HTC VIVE Cosmos

I really wanted to love the Cosmos but some major design flaws sent it back. First is the sweet spot. Those of you who don’t know what the sweet spot is it is the center point on each fresnel lens with the image is crystal clear. Both eyes must align perfectly on these center points. The bottom line is if the earth is the size of the lens for each eye, the sweet spot is about the size of the ball point pen. What makes this worse is how the unit fits on your head. It requires many adjustments to get it perfect. I found that the only way to get it perfect meant having it strapped pretty tight on my head, which caused serious headaches and limited play time. Because the visor flips up which indeed is a great idea also means the visor doesn’t sit flush on your face. Which again, affects the centerpoint clarity. When you do get the perfect clear image on both eyes which was also a problem because sometimes one eye would be in perfect focus and the other eye would not, the very moment you allow your eyes to stray from that centerpoint everything becomes blurry extremely quickly and really bad. It’s as if your peripheral vision is completely blurred out which means you can’t move your eyes you can only move your head to look around. I have had the Oculus CV1 for 2 years and preferred it over this. The next issue was the headphones which is a pain to line up with your ears, and when you do line them up, they don’t sit flush on your ears. They pop upwards off the ear and sound quality terrible. Next is the Vive user interface which is absolutely awful at best. And confusing at worst. Trying to navigate between that and steam VR is a real pain. The tracking cameras are absolutely a joke. I had numerous issues with tracking, Constant errors on screen about there not being enough light, despite using my video lighting from my cinema work which was also ridiculous to have to use especially considering there’s plenty of light in my living room. I really wanted to leave oculus because of the whole Facebook tie in, and I wanted something that should be essentially next generation considering as I’ve had mine for two years. But this unit definitely was not the solution. I was given a lot of warnings about this headset, all if which turned out to be true. So i’m standing by for the rift S to come back into stock and we will see where the market is in another two years. Maybe the next gen valve index... My best advice is stay away from this headset.

This review is of the Vive Cosmos. Ive seen Vive Pro reviews get mixed in here. My primary basis for comparison is the original Rift with Touch controllers. To start with the good points: • Resolution is excellent. Text is clear, where I always had legibility issues with Rift. The higher pixel + subpixel density make a huge difference with clarity. • Much reduced SDE (screen door effect). Related to resolution. They opted to use RGB LCD displays instead of RGBG OLED displays. Not only is the subpixel density of LCD 50% higher than OLED, but the actual light emission surface area of OLED is much lower than LCD, giving more black space between subpixels, exaggerating SDE. • Halo design very comfortable. Overall fit feels more balanced than the Rift and less fatigue on long sessions (1 hour +) • Flip up goggle design amazing for eyeglass wearers. This feature is a godsend for putting on and taking off the unit for anyone that wears eyeglasses. It was always a battle with the Rift, having to stretch it out as far as it could go and still having the goggles catch my glasses. I can also wear glasses with larger frames than I could with the Rift. • Good ventilation. There is improved ventilation around your eyes with the gaps at brow and nose, ventilated design of the electronics components, and induced draft from the cooling fan for said electronics. I generally no longer sweat around the fit of the goggles like I did with the Rift. • Controller ergonomics improved over older Vive controllers. I thought the wand type Vive controllers felt awkward in VR the one time I used them. These feel natural, albeit not at the same level as the Touch controllers. If only someone would figure out a way to use the Cosmos headset with Touch controllers/sensors • Wireless adapter option. I can hardly wait to pick up one of these to cut the cord for good. Never was an option with the original Rift. • Very easy setup. Thanks to the inside-out tracking, there are no lighthouses to set up and configure. Now for the downsides: • Vive optics are exquisitely awful. Godrays, a tiny sweet spot, seeing reflections off of the Fresnel ridges, distortion. Rift also uses Fresnel lenses, but the ring density is higher. Still has some of the same problems, but it is obvious more effort went into optics design on the Rift. FORTUNATELY there is a solution to the optics problem. Third parties sell an adapter and lens kit that takes the lenses from a specific GearVR unit and incorporates them into a 3D printed adapter to fit in the Cosmos. It will set you back another $70, but worth every penny. Takes about 5 minutes to install and the clarity afterward is unbelievably good (photo of the replacement lenses installed in review). Personally, I think ALL VR sets should use similar lenses stock. (DISCLAIMER: THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY and prevent returns, but imo this improvement is still worth the risk) • Tracking not what it should be for a 2nd gen headset, yet. It is difficult to compare this to the Rift, which uses outside-in tracking that is extremely responsive and solid. Sudden headset motions will give a detectable lag. Rooms that are not reasonably well-lit are a problem (used to be a big problem). Controller tracking sometimes choppy, although it is possible my older rig is playing some role. Sometimes the controller tracking locks up entirely and Ive had to restart my PC to resolve it. I have only had this happen if I pause a session for a while then come back to it. Sometimes I cant get the headset to start tracking at all and have to restart the PC. However, all these issues are software related and it would be a good assumption to claim they will gradually go away as the product and software matures. Overall, this is a good product that will become a great product once the software and firmware kinks are resolved. Hopefully htc will wake up and release a version with improved lenses. Fresnel lenses should have no part in fine optics. Before doing the lens mod, I was disappointed in both the product and my purchase. Since, the visuals are stunning and I am seeing improvements being made to the software. The Viveport Infinity membership included is a nice touch. Lots of content available which is typically expensive for VR platforms. UPDATE 9/17/20: After nearly a year, HTC still cant get their act together. Head tracking never was quite right and the scene will always bob with moderate to sharp change in movement. Controller tracking very glitchy - often times my virtual hands would freeze up allowing rotation, but no movement. Viveport software buggy and getting any title to run is always a far longer process than it needs to be. Audio only works half the time. It seems that every time I want to use the device, there are some problems that need to be fixed first. Exact opposite experience as with Oculus. In addition to the lens mod, I added the wireless module. While it does un-tether you from the PC, its not truly wireless and requires you have a cable from the headset to a chunky power supply on a belt clip. The Cosmos is such a power hog you cant use just any power supply, but a 21W model I havent seen anywhere except through HTC. Their video compression is not that great and there was noticeable pixellation in some games wireless. Now the Oculus Quest 2 has been announced at less than half the cost of the Cosmos and specs are better in almost every way except maybe audio and stock headband comfort.

