Later this month HTC is planning to ship a “Cosmos Compatibility Pack” for $50 with a battery that’ll supply enough power to turn the new Vive Cosmos into an untethered headset.
HTC sells the Vive Wireless Adapter for around $300 that works with some desktop PCs featuring an open PCIe slot which turns the earlier Vive or Vive Pro into untethered systems. The new $700 Cosmos headset, though, departs from earlier designs and features six cameras for inside-out tracking. According to HTC, those cameras “and other features” draw “slightly more power” and a new battery supplies enough to make the Vive Wireless Adapter work with Cosmos.
“Due to the new inside-out tracking on Cosmos and other features, the headset draws slightly more power than the current Vive Wireless Adapter battery can support, so this battery is needed to power this headset wirelessly,” a blog post from the company reads. “In addition, Vive Cosmos processes all the camera tracking data solely in the headset and never sends the visual tracking data to the PC. While this means we are securing user privacy in their play space, this approach results in a higher headset power consumption.”
The Cosmos Compatibility Pack “will ship with a new 21W power bank, the connection cable for Cosmos, and a new pad to attach to the headstrap,” according to the company. You should be able to buy compatible batteries from other places but we haven’t tested any yet.
We’ll have a full hardware review of the wired Cosmos experience on our site at midnight tonight Pacific time.
