During the recent past 8th to 11th of January at CES 2019, the event set in Las Vegas for consumers technologies, HTC Vive announced its new VR headset, Vive Cosmos.
In this post we’re going to analyze the Vive Cosmos device and its characteristics.
It’s a PC VR system. This means that Vive Cosmos is not an standalone or independent headset like the new Oculus Quest. We expect that because of this fact the price won’t rise.
It will have features with other devices. As we can see in the launch trailer, the headset is shown with a smartphone that makes us think it can power the device too.
The device is modular, which means we can customize and update it. This is the reason we believe the headset can be wireless if we use the adapter available in their store.
It has a new inside-out tracking system. Say goodbye to all the sensors HTC Vive has us used to in its headsets. Vive Cosmos has four cameras, two on the front and one on each side, that track and scan the environment, its position and the controllers to give you the six degrees of freedom (6 DoF).
The screen flips up. Not all VR headsets are capable of do this and in our opinion this should be a standard to follow in every device.
New controllers. Although you can still use the basic model from HTC, the headset has a new pair of models, very similar to the controllers from Oculus Quest, which makes us think this could become a standard, at least for VR headsets that focus on gaming and consuming.
It’s going to have Vive’s “sharpest screens yet”. Right now Vive’s Pro Screens has a resolution combined of 2880×1600 pixels, if Vive Cosmos goes over it, its price might too.
It comes with a new platform system, Vive Reality System. You will still be able to use Steam VR with Vive Cosmos, but it seems like HTC wants to departure from it. In this new platform we can buy and launch VR experiences and games, use the web browser and meet up with friends.
Vive Cosmos is expected to be realised this year but the price, as well as the date, is unknown and we can just expeculate.
As our conclusion, it looks like HTC Vive want Cosmos to be a product for every consumer as it seems they want it to focus on experiences and games, but if some of the characteristics are better than the Vive’s Pro which price is now at 799$, Vive Cosmos might be even more expensive and the consumers will look for cheaper options like the old Lenovo Windows Mixed Reality that during the last Black Friday had a price of 150€.
Right now we cannot do anything but wait until the company realise it or announce anything else.
We will keep our eyes on it!
If you want to know more about the latest device that we analized, check this post
