“I am afraid the VIVE Cosmos headset has been discontinued in the US. I suggest you to check with resellers if they have it available,” an HTC service representative confirmed with Road to VR, echoing the statement provided to Kody1996.
At the time of this writing, new units are still available direct from HTC in select markets, including Europe, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan.
Photo by Road to VR
Vive Cosmos has always been a bit of an odd duck. Launching a little over a year after Vive Pro hit the market, Cosmos was set to be the company’s first consumer VR headset since the original HTC Vive. Cosmos’ claim to fame in 2019: integrated audio, competitive displays, and an inside-out optical tracking, which was… not great.
At its 2019 launch, the $700 Cosmos was sandwiched between two primary competitors: Oculus Rift S on the low-end at $400 and Valve Index on the high-end at $1,000 (controllers and base stations included). It would have to perform better than Rift S to defend its seat in the middle ground, but it was actually so bad at launch we postponed our review because we thought we had received a faulty unit. Nope. The headset’s inside-out tracking was just really unreliable in everything but perfect lighting conditions.
Those tracking woes were partially improved with successive updates, although the only real way to get ‘perfect’ tracking out of the headset was to ditch its modular faceplate and middling controllers and swap it out for the platform’s rock-solid SteamVR-tracking faceplate, courtesy of Vive Cosmos Elite. When Cosmos Elite launched in 2020, that would have set you back $900 for the all-in kit, putting it $100 below Index, which is still broadly considered the reigning champ for best all-around PC VR headset.
Despite lowering the price of the all-in Cosmos Elite kit in the US from $900 to $750, and even offering a headset-only option for as little as $550, HTC’s modular headset never really managed to serve up competition to Oculus or Valve, making only a sliver of an in-road on Steam in its first year.
HTC is doing a week-long holiday sale starting today that is bringing deep discounts to many of its PC VR headsets, as well as accessories such as the Vive Wireless Adapter and Deluxe Audio Strap.
The promo is in effect starting today, and goes until December 19th (or until supplies sell out).
We’ve listed prices in US dollars below, however you’ll find similar savings across both EU and UK regional sites. Here’s the full list of VR hardware currently on sale:
Natively compatible with original 2016-era HTC Vive
We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for more savings in the coming days, as the usual rush of hardware and software discounts tend to arrive around this time frame, often seeing repeats of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. Check back for more deals and discounts!
As is now becoming commonplace, Black Friday isn’t a single day of amazing deals, expanding to a whole weekend and now several weeks. Today, HTC Vive has announced its latest raft of deals, where customers could save up to £250 GBP on the latest virtual reality (VR) hardware.
A the top of the pile for discounts is the Vive Cosmos Elite Full Kit with HTC Vive knocking a whopping £250 off the entire kit. Normally £899, the deal drops the cost down to £649.00, a great all-in-one bundle for those with a VR-capable PC. The kit comes with SteamVR 1.0 base stations and the latest Vive controllers. Specification wise it offers a combined resolution of 2880×1770 (1440×1700 per eye) using an LCD display, 110-degree field of view (FoV), a hinged front to easily drop in and out of VR, built-in headphones and IPD adjustment.
If you’ve already got a SteamVR setup and want to upgrade then the Vive Cosmos Elite headset has £150 off, dropping the price to £399. Or in the same range, the original Vive Cosmos with its inside-out tracking is available with a £200 saving, costing a competitive £499.
HTC Vive isn’t stopping there. Going into its pro range the Vive Pro Full Kit is on sale for £919.00, saving customers £200 on the regular retail price. If you really want to step up further there’s always the Vive Pro Eye with its in-built eye tracking. That’s currently £1,099.00, a reduction of £200.
It’s not just VR headsets HTC Vive is discounting, the Wireless Adaptor Full Pack and Vive Deluxe Audio Strap prices have also been slashed. The Wireless Adaptor is now £209.00 rather than £359.00, whilst the Audio Strap comes in at £79.99, a saving of £30. All these offers are available via the UK website from today until 29th November 2021.
Expect more VR Black Friday deals in the coming deals in the coming days. As they’re announced, VRFocus will keep you updated.
