A Chinese company called Deepoon has produced a VR headset that combines all of the elements – including the display and processors – into a single unit.
VR headsets today are all, effectively, companion devices. Some use a smartphone as the display and processor (Gear VR, etc); others feature their own display, but still offload processing to another device such as a PC (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift). Deepon, however, claims to have produced the world’s first completely standalone headset.
Working with Samsung and ARM, Deepoon created its M2 device with an OLED display and Exynos 7420 SoC – the same chipset used in the Galaxy S6 smartphones. The display (Deepoon has not clarified whether the headset uses one or two displays, although we believe it to be one) has 2560 x 1440 resolution and a 1ms response time.
The Exynos 7420 uses an octa-core ARM CPU and Mali-T7680MP8 GPU. It is optimised for mobile VR, says Deepoon, with optimisation such as front buffering, context priority and multi-view. Latency is sub-19ms.
An advantage to placing all of the processing in the headset is a cable-free experience (although we imagine that the Deepoon M2 is heavier than rival devices – TA). Deepoon’s headset is compatible with the M-Polaris Mobile VR Positioning System, a 360° tracking tool.
Deepoon announced at CES Asia that it will focus on building a VR ecosystem, working on both its own and partners’ products. Content is also reasonably plentiful, with over 150 games available at launch and access to the 3D BoBo library: China’s largest VR content platform.
More than 20,000 pre-orders were placed for the M2 headset, and it is shipping in China now.