The display came with stuck pixels. It is fully functional but really, really frustrating.

Bottom Line Up Front: I CANNOT recommend the HTC vive Cosmos; a lot of problems and it is way overpriced. NOTE FOR HTC: I hope that the HTC engineers and department heads read this and take note as I really am very, very disappointed with this headset and I honestly believe that HTC dropped the ball on the development of this unit; and rushed it to market without the appropriate testing. I returned my unit to Amazon for a refund. Summary: I have been an owner of the original Vive for more than a year. My entire family enjoys using the original Vive. And we have not had any problems with the original Vive. I have been following the Vive Cosmos since it was announced and was looking forward to a system that supposedly has better improvements than the original Vive. Boy, was I wrong. Ordered it on 23 Sep and received it on day of release, 3 Oct 2019. Opening the box and removing the headset, I immediatley noticed how light the HMD is but I found it to be very cheaply constructed and flimsy and the face plate rattles. It just did not feel like a solid headset as the original Vive does. I followed the instructions and installed the required software with no problems..my sytem, I7-8700K CPU, Nvidia GTX 108Ti, and 32 GB RAM; while the resolution is definitley much sharper than original Vive, everything else is a negative...at least to me and my family. While everyone has different likes and dislikes, let me explain the negatives from my use of the Vive Cosmos (used for two days). Fit: yes the halo strap is comfortable but with the design of the flip up, I just could not get a good sweet spot (clear focus across what my eyes were viewing in Origin or Steam VR or game) without really cranking down the knob on the back of the headset which was painful. The problem is with this ability to flip up the HMD it does not allow for the HMD to sit flat and close to your face, resulting in severe light bleed from the nose area. I tried different adjustments for hours...all to no avail. Even with the knob cranked down as tight as I could get, there was still light bleed from the nose area and a lot of pain on my head from the severely tightened head strap. And no I do not have a big or small head, I am average; my entire family had the same problems I was having above. Resolution (The ONLY POSITIVE aspect of the VIVE COSMOS albeit blurriness was an issue at the edges of the eye lenses): yes, much sharper than the original vive but with a very small sweet spot thus leaving a lot of blur on the edges of the lens. I again tried different adjustments to include adjusting the IPD (distance between pupils of the eyes). My IPD is 68. The COSMOS allows and IPD adjustment of 61-73. Controllers: I did not think the controllers were too heavy nor do i think they were awkard to use. However, the issue with the controllers is they require two (2) AA batteries per controller. I did get about 6-7 hours of use before I had to replace the batteries. Also very few games work with these controllers as they are not mapped for many games. I tried over 10 games and only two worked without flaws...some would not work at all. Tracking: Not good....first the lighting issue--display kept popping up saying that the environment was too dark. My room has five (5) LED lights in the ceiling and a huge picture window of solid glass. There was enough light in my room to light up an entire drop zone! Tracking was jittery/clunky when using the controllers and many times I lost tracking and it would take 2-3 seconds to regain. I am of the opinion that inside out tracking is just not as accurate as outside in (i.e., using base stations...with our original Vive we have never had an issue with tracking day or night or with any app or game.) I understand that HTC did release a firmware update to address the problem with the lighting...but my question to HTC is why didnt this issue surface during testing...was the COSMOS properly tested,,by who and under what conditions??? Also, HTC is planning on releasing a HMD modular plate sometime in early 2020 (read that to mean maybe by June of 2020) that will allow tracking from outside in and thus allow the user to utilize Valve index or original Vive controllers....well, my next question to HTC is why wasnt this released at the same time as the VIVE Cosmos on 3 Oct....I suspect because it all comes down to HTC attitude of wait and see how many COSMOSs we sell and then if sales are good lets release the external tracking mod. In summary, the Vive COSMOS definitely improves on resolution display over previous headsets but that is it...everything else is negative compared to the original Vive; and it just DOES NOT go far enough to justify a $700.00 price tag. HTC is all about money and it is a shame because they have the capability to come out with the best VR sytem over any other company...including Valve. But there greed of money will hurt them and I predict that the COSMOS will bomb unless HTC Vive COSMOS undergoes some major renovations as pointed out by the many negative reviews of the COSMOS, and undergoes a major price cut. Last, to reinforce my point about their greed.. why is HTC discontinuing the original VIVE??? The original VIVE sold between 35-45% of all VR HMDs...so why abandon it vice reinforcing it and continue to support it! This is really very sad to me as I would like to see HTC be very, very successful in the VR market...but the decision makers in that company are OUT of TOUCH with reality and this could be the beginning of the end for HTCs VR quest.

