HTC Vive Cosmos External Tracking Faceplate Review 

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

For $900 just save the money for the valve index

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." :)

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.

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

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.

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

now if only they released the cosmos like this to begin with and then added the inside out tracking faceplate down the road things would have been sooo much better

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

So with that thing on you can use valve knuckles without the base thing ?

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

I have a Cosmos and a Vive Pro w/2.0 base stations/controllers so I may consider purchasing the $200 faceplate. One question I have is if I change over to the new faceplate will it still work with the current Cosmos VR system (eg. Origin/lense) or does it need to only use SteamVR like my Vive Pro? Also, would I be able to use the Vive Pro Link Box or would I still need to use the Cosmos Link Box and if so would I be able to use the Cosmos Link Box with my Vive Pro in order to make switching between headsets easier? Thanks.

Can you try out the Pimax 8k + and the Pimax 8K X I was wondering if the working is any better?

do the knuckles work out of box with face plate 2.0 or no and do i need base stations 2.0

So if I understand correctly, the regular cosmos controller does NOT have external tracking? So I can't use it with steam? I have a vive cosmos elite and I have bought the controllers because of the analogue and now I'm not sure if it'll work with my headset.

Let me tell a joke. Ok, ready? HTC.

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

Wait you can use index controllers with the cosmos elite Also you can use the lighthouse 2.0 base station

you have the rift that is much cheaper with a lot better inside tracking and better controllers, and you have the index with much better tracking, FOV and controllers. Why would anyone buy this?

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.

Before we knew the tracking was going to be garbage, I remember it was teased to support vr off a phone (something unique to the scene right now). What happened to that? I haven’t heard it mentioned once since release

What ever happened to the “data glove” ?

Does it work with a mic

HTC should just pack it up, they failed us all... Quest is just better Linked or Standalone... Tracking is Horrible and that's a make or break in VR... If u would've used the same tracking Oculus uses in the Cosmos I would've brought one but no u fucked up and can't unfuck it.

So I have to go out and spend several hundred dollars more to get a decent experience with my Vive Cosmos? All of my troubles could have been avoided if I just went for the lower resolution Occulus Rift S.

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.

Why do HTC customers have to paid for HTC‘s fault on their defective devices

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

I bought the cosmos from a friend as my first vr set. It's great for casual fun but I find with games such as kingspray vr and pavlov it doesn't track well enough for accuracy. Plus the other issue is in Australia they never released the steam vr sets like the index so to buy one its about 1800 aud to buy a full set. Most people are selling them individually as in headsets separate to controllers etc for 900+ aud it's nuts.

would like to see this with the quest tbh really want to try the index controllers

adding $200 to the price of Cosmos makes it unreasonably overpriced.

so u have to spend an additional 200 dollars to make it actually work in the way its supposed to?

it starts

ok, so the cosmos play will be better then the cosmos in tracking ? cuz i already bought the cosmos and the tricking is like 80% accurate.

Since they love to offer so many options, they could have used Cosmos controllers and integrated lighthouse tracking in the ring instead of inside out.

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".

When he kept saying "put the controllers close my face" I kept thinking about that scene in Lost In Translation. "Close my face? Close my face?"

The original HTC OG Vive is still good...should have not discontinued it..

Buy all the plates you wish.... You're still stuck with the same resolution, screens and lenses... Make those swappable/upgradable and you may just be on to something... My Wish list: much wider FOV (for me one of biggest drawbacks of all VR, is the restrictive binocular tunnel vision), better lenses and ability to run PC connected or stand alone. Bonus points for a connection port for external storage like a thumb drive to run off of!! Just my two cents..

Just got a cosmos, and its my first VR So I'd need controllers, lighthouses AND new faceplate. We're talking $700 in upgrades here. what the hell.

Owning the HTC VIVE and the VIVE PRO i'm not really looking for higher resolution screens reason being that i already have to turn down quality in the game for it to run at 90fps. And yes i'm using a high end pc with 2080TI . once i can run ACC and DCS with everything set to high then its time to move on to higher resolution HMD's . So for now its Nvidia and AMD that have to do their bit . ;-)

$200.00 for a Bandaid?

so thats why i cant connect the knuckles whith no et face plate ooooh im buyin it now love valve knucles

This still doesn't fix the TINY sweet spot for the lenses that I could never seem to hit unless I pushed it against my face with a hand because the hinge (that's super not necessary if you have good passthrough) ALWAYS has some give to it and would cut the FOV by 10-15°

Last I checked vive used to be at the head of VR innovation. What happened in the last few years?

