When the first generation of virtual reality came to market in 2016, HTC was king of the hill with its powerful Vive headset. But the platform has started to mature, with competitors like Facebook making headsets for everyone like the Oculus Quest, and Valve pushing the envelope with its own high-end Index headset. So can HTC’s new Vive Cosmos (See it on Amazon), with its inside-out tracking and $700 price tag, keep a solid foothold in the market? The company sent us a review unit to test and find out.
HTC Vive Cosmos - Design and Features
While many modern headsets go for the sleek-and-understated look, HTC decided to run head first in the other direction. The Cosmos is a blue, industrial, Star Wars droid-looking piece of hardware, with six visible cameras all around the headset and light-up geometric shapes on the controllers. Subtle it ain’t, but given that the original Vive kind of looked like Swiss cheese, it’s not so much a step down as a step to the side.
Those cameras serve a purpose, though: unlike the Valve Index and the original Vive, which use SteamVR’s lighthouse-based tracking system, the Vive Cosmos is fully inside-out, which means you don’t need any extra cameras or sensors placed around the room. The cameras on the headset do all the tracking for you, provided your room has the right lighting (more on that later).
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The interior specs have also been upgraded from its predecessor, with an RGB LCD screen coming in at 1,440 x 1700 per eye – higher than even the Index (albeit by only 100 vertical pixels). The LCD screen doesn’t have the perfect deep blacks of an OLED-based headset like the Oculus Quest, but in practice, I didn’t notice too much. The field of view sits around 110 degrees (with adjustable interpupillary distance) and the refresh rate clocks in at 90Hz – the same as most of its competitors, but not quite as high as Valve’s top-tier Index.
In other words, the screen is about on par with other modern VR headsets, and I found the screen door effect to be less noticeable than other headsets, but still there, and aliasing is still clearly visible in many of the experiences I tried.
Unlike the original Vive (and modern Rift headsets), the Vive Cosmos utilizes a halo-style headband with a knob on the back that cranks to tighten. It’s actually very easy to put on, and the visor flips up so you can re-enter the real world briefly without taking the headset off entirely. I can’t tell you how convenient this is, particularly when you’re playing in a living room shared with other people. The attached ear pad headphones are fine, though you can plug in your own if you prefer. The headset also fit over my glasses beautifully.
Unfortunately, all of those benefits are overshadowed by how uncomfortable the Vive Cosmos is (at least on my head). The headset is very front-heavy, and its visual sweet spot is quite small, so once the image inside is clear, you have to tighten it quite a bit for the headset to stay in place. Since the halo strap sits on the back of your head rather than going under the bottom of your skull, that basically means I end up with a headache after half an hour of play, which is pretty sad. I tried to make this thing more comfortable, and I just... couldn’t. Even the original Vive, heavy as it was, was significantly easier to wear than the Cosmos, in my opinion.
The controllers feel similarly off-balance, with the rather large tracking rings making everything feel too front-heavy. The button selection is rather nice, though, with two game buttons, a menu button, and a joystick on each hand, plus two triggers and two grip buttons (which, sadly, aren’t pressure-sensitive). I’m not aware of any games that even use this many buttons, but I suppose it’s nice to have a bit of future-proofing.
Finally, the Vive Cosmos uses a single cable that travels to a small box that splits into power, USB 3.0, and DisplayPort for connecting to your PC. The cable was long enough that I never felt like I was reaching the end of my tether. If you hate corded VR, the Vive Cosmos works with the Vive Wireless Adapter, too, which – despite a few quirks at launch – is still one of my favorite VR accessories.
HTC Vive Cosmos - Setup and Requirements
Setting up the Vive Cosmos is fairly easy. After plugging the headset into the breakout box and inserting the requisite cables into your PC, you’ll need to download and install the Vive software, which will walk you through the rest of the setup process. That mostly involves putting some AA batteries in the controllers (two per hand), updating the headset’s firmware, and fiddling with the strap until the headset is in just the right spot. You’ll also need to flip the headphones down so they sit on your ears.
The Vive Cosmos has the same PC requirements as most other headsets, needing an i5-4590 or FX 8350 CPU, a GTX 970 or R9 290 graphics card, and 4GB of RAM – which shouldn’t be too hard to come by for a modern gaming PC. It’s also fairly lenient when it comes to room size, only needing a minimum of 2m x 1.5m for room-scale mode. That should be fairly easy to accomplish, though the bigger the better – and some games may require larger play areas.
Unfortunately, all of those benefits are overshadowed by how uncomfortable the Vive Cosmos is.