Apparently, the Cosmos is too new to be compatible out-of-the-box with many pre-cosmos games and apps. You can finagle the settings to use legacy controller mappings but the Cosmos controllers still dont seem to work 100% making it difficult or impossible to play most of the games that I tried. The controllers themselves seem to track poorly, do not allow for fine control or positioning, and lose it if your hand goes behind your head (to get that virtual arrow out of your quiver for example). Putting one or both of the controllers down often causes a tracking loss where you have to stop and reinitialize the controllers! The headset does not want to stay centered and continuously tracks right as used, (Turning towards the brightest light source maybe?), causing you to periodically stop and reset the forward and floor positioning. With ceiling light and floor lamp in use, I would still get periodic messages that my environment was too dark. I found that glaring intermittent light leaks from around the nose bridge to be immersion breaking. It would be nice to be able to operate in a low light environment so that would not happen. Sometimes I would have to rescan my play area before the Cosmos would allow me to use a game or app. The controllers are heavier than other VR controllers I have used causing me to take breaks more often than I would like. The graphic quality is decent with minimal screen-door effect, and the audio is OK.

I am still trying to understand what HTC intended with the Cosmos Set. Considering the whole background and all the competitors and their technologies, I expected this one to be a ground breaking release. I dont like the lenses and I dont like the bad tracking on artificial lights. It is not compatible with Windows Mixed Reality despite all the cameras, and cant track anything else unless you purchase the whole outside tracking extra stuff.... Just like Hello Games did to No Man Sky, I am expecting HTC to release a update that will unleash some untapped potential of the Cosmos head set... If that happens I will come back here to change my statement. One more thing, 1 year of viveport subscription is nothing considering the software that you get access to. I expected to have at least Beat Saber, Sparc, and others to make it worth consider a continuous subscription. I am only considering 3 stars there, because eye resolution and sound quality are quite good. Also due to the flip up and cooling features. Others issues are, parts come off too easily, it is very hard to set focus sweet spot, it is connected to Steam VR but it fails to initiate Steam when it runs the VR room,

I dont know if its just me, but it felt impossible to work with. Ive used a few different headsets and this is the only type that had these issues. Issues i ran into were: Very very uncomfortable to wear, gave me very severe headaches. Ive never had this with other headsets, but this could just be an issue of my head shape? Unsure. Very blurry. I wear glasses, so like other headsets, i kept them on inside the headset. This proved to be problematic, as no matter where i looked, it was very blurry. I had to adjust it for a long time every time i put the headset on, and if i moved around too much, it would get blurry again. This made it very hard to do anything. Glasses off did not help any, for the record. The controllers were not very intuitive at all, and honestly were somewhat deceptive. They look just like oculus rifts touch controllers, so one would assume they were also touch controllers. This is not the case. They are in fact, not even slightly touch based. One of the joysticks were also off by an annoying margin. So if you wanted to move left, youd have to move the joystick left and down, or it would just make you go up. This all said, i feel like these issues would vary person to person. A bit more reading and research than i did is recommended for purchases like these. The tracking was about what you would expect with a camera based tracking headset, limited, but functional. If you want better tracking you can even replace the faceplate and get lighthouse sensors. A big +. Would i recommend buying? Depends. If you have a big budget and plan on getting the external tracking, yes. If youre just looking for a casual experience in VR, then get the oculus rift S. Its far cheaper. This thing is for people who plan on getting external tracking on an updated headset. The price reflects this. If youre reading this during the period where the oculus is out of stock and want to know if you should buy this instead of waiting, the answer is dont do it. This is a very expensive purchase compared to oculus. Not for casual experiences.