A pretty attractive new HTC deal bundles the Vive Wireless Adapter in the Cosmos Elite headset in the UK just ahead of the company’s Vive Flow announcement.
The deal, live from today on the Vive website until October 14, applies to the full Cosmos Elite package only, and not the headset-only option. We also don’t see the deal listed in the US yet but will update this article if that happens. The overall package gets you the headset, two Vive wands and 2 SteamVR base stations as well as the Wireless Adapter for £899. Usually the adapter is a hefty £359 itself, so you’re saving quite a lot there even if the headset itself is pretty expensive.
The Elite version of the Cosmos swaps out the base version’s inside-out tracking for the more reliable Lighthouse system from Valve. It’s essentially an upgraded version of the original Vive, though it’s also a step behind the recently-released (and even more expensive) Vive Pro 2 on the specs front.
Still, if you’ve been looking for a wireless PC VR setup and don’t want Facebook’s Oculus Quest — which has a built-in PC VR streaming option — then this could be a good choice. We reviewed the setup back in 2018 with a Vive Pro, which we thought offered a great but expensive experience. The Elite version of the Cosmos, meanwhile, was a solid upgrade, if not enough to make a real dent in the PC market.
It’s possible HTC is trying to sell off adapters and Cosmos units before its announcement later this month. The company’s teased an event for October 14 — the same day this deal ends — and we uncovered trademark filings for something called Vive Flow. Could Flow perhaps represent a new wireless solution? Or does HTC have other plans?
It’s also important to note that the Pro headsets listed in the sale are the older Pro models. The newer Pro 2 model was announced in May alongside the enterprise-focused HTC Vive Focus 3. Those newer headsets remain at full price, with the headset-only model of the Pro 2 available for £659 and the full Pro 2 kit available for £1299.
Spring is here so it’s time for some seasonal offers. The first out the gate is HTC Vive which is offering a £120 GBP discount (or regional equivalent) on its Vive Cosmos range in select countries.
This is becoming a trend for the company which previously conducted the same deal back in February. So for one week only, from now until 4th April, you can purchase either the standard Vive Cosmos or the Vive Cosmos Elite for that whopping discount. The brings the Vive Cosmos down from £699 to £579 and the Vive Cosmos Elite from £899 to £779. Not too shabby if you’re after a dedicated PC VR headset and the Valve Index is a bit too much of a stretch.
If you’re unaware of the difference between the two headsets, it’s all down to tracking. The Vive Cosmos has inside-out tracking thank’s to the six cameras dotted on the front and sides. These tracking both you’re position within your play area as well as the two motion controllers. This solution is also easier to setup with no external sensors to worry about. The Vive Cosmos on the other hand, utilises the SteamVR 1.0 basestations which need to be wall-mounted (or mounted on anything at the required height). Using this system you also ge tthe older, Vive motion controllers. The upside to this system is that its very accurate, can be expanded if you ever needed to and also supports the Vive Trackers.
As for the other features, both headsets provide a combined resolution of 2880×1770 (1440×1700 per-eye) using an LCD display, a 90Hz refresh rate, a maximum 110-degree FoV, IPD adjustment, a hinged halo strap to easily drop in and out of VR and built-in headphones for spatial audio.
HTC Vive is gearing up for a big 2021 by the looks of it. Earlier this month the company announced its new third-generation Vive Tracker which features improved battery life, weight reduction and smaller footprint. Additionally, the Vive Facial Tracker was launched, allowing for the real-time depiction of facial expressions.
Even more exciting, there’s a new headset on the way – possibly why the Vive Cosmos is being discounted. Very little has been revealed about the device other than it’s due this year and it’ll be all-in-one (AIO) so no PC required.
For UK customers, the current Vive Cosmos Spring deals can be found at Vive.com, Amazon, Argos, Carphone, Game, Overclockers, Scan and Ebuyer. For further hardware updates from HTC Vive, keep reading VRFocus.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know what you think about the news of HTC gearing up to announce a new VR headset soon. Specifically, what do you expect out of the device, assuming it’s a standalone Quest competitor?
What Is Next From HTC Vive?
