Valve Index availability rumour

My Index is stuck at the ParcelFarce depot. I've rung them up and they claim that they've got drivers off with the virus, and they hope to deliver it sometime soon. I'm not happy that a parcel worth £900 is lying around. The more time they have it the more chance they'll damage or lose it. :(
 
Finally got my Index. Had to go and collect it personally, but it's here. I'm working from home luckily so I could pop out and get it from the depot, but I'm going to have to wait until this evening to set it up. First impressions though is the headset is really comfy. Looking forward to trying it out later.
 
My first impressions, coming from a CV1, Go, and a Quest.

Bad:

  • The god rays are awful, worse in some ways than the CV1.

  • The black levels are poor, worse than the Go which also has an LCD.

  • The cable is heavy. (Though you don't tend to notice this when the headset is on)

  • The controller button and stick layout isn't as well laid out as the Oculus touch controllers. (Ideally the buttons or stick should be where the trackpad is, the gap between the stick and buttons is too large.) I find the menu buttons quite awkward to press (though you might argue the touch controller menu buttons are too easy to press accidentally).
Good:

  • Feels solid and well built.

  • Setup was very easy.

  • Tracking is great.

  • FOV is excellent.

  • Clarity is excellent - even though I'm not wearing my glasses while I'm waiting for my prescription lenses to turn up.

  • Audio is excellent. So much better than the Quest's built in audio, and better than the CV1 but without anything on your ears.

  • Comfort is great.

  • The finger tracking and grip mechanic work really well. Having the controllers strapped to your hands helps with immersion.

  • Revive works amazingly well with Oculus games. It's great that I can still play the games I bought on the Oculus store, and they look much clearer than on the CV1.
I haven't tried 120hz or 144hz mode yet, but I only(!) have a 1080ti, so I'd prefer resolution and clarity over refresh rate,

It seems a shame that despite all the positives the god rays, black levels, and controller ergonomics let it down a bit. It seems like there's still no 'perfect' headset, out there, though the Index comes closer than any other.
 
Ravenger said:
It seems a shame that despite all the positives the god rays, black levels, and controller ergonomics let it down a bit. It seems like there's still no 'perfect' headset, out there, though the Index comes closer than any other.
Click to expand...
For me personally the Vive Pro comes the closest at the moment - I just couldn't give up the OLED colours and black levels even for FOV, having tried a Go, and owning a Pimax. However, if I starting fresh rather than upgrading my existing OG Vive, the Index package would easily be the one I'd go for.

Agree that the Index controller touchpad and stick should really be the other way round, or at least the stick should be in the center rather than to one side. Bit of an oversight by Valve if you ask me. I liked the touchpad on the old Vive controllers, but since it's been reduced to the size of a peanut it's effectively now useless except for scrolling up/down.
 
Ravenger said:
It seems a shame that despite all the positives the god rays, black levels, and controller ergonomics let it down a bit. It seems like there's still no 'perfect' headset, out there, though the Index comes closer than any other.
Click to expand...
Already guessed this by checking reviews, that's why I'd probably rather a cheaper Rift S and spend a bit more when an even better headset comes out, which isn't likely for another couple of years at least in terms of updated models from the current ones.
 
I’m still trying to tweak mine as the image clarity and text readability, especially when off dead centre is not good.

I too noticed the god rays on anything white were quite OTT but performance was good.

Hopefully the video fitting guide will help me get a good fit of the headset and improve the image clarity as ill-fitment can be a big cause of image blurry ness.

Oh and a tip from the noob. Make sure you remove the plastic film from the base stations. It helps with the tracking somewhat :)
 
Gazanimal said:
Oh and a tip from the noob. Make sure you remove the plastic film from the base stations. It helps with the tracking somewhat :)
Click to expand...

I was wondering why I got a grey screen when I put the Index on for the first time (I knew that it indicated loss of tracking). Then I spotted the plastic film on the lighthouses. DOH! :rolleyes:
 
Ravenger said:
It seems a shame that despite all the positives the god rays, black levels, and controller ergonomics let it down a bit. It seems like there's still no 'perfect' headset, out there, though the Index comes closer than any other.
Click to expand...

Great review and it pretty much sums up what people I know say about the Valve Index. Have you played in it for a long time yet? Do you find it very warm to wear for long periods?

Your last line is the reason for me choosing the Rift S over the Index. For the price I paid I can forgive the Rift S some of it's short comings, but I am not sure I would be able to live with the issues if I paid a £1000.

I hope you are happy with your purchase though? That's all that really matters :)
 
I got my Index and have got it working. I was a bit lucky as the delivery firm's parcel tracking said it was still in their warehouse but just as I was leaving the house for a few hours it turned up. If it had arrived a couple of minutes later I'd have missed it.

This is my first VR and I am just getting used to it with Elite Dangerous, as I feel that a space game is less likely to give me motion sickness issues than a flight or driving sim would. Once I have acclimatised with this I'll set it up for my other sims. The Index game controllers aren't needed for Elite, I already have that set up with Voice Attack and my HOTAS, but they may be useful in other games. First impressions are it massively improves the whole experience in Elite, situational awareness in combat should be much better although I am just doing the docking simulation at the moment. The sense of scale as you approach the stations is very impressive though.