I see that the faceplate team lost in internal team discussions. I also see that the corrective action did not fix the problem. I see larger issues afoot.

the xr plate sounds promising. but they would still have to fix the controller tracking properly. it would have to be at least as good as the rift s. you dont build a house on a bad foundation.

They realized they couldnt fix tracking with the technology they put into it so there trying to downgrade the headset to fix the tracking...and this headset was way more expensive then the rift s that doesnt have these issues.

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

The cosmos elite sounds like a vive pro but with extra steps

even with the index's quality control problems it is still a much better buy. like i have the index and had to replace the controllers for not working out of the box, i made a support ticket and they quickly responded and sent me new ones that work great. and with the $200 cover it's $100 more than an index full kit. the only reason i would ever see anyone buying one of these is because you just cant buy an index since its always sold out.

Awsome

I was interested in this since i own the OG vive, and now that i want to upgrade HMD i expected a big upgrade maybe as a standalone visor too, but i guess not! gonna go with the quest 2 probably, 350 if the Link system works well it's a no brainer

These vr glasses. have a software / hardware conflict. this is manifested by incorrect recognition of the USB 3.0 port. They get hot, error messages are displayed. Generally, a lot of combinations have to be made to make them work.

The tracking definitely has to continue to improve. "Good Enough" is not enough in today's market considering the current competition but having said that and to their credit they are continuing to work on it so i am hopeful that they will be able to resolve the remaining issues. What they didn't mention is that the original OG Vive wands don't work with the 2.0 base stations, only the 1.0 version and since the design is way over 4 years old ( and no thumb sticks) in my humble opinion they really need to upgrade them to something more suitable to the second decade of the 21st century (if you know what I mean) otherwise they just won't compete in the current market successfully. Index controllers are a great example of what they need to develop but try getting a pair these days , they only have half the product or 1.5 so to speak. Maybe a third party will come up with compatible controllers that are easier to use and have more functionality. Finally I think the AR\VR face plate is really interesting and I hope they implement it well (and fix the tracking) it will give them a edge. A bummer that we have to get third party devices for eye tracking with the Cosmos. In any case great and informative interview thanks it's good to hear information coming for the source so to speak.

The XR version with a wireless adapter is definitely a differentiator right now in the PC VR market. Hope to get my hands on that.

Bought it, tried it, now I'm returning it.

I am so torn between headsets right now. I really want an Index. But, they're next to unicorn rarity here. I can easily get a Cosmos Elite or a Rift S. Cosmos is priced the same as an Index. And I really don't like the idea of having to use FB. Since they aren't known to stick by their word on anything.

900 for the hmd plus upgrade... Still leaves out lighthouses and controllers so let's bump that up to 1250. Is HTC trying to go bankrupt?

HTC should have to send this for free to existing cosmos owners!

I don't really understand why you would spend 200 on this face plate. If you buy base stations, controllers, and dongles for connecting them you can have the inside out tracking for just your head which seems to work fine. The controllers are then tracked externally which works great, so instead of spending 200 on a face plate just spend 30 on two vive tracker dongles.

Honestly, never had an issue with Cosmos tracking outside of using two hands on a rifle. However, the biggest offender is the goddam design and weight. The controllers are too big and don't fit into the hand comfortably. Due to the un-ergonomic design of the grips they keep on wanting to slip out of your grasp so you constantly have to re-adjust. Rift S controllers are lighter and compensate with the knuckle straps. The headset is too front end heavy and the head brace don't fit the head as comfortably as the Rift S. Rift S feels like a much more immersive experience while you are constantly reminded of the giant rock you have strapped to your face with the Cosmos. Along with the tiny sweet spot on the Cosmos means that you are constantly taken out of the immersion. Definitely Rift S is the superior experience. Cosmos is probably only good for watching VR porn.

