New valve vr hmd

I got my Index 'reservation ready to purchase' email from valve yesterday, giving me seven days to decide if I want it or not. I'm sadly not going to buy after reading many reviews. No new game, no new purchase, is my stand. I'd rather just get a cheap WMR just to play Beatsaber, then see whats new in 12 months time.
 
£40 in steam sale returns if you bought one. Had an extra fiver on that to finally give up on Beatsaber, and get NMS for nothing:)

Rhythm games are turning out to be far more fun playing hands free. The Vive controllers were prone to slipping when you got active, having an open hand feels great.

Edit* Massively impressed with BS, fluid at 144hz without a single frame dropped.
 
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I'm surprised at the amount of people running games at 144hz. Do you all have uber machines?
I'd have thought 120 was a bit of a push. I struggle to get that high on some modern game running flat screen.
 
GBRusty said:
I'm surprised at the amount of people running games at 144hz. Do you all have uber machines?
I'd have thought 120 was a bit of a push. I struggle to get that high on some modern game running flat screen.
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I reckon people are actually running at 60 or 72fps and letting SteamVR double up via motion smoothing and/or dynamic resolution to get to 120 or 144Hz? Something simple like Beat Saber you might get away at a native 120 or 144fps though on a 2080Ti.
 
There's not been much I've pushed at 120/44. Some things just don't agree, they become stuttered because they don't support the increase. Of the few that have worked out, Beatsaber was flawless at 144, DoomVFR was great at 120, and X-Rebirth was outstanding at 120hz with the increase in scale and fov. No motion smoothing involved, all checked out with FPSVR. 2080ti 9700k.
 
Valve Index received! It's a stellar bit of kit. Everything looks fantastic, great screen quality. Google Earth VR is just breathtaking. About to try more VR apps to see what else this baby can do.

My only gripe is the base stations, well one of them in particular - the motor is making a faint high pitched whining noise, which is pretty frustrating given I've spent a lot on the rest of my setup for a quiet gaming experience. Tried a few things like tightening the base etc. but it's definitely the internal motor causing the issue. I've contacted Valve support about it, but I doubt there's much they can do other than replace it.
 
I your looking to exploit the audio visual, then check out Conscious Existence - A Journey Within. The base stations do make a little sound because of the motor, but if one is noticeably more than the other id imagine there's an issue. Mine are up in the rafters and have been silent while whirling away for 3 years without a rest, generally you don't see many problems with the motors.

Visually I loves the pinball. It easily super samples at 2.0 and some of the Visual Pinball tables in VR are totally photorealistic. Audio is well served with anything with a pumping bass, the speaker/phones have a wicked bass tone.
 
lokiss said:
https://www.vpforums.org/index.php?s=2a99f4eeeb291af41db07aefbd681dfa&showtopic=38417&page=1

It's visual pinball, but it's a whole new beast in VR. Some of the latest tables have better visuals over the commercial counterparts, hands down my favourite thing to immerge in VR this year.
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Had a quick look at that link, wow that's a dated website ><

I'm not even sure what I'm looking at. Is it a pinball emulater? I saw MAME mentioned. So will I need to find my ROMs for the table (for the ones I own , natch).

Can't wait to try it on my Vive and then the Index (I've got it on pre-order thingy so probably a month or two to wait)
 
I tried the 'knuckles' controllers yesterday (On an original Vive, unfortunately, not on the Index) and I thought they were very good, but not a million times better than Oculus Touch.

I guess as I've had limited finger tracking on the touch controllers the Index controllers don't seem as revolutionary as if I'd come from the Vive using the wands. The most impressive feature I feel is the grip sensitivity, so you can squeeze the controller to grip harder. That feels like it could have some good uses.

The physical controls placement is awkward though. The Thumbstick seems like it's in the wrong place - it's a bit of a stretch to reach it. Ideally the trackpad and the thumbstick would be better swapped.

Overall they're amazing controllers, but I do wonder if they will be used to their fullest extent or if most developers will just develop for what common functionality there is between them and the Touch controllers.
 
GBRusty said:
m not even sure what I'm looking at. Is it a pinball emulater? I saw MAME mentioned. So will I need to find my ROMs for the table (for the ones I own , natch).
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It's visual pinball, it utilizes Pin in mame to tandem a rom file. It's been around about 15 years, there are thousands of original user made tables and original rom files freely distributed by the authors. Also to put your mind at ease, the commercial roms are freely available, no need to own the table:)

https://www.reddit.com/r/virtualpin...inmame_and_visual_pinball_working_in_virtual/

Explains it all.
 
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I’ve been playing with the Valve Index all weekend.
Positives: Comfort is excellent, the earspeakers are absolutely amazing, clarity through the lens sharp and clear. Tracking is obviously excellent with the lighthouses.

