One of the obstacles VR faces in jumping from virtual to reality is the wires themselves. Being able to get up and walk around with the HTC Vive - and soon the Oculus Rift - is fantastic, but you're still limited by those cumbersome cables.
As it turns out, the HTC Vive can indeed go wireless, but you'll need the help of a new accessory to do it. HTC has opened pre-orders for a $220 add-on produced by TPCast, a startup within the company's Vive X accelerator program.
Read next: Oculus and Valve are forging different paths for VR
Speaking to UploadVR, Alvin W. Graylin, China Regional President of Vive at HTC, said there is "no noticeable difference" in performance when using TPCast's device, so latency shouldn't take a hit.
The add-on affixes to the headset and runs on a battery that should give you about an hour and a half of play, although HTC says it plans to put out a longer-lasting battery in the future.
You'll be able to pre-order the preview edition of the upgrade kit from HTC's China Vive site from 11pm Beijing time on 11 November. It's priced at 1,499 RMB, which works out to roughly . Fortunately, you can have it shipped internationally, which might be your only option for the near future. There are apparently no plans to sell it locally anywhere else. The first batch of kits will start shipping from Q1 2017
It's interesting to see this coming direct from HTC itself, and suggests this tech may come embedded with future headsets, be it from HTC or any other manufacturer that works with Valve's VR technology.
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By Hugh Langley
Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.
Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.
Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.
He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.