>be me >cosmos owner >dont have base stations or wands >buying something pretty much equal to the index for 2 times the price with knuckles and 2.0 stations thanks htc

I'd be curious if they plan to make an elite plate that supports SteamVR 2.0 tracking in the future. Edit: I guess this would eat into the Vive Pro market and its purpose. So from their prospective would make sense not to.

i wish they sent someone who would call them out on this crap not norm

699 for the cosmos plus the lighthouse, faceplate, and index controllers. It doesn't matter how much the lighthouse and faceplate are the controllers would push the price over Valve Index at 900 so you may as well just get that.

If external tracking fits in that small little plate why didn't they just have it already in there to start with it seems like they're just trying to charge you more by making add-ons for it I'd rather buy the whole package in one headset

Not to excuse the Cosmos, but why are you holding a handgun up close to your face? It should be held out with your dominant arm at not quite full reach. Watch some shooting videos.

imagine paying 900 dollars for an eh headset when you can get an index for 100 more

if its the controller tracking that was bad. how does this faceplate even help. you could already have just used lighthouse tracking and index or vive wands and the inside out for the headset itself. a bit trickier to set up but definitely doable. all this does is make the headset tracking better, which was already not too bad. (at least as a wmr owner anyway, i can attest to the hmd tracking being pretty much perfect, its only the controller tracking that has flaws.)

Interesting that the other cosmos SKUs never made it to market and the line was discontinued in many countries....shame.

they should replace the standard faceplate with one that has extra cameras further out/ wider for better controller tracking. and then just use the integrated cameras for passthrough. they would have to offer a free new faceplate for existing cosmos and sell all new cosmos's with the new faceplate. could potentially fix the controller tracking issues. or at leat the occlusion issues. and all without a complete redesign or replacement of the actual headset itself.

I believe HTC has to launch a robust inside-out tracking for the sake of survive in this VR business. All-in-one VR HMD will be the mainstream of VR in the near future.As you can tell an easy to set up HMD without any additional Lighthouse tracking will encourage more people to join VR world. Oculus quest is the wonderful example of that. Also in one of the Chinese news report state that , the head of HTC China has said: Cosmos is all developing by HTC itself, as you know HTC had been criticized for owing less VR relative patterns compare to his competitors on(e.g Microsoft ,Samsung and Facebook) .It had happened before when HTC still in phone business and then heavily rely on the supplier to offer them the tech, unlike Samsung vertical integrate all the components and make all the parts. In conclusion, they just fail to launch a good tracking HMD and as the VR section be the main source of company revenue , the price tag just cannot be lower.Viveport infinity seems to be right yet the content just not will be compete with Oculus’s

I was and will always be a Vive wand controller fan (index to but more of the Vive wands) and they feel right and I'm sure that if you had the right PC you could do it The faceplate you don't need to buy just buy the elite and the index Simple

They've still forgotten the base loyal customer who early adopted VR. I want the cosmos with the faceplate to work with my lighthouses only because I want to lose the screen door. . What an ass backwards way of doing something. Brain dead imho. Honestly I'm seriously considering the Pimax for my 2.0 . Cause the Index failed too since the product isn't even available in Canada.

why are they not discontinuing the original vive wands and replacing them with identical wands but with thumbsticks and one or two extra buttons etc. just like other controllers. jeeze.

And you can't tell me that anyone is going to want to 4 camera over a 6 camera that's not easing into playing that's screwing you out of playing properly

Actually, the passthough camera are disconnected with this faceplate, god knows why. With index controllers and wireless module think it’s possibly the best headset

I’m loving the tec vids. Digital love is safe sex ;)

Shame Lenovo stopped producing the Explorer, because it was an incredible value for the money. For about $200, it was an incredible entry-point into VR for people that don't want to spend a fortune, and it was the second best native WMR headset, and less than half the price of the Samsung headset that beat it out. But now they're partnered to do hardware with Oculus and the Explorer is discontinued, while still reselling used for more than it did new. The Rift S is basically the Explorer with a few tweaks.

I see everybody saying "just buy an index," but the cosmos has a higher resolution, so if you want higher resolution you should go for a cosmos, but the index has a higher FOV, so if you're looking for higher FOV you should go for an index.

