Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “HTC Vive Cosmos Elite Review”.
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I want to thank skillshare for making this content possible. What is up folks how’s it going. This watch hope you guys are all doing well and for the past few weeks i’ve been doing a lot of vr gaming testing out the new htc vive cosmos elite. Now htc released the cosmos, vr headset late 2019 and that used uh what they called a motion.
Faceplate, so it was actually a array of camera built into the faceplate that used inside out tracking, so it didn’t use the lighthouse vive base stations that you found in the original htc vive that we tested out back in 2016.. Now a number of people had issues with the performance of the head tracking capabilities on the cosmos inside out motion tracking system, especially with games that heavily rely on uh accurate motion, capturing of the head itself. To give you a good aspect and perspective and the cosmos was actually kind of tailored for learning, fitness and creative works applications and for hardcore serious vr gaming. You need to have extremely precise, head tracking capabilities in order to improve the whole immersion aspect of a vr and at this stage of the game, you really need external units to track the faceplate and the headset itself in order to get that precision.
So that’s why, on the cosmos elite, we now have uh two base stations. The lighthouse system, which is the outside in tracking system, which is gon na, then enable that precision that we saw in the original htc five and what we see with uh the best vr systems out there. Now, beyond the face plate change and the addition of the base stations, the cosmos elite is pretty much identical to the cosmos. Htc 5 headset same exact internal headset specifications. So, in terms of the display, we have dual 3.4 inch lcd panels with a native resolution of 1440 by 1700 on each eye with a combined native resolution of 2880 by 1700. It is a 90 hertz, a refresh rate panel, with a maximum field of view of about 110 degrees.
Now i didn’t use the cosmos headset, but i did use the original htc five and uh, comparing that our original experience with the cosmos elite is definitely almost night and day due to the fact that the resolution optics and screen panels on the new cosmos elite is Definitely superior the original hdc5 had a combined native resolution of 2160 by 1200 same refresh rate about 90 hertz and the same field of view about 110 degrees. But the uh main complaint that i had back then was the screen. Door effect was quite prominent due to the fact that the resolution was relatively low. Not only do we have a higher native resolution, an increase of about 88 percent, but the pixels on the cosmos panel are actually closer in together, thereby in combination with the higher resolution panel as well as optics.
You get a sharper image with a reduced screen door effect and the new optics also improve your own ocular acuity as well. So you can focus your eyes on a specific point on the display and have it pretty well in focus and there’s a decent fallout point before other things become kind of out of focus and blurry. Now you still have that effect, where most of your peripheral vision is at a focus.
That’S just due to the limitation of the displays and optics that we have on most of these uh current generation. Vr headsets as the technology improves, we get better displays and better optics. More improvements will come will get a better access to your peripheral vision with a greater field of view and better visual slash, ocular acuity.
Now, in terms of the ergonomics of the headset, it is very comfortable to wear fairly lightweight as well. You have tons of velcro adjustability and you could wear this thing for hours on end, it’s breathable and it’s not going to fog up like the early vr headsets did in addition to that, you also have a flip up visor design, so you can flip up the Headset and be more aware of your surroundings or adjust your pc settings, which is definitely handy and convenient on the side of the headset. You have adjustability to set your inner pupillary distance or the distance between each of your eyes to optimize the stereoscopic effect inside the headset. There is room enough for small to medium-sized glasses, but if you’re going to use large hipster-style glasses, that might be a little uncomfortable, especially for prolonged periods of time and probably get the glasses damaged, scratch or smudge, which isn’t good for the headset or your glasses.
So, in a lot of cases, i would actually recommend for most people to have the best experience without glasses. So, if that’s possible, i definitely do so or use contact lenses. Now, in terms of the audio performance, the built-in stereo headphones, sound and fit great in terms of the fit. You have three points of adjustability, with breathable memory, foam lined ear caps. I played a lot of half-life alex on this headset and the sound quality coming out of the built-in headphones was pretty darn sensational now, for the past couple of months, i’ve been completely immersed in the vr headspace and uh back in 2018. I kind of lost interest in vr, but since getting the cosmos elite, that interest has certainly sparked up.
I’Ve been actually doing a lot of my day-to-day computing in vr using applications such as virtual desktop, which is really cool. You can set up your desktop in space or whichever kind of virtual environment you want, and the breadth and width of vr content has definitely expanded dramatically for the past couple of years and there’s tons of unique and interesting immersive vr films and animations that you can Kind of witness to which is gon na kind of birth, a whole new genre, potentially of content being experienced, but in terms of the actual gaming experience uh the headset itself. I have absolutely no complaints with it’s pretty stunning in most regards, but the biggest issue that i have with the cosmos elite definitely has to do with the bundled controllers, which are the vive touchpad controllers, similar to the original htc vive controllers. Firstly, there’s definitely no problems with the overall tracking performance, since the controllers are so large and cumbersome.
The base stations have no problem in terms of accurately tracking your hand, motions individually, but the problem lies with the control interfaces themselves, mainly due to the fact that you don’t have accurate control over your grip and hands. And you don’t have any thumb sticks which is pretty vital for games like half-life, alex boneworks and other first-person shooters in vr. You simply have most of your local motion. Controls done either physically by walking around or by using the teleport feature, and you really can’t use these touch.
Pads, like thumb, sticks like a valve conceptualized with the original steam controller, which originally was supposed to replace uh thumb sticks on a gaming pad beyond that. The individual grip commands on the controllers are very tough to initiate, since you have two small buttons on the back of the control, which are hard to press in and games that rely on precise hand, motion and control over your grip are going to be definitely tough To use with these valve touchpad controllers and compared to the other vr control interfaces that are out there, especially the valve index controller, which allows you accurate, individual control of each of your fingers as well as having thumb sticks. I think the htc vive touchpad controller is probably the worst interface for vr gaming available for most pc interfaces beyond those factors, that’s really it for the cosmos elite for the time being still going to be testing this thing out for the next couple of months. I’M also very curious to test out the valve index vr headset, not to mention the controller, looks awesome so if you’re interested in a full comparison between the valve index and the cosmos elite, definitely let me know – and if you haven’t done so already, please give us A thumbs up, if you like this video, have post notifications turned on, so you get our videos once become available and check out the description down below for more details about everything we talked about, including our sponsor skillshare. That made this content possible thanks again for watching we’ll see you later take care. .