Valve Index - Valves VR headset - June 28, 2019

**Gryffes** · 2019-04-30 12:14

https://store.steampowered.com/valveindex

Pre-Order available tomorrow.

Backwards compatible with lighthouse v1, so you can mix and match controllers/headsets, ie if you bought a vive/vivepro, you could just buy the new headset.

Price: $1000 for tracking+controller+headset, -$250 per item you don't want eg, headset = $500, headset+controllers = $750

Specs are interesting:

Display: 1,440 × 1,600 dual LCD panels. Custom full-RGB LCD promises good fill-factor and minimal screen door effect, providing 50% more subpixels that OLED. Low persistence displays: 0.330ms

Framerate: 120Hz, full backwards compatibility with 90Hz, experimental 144Hz mode
Optics: Custom dual-element lens boasts increased sharpness, FOV 20 degrees larger than HTC Vive (estimated ~110 degrees) and large eyebox

Adjustablilty: Mechanical IPD adjustments, “eye relief” adjustments to let lenses sit as close as possible to the eye for max FOV

Audio: Nearfield off-ear speakers (speaker drivers, not headphone drivers) boast higher fidelity audio. No physical contact with ear aims for increased play-session length

Comfort: Reduced weight, high-quality fabrics and padding, geometry targeting “95% of adult heads”

Modability: Extensibility through “Frunk” USB expansion bay and stereo cameras. Stereo cameras don’t provide room or hand tracking, although Valve will be providing CAD models, specs and sample code to the maker community

Minimum Specs: Dual core CPU with hyperthreading, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD RX480
Recommended Specs: Quad core CPU or greater, NVIDIA RTX 1070 or greater

**Kaisha** · 2019-04-30 17:05

It's basically what the Vive Pro should have been from everything I'm seeing and reading.

It's still half-step upgrade though, lacking the things I want in my next headset purchase, which namely are a solution to focusing on near/far things, and support for foveated rendering so GPUs don't explode trying to 144hz some games across two eyes.

If I owned a Vive instead of a Rift already, I'd have sprung for the Knuckles controllers at the least though (as expensive as they are), as those are a major upgrade over the old Vive wands. It is nice of Valve to sell all components of the new headset piece-meal.

**Gryffes** · 2019-04-30 19:09

I'm tempted to get the HMD+Controller bundle.
It's less resolution than a pimax or HP reverb but pimax is still having a lot of issues - people complaining about having to spend a lot of time configuring it and messing around. ( to be fair vive/oculus both had a lot of similar issues early ).
I also trust that I'd get better service from valve than pimax and fuck HTC support ( never buying from them again ).

OG vive was 1.3 megapixel per eye, Index is 2.3 , Pimax is 3.7, and Reverb is 4.7.

Might be worth waiting for reviews and comparisons to Pimax/Reverb before jumping on the train I guess.

You also have to think about what's going to deliver those MP levels. I have a 1070 ti and some titles I'm turning settings down to achieve 90fps at 2.6mp, it's absurd to even consider trying to drive 9.4mp on a reverb without getting a 2080ti at minimum and that's probably not going to do it either.