Setting your boundaries is much easier on the Cosmos than it was the original Vive. Instead of walking around the room with the headset off, you just put the headset on, use the camera’s pass-through feature to look at the room around you, and “paint” your play space on the floor. This is similar to Oculus’ recent headsets, and it’s definitely a step up from older VR hardware – though the Vive Cosmos doesn’t remember more than one room at a time, so if you tend to move it around, you’ll have to re-paint your play space every time.
HTC Vive Cosmos - Gaming and Software
Getting up and running is easy, but getting into a game is strangely confusing at first. Unlike the Vive and Index, which mostly rely on SteamVR, the Vive Cosmos also has its own Viveport software that sort of sits on top of SteamVR. The Viveport launcher is fine, and the included six month subscription to Viveport Infinity will ensure you aren’t short on things to play – though many of the best titles are still on Steam’s store, so you may have to mix and match as you go. (Once the trial is up, Viveport Infinity will cost you $12.99 per month (or $8.99 per month if you pay for a year up front).
Viveport also has its own “home” environment from which you can launch games inside the headset, and it’s beautiful – but I couldn’t access my Steam games from this environment unless I brought up the “Lens” that pops up when you press the menu button. My games were available in the Steam Home environment, though (including my Viveport games), so I tried to use that as my main launcher. All this is to say: the fragmentation between Steam and Viveport was extremely apparent, and may be confusing for new users.
When it comes to actual gaming, the Vive Cosmos is...not the best VR experience I’ve had. Since the sweet spot is so small, and the headset so difficult to wear, it felt like I was always adjusting the headset to try to see things properly. In games like Unearthing Mars 2, the subtitles were difficult to read, and I had a hard time focusing on anything except characters right in front of me.
Which brings us to the Vive Cosmos’ most glaring issue: tracking. Ignoring the regular notifications about room lighting – My Cosmos told me my room was too bright, while I saw other reviewers complain about notifications saying their rooms were too dim – in-game tracking is middling at best. The controllers seem to wobble in your hands, and while I could get by okay in some games, I often found the controllers getting stuck or lost entirely because I brought them too close to my face, or flung my arms out of the camera’s visible radius. That’s enough to kill the experience at higher levels of Beat Saber play, and was a pretty regular source of frustration for me.
Again, many games are still playable, but even after HTC’s most recent software update (which claims to improve tracking), it was noticeably worse than the original Vive, or even the Oculus Quest. HTC may continue tweaking the software as time goes on, but if any of the problems are hardware-based, I fear it may not get good enough to compete with other current headsets. (An external tracking mod is also “coming soon,” but since it’ll be sold separately, it will almost certainly be more cost effective to just grab the superior Valve Index.)
In-game tracking is middling at best.
The controllers themselves were similarly disappointing. Most of the buttons were responsive and had satisfying tactile feedback, but as I said, they felt very front-heavy and unbalanced in games where you’re moving your arms quickly (that is, when they aren’t getting lost by the sub-par tracking system). The haptic feedback also produced a very loud, high-pitched buzz, which was pretty annoying, especially to other people in the room. I much prefer the controllers on the Oculus Rift and Quest, or even the original Vive.
With all this in mind, it’s hard to know who the Vive Cosmos is really for. The only reason to buy it over the Rift, Quest, or Index would be if you absolutely have to have fully wireless, PC-caliber VR – but that’d cost another $300 for the Vive Wireless Adapter. That means you’re paying $1,000 for a headset that is wireless, but otherwise worse than the Index in almost every way. Frankly, I’d sooner buy the original Vive and use that with the wireless adapter – sure, it has a lower resolution, but just about everything else feels better, and it’ll cost less, too. Or you could buy the Oculus Quest, which allows you to play some games wirelessly (albeit with lower quality graphics) and some games wired up to your PC using the upcoming Oculus Link feature.
Every headset right now requires a sacrifice or two, but when it comes to the Cosmos, I just feel a bit short-changed. Its specs fits in perfectly between Oculus’ Rift headsets and the Valve Index. But in actual usage, it’s inferior to both.
Purchasing Guide
On paper the HTC Vive Cosmos might seem like a compelling inside-out VR headset for the PC, but it wobbly tracking leaves me wanting. At this point the Oculus Quest (See it at Amazon / See it at Amazon UK / See it at Amazon AU) is a better headset that gives you better sensor-less room scale virtual reality. What's more the Quest can act as a completely wireless headset and connect with PCs with the upcoming Oculus Link feature.