Any Valve Index Sim racing feedback yet?

[Flibbberflops]

Has anyone here got their Valve Index yet and can give some sim racing feedback?

 

[RCHeliguy]

I'm not remotely suggesting that the NLRv3 is capable of giving you the same suspension queues that the SFX-100 gives you. It's not. But there are things that it does well. They are VERY different designs with very different characteristics.

 

[Mr Latte]

Okay thanks for input, taking thread OT.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Fair enough!
Back on topic, I'm still LOVING My Valve Index

 

[anton_Chez]

Haha yeah a little OT Rod but food for thought anyway.

Well, back ON topic, got my Index, It's incredible from first testing. I'll post some thoughts I listed in the SFX Discord:

Ahem, so, anyone want to buy a Pimax? Quick first thoughts as I ran my first laps with the Index:

- R.I.P FOV - R.I.P earbuds - Image is better than ANY setting I've EVER tried on the Pimax, even at only 4M pixels per eye

- 144hz is absolutely achievable at that resolution, with headroom to spare.

- 2 minutes to adjust the headset on my face, almost flawless comfort initially.

- Getting the grey more than the Pimax, but might be cable routing

- Cable is around 3km long

- FOV is absolutely acceptable for sim racing, miles better than the Rift and is very close to the Small FOV of Pimax, as many have stated.

- Build quality is top notch. Feel of the headstrap, adjustability, weight distribution absolutely spot on.

- Eyes are pretty close to the lenses (you can feel them around the upper part of your face) but you can adjust this. The trade off is you lose a tiny bit of FOV.

- Integration with SteamVR is WAY better than using PiTool and SteamVR together. There is a button on the HMD to switch to desktop mode, Steam mode and back to VR. This by itself is almost a reason to switch from Pimax. The 'options' button on my PS4 pad is holding on for dear life, as it took maybe a thousand presses per instance to get to where I needed to with the Pimax in the SteamVR 'world'. So, no more R.I.P controller now.

I should clarify the R.I.P FOV statement at the top. I meant it as in, who cares about the wide FOV options of Pimax. It's absolutely a million times better than the Rift and it gets past that point of feeling boxed in. Once you hit that point, as the Small FOV does on the Pimax, you really are free to experience all the other benefits of a new gen HMD, NOT JUST the wide FOV.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Can I get an Amen Brother? We have another believer

I love the extra cord length too, especially given the range of the 2.0 base stations. I have lots of room to roam in room scale mode.

 

[anton_Chez]

Don't need the room scale but the ability to route the cable exactly where and how you want it is amazing. It went from Rift to Pimax and now to the Index getting longer and longer. It means I can just leave my HMD where I want it on the rig and never have to worry about the cable being across the room, or having to route it away and put the HMD out of reach when I'm done. It's even more important for room scale but even for seated experiences it's very good to have.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I think the Index is the first HMD to get everything right and they did think about all the little details.

Longer cable length, the magnetically attached very comfortable face pads which are extremely easy to swap out between sweaty players, excellent audio, excellent tracking, excellent hand controllers, etc..

@anton_Chez After getting used to lower refresh rates with the Pimax, can you see the difference at higher fps? In action games it's almost like cheating but even seated in a car I've found it's less fatiguing. I spent 4 hours in iRacing Sunday morning to get my D licenses before the new season started in September, and it was nothing. I could have gone another 4 hours.

Something else of interest. When I'm in my rig I have a fan blowing at me head on and I always leave the front cover off my Index. The air from the fan flows through the HMD! I can actually feel a slight breeze. The end result is that I NEVER EVER have any issue with fogging while I'm in my rig with the fan on. I also never get hot in the Index. I can't say that is always the case in room scale. In roomscale I sometimes get hot and the lenses can fog up, but Beat Saber and some other titles tend to make you a sweaty mess.

 

[anton_Chez]

144hz is smooth as but not a huge difference over 90 which I already find super smooth.

I have to experiment with the front cover off. I thought the same thing when I saw the mesh on the front.

