Can you wear glasses with the Vive XR Elite? You might not have to
We explain how the Vive XR Elite can recreate your glasses
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Can you wear glasses with the Vive XR Elite? Today we’re going to dig around HTC’s upcoming VR headset to find out.
VR appears to be having a big year of growth in 2024. The PSVR 2, Vive XR Elite, and eventually the Meta Quest 3 will all hit the shelves this year.
HTC Vive XR Elite VR headset
Chipset
Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2
Storage
128GB
RAM
12GB
Display resolution
1920 x 1920 per-eye
Battery Life
Up to 2 hours, comes with a hot-swappable 26.6Wh Battery
Weight
1.37lbs/0.62kg
A competitive year means that whichever VR headset you go for will need to be almost perfect, especially given the price these people are charging for them.
The question of glasses is a big deal too. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, almost half the world’s population have issues with sight, with 75% of adults using some kind of sight corrective measure, be it contact lenses or glasses.
NOW READ: PSVR 2 review
Obviously concat lenses are a non-issue, but what can cause problems with VR headset is wearing glasses. So, can you wear glasses with the Vive XR Elite? let’s take a look.
Can you wear glasses with the Vive XR Elite? No, but you might not need too.
So far as we can tell, HTC hasn’t specifically ruled out the use of glasses with the Vive XR Elite, though the slimness of the headset makes it understandable that some are worried.
However, they have designed the headset to compensate for your prescription, allowing you to go “glasses-free.”
How does this work? Well, according to the product page and some hands-on first impressions we’ve seen about the place, you can manually adjust the focal point of each lense.
In addition to the usual inter-pupillary distance (IPD) adjustment (controlled by the slider on the right on this image) you can adjust the focal length of each lense independantly using the knurled gear around the outside. (Left side of the image above).
This allows you to recreate your prescription per-eye. Obviously there are limitations to this, with the built-in diopters only adjustable to -6, unfortunately some people having eyesight worse than that, so it wont work for everyone.
NOW READ: HTC Vive XR Elite vs Meta Quest Pro
Additionally, ophthalmology is a complex science, with + and – prescriptions only being the tip of the eysight iceberg. As the Vive XR only goes from 0 to -6, it only caters to people with short-sightedness.
So, the Vive XR Elite does allow glasses wearers to use the headset by essentially recreating their glasses. But can you actually fit your real glasses in there? We haven’t managed to get hands-on with the Vive XR Elite yet, but given how slim it is, we doubt it.
We noted that you can just about fit a pair of glasses inside the PSVR 2, but it was a tight squeeze, and the Vive XR Elite is way slimmer, so we aren’t confident.