I bought this during black Friday with 20% off amazon warehouses products including a $100 price drop against new. In the end cost about 450 for the vive cosmos. It did arrive in its original packaging, but in the box all the wrappers were just stuffed in there and none of the components were in their original wrapping?!? So it didnt look like new but there was no damage on any of the components and it worked fine. I also purchased the wireless adapter and mount and it took me a while to get it all working. Have to take the headset foam/cushions out to install the new cable and the mount for the wireless. It took me about 2hours to get it all working. There were some quirks too like sometimes it would give me an error code to reboot the computer and if I did it would hang on reboot or at least my monitor display wouldnt come up but if you reboot again then it all worked again. This seemed to be due to improper shutdown or startup as the documentation for such things is non-existent. Still not sure how you are suppose to shutdown. But all the complaints about cosmos seems exaggerated or something. Tracking is just fine as good as the oculus quest that my kids play with. Its actually much more comfortable fit than oculus quest. The sweetspot is not any better or worse compared to quest either. They are all a blurrier as you shift your eyes to the edges. I wear glasses so maybe that is contributing. Room setup is more poor interface design as I couldnt figure out how to reset playroom other than from the menu from my pc not directly from my headset. The directions that I looked up on the webpage also didnt match my screens so they were just confusing and wasting time. The product is good and the wireless experience for pc driven is very good. The quality of games significantly and undeniably better than Oculus Quest. I am satisfied with my purchase and I think it is a good choice. I have not tried the valve index, but everyone says good good things about it so this is in reference to oculus quest. Cosmos is far better than quest even with oculus link that is very interesting, but doesnt work quite as well.

I decided to wait a little while before writing my review of this headset because a lot of the games that I play regularly in VR werent compatible with this headset at launch. After support was added for games like SuperHot, I can say that this is a much better experience compared to the samsung HMD that I was using before. LCD screens dont have the contrast of OLED screens, but thats really the only benefit. The image is clearer, the response seems faster, and there is less screen door effect on the LCD screens. This is either because HTC has had more time to figure out VR screens, or an inherent advantage of LCD, but regardless, the experience is a lot better. Motion tracking coming from a 2 camera setup is worlds better. After recent updates, I dont have any issues at all. While playing The Lab, I had to turn my head to load an arrow on the Samsung headset because it would lose tracking. With the Vive, its not an issue because of the 6 camera setup. The tracking is consistent, and unless you move a controller completely behind your back, it wont lose track of it. The fit of the headset is also a massive improvement. The top strap and headband combo work great compared to just having the headband. Also, being able to flip up the screen is great for getting out of VR without taking off the headset. Ive always been a fan of including the headphones with the headset, and the headphones included with the Vive are comparable to the ones on the Samsung HMD, if not slightly better when it comes to positional audio. The Vive also gives you the option to swap them out for your own headphones, which is a nice feature. The controllers seem small when you initially grab them, but they fit well in the hand after figuring out your grip. They are more ergonomic than the Windows Mixed Reality controllers. The thumb sticks have touch sensors which lets them function like the old vive controllers, but with the more natural feel of a joystick. Each controller also has two buttons for game controls, a grip button, trigger, bumper, and a start/options button for vive functions. For people who use controllers frequently, this feels like a very natural control scheme. Overall: the Vive Cosmos is a great improvement over older all-in-one virtual reality headsets for the PC. I dont have any other headsets to compare it to. I know that the valve index has improvements in refresh rate and controller functionality, but it also requires lighthouses and deeper pockets. This is just the best experience I have had with a VR headset when it comes to setup and use.

Set up is easy and support is slow but regular. Unfortunately the tracking leaves a lot to be desired. Games that require more precise aiming like Arizona Sunshine, Gorn, Pavlov, or Boneworks lose a lot of playability because the headset simply cannot track precisely. It is passable at best, if youre looking for a more casual experience like Beat Saber then this headset works fine. It also requires a pretty bright room, things like large open windows will confuse the room tracking. Game support is really slow, I purchased on launch in October but some games like Skyrim or Gorn are still not officially supported. Fortunately there are plenty of fan mods to get things in running condition. Overall, this headset is hard to justify at its price point. For the functionality you get it would be more reasonable to price at maybe half of what HTC currently sells it for.