Index Synopsis:
Hand Controllers: Tracking is fantastic and allows me much greater accuracy than I had with the Rift cameras. Getting used to them took me about a day from the Rift Touch controllers to reach proficiency. They are very comfortable and fit my hands well. As of the last SteamVR, firmware update the Controller configuration tool allow you to make changes to the mappings while the game is up that take effect immediately!!!
Base Stations: Set them and forget them. Setup for the Index is very easy. Rather than telling it your height like the Oculus asks. The Index just asks you to put your controllers on the floor and it calibrates everything from there. Not sure how this works without them. You trace your play area just like the Rift walking around with an hand controller with the trigger pressed. Setup overall was very quick and easier than setting up a Rift with cameras.
Heat: Not an issue that I've noticed after extended marathon sessions. I leave the front shield off just because of the reddit post saying it stays 10-15 degrees cooler that way. For racing and flight sims I typically have a small fan blowing at me.
Room Scale: Having an additional meter in length over the Rift cable is great! I'm running two base stations in opposite corners of my room and have a much larger area to play and never run out of cable. In Death is no longer trying to direct me to face forward and for tracking purposes it doesn't matter how I'm facing.
The HeadSet: This has gotten the most press, so I saved it for last.
- Color: Looks great to me
- Sharpness: Excellent
- SDE: If you look for it you can still see it, but it doesn't jump out like the Rift and I rarely ever notice it in games.
- FOV: Noticeably better and as others have said especially vertically which is great for glancing down at gauges without having to look down.
- Comfort: Very comfortable even after extended sessions. No aftermarket anything required.
- On/Off: Once you have the headset adjusted it is very easy to pull off and put back on without any readjustments necessary.
- Hygiene: I just got my 2 spare face gaskets which pop in and out extremely easily with the magnetic fasteners. The material is soft and feels great.
- FPS: I could tell the difference running at 120fps and I would love to run every game at that speed if I could.
- Audio: I'm hearing effects in games that I never noticed and it does make everything sound more full and ambient. I can't hear my NLRv3 or transducers while playing and honestly the out of the box sound is loud and I turned it down some. These headphones are very dynamic and some games have more pop in them to handle lesser headphones. Some effects in some games while spectacular where too much and I had to adjust game settings to lower the volume.
Performance: My i9-9900K with 1080Ti is running it well, but it takes a pretty powerful machine to really take advantage of it. Dirt Rally running inside ReVive appears to require dropping to 80 fps to reliably work without any stuttering. I could run it at 90fps and it would be good most of the time. Likewise DCS World flying planes looked great most of the time at 90fps, but depending on settings was happier at 80fps. In PC2 it will run 120fps well and I like it. For many other room scale games I could run 120fps and crank up the resolution quite a bit. I was running Space Pirate Trainer at 180% and 120fps and it looked great. Likewise In Death at 120fps and 140% looks great.
Gaming Performance: This is a combination of things.
- Higher frame rate
- Better clarity and resolution
- Better tracking
When you can see further, aim more accurately because of tracking and higher frame rate the combination is greater than the sum of its parts. This will give you an advantage in some games. I notice this especially playing In Death. It was like I had a scope on my bow.
Work In Progress: I've updated the firmware and SteamVR twice since I got my Index and the changes are combinations of bug fixes and new features. This has just been released and I can only assume there will be performance enhancements coming as well like there have been for every other headset that has been released.
My hope is that eventually I'll have a computer that can drive this headset in all games like I can in Eve Valkyrie at ultra high settings with 120 or better fps and high super sampling. It looks absolutely stunning! This tells me that I'll only get better results out of this headset over time.
