News HTC’s Vive Focus 3 has a new, far-out mission: astronaut mental health

[News]

Testing the HTC Vive Focus 3 during a European Space Agency parabolic flight. | Image: Novespace

HTC is going to space. The company announced today that on a planned November 7th NASA resupply launch, a tweaked, microgravity-friendly version of its Vive Focus 3 VR headset will be sent to the International Space Station. Once it’s there, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen will test the Focus 3’s viability for helping alleviate the mental stress that NASA says comes from the “lack of privacy, high and variable workloads, and separation from loved ones” inherent to work in space.

HTC partnered with a virtual reality therapy company called XRHealth to work on a “virtual assistance mental balance initiative” by aeronautics R&D company Nord-Space ApS to try to meet astronauts’ unique needs. HTC believes its tweaked headset Vive Focus 3...

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