One annoyance was a barely audible but really irritating whine coming from the base stations, not a problem while playing but initially at least I was forced to unplug them each time I stopped. Since then though I have figured out how to get the things to shut down automatically whenever I exit SteamVR.
 
melmac said:
Great review and it pretty much sums up what people I know say about the Valve Index. Have you played in it for a long time yet? Do you find it very warm to wear for long periods?

Your last line is the reason for me choosing the Rift S over the Index. For the price I paid I can forgive the Rift S some of it's short comings, but I am not sure I would be able to live with the issues if I paid a £1000.

I hope you are happy with your purchase though? That's all that really matters :)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty happy for now, mainly because the FOV is incredible compared to the Rift. Horizontally it's not that much bigger, but vertically it's a huge improvement. I really removes that ski goggles effect, which makes it more immersive. I imagine for sims this will be great. (one of the reason I wanted to upgrade was I got fed up of the low resolution when playing sims).

I'm sure some of the glare can be addressed by proper fitment of the headset, but it is annoying for a £1000 system. Oculus have really nailed the lenses with the Go and Rift S (Ironically the Quest lenses have a bit of glare). I just wish they hadn't released such a compromised system in the Rift S. I only wanted a higher resolution CV1 :)

I would like to try a Rift S to compare, a colleage of mine has one and he hates it compared to the CV1, mainly because of tracking issues.

I've not used the Index long though, just popping into various games and trying them out. I hope to have a proper play session tonight now I've properly mounted the lighthouses and got all the wiring tidied up. Ironically it may actually be better to play Oculus exclusive games on, due to the higher resolution and FOV. Lone Echo looks incredible, and works amazingly well with the Index controllers using ReVive.

For the time I've played it I've not noticed any heat, but I love how easy it is to adjust. The rotating knob at the back which is so much better than the CV1 and Quest velcro system. For such a heavy headset it's amazingly comfortable.

I'll post more feedback once I've played it for a while.
 
I have managed to mitigate the glare somewhat, by tilting the headset down more. It's still there, it's still distracting, but it's less annoying.

I also tried a few more games, and I thought Elite Dangerous would look bad due to the poor LCD black levels, but it actually looked pretty good. Even Dreadhalls which is a very dark game looked ok.
 
To be honest I'm finding overall experience with the Index to be below my expectations.

What with the glare, the unergonomic controllers, plus there also seems to be issue getting games to run accepably. I'm not sure if it's due to the increased resolution but I'm having a hard time getting games to run without reprojection, even though I've got a Ryzen 3900x and a superclocked 1080ti (Ok it's not a 2080ti, but it's way above min spec). Now I seem to be getting movement hitching with games that feature smooth loco, like Borderlands and Skyrim, where the movement speed will slow down for a moment, then speed up again. I don't even find the tracking that smooth either - it seems more shaky than the Oculus CV1, though again that could be due to reprojection, or maybe it's too accurate and picking up my jittery movements :)

I've tried playing around with the various supersampling options but not found a decent set of settings yet.

It does make me realise how much more polished the Oculus VR experience is.

I'll see how Alyx runs on Monday.
 
I'm surprised - I'm running a Pro on a lot less than that and it generally performs very well (OK, a few games fall into frequent motion smoothing territory depending on my settings, but they're few and far between if you don't go totally overboard with stuff like supersampling and overzealous AA). Could be a hitch with your USB connection perhaps? Tried changing ports? Also try reducing the camera frame rate as that can suck up a lot of bandwidth (although I think only when active).

As for tracking I can only comment on the old SteamVR 1.0 vs 2.0 tracking as I've owned both sets of lighthouses - I feel the 2.0 tracking is not as accurate as the old 1.0 tracking. Motions are fine and dandy, but the precision is not quite the same (hold the controllers touching in front of you and there are huge overlaps if you rotate round - it was not that bad with the 1.0 lighthouses). Still perfectly acceptable in-game and I dare say better than inside-out tracking, but it's disappointing it took a slight step backwards.
 
Ravenger said:
To be honest I'm finding overall experience with the Index to be below my expectations.

What with the glare, the unergonomic controllers, plus there also seems to be issue getting games to run accepably. I'm not sure if it's due to the increased resolution but I'm having a hard time getting games to run without reprojection, even though I've got a Ryzen 3900x and a superclocked 1080ti (Ok it's not a 2080ti, but it's way above min spec). Now I seem to be getting movement hitching with games that feature smooth loco, like Borderlands and Skyrim, where the movement speed will slow down for a moment, then speed up again. I don't even find the tracking that smooth either - it seems more shaky than the Oculus CV1, though again that could be due to reprojection, or maybe it's too accurate and picking up my jittery movements :)

I've tried playing around with the various supersampling options but not found a decent set of settings yet.

It does make me realise how much more polished the Oculus VR experience is.

I'll see how Alyx runs on Monday.
Click to expand...

Are you running games with too high of settings or too much SS? Try lowering the settings and report back.

As for tracking, That doesn't sound right at all. Are you in a room full of reflective surfaces?

I have a Vive and Rift S and haven't noticed any tracking differences between them.

Could it be a faulty headset?
 
I remember having some hitching issues in Skyrim. I am sure this was due to too much supersampling. Have you double checked the SS on Skyrim and steam make sure you have not doubled up?
 
Solved the hitching issue by turning off motion smoothing. I'd already turned off supersamping inside Skyrim.
With motion smoothing off I seem to be having a better time getting games to run properly, so it's looking more positive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom