HTC has invested heavily into its VR place in the market, with the company being one of the most prolific in both exploring the market (that's till a relative niche) and developing improvements on their products. The new Vive Cosmos VR headset is another take on the VR world, one with modularity in mind and set with better technical specification than the original Vive - while undercutting the Vive Pro by $200, down to $699.

The Vive Cosmos features a higher 2880 x 1700p combined lens resolution (90Hz refresh rate), up from the original Vive's 2160 x 1200p. Usability improvements include the faceplate, which is now of a flip-up design that keeps the headset resting on your head when you need to actually take a look at the world around you (or your pet, or your staring significant other and the cold food that lays on the table by now).

The pace of innovation can't stand still, and if there's one space that needs cost-cutting and new product injection to increase its install base is the VR ecosystem. HTC took to CES 2019 to reveal their new take on the VR, a semi-portable VR headset that has been designed not only for room-scale VR, but also for home use and, cryptically, on-the-go (holy moly, the headset flips up towards your forehead!).

Apparently, the Cosmos will have the ability to be powered by your smartphone and perhaps other devices - not all that surprising when you think of the RAM and computing power that it holds right in the palm of your hands (I'll say. My smartphone is a much better performer than my work PC...). And HTC says the Cosmos will be their sharpest VR headset ever - which should mean that it should feature higher resolution than the Vive Pro's 2880×1600 (1440×1600 per eye) display. A smartphone would likely only be able to power some sort of augmented reality graphics on that resolution, though - but I might be wrong.