HTC Reveals Two VR Headsets, The Untethered Vive Cosmos And Gaze-Tracking Vive Pro Eye

Only one of them seems worth your attention, though.

- Hayden Dingman

A few months back we went to look at HTC’s new Vive Focus (go.pcworld.com/f0cs), a clunky standalone headset that stumbled through all the demos we tried. It didn’t impress us much, to say the least—and that was a shame, because HTC needs something to counter Oculus’s upcoming standalone Quest headset (go.pcworld.com/ qest). Much as we love PCs here at PCWorld, the Quest’s slick wireless VR is impressive enough that we’ve already hypothesized it “could be the VR headset moving forward.”

Luckily HTC gets a second try. At CES, HTC hosted a small press conference that revealed multiple new pieces of hardware: The Vive Cosmos and Vive Pro Eye. Details on both were skimpy, but perhaps HTC’s finally landed upon a proper Oculus Quest competitor.

VIVE COSMOS

Let’s cover the more interesting announcement first, yeah? The Vive Cosmos is a semi-standalone headset, designed for easy setup and long-term comfort. It is, if we extrapolate a bit, a direct competitor to the Oculus Quest—or the closest we’re going to get from HTC.

You’ll notice I said “semi-standalone.” That’s probably the most interesting hook for the Vive Cosmos. We didn’t get many details during the show, but it sounds as if the Cosmos will be able to hook up to your PC for a high-fidelity experience, or be detached for a more mobile use-case. It doesn’t look like the Cosmos has wires though, which makes me wonder whether the recent HTC Vive wireless adapter (go.pcworld.com/htca)—the one using Intel’s WiGig tech—is built straight into the headset this time. That’d perhaps allow for a PC experience sans-wires as well as a lightweight mobile experience.