Valve Index Announced

[Jeremy Ford]

Any of you guys experience this?

No, I've tried the headset for the first time this morning and it's fine in regards to this.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

A few quick observations. SDE is virtually non-existent, you can see it if you focus your attention on an area, it's very slight.

The resolution is excellent, the image is very sharp at 100% render-scale. I haven't found the need to use super-sampling. But I'll need to try more games, as this was a sample of very few titles. Haven't tested sim racing titles yet.

Vertical FOV is noticeably better than the Vive. However horizontally FOV isn't that much better that will wow you. However, on my Vive I did change the face pad to a thinner one which increases the FOV. Though FOV has improved, doesn't feel game-changing though, but a good incremental improvement.

A lot of glare in some scenarios. It's not a universal issue in every game or a constant issue. A good example would be a night scene with a full moon. Or a loading screen with white text and a completely black background. The glare is pretty bad in these situations.

Coming from a Vive where the colours are rich, bright and blacks are truly black. The LCD is less vibrant, and blacks are off-black. It reminds me of my Lenovo WMR HMD, but a better version of that panel.

The pixel response is blur-free. Moving your head around, there's no blur to pixels. On the Lenovo and Vive, there is a slight pixel blur when moving your head quickly.

The comfort is A+, and a big improvement over the Vive. And the woven material used on the padding is very nice against the skin. Much better than foam or those fake leather VR covers.

The audio from the speakers is amazing.

I do miss the vibrant colours and brightness of the OLED panel in the Vive. I'd say that's the only negative point that occurs to me right now.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

@Jeremy Ford, did you have Vive Pro or regular Vive?
If former, how much resolution (clarity) do you think you gained in distant objects in something like AC or PCars2.
Thanks for a great write up.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

This was just posted on reddit?
Are glare and controllers really that bad?
Have my reservation expiring tomorrow, way too hesitant to pull the trigger, and goddamn HTC does not announce Cosmos availability date, hope they are not waiting for Christmas.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

This was just posted on reddit?
Are glare and controllers really that bad?
Have my reservation expiring tomorrow, way too hesitant to pull the trigger, and goddamn HTC does not announce Cosmos availability date, hope they are not waiting for Christmas.

Glare is a thing for sure. It's scene dependant. When I first powered it up and saw the glare in the Steam menu I was concerned. During Loading screens, it's rather bad. In games, it's not a huge problem for me, and usually not noticeable; it's not a constant anomaly. I haven't found it to be a deal-breaker, and it's not affecting my gaming which is the main thing.

The only game I found glare to be persistent, is playing 'In Death' with its high contrast visuals throughout.

Different users may have varying sensitivity to the glare levels.

 

[RCHeliguy]

As someone who enjoys In Death a lot, I'm very curious how that feels to me. I can very easily run In Death with 2.0 SS without my CPU cores or GPU working hard, so I think I should be able to play it at 120fps or better with the Index and I'm looking forward to both the extra frame rates and the tracking accuracy with my bow.

Then again my Rift has strong god rays and it doesn't bother me in game. So there is hope.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

As someone who enjoys In Death a lot, I'm very curious how that feels to me. I can very easily run In Death with 2.0 SS without my CPU cores or GPU working hard, so I think I should be able to play it at 120fps or better with the Index and I'm looking forward to both the extra frame rates and the tracking accuracy with my bow.

Then again my Rift has strong god rays and it doesn't bother me in game. So there is hope.

I have to say the 120mhz doesn't make that much of a difference, you can tell a slight smoothness increase. But it's not a major noticeable uplift that will wow anyone to be honest. It's a nice feature have in the bag, but it's not actually a killer feature. I tried 90 and 120 in a few games. And to be fair it's hard to tell the difference, and often you can't.

 

[RCHeliguy]

I have to say the 120mhz doesn't make that much of a difference, you can tell a slight smoothness increase. But it's not a major noticeable uplift that will wow anyone to be honest. It's a nice feature have in the bag, but it's not actually a killer feature. I tried 90 and 120 in a few games. And to be fair it's hard to tell the difference, and often you can't.

How about the bow tracking? I run into limitations even with the Rift when shooting at long range. If it matters I'm at 97/101 achievements and currently ranked 172nd overall.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

How about the bow tracking? I run into limitations even with the Rift when shooting at long range. If it matters I'm at 97/101 achievements and currently ranked 172nd overall.

Tracking is perfect, you won't have any problem there. The lighthouse tracking is pinpoint accurate in any way you handle the controllers.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

@Jeremy Ford, did you have Vive Pro or regular Vive?
If former, how much resolution (clarity) do you think you gained in distant objects in something like AC or PCars2.
Thanks for a great write up.

Just for you sir I've just had a 5 minute go in PC2. OMG, it looks awesome on the Index. It's completely sharp right to the horizon. And the dashboard motec is perfectly clear. And overhead wires are no longer shimmering.

My outgoing headset is the non-pro Vive.

 

[Deleted member 197115]

Just for you sir I've just had a 5 minute go in PC2. OMG, it looks awesome on the Index. It's completely sharp right to the horizon. And the dashboard motec is perfectly clear. And overhead wires are no longer shimmering.

