Pro), whether it be by pushing specs slightly beyond Quest 2 or going for full spec parity with Cambria.