The Pimax is good because it has options for lower native hz but the truth is with the Index the image is so good at lower resolutions that you probably will never need anything below the 80 it gives you.

 

[Jordan Dion]

Hello guys!
I finally got my Valve index
Any ideas where I can find good setting for ACC and AC ?
Do you guys use 80,90 or 120 hz mods ?
I use Steam VR SS at 150 at the moment **** an 2080 TI

 

[Thomas Vasileiadis]

is it true that you don't need controllers for simracing and can work only with Index and one base ?

 

[anton_Chez]

Correct

 

[RCHeliguy]

Hello guys!
I finally got my Valve index
Any ideas where I can find good setting for ACC and AC ?
Do you guys use 80,90 or 120 hz mods ?
I use Steam VR SS at 150 at the moment **** an 2080 TI

I'm talking from hearsay, but I've heard the best way to run ACC is at 120 fps using reprojection. ACC won't hold a stable 90 fps native even with an over clocked i9 and 2080Ti. I heard one guy had his i9-9900K upto 5.1GHz and had tweaked his 2080Ti quite a bit and still couldn't get a stable 90 fps with a grid of cars.

AC is much different and people are having much better luck running it at 90 and 120 fps.

 

[Jordan Dion]

I'm talking from hearsay, but I've heard the best way to run ACC is at 120 fps using reprojection. ACC won't hold a stable 90 fps native even with an over clocked i9 and 2080Ti. I heard one guy had his i9-9900K upto 5.1GHz and had tweaked his 2080Ti quite a bit and still couldn't get a stable 90 fps with a grid of cars.

AC is much different and people are having much better luck running it at 90 and 120 fps.

Honestly i dont run acc now whit my index... its to bad comparing to ac or iracing...

 

[RCHeliguy]

Honestly i dont run acc now whit my index... its to bad comparing to ac or iracing...

Agreed I can run 144 fps in iRacing by myself on most tracks and I typically race at 120 fps, just to have headroom and make sure there are no issues.

 

[anton_Chez]

With some compromises ACC can look sharp and run pretty good. I am not happy with it but I have made peace with what I need to do to enjoy it. It looks the best of all the titles I normally run, even with the compromises. Easily. It's strange how the blurry mess most see can be made sharper than any other title with a good amount of tweaking. I look forward to driving it now rather than avoiding it. New series coming for my league tomorrow night so a good chance to test it all out.

 

[RaceNut]

How long (on average) should one expect to wait for a chance to get the Index after initiating the email notification process?

 

[Navoan]

How long (on average) should one expect to wait for a chance to get the Index after initiating the email notification process?

They are sold out world wide and expect to get stock in April i believe........

 

[RaceNut]

They are sold out world wide and expect to get stock in April i believe........

Thanks for the reply.

 

[RCHeliguy]

Wow, but that does not look like a Valve Index. Also dated Feb 18th of 2019....

 

[Lonnie Farrare]

Whatever the EMI issue are, they are well worth the troubles. The NLRv3 is a great motion simulator, but in time it will fail. When it does, you need to send a heavy (expensive) package back to the manufacturer and wait for them to fix it.

The SFX100 is not only superior in motion clues from the NLMv3 ( i had one that broke down), but if something does break down, you will be up and running in no time since you can do all the repairs yourself.

Grey screen of the Index, doesn't bother me at all. I know where to touch it if needed. The tracking is flawless. Haven't even gone through the trouble of trying grounding the USB cable from the frunk yet.

But while waiting for Dirt Rally 2 doing it's massive VR update



I grabbed a complete set of ferite cores and put on the Valve Index cable. It definate helps a lot. Now i can touch the HMD without instant grey screens when the servos are powered on.

I was having the same issue with my rig when I introduced the Index. My Vive worked fine. I had a few ferrites lying around from my original build. That didn't do the trick then I remembered that I had some EMI tape and that solved my problem 100%. I wrapped the entire wire, although it's still sensitive if I keep my hands off the headset it works great! Just thought I'd post for others. The SFX is worth the extra work.