The ASUS Mixed Reality Headset sports an "digital industrial" design language, sporting an outer design comprised of 3D polygons. The headset itself comes with all the standard Windows Mixed Reality features, including front-facing cameras for spatial awareness and room tracking, and the Microsoft-approved controllers.
ASUS touted Windows Mixed Reality's ease of use when compared to the likes of Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, saying that set up takes only 10 minutes, and no external sensors are required. ASUS and Microsoft claims that there are already 20,000 Mixed Reality capable apps (native to the Universal Windows Platform), and the company re-affirmed that Mixed Reality will support SteamVR in the future, bringing a huge array of games to the platform.
The ASUS headset comes with a 3K resolution and a 90 Hz refresh rate, with the aim of reducing motion sickness issues. It also comes with anti-bacterial fabrics for its headband to make headset sharing a little more hygienic, with quick-drying properties for easy cleaning. The visor can also be retracted upwards 90 degrees to make switching between Mixed Reality and old fashioned analog reality easy.
This certainly looks like one of the more impressive Mixed Reality headsets on the scene right now. At $449 dollars, it's priced slightly higher than the competing Oculus Rift, but quite a lot less than the HTC Vive.
Whether or not Microsoft actually follows through with Mixed Reality or abandons it in a couple of years remains to be seen, but with impressive support from PC OEMs across the board, it looks as though Redmond might have a fighting chance.
Keep it locked to Windows Central for all the latest coming out of IFA 2017.