Last week HTC Vive teased what looked to be news about an upcoming new VR headset. The tease itself was only a fraction of their logo, but it looks like it’s on some sort of plastic or leathery material that would indicate it’s an actual physical logo on a device of some kind.
This week, it was spotted that HTC’s President of Vive in China, Alvin Graylin actually said in a past interview they’re going to release a “next-generation standalone” VR headset this year. So, the mystery is probably not quite as mysterious as it originally seemed.
Assuming this is accurate—which, let’s be real, it probably is since this is what everyone was already expecting—this is big news. Obviously the Vive Focus line already exists, but those were never really designed to be consumer-focused headsets at all. From the moment the Vive Focus was announced it was always marketed as and targeted at enterprise customers. Hopefully, this is the Quest competitor everyone has been waiting for.
However, it’s worth noting that in that same interview Graylin did say, “I don’t think I would position it as a Quest competitor,” but that could just be him downplaying comparisons ahead of the announcement.
What do you think? Assuming this is HTC Vive’s standalone all-in-one VR headset that aims to be a Quest competitor, what do you expect?
Deals on virtual reality (VR) hardware are few and far between, some devices like Valve Index never have an offer on whilst the PlayStation VR, for example, will get the occasional bundle. Today, HTC has rolled out a couple of deals for its Vive Cosmos series, knocking a sizeable £120 GBP off the regular price.
Vive Cosmos
For those after hassle-free PC VR gaming with no sensors to setup then the standard Vive Cosmos has been reduced from £699 down to £579. The headset features a combined resolution of 2880×1770 (1440×1700 per-eye) using an LCD display, inside-out tracking from its 6 front cameras, a hinged halo strap to easily drop in and out of VR and built-in headphones for spatial audio.
The other option is the Vive Cosmos Elite kit which is down from £899 to £779. As you can see from the image below the main difference here is the tracking solution. The kit comes with two wall-mounted lighthouse base stations (v1.0), the Elite faceplate so they can track the headset and the normal Vive controllers. It’s a far more fiddly setup but because the base stations do have excellent tracking, the kit is sold as being more precise. The rest of the headset’s specs such as resolution and audio are still the same as the standard Vive Cosmos.
Both offers are only available from today until Sunday, 7th February, and they still include a 2 month membership to Viveport Infinity so you can access loads of free videogames and apps. You can also make both headsets wireless with the Vive Wireless Adapter for £359 if the cable starts getting in the way.
Vive Cosmos Elite kit
Earlier this month HTC Vive released new performance updates for its VR headsets. These included an upgrade to DirectX 12 for NVIDIA GPUs, improved latency and a reworked chaperone for fewer interruptions.
HTC Vive’s prominence in the consumer market has wained due to competitors like Oculus Quest offering an easier route into VR. The company does have its own standalone, the Vive Focus Plus, but this was always aimed at the enterprise market. Its Project Proton concept may see the light of day this year and if that happens VRFocus will keep you informed.
Unlike its forebear, the Vive Cosmos had a very shaky start in 2019, never rising to the same heights whilst struggling against rivals Oculus Rift S and Valve Index. But HTC Vive has continued to roll out improvements for the headset, the latest arriving this week, unlocking more PC performance.
Vive Cosmos has received several updates to ensure a smooth virtual reality (VR) experience such as an upgrade to DirectX 12 for NVIDIA GPUs which the company claim: “gives your computer’s CPU an average of 15-20% improvement.”
Latency is always a concern when it comes to VR, if it’s poor then a videogame is likely to get uncomfortable. So the update has: “optimized frame timings offering 10% better latency.” VR content should also look a little better because HTC Vive: “refactored our runtime which improves your computer’s graphics processing by 10%.” All of which should mean a better VR experience even for lower-end VR-capable machines.
And to top this all off, the Vive Cosmos has seen a new chaperone to passthrough behaviour introduced. This will reduce interruptions so there’s less chance of losing that feeling of immersion whilst still maintaining a safe room-scale area.
HTC Vive’s collaboration with the OpenXR standard means that developers can get under the hood and play. “We are releasing beta access to OpenXR, offering you an opportunity to let your imagination turn to action. OpenXR support will also be coming to Vive Wave later this year,” notes the Vive team.
