In the battle of the headsets, who is the King?
In the Blue corner, we have the Oculus Quest and the Red corner we spot the HTC Vive Cosmos. Both well worth the investment, providing high-quality audio and visual immersion in VR, but when we get down to the final round, who will be left standing and will the content of your wallet?
Starting off is the Oculus Quest…
…with Pricing of $400 that is slated to be availability come spring 2019, it weighs ~100g more than Rift (470g), with an Integrated open-ear, two 3.5mm audio jacks for external audio also featuring a display with 1,440 × 1,600 per-eye (2,880 × 1,600 total) resolution, dual OLED and a refresh rate of 72Hz at ~100 degrees field of view.
IPD hardware is adjustable with ‘Insight’ inside-out (no external sensors) – four cameras tracking and Supports 6 degrees of freedom head and controller tracking. It is recommended for use in any lit indoor environment.
The Oculus Quest works with your environment, so you can play standing or sitting, in spaces big or small. There no tether with an On-board Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 and active cooling, a 2–2.5 hours battery life for extended gameplay with passthrough Support.
Boundaries are traced from inside headset using passthrough (Multi-room Guardian system).
Next, we have the HTC Vive Cosmos…
…which was shown off at CES 2019, is still shrouded in mystery specs-wise. We do know however that the Vive Cosmos will connect to PC initially, but HTC has suggested that you may be able to link the Cosmos with a smartphone in the future.
This was further reinforced by a teaser video that shows the headset next to a smartphone and the accompanying press release, which states that the Cosmos will have the capability to be powered by more than a traditional gaming PC.
HTC’s reveal video also teases an all-around improved headset design, including features like a flip-up HMD that lets you see the real world without having to remove the headset, tracking cameras on the front and sides of the cameras and the handheld controllers have had an upgrade too.
Gone is the fiddly touchpad, replaced by a joystick and accompanying buttons that look a little more like Oculus’ Touch controllers. The Vive Cosmos and accompanying handheld controllers don’t require external sensors for 6DOF tracking. It should remove the process of outlining your play area whenever you want to jump into the world of VR, as is the case with the Vive and Vive Pro at the moment
What to expect
So this is one fight that will still take a while to get started but since HTC already knows what the competition is offering, you can rest assured that they will come out the gate swinging.
