HTC Vive Cosmos External Tracking Faceplate Review

With HTC's announcement of a family of Vive Cosmos virtual reality headsets, we revisit the Cosmos to see how it's held up and test the new external tracking faceplate that gives it SteamVR Lighthouse tracking. Plus, an interview with HTC about the state of Cosmos tracking updates, modular faceplate strategy, and future of VR for the company!

Shot by Gunther Kirsch and edited by Norman Chan

Tested is:

Intro bumper by Abe Dieckman

Thanks for watching!

[DragonFlash]

For $900 just save the money for the valve index

[projectrallus]

$200 to repair a defective product is not exciting news.

[JanTuts]

4:27 OK, let me rephrase that: "If you are a Cosmos owner, and highly regret that purchase, and obviously can't find anyone who'd want to buy it off of you (so you can buy an Index instead), but you still happen to have your old Vive Wands and Lighthouses laying around, then you can now spend yet another $200, to make your Cosmos useable and playable, and get a much better experience." :)

[meat]

It's nice to see HTC stepping aside from making good products and give other companies a try. That controller should have never left testing. No one should buy it where a $200 WMR can get you better tracking at less than a third the price. It looks like HTC is neck deep in sunk cost fallacy.

[kvbomb]

I bought the cosmos for my son for christmas and instantly he didn't like it because of tracking troubles. It just sucks that I have to pay more to get better tracking... Feel ripped off. Won't be dealing with HTC after this.

[ThrillSeekerVR]

I think it's time for a meme break....

[Sampler]

Oh, the look of the headset changes from surprised to determined.

[johnarnebirkeland]

So in short, Cosmos users must pay $200 extra to get tracking on par with a 4 year old headset. Sometimes I wish Tested would ask more difficult questions, instead of pussyfooting around the issue.

[elliumsoverseer]

Not that anybody asked, thought I’d share my thoughts.

The fact that the VR device has so many issues, there are two possibilities of what they wanted to achieve.

One, it could be similar to if a laboratory published their discovery or invention before everything was written out and complete. There are multiple holes or “bugs”, but they want to get their finding out and “funding” furthered, so they pushed out an incomplete product.

I only say that because I’m learning about scenarios like this in my college research methods class.

2, or it could be they wanted to push a incomplete product, so they could then sell “patches” for it, in the shape of the faceplate, or additional devices to sync to the HTC VIVE.

In other words, a shady Marketing attempt to squeeze out more money from the consumers.


Insert funny Fallout 4 meme about really bad choices:

Everyone disliked that.

*super edit* received a comment wondering if I was a native English speaker. It was just a case of a really exhausted Texan boy trying to sound smart, so I reformatted the content.

[heyguyslolGAMING]

I would really love to know what Vive is smoke'n these days where they think you as the consumer should have to pay to beta test their HMD's. They don't even try to be covert about it either, lol.

[gurthang]

“Just like the original Vive” ...except nearly double the price and almost the same price as the Vive Pro

[goku]

HTC single-handedly pushing Valve Index sales forward...

[DriveCancelDC]

It now costs more than an Index with this faceplate. Good job HTC, you played yourselves.

[xXSinForLifeXx]

Htc is dead in the water.

Honestly cant see them competiting with Valve or Oculus the only reason HTC was doing well is because valve was supporting them.

[CaseFace]

Man without Valve, HTC is floundering to keep Vive up to snuff with modern VR. I am so glad I dropped the cash on an Index, well worth the cost for the best VR experience

[madbyte_]

Good old "create a problem", then "sell the solution"... Companies are fun!

[steel]

Let me tell a joke.
Ok, ready?


HTC.

[Adtr]

As long as the tracking is this RBG camera broken mess, I could never recommend this to anyone. If they could make the tracking as good as Rift S then it would be a no brainer for new people.

[leoozada]

Do you want to spend a lot on VR? Sell your HTC and get an Index.
Do you want to spend a little on VR? Sell your HTC, get a Quest and Link cable.

HTC screwed up pretty badly.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[forestR]

HTC: "We designed the cosmos as a "family product" we knew ISO was a failure so we include that in the box at full cost to our customers. This enables us to sting our customers for the hardware that SHOULD have been used in the first place, which is good for our money".