The standard Vive Cosmos with its inside-out tracking, modular faceplate and funky motion controllers currently retails for £699 GBP and comes with a 2-month Viveport Infinity membership. There’s also the Vive Cosmos Elite for £899 which does away the inside-out tracking in favour of the external Steam Lighthouse Base Stations and the normal Vive controllers.
There’s a possibility that 2021 may even see a new Vive headset appear. Early last year the company unveiled its Project Proton concept which showcased two designs. For all the latest HTC Vive updates, keep reading VRFocus.
To say 2020 was tumultuous would be generous. So firstly, I hope everyone has been keeping safe and well.
When I think about the industry in 2020, it was a landmark year for VR, and actually for the overall XR vision of where we’re headed to. This year the demand for all home-based entertainment increased, as a direct result of COVID restrictions. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. This year has seen several huge games in VR, Half-Life:Alyx, Star Wars: Squadrons and Microsoft Flight Simulator.
And in B2B, remote working was proven to work, meaning a rise in tools which support remote collaboration. Adoption of VR-based tools has been increasing across a range of industries for everything from designing products, through to carrying out basic training for employees.
Consumer
Let’s have a look at consumer VR first. COVID was one of several factors which continued the acceleration of consumer VR. Normally there’s a seasonal pattern to sales, but we saw more of a steady upward line in 2020 instead of the usual cyclical trend.
It’s important to note that the market has started to mature more and segment. Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 showed there’s enough demand for more casual games and a pick-up-and-go experience. But high-end graphics and experience require a PC, and just as with the console vs PC market, we’re seeing the VR industry segment along those lines.
There were a number of AAA games coming to VR this year. Half-Life: Alyx was a thrilling demonstration of what can be achieved when a game is designed for VR. It was intuitive, heart-stopping, and a worthy addition to the fabled Half-Life story. Our Vive Cosmos Elite launched at just the right time for people to enjoy Half-Life: Alyx, and we heard a lot of people loved the experience. Star Wars: Squadrons was another favourite for a lot of people – the immersion of VR changes the way you play, and Microsoft Flight Simulator will be an early Christmas present for a lot of people, too.
A wider trend this year has been privacy – we saw it with the various COVID tracking apps, and that kept the topic in the public eye. Facebook has seen a visceral reaction from a number of developers and users due to the requirement of using a Facebook account for the Quest 2. It remains to be seen exactly how big a barrier that creates, but VR is a unique technology in how it effectively introduces multiple cameras in your home, so privacy is an entirely valid concern. We remain committed to safeguarding user privacy and feel that will continue to be an important part of the decision-making process of consumers.
HTC Vive Cosmos Elite
Industry
A part of the VR industry hard hit this year was Location Based Entertainment (LBE). That’s set to change in 2021, as normal life starts to resume. We’d actually seen the demand for LBEs increasing all over the world. Venues are regularly opening across the world, ranging from solo to multi-player experiences – there’s a lot of popularity for them across Asia and we’ve seen that demand grow in Europe and the Middle East as well.
Related to that, one of my favourite builds this year was the Danny MacCaskill experience at RIDE OUT in Amsterdam. Created by the magicians at REWIND and Cut Media, riders use a bike mounted on a motion control platform, with working brakes, drivetrain and steering, as they inch along perilous cliff edges, and race over mountain crests. It’s a great example of just how immersive VR can be, working seamlessly with real-world elements to produce something which truly makes you feel like you’re there.
B2B
It’s obvious that the pandemic was the main influence on 2020. It did finally mean that remote working was taken seriously, and that’s something which will shape the future. The vaccine is incredible news, and I’ve no doubt that people will return to working in offices, but it won’t be at the same scale as before – CCS Insight predicts that in 2022, over 50% of office-based workers will actually work remotely.
Anecdotally, I can tell you that in early Q2 when most of EMEA implemented lockdowns and travel restrictions, there was a short time where a lot of our external meetings were cancelled entirely – but quickly people adapted to working remotely and by mid-Q2 we ended up having more customer meetings than before.