Negatives: Controllers are a ergonomically awkward, not too bad, but just ok. The finger tracking is fine, but not really a transformative experience. The years of development and expense don’t feel justified.
The lcd screens are unfortunately a massive dealbreaker. Sure, the oled screens on the Vive had SDE, but the depth of tone in the colours and the black levels gave the experience a ‘looking through a magic portal into another reality’ feeling. That is not present here. On the Index the image is sharp and clear, but it’s just unengaging sadly. I was going to upgrade my gpu to a 2080ti for this, but don’t see the point now.

I’m going to keep it, as the earspeakers just make music games like beatsaber or vrbox fantastic fun, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for hopefully another headset in the future that employs a similar RGB strip oled screen as the PSVR, which for me is the best display tech. It’s a shame it’s so low resolution. Maybe on the PS5 we’ll see an update.
 
Moomalade said:
I’ve been playing with the Valve Index all weekend.
Positives: Comfort is excellent, the earspeakers are absolutely amazing, clarity through the lens sharp and clear. Tracking is obviously excellent with the lighthouses.

Negatives: Controllers are a ergonomically awkward, not too bad, but just ok. The finger tracking is fine, but not really a transformative experience. The years of development and expense don’t feel justified.
The lcd screens are unfortunately a massive dealbreaker. Sure, the oled screens on the Vive had SDE, but the depth of tone in the colours and the black levels gave the experience a ‘looking through a magic portal into another reality’ feeling. That is not present here. On the Index the image is sharp and clear, but it’s just unengaging sadly. I was going to upgrade my gpu to a 2080ti for this, but don’t see the point now.

I’m going to keep it, as the earspeakers just make music games like beatsaber or vrbox fantastic fun, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for hopefully another headset in the future that employs a similar RGB strip oled screen as the PSVR, which for me is the best display tech. It’s a shame it’s so low resolution. Maybe on the PS5 we’ll see an update.
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How is the sweet spot and godrays compared to the Vive if you had one. I got a Vive Pro and am on order for one of these but all the evidence is pointing to not worth it. Coming from an origional Vive or Oculus I guess yes. Perhaps I am better putting my money into a 2080ti from a 1080ti than just buy a very similer head set? With my eyes I see very little screen door effect but God rays and sweet spot could be better but if they are not there is very little reason to upgrade the headset, where having an extra 30% gpu power would be more beneificial as both the Pro and the Index would be handicaped a little by the lack of GPU grunt.
 
rossiboy001 said:
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How is the sweet spot and godrays compared to the Vive if you had one. I got a Vive Pro and am on order for one of these but all the evidence is pointing to not worth it. Coming from an origional Vive or Oculus I guess yes. Perhaps I am better putting my money into a 2080ti from a 1080ti than just buy a very similer head set? With my eyes I see very little screen door effect but God rays and sweet spot could be better but if they are not there is very little reason to upgrade the headset, where having an extra 30% gpu power would be more beneificial as both the Pro and the Index would be handicaped a little by the lack of GPU grunt.
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I used to own the Vive, and the sweet spot is considerably better on the Index. Godrays are also reduced to the point that I don't really notice them. There is occasionally a diffuse sort of minor glare that happens sometimes in bright objects against a dark background, but even this isn't really obtrusive at all.
As for upgrading from the Vive Pro, the core issue is the LCD vs Oled problem. Essentially, Valve and Oculus have traded in depth resolution with the deep inky colour tones and black levels of Oled, for the surface resolution of LCD with it's higher sub-pixel structure. I'm not sure this sacrifice was worth it from an 'experience' point of view, the illusion of feeling somewhere else. LCD is a lot clearer, but it's a sort of dry looking presentation, you never really forget you're looking at a screen.

In practical terms it's definitely superior for general use and the higher refresh rate does make a big difference in terms of comfort when zooming around in project cars, something I struggled with in the past. I guess it's down to what your priorities are. As I say, I'm keeping it as the earspeakers are crazy good, but I'm definitely going to miss that lovely magical feeling of Oled.

If I could afford it I'd have both the Vive Pro and Index, each with it's valid use case.
 
Moomalade said:
As I say, I'm keeping it as the earspeakers are crazy good, but I'm definitely going to miss that lovely magical feeling of Oled.
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This is why I'm hesitant to pull the trigger on the Index HMD. I have a Pimax 8K and it does many things better than my Vive (higher resolution, much higher fov, minimal glare) but I keep going back to my Vive because of the OLED colours, blacks, and brightness.

I'm sure the Index panels are better quality than the Pimax panels, but LCDs just can't "pop" like OLEDs can. I have a feeling I'd be similarly disappointed.

What I really want is just the audio headstrap of the Index and the controllers :D
 
I have the Pimax 5K+ and the Vive Pro - I've started to use the wireless Vive Pro again for games where wide FOV is not useful but good colours are, and I use the Pimax when I want to see more of the world around me. A lot of VR games are designed for 100 degree FOV, so adding more FOV does not do a lot for them. The one thing the Index has over the other two is the high refresh rate, but it's not really worth it for me at the moment. The audio looks interesting, but if I loved good audio I would have bought some fancy headphones.
 
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