The last item I used to be anticipating to come back out of this 12 months’s CES was one other digital actuality headset, however right here you go. Announced earlier immediately (or final night time for these of you within the UK), the Vive Cosmos is the most recent headset from HTC, and it’s been designed with high quality consolation and ease of use in thoughts. Here’s every thing we all know to this point.
Admittedly, it’s not fully clear from HTC’s press launch whether or not the Vive Cosmos is, in reality, a PC-based headset. Its teaser trailer would suggest it makes use of your smartphone to energy its VR expertise (see under), however HTC have additionally mentioned it “has the capability to be powered by more than a traditional gaming PC.” It’s ambiguous, to say the least, however I’ll replace this text with extra data as soon as I’ve heard again from HTC.
Still, no matter whether or not it makes use of your telephone or your PC, the important thing factor HTC are pushing with the Vive Cosmos is the truth that you don’t want any of these pesky base stations (these magic black packing containers that do all of the room monitoring on the strange Vive) to set it up, thereby making it a lot simpler to make use of and begin messing about with.
It may also be the primary Vive headset to utilize HTC’s newly introduced Vive Reality System, which HTC helpfully describe as “an entirely new design experience for VR.” The accompanying bumpf doesn’t actually make issues any clearer, however it appears like a brand new interface and tutorial system that can presumably do a greater job of easing folks into VR than the Vive does at the moment.
If it helps in any respect, VP of HTC Vive’s Creative Labs Drew Bamford described it thusly: “We want VR to feel less like launching apps and instead like stepping between worlds,” he mentioned. Sure.
Admittedly, we don’t know rather more in regards to the Vive Cosmos than that in the intervening time. Apart from saying it exists, HTC haven’t named a worth or set a date aside from a obscure level in 2019 simply but, however we would study extra as soon as developer kits are made accessible someday early this 12 months.
If the Vive Cosmos wasn’t sufficient, HTC additionally introduced the Vive Pro Eye, which is an up to date model of their present Vive Pro headset (which could be very a lot a PC-based affair). Aimed extra towards the skilled VR consumer, the Vive Pro Eye provides built-in eye monitoring to the combination, providing new ranges of accessibility in keeping with HTC akin to gaze-oriented menu navigation and eradicating the necessity for controllers. It will launch someday between April and July 2019.
For extra information and palms on previews from this 12 months’s CES, try our CES 2019 tag.