Major companies across the world have already made it clear that they won’t ask employees to go back to the old model of working, embracing the opportunity to improve work/life balance, and not forcing people to live in major cities. The shift earlier this year meant suddenly hardware a big focus – do people have good laptops, screens, mics and webcams.
But that first stage of adjustment focused purely on hardware, and that’s not the full story. A good workplace is about collaboration, and as companies tried remote working for the first time, a lot of them encountered issues. We all know that meetings can be boring and people get easily distracted, especially when it’s a video call. From our research story on the future of remote collaboration, a third of respondents (36%) expressed exhaustion after being faced with hours of video calls, with nearly half (47%) craving more face-to-face meetings to break the monotony of Zoom calls.
That’s partly why we stepped up the launch of our Vive Sync tool, a great way to carry out meetings in VR. I did have someone ask me the other day – “I have a three-hour meeting, why would I do that in VR, wouldn’t it be uncomfortable?” – the honest answer is… is that meeting comfortable in real life? Are you able to focus for the entire time? Sometimes the problem is that we’ve become conditioned and accustomed to long meetings – we just accept the time drain. We’ve seen that people using Vive Sync are more focused and engaged. It’s good for presentations of any kind, and easily the best way to review a 3D model of a design/building/component.
And when it comes to any kind of design process, VR changes how organisations operate and work together. Bugatti saw a 40% reduction in design time through using VR, and Bell Helicopters went from a six-year to a six-month design time. We designed our Focus Plus headset in VR, and everyone from Adobe to Autodesk and more, have created tools for 3D design.
On the developer side of things, the industry continues to grow stronger. There’s more talent joining the industry every day, and projects range from crowdfunding through to corporate investment. The uncertainty around COVID meant that in some sectors investment slowed down, but Vive and Vive X continued to seek out the best talent across the world. One of our European highlights was investing in Emissive, a very exciting French company, whose VR builds blur the line between education and exploring, with immersive expeditions which bring faraway lands and lost eras to life.
2021
So what can we look forward to in 2021?
Hand-tracking was another hot topic for a bit of 2020 – most of the industry has been experimenting with it for quite some time. Our own SDK first launched in February 2019. Hand-tracking makes VR feel even more futuristic and intuitive and adds another new way for users to interact. 2021 will see more tech developed to make interactions natural – hand-tracking, more accurate body tracking, as well as facial expressions. It’s a level of immersion which won’t necessarily be immediately seen in consumer technology but will help in industry and trickle out to gaming as well.
In terms of users, segmentation will continue to develop in 2021, with the more casual end of the market expanding. We’ll keep seeing that progression, similar to the console vs PC debate, with both having attractive elements to different groups of users. Not everyone wants to invest in a full VR/PC kit, and not everyone wants just casual gaming or the tech limitations of trying to upgrade an AIO to PC-VR.
And that relates to something I’m really excited for in 2021 for VR. 2020 was a great year for PC graphics, and in the future we expect to see ray-tracing combined with foveated rendering, as the graphics card makers continue to push their technology. It’ll mean you’ll be able to experience better graphics for more of the time, as the area being rendered is essentially being super-sampled. Really sharp graphics will increase immersion even more and allow game developers to create experiences like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
And as a result of consumer VR user segmentation, hardware will follow suit. We’ll continue to see high-end PC-VR hardware take more advanced leaps. And at the other end of the spectrum, we’ll see more activity as well.
The early efforts at VR viewers had low barriers but also clunky execution. The leading processors in smartphones are now very impressive and capable of powering VR viewers, so we expect to see the rise of All-in-Two devices – lightweight glasses which are connected to a smartphone. It’s technology we’ve looked at for some time, tackling the problem from multiple angles including working with chip manufacturer industry leaders Qualcomm to create the VIVE Wave platform, meaning powerful smartphones running 5G can drive XR experiences.
The high-end of the B2B market has already seen a flurry of device launches at the end of 2020, again proving the demand. We feel there will be some more consumer-focused announcements in 2021 as tech takes another step forward.
Omdia predicts that by 2025 the VR industry will be worth $10bn, and 2021 is a critical element, continuing the momentum built this year now that VR is undoubtedly established.
