I have some exclusive news on the Vive Cosmos, one of the most awaited headsets of 2019, that I want to share with you. Fasten your seatbelts and read this article.
As you may know if you follow me on social media, last week I spent my whole time in Taiwan, at first in Kaohsiung and then in Taipei. It has been a really interesting experience, and there I watched breathtaking landscapes, I ate delicious food (included the “Best dumplings in the world”, as Viveport’s Steve Wang says) and met fantastic VR people.
I will tell more in a future summary article about my experience there, but for now, just let me tell you that among the fantastic people that I met, there have been the guys and the girls at HTC’s headquarters in Taipei.
Last Thursday was a rainy day in Taipei and I dressed super elegant for the occasion: I mean, it doesn’t happen every day to visit the HQ of a major VR company. I entered the building with my Chinese assistant Miss S… and I have to say that that place is very beautiful… all white, with an enormous white hall (shared with Google!) and a big artistic Vive logo made with headsets attached to a wall. It’s very modern and clean.
After the check in, I started various meetings with some HTC’s engineers and project managers where we talked about HTC’s VR devices and SDKs. Of course we spoke in English, but sometimes I also tried to say some words in Mandarin, just to feel more local and make them more confused than ever with my terrible pronunciation. People there have been very kind with me and I have been able to feel their strong desire of improving their products: they were very interested in listening to every critic (even the harsh ones) about their devices. I really appreciated this attitude, that I think that every company should have.
In all these meetings, of course, I also tried to get some secret info about the future plans of the company. And you know, I am really excited about the mysterious Vive Cosmos, so of course, I tried to get some new info about it.
Unluckily, HTC is still not ready to disclose all the details on this device, so during our talk, its employees have been quite tightlipped about its most important features (like for instance field of view and resolution). Every question that I tried to make in this sense, got as answer always “Sorry, but I can’t tell you this”. Needless to say, I expected that: people working for corporates are always very attentive about what they can disclose and what not, because there is always a precise regulation on this side.
So, I tried to ask directly what are the information they could disclose to me apart from what has already been revealed during the CES, and all the speculations that have been made on it starting from the Qualcomm’s reference design presented there (if you want to read everything we officially know about the Cosmos until now, please read this article). I explained that we people of the VR communities are really excited about the device and so we crave to know everything about it, and at the same time we are also a bit worried by all these months of silence. I told them that every new info can make us feel a bit better 🙂 . And it seems that these reasonings have convinced them to tell me something new to share with you all (yay!).
One of the most important missing pieces of the Cosmos puzzle is knowing when we can expect it to be released, since we all thought that it should have already been launched. One HTC spokeperson told me that he couldn’t reveal a release date, but they should release the device around Q3 2019. He explained that yes, they are a bit on a different schedule than the one announced at CES and the reason is that they are continuously improving the device. He told me that they want to really surprise us all, they want the Cosmos to be really a top-quality headset that we all could love. I admit that I was a bit hyped by this sentence, but at the same time, I am a very difficult person to surprise, so I was at the same time even more curious to try it to see if this claim was real.
There was some fear in the VR communities that the project was abandoned and a source of mine also hypothesized that the Cosmos were just a fake shell that HTC was using to hype the community (this would have explained why no one has been able to try it). No one of these claims is true: the Cosmos is going to be launched soon, most probably in Q3. The man I talked to also disclosed me some non-public details that made me understand that there is already a working version of the device, so the rumor of the “fake shell” is confirmed to be false.
Then I started talking about the connectivity of the device. HTC has teased that it will be able to connect with a PC and also with a phone through a USB-C connector. I asked so if the Cosmos will support VirtualLink and the answer has been positive. Regarding connection to the PC, the protocol will be DisplayPort, exactly as happens with all the newest high-resolution headsets. I had no further details on how the device will be able to connect in these different ways (will there be an adapter? Or the cable can be changed?), but at least now I know that HDMI ports will be useless.
I also asked about support for Mac: HTC Vive and Vive Pro are the only headsets on the market that can work with a Mac, through an external box. I wondered if the Cosmos would have the same superpower. The answer has been: “probably, but we can’t confirm it now”.
If there is a feature that everyone loves about the Vive Pro is its wireless adapter: I’ve tried it myself in Beijing and I can tell you that having a super-high-quality headset on your head, with the computational power of the PC and no cables is a fantastic experience. It works incredibly well. HTC has told me that the Cosmos will have a wireless adapter as well. This means that it will be possible to enjoy wireless virtual reality with amazing graphics with the Cosmos as well. I haven’t got if it will be a new wireless accessory or if it can be the same of the Vive Pro, though.
Then I asked one of the big questions: HTC is abandoning Valve’s amazing outside-in tracking technology to use its proprietary inside-out one. This makes the setup easier, but at the same time reduces the possibilities of what can be done with the headset. Vive is a device that all makers love because it is an open platform and thanks to the Vive Trackers it is possible to make the VR player interact with the physical world around him. But the Cosmos uses a new tracking technology that doesn’t allow the use of Trackers, and this means “game over” for all people that want to create crazy stuff in VR. This could also limit the use of the Cosmos in enterprise applications. I so asked HTC what was its take on this issue. I imagined at this point the usual Oculus-style talk about the usability and the compromises that a company has to do to make a VR headset more affordable.
HTC instead answered that they have a solution for the Cosmos that can somewhat substitute Trackers. I was in awe: “Oh what? Really? How is it? How does it work? Tell me everything about it!”. Unluckily, apart from these few words that have hyped me, I got no more info about it. The guy I was talking to had promised me that the Cosmos would have surprised me and it already managed to do this. If HTC really manages in the mission of creating something that can somewhat substitute the trackers (maybe using some light-based trackers that the headset can “see” with the cameras), the device will preserve all the hackability that has made the Vive so great. Add to this the Mixed Reality features that have already been teased, (probably with color RGB front cameras, as a source of mine says). Add the fact that all of this may work in full portability, with the headset connected to your Snapdragon 855 phone (still to be confirmed). What you obtain is a device that is really a Vive 2 on steroids, that is easier to use, preserves all its best features… and adds some new exciting ones! Imagine creating a mixed reality app in a warehouse that works with the headset connected to your phone in the pocket and that lets you wander in the whole environment and also interact with real objects… according to the info I got, it would be possible!
I insisted to know more, but with no luck. I just got again the answer that the device will be launched soon and that it will be full of features (like this one) that I will love.
At that point, I had to leave the building, even more intrigued than before: the Cosmos is an alive project and it will probably be the first inside-out headset to track external objects! :O
I can’t wait for Q3 to discover more about it… and you?