[I want to return my cosmos. Here's why...]

4 hours ago, LMulvey said:

Some things that helped us get it to a usable point:

1. Changed our lighting to "warm lights" (2700K LEDs) - the controllers emit a white light so it can apparently blend with your lighting situation if your lights are also white.
2. Hung some art and paintings on the wall.
3. Used painters tape to add tracking points to blank spots on the wall.
4. Added additional lights.

After that, we went into the Settings > Troubleshooting and reset the environment and proceeded to do the Room Setup again. After this, we were able to play some Beat Saber, Blade & Sorcery, Half Life: Alyx with some caveats:

• Cannot take cover in HL:A that involves crouching
• Parts in HL:A that involved crouching, I would have to squat and ensure that I look up with my head. I was using continuous locomotion. Not sure how I would have teleported with this method though.
• The odd time me trying to put something over my shoulder in HL:A to put it in my inventory would result in losing tracking and the item would get lobbed away. This was pretty rare.
• In Beat Saber, difficulties Easy through Hard were mostly okay. Into Expert, notes start being on the far sides of the screen and trying to hit these at the same time would often result in one controller losing tracking and missing the note. Most Expert+ songs are nearly impossible because of the tracking loss.
• In Blade & Sorcery, all your attacking must be standing–crouching often results in a tracking loss. Get used to using the telepathy to pull weapons to you. Picking weapons off the ground results in a tracking loss. 

I also attempted to play Boneworks but could only make it about an hour in with this headset. There's a part in the game that involves you lifting and placing a giant yellow plank that is roughly the width of the headset FOV which results in at least one of your controllers being out of sight of the headset cameras so... it's just not possible. I tried for about 30 minutes to pass this part but I would constantly lose tracking while trying to place the plank and just gave up. I downloaded a save file for the game so I could at least mess around in the sandbox, however, a lot of the climbing in the game involves you placing your arms above your head which again results in a loss of tracking.

 

There are times where the headset is fine but with a lot of games you have to learn to work around the tracking and it can be frustrating. Apparently racing sims are great and I'm sure some third person/omnipresent RPG games would be awesome too. The resolution and sound on the headset are fantastic and it's immersive but with the tracking, it's hard to recommend anything first person unless you're prepared to do some weird fixes and be disappointed/frustrated at times.

My god! 😝 I had the exact same issue at that part in boneworks, when going to the other side trying to go for the climbing part instead of the plank one. It was not possible by either one. Tracking just glitches out if you get your controllers too close to the headset and end up falling down... 

[Vive Cosmos Upgrade Kit?]

On 6/4/2020 at 7:58 PM, LMulvey said:

As a first time buyer, absolutely.  This has been a thoroughly irritating experience and I've personally lost all confidence in HTC. I waitlisted for a Valve Index last week and won't look back. It's an 8+ week wait at this point but if I'm going to pay $800 to make my cheaply-built HMD work properly, I might as well cut my losses and spend $1300 to get a top-of-the-line, well-built headset with proper support. 

I'll try to sell my Cosmos to a friend as an entry-level step in and ensure they understand that a large portion of the games for it would be non-functional. I can't wait to play through Half-Life: Alyx again and actually be able to take cover on objects without losing tracking, haha!

I should add that the few HTC staffers who roam these forums are awesome and are doing the best that they can. I additionally had a great chat with someone on their support chat last week, who was also awesome. I feel bad that they're put in this position to try and service a faulty product without any clear direction from higher ups or a clear path to a fix. In light of their layoffs yesterday, I hope that if we lost any of the support team, they find work elsewhere at a company who at least attempts to care about their consumers.

Yeah that's very good of you! 🙂the fact when you're selling it you are making sure the buyer is aware of the issues. unlike HTC marketing team LOL .Watched a in-depth youtube video about this headset and just like the guy said " This headset shouldn't really exist." is spot on. It's still a good headset if you're playing games like racing sims and so on. Head tracking there's no issues with. But man was i boiling when trying to play boneworks. 😡

[Cosmos Aim tracking workaround]

49 minutes ago, VibrantNebula said:

Base station tracked devices don't have that kind of occlusion issue if the stations are deployed properly. This issue happens because on an inside out tracking headset, all of the sensors are bundled into the headset and so line of sight is more important. It's much harder to occlude with outside-in (basestation) technology, especially if you're using more than 2 2.0 stations.

Real sad that htc didn't test the headset, or if they did, saw the issue.. ignored it then released it anyways. At this point i just hope they were ignorant and just didn't test the headset properly. 

[Cosmos Aim tracking workaround]

Wait even with lighthouse tracking you still encounter issues like this??? Was planning on getting the cosmos Elite after refunding my original cosmos. But hearing this i might just say f it and wait the 10weeks for a index  @Toro

Yeah this is really sad, I wounder if the developers themselves are actually reading the forum and are aware of this. Because checking twitter all i can see is them praising the cosmos through misleading advertisement. 

 

[HTC needs to be held accountable]

returned my cosmos to my retailer and getting the cosmos elite ( because i don't wanna wait over 10 weeks to get a valve index ) , the Original cosmos was a misstake from HTC's part. and should have never been released. i even doubt they tested the headset before releasing it ( which is f****ing unacceptable ) Yeah if you are a owner of the cosmos headset i suggest you contact the retailer you bought the headset from and write them a mail with clear details & also provide some evidence ( like forum posts, youtube videos about the headsets problem ect.... ) and they should be able to give you a refund or atleast let you be able to add some additional $ to get the cosmos ELITE. if a retailer sends back a device that has clear issues they have to give a refund.  So there's really no reason for a retailer not to accept you're return. ( unless it has physical damage ). Also it's on there end, not your fault the retailer put up a faulty product on their site/shell. I got offered a refund from my retailer even tho i've had it over the 14days mark. I wrote a detailed message with evidence that the headset was faulty and just overall a trash product that shouldn't be sold. I live in the EU and over here we have the consumer protection law. And this headset pretty much breaks all of them.