My outgoing headset is the non-pro Vive.

Thanks, jump from non pro Vive or CV1 must be massive.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

Here you go folks, my unboxing video. Full review to follow....

 

[RCHeliguy]

Woo Hoo!

 

[RCHeliguy]

A few quick things:

1. Configure controllers: I was wrong. They need to be mapped and can't just be set to Oculus Rift.
2. I needed to update to the latest NVidia driver to get the audio to work.
3. Since the base stations are in the corners it has no idea what the front is. When setting up my room scale for some reason it defaulted backwards. There is a flip button to get the arrow pointing forward.
4. There are game specific settings for frame rate and super sampling. Right now I'm running either 90 fps at 150% or 120 fps at 112%. I'm not sure how that works with games that have super sampling settings like PC2, In Death, etc..
5. I setup Revive and Robo Recall etc.. all appear to work properly. Very simple download Revive from GitHub, Install, run, it finds the default folder for the Rift Games. The Oculus app does not need to be running unlike some instructions I saw.

My controllers came fully charged so there was no wait time before trying it out.

My initial reaction was that it was very comfortable, sharp and the controllers felt different. After a short adjustment period the controllers feel good. I agree that the Oculus Touch controllers felt perfect instantly and the Index controllers took a brief period to get used them, specifically where to position my hands before I cinch them down. Also I am typically cinching a bit too tight and then tap the button to release just a smidge before they are comfortable.

I'll be setting my my rig shortly. I have a couple things to test first.

 

[RCHeliguy]

PC2 looks great at 120 fps @ 120% SS

I used the following steps to get Dirt Rally 1.0 to work.
It's pretty simple. Copy 4 files, rename two and set the Launch field.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Vive/comme...a84g/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
If you tried using ReVive with Insert and Patch steps from a different set of instructions, you will need to uninstall/reinstall Revive to get it to work properly.

Dirt Rally was 90 fps and 110 SS was all I could manage. It looks great too. However I'd be lying if I said that Revive solution was rock solid. If I reboot my computer and start it up, it seems to work either right away or with the 2nd attempt. However If I switch back and forth between games it doesn't seem to like it very much.

Eve Valkyrie, OMG!!!! It looks freaking amazing!!!! I'm running 180% SS with all settings on ultra. It's exactly what I hoped that would be.

I'm not seeing color saturation as being an issue. Everything looks great !

 

[RCHeliguy]

I've been in my Index for quite a few hours today and far more than normal and I do have one negative to say about it. I can feel the weight of it after a while compared to my Rift. I assume I'll just build up my neck muscles so it isn't a big deal. I also won't typically be in my headset for as many hours as I have been today. Now it's perfectly balanced and extremely comfortable, but after a very marathon session my neck is actually a bit sore.

My thoughts after a good chunk of a day in the Index are that my i9-9900K & 1080Ti are driving the Index very well and I have zero urge to get a 2080Ti. Great news! Now I just get to enjoy it.

 

[Jeremy Ford]

I've been in my Index for quite a few hours today and far more than normal and I do have one negative to say about it. I can feel the weight of it after a while compared to my Rift. I assume I'll just build up my neck muscles so it isn't a big deal. I also won't typically be in my headset for as many hours as I have been today. Now it's perfectly balanced and extremely comfortable, but after a very marathon session my neck is actually a bit sore.

My thoughts after a good chunk of a day in the Index are that my i9-9900K & 1080Ti are driving the Index very well and I have zero urge to get a 2080Ti. Great news! Now I just get to enjoy it.

It's lucky you never tried the HTC Vive, that fella is very heavy on the face. The 1080Ti does indeed run the Index really well. A 2080Ti would be nice, but I agree it's not needed.

 

[RCHeliguy]

It's lucky you never tried the HTC Vive, that fella is very heavy on the face. The 1080Ti does indeed run the Index really well. A 2080Ti would be nice, but I agree it's not needed.

Part of the neck fatigue comes from playing Eve Valkyrie being in space combat with head tracking weapons such that I'm looking all over the place while flying. But it was beautiful

I should also mention that I've had zero issues with heat.

 

[karoliens]

Hi guys,

I've just received Valve Index. I like everything about it except... When I tried PC2 or AC with 24 cars.
I get terrible artifacts ghosting of the models and bluriness when it drops to 45fps which happens almost always with my hardware and settings.
I am running it of the laptop which has 8750H CPU and 2070 Max-Q GPU. SS is set to 100% in Steam VR. Graphic settings are set low to medium.
When I had Rift S and ASW kicked in at I didn't have these terrible artifacts, blurriness and it was still playable.
Is it because the steam smoothing is so terrible compared with Oculus ASW or something else?
And perhaps someone could share performance figures and hardware setup when playing AC and PC2?
I've tried lowering the SS, disabling, enabling smoothing but still when I had full grid or a lot of cars around me I was experiencing same issues. When I tried with just 5 cars on the grid it was fine since I reached 90fps all the time. So I am guessing it has something to do with smoothing?

 

[Michael Stead]

Is it because the steam smoothing is so terrible compared with Oculus ASW

Yes. I do everything I can to avoid steam's smoothing kicking in on my vive.