now that the world is such a screwed up place you’re not even really supposed to leave your house unless it’s basically on fire it’s definitely a better time than ever to jump on board with a bit of virtual reality I mean frankly even a fictional world where the human race basically finds itself enslaved by aliens pretty much sounds like progress now if you’ve been following my channel you’ll know that I’m already a big fan of the standalone oculus quest but if you really want to experience next level of your game and you’ve got to get yourself a headset like the HTC vive cosmos this tethered set hooks up to your PC and offers incredible immersion with a full six degrees of freedom perfect for enjoying new titles like half-life Alex the only problem of course is that this kind of setup short in cheap so you got the basic HTC vive cosmos that comes with a headset the controllers on the link box everything you need to get into the good bit of VR game and action that’ll cost you seven hundred quid slightly I water an asking price if you want the elite version which is what I’ve been testing out it comes with two external tracking cameras as well that’s another two hundred quid on tops then you’re talking the best part of a grand so anyway I’ve basically spend the last week cowering from reality in all kinds of
beautiful gorgeous and also quite deadly Virtual Reality environments using the HTC vive cosmos elite and here is my full review and from on the latest creative sec please do bug subscribe and thing that notifications about Cheers now first of all if you want to get involved with VR game and on your PC you’ll need a fairly hefty rig though most gaming laptops these days can cope absolutely fine so for instance as long as you’ve got a minimum GeForce GTX 970 GPU or if use an AMD than a Radian or nine to 90 you’ll be absolutely fine you’ll also need to make sure that your game and laptop or desktop has a display port connection notes were actually stream those visuals to the headset unfortunately mine didn’t but luckily I managed to find a display port two USB type-c cable which did the job just fine because my USB C lightning port was actually connected directly to my GPU whew of course this wee bugger cost me an extra thirty quid thirty quid for a soldering Gabel so those costs are really starting to ramp up now submit the most of the vive cosmos elite you’ll definitely need a good sized room as well the recommended dimensions are roughly three meters by three meters if you want to walk and really move about the place if you don’t have a room that big though don’t worry you can still use the cosmos but you’ll want to select the stand and slash sitting option when you’re
setting it up and of course it goes without saying you to be an empty space as well so you don’t accidentally smacking your shins off tables or punching your TV to death when you’re in the middle of an fie or game now as you’d probably imagine there is a bit of setup involved with the HTC vive cosmos although thankfully the vive software does walk you through it step by step it’s very simple and straightforward the biggest bollock and the whole thing is the first step which involves setting up the cameras in this elite version you can mount them to the walls or wherever if they’re going to be a permanent fixture or if you’re a bit lazy like me just stick them up high somewhere shelves are good as I’ll precariously balanced boxes bear in mind the buffalos tracking cameras need to be hooked up to the mains at all times though so it can get a wee bit awkward if you don’t have many power points in your designated room once that’s done the next step is to connect the headset to your gear man rig and get it all tracked with the cameras this takes a couple of minutes and then you’re basically done of course if you later decide to shift the cameras around or if you want to move to an entirely different room then yes you’ll have to repeat the entire setup
process from the beginning so it’s kind of a bowl they can that’s where something like the oculus quest definitely comes in handy because it’s super flexible super easy and shift to another room and within a minute or so you’re all set up and ready to go again I’d say as long as you’ve got the space and the power plates available for those cameras it’s really not a complicated setup at all now yes I’m aware that the vive cosmos headset looks absolutely freakin massive like it would probably crush a few of your vertebrae if you played for more than five or ten minutes but it really is impressively light and incredibly well designed I found that I could literally game for two three hours at a time and had no discomfort whatsoever and I also didn’t suffer from any kind of motion sickness or anything like that and absolutely no worries if you’re a glasses wearer either there’s plenty of space inside that headset to accommodate them so they’re not getting crushed against your face and I am 100% a massive fan of the flip style design as well which means you can quickly lift and then replace the goggles whenever you need to is very handy if you need to quickly do something on your PC lured up again or deal with an error message or something like that or if you’ve got some annoying family member who
wants to have a conversation and interrupt your gaming session you can hook up your own pair of headphones if you like but I really like the vibe cosmoses built in ear cups which just nestled against your ears and pump in some powerful sound and audio it get this really helps to create a feeling of total immersion in whatever you’re up to of course the fact that you’re actually tethered to your PC at all times isn’t an ideal situation especially when you’re jumping about the place occasionally you can sort of trip over it a little bit or a couple of times within the likes of half-life Alex I’m basically twisted around too much and I’ve ended up with it wrapped around myself but it’s very rarely an intrusion it’s certainly nowhere near as bad as the ps4 your cable which is far too short this this thing is super long so at least this stretch right the way across a decent-sized room and if you do find the tether really really irritating you’ve got the option of buying a Wii gig wireless adapter to completely remove it from the situation unfortunately that will add another three hundred quid on top of the already steep asking price I haven’t tested it out so I can’t say whether it’s actually any good or not now one of the areas where the HTC vive cosmos really sets itself apart from the competition is the excellent visuals you get 2880