Here's my two cents on this. I see a lot of angry people in the comments, rightfully so if you bought the original Cosmos. I just got the Cosmos Elite. I spent about 2 weeks researching different options for VR headsets, and my 3 choices boiled down to the Cosmos Elite, Valve Index or Oculus Rift S. I'm doing a lot of working from home, so I rarely get to go out and socialize with the lockdown. With that said, I wanted something right then and there, and the Index & Oculus Rift S were nowhere to be found. Almost 3 months for the Index and God knows when the Rift S would be back in stock. After 2 weeks of owning the Cosmos Elite, I really do like it. Is it a little bit too expensive for what it is? Yes, but it wasn't that big of a deal (thanks Stimulus check). I do have the Index Controllers on preorder, so I'll at least be getting a somewhat close experience to the Valve Index. Yes I'm spending a little more, but I'm impatient and was getting super bored at home so to me it was worth it.

Playstation VR had/has the same issue. Light tracking for controllers isn't the best stand-alone tech out there. #Oculus Quest. Why did they decide to use a less accurate tracking system like light, when better tracking exists?

vive, you have sold me on everything about he cosmos. except for the controller tracking and the price. its everything i wanted as an upgrade path from my wmr. except for those two things. sorry to say but they are not acceptable as is...

The only real advantage of the HTC headsets in my opinion is that they are the only headsets with a proper PCVR wireless solution available. And they kill it with the much too high price and the fact you cant combine the parts you need without paying a lot more (like Elite + Base Stations V2 + Index Controller + Wireless). As soon as the first competitor (Oculus or Valve) will also bring a wireless solution, HTC will completely die off I think. The real next step in PCVR is wireless PCVR because its more important to the most then more refresh rate oder a slightly bigger FOV. HTC could have used this advantage from the beginning with making a really good wireless overall package but they completely failed it.

I've had the Elite kit for two months. I only have a few complaints: - Too expensive, especially considering the competition of Index and PiMax. Idk how this system remains viable as other devices become available. - The "flip up" mechanism is too loose. The headset itself lifts off your face while looking down. This makes the image blurry. It's a shockingly bad compromise and I don't know who was asking for it. Having a flip up is nice. Being able to see what you're virtually picking up off the ground is even better. - The headphone over-center mechanism had to be broken in before they would stay on my ears. Not a deal breaker, just another weird design decision. - Activate the cameras, HTC. Every part of this $900 machine should work. Add a peak function. I hope this was an engineering issue and not a product differentiation issue. - Lastly, the FOV. It could be better. Part of the pitch is that Cosmos can be upgraded. Because of the optics, the FOV will never be one of those upgrades. Unless I'm just misunderstanding, which is possible.

Take a look at Toler tools omnilock

My prediction is that HTC will go out of business by the year's end. The Cosmos is an embarrassment.

I feel like this interview hurt HTC more than helped. They feel...bumbling and evasive, and don't say much. Poor dudes are sitting there answering questions that they know they don't have solutions for. I'm still waiting for HTC to released these faceplates by posting a video of them all on a table spinning around.

I Reaaaaaly dont understand why they went with the lightrings. Inside out tracking with IR leds was already mature, cheap and power efficient. Even if the lightring tracking was good it would be inferior because of the heavy, bulky controllers that just suck up batteries in a flash.

Their 5G was running to a laptop which was streaming to a vive focus over wifi. It was much worse than current virtualdesktop w quest

lol i was about to buy them thiks weekend cause they are the only headset avalaible in australia or at least from retail shops atm and now i know why cause there shit and they are selling for $1300 seen that the HTC Vive Cosmos Elite comes out next week was gonna wait for thta there going for 1700 might be a bit better with the base stations and stuff either that or i might just buy the rift s that everyone keeps saying to get hell of a lot cheaper but just means ill have to wait for them to get sent

200 dollars on top of a vr headset wich could cost up to 800 dollars makes me think, maybe look at oculesses quest...

is this Pimax 2.0 ?

I really like my HTC Vive Pro. It seems the Cosmos is a step backwards. Why not just improve a proven product. Just give us higher resolution and wider field of view and I would happily buy it.