by 1700 pixel resolution that’s actually the combined resolution between the two eyes so what you actually get is a 1440 by 1700 resolution per eye and what that means is you get perfectly crisp visuals incredible immersion in all of your titles the likes of half-life Alex look absolutely stunning definitely photorealistic at times so there’s definitely a step up from the likes of the oculus quest where everything can look a bit more blocky grainy or just generally cartoony the only issue is that those screens don’t completely fill your vision so it does still feel like you’re viewing everything through a headset rather than in a completely filter free environment but after a while you bring kind of adapts and you get used to that setup and then it’s kind of lost in the immersion anyway and when it comes to the controller’s weirdly this HTC vive cosmos elite version comes with the original five controllers instead of the compact new cosmos ones that you get bundled with a standard version which confused the hell outta me so these are the controllers you get with the HTC vive cosmos elite and these are the standard HTC vive cosmos controllers they’re definitely both got a good heft to them so if you’re wielding a gun in a game or something like that will actually feel like you’re clutching a weapon unfortunately the original vive controllers don’t have as many buttons as the new cosmos once you’ll find that they’re not compatible with all titles one advantage of the controller is you get bundled with the HTC vive cosmos elite as the fact the action of a built-in rechargeable battery rather than taking separate air batteries although unfortunately you will have to use microUSB to recharge them rather than type-c well the only other problem I had with these
controllers was the buttons that are built into the grips are basically when you’re holding them you can give them a quick squeeze and that’ll for instance open up the the options menu in half-life Alex well unfortunately of course when you a headcrab leaping at your face or something your reaction is to squeeze and therefore I found myself constantly mid-battle opening up the bloody settings and then of course I’d be like oh crap okay got a resume game and I’m dead of course if you just try not to squeeze the controllers in a mad panic every time something attacks you you’ll be absolutely fine now as you kind of hope and expect I found that the motion tracking with the HTC vive cosmos elite was basically close to perfect even though I had quite a small space to work with that still worked absolutely fine as long as the cameras were kept at least head height I didn’t stray from their field of vision combined with the hand tracking cameras built into the headset it’s definitely a great setup a whole week of game and there was only one moment I can remember where my right hands and knees started to disconcertingly drift across the room away from my body like it was basically rebelling from being a part of me altogether but of course a great VR headset is only as great as the actual selection of games and the vive bought online store now has almost 1500 titles to get stuck into although that number does cheekily include DLC packs so it’s not actually
quite that many the quality is a bit all over the place as you might expect for every moss or superhot there is definitely a low wall VR or well whatever the hell this thing is supposed to be in fact there’s usually at least three or four pieces of Blizz and garbage for every semi-decent title so you’ll definitely have to sift through a fair bit of excrement to find those golden nuggets or of course just go on to steam where you’ll find that loads are more grave VR games which all of the main PC VR headsets can access if you’re getting started with VI you don’t really know where to begin well don’t worry you can sign up for a vive infinity subscription this basically gives you access to just over half of that online catalogue which you can then download and play it to your heart’s content for naught extra cost the monthly price is that usually nine pounds but at the time I shot this video it was half price as part of a lockdown special and the good news is if you buy yourself an HTC vive cosmos le you get a six-month subscription thrown in as well as you can dive in and try out lots of different things nor extra cost although I did find that some of my favorites on the vive store such as moss and suport were not part of the Infinity subscription boo sorry there in a nutshell is the HTC vive cosmos elite I’d say if you’ve got the space and the money and you’re
dead set on playing the most demanding VR titles out there like half-life Alex and then basically go for it but for everyone else there’s definitely still the oculus quest which is more of fordable it’s a lot easier to use to set up and everything it’s a standalone device you don’t need a hot PC in order to actually play the games or everything and while the games catalog isn’t as strong it’s definitely getting there slowly but surely so if you’re a VR Fanta if you let us know your thoughts down in the comments below whether you’ve been using the HTC vive on the oculus quest or whatever be great to hear thoughts please do put subscribe ding that notifications bell and I miss our tool of the week people chisel wrong
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