Index VR headset will officially cost $999 for full kit, on sale tomorrow - Sensationalist Headlines

Valve’s Index VR headset will officially cost $999, on sale tomo.. That’s a relatively high price by today’s VR headset standards — Facebook just announced the Oculus Quest and Oculus Rift S will ship May 21st for $399 — but Valve will also let you buy parts piecemeal if you need, which is rather nice. If you’ve already got a Vive or Vive Pro and / or don’t need the latest Knuckles controllers, you won’t necessarily need to spend that whole $999 to get started. Like the HTC Vive before it, which was co-designed with Valve, the Vive Pro will still be a tethered experience with a 5-meter cable that plugs into your beefy gaming PC, and one that uses the company’s laser-firing Lighthouse base stations to figure out where the headset is at any given time, and thus let you walk around a room’s worth of space in VR. It’s not using cameras for inside-out tracking; Valve says the twin stereo RGB cameras here are designed for passthrough (letting you see the real world through the headset) and for whatever the computer vision community can dream up. Instead, Valve says the Index’s focus is on delivering the highest fidelity VR experience possible, meaning improved lenses, screens, and audio — which in this case actually includes a pair of 1440 x 1600-resolution RGB LCDs, rather than the higher-res OLED screens much of the competition is using. But Valve says its screens run faster — 120Hz, with an experimental 144Hz mode — and are better at combating the “screen door effect” and blurry-when-you-move-your-head persistence issues that first-gen VR headsets struggled with.

$999 is steep, however it's worth mentioning there's a lot of compatibility between the Vive, Vive pro and Index hardware which allows an incremental upgrade.

Welp, was hoping to sell my WMR headset and get one of these on launch. Guess not.

£260 for the controllers nope

I saved my money just for this, and now I'll save it on something else

Are financing plans available or something..? $1000 is fucking expensive.

I really wanted to see eyetracking now when variable rate shading is a thing. It could really help driving those displays at that maximum refresh rate.

If you've already got a Vive setup and just want the Headset, you can get just that. Same with the controllers. The headset alone is $499 The controllers alone are $279 Both together are $749 The full price is if you don't have anything and are starting out. For me, since I don't have anything at this time, I'm thinking I might pick up a Vive starter kit and then just get the controllers.

Is it confirmed that the controllers will work with the current Vive?

Why isn't variable refresh rate a thing on VR headsets? Is it a latency problem?

1080€ here, 300€ just for the controllers, holy hell

The headset alone is $500, headset with Knuckles is $750. If you have a Vive or Vive Pro you can reuse your Wands and Base Stations. It's not a horrific price all told, it is a very premium VR experience and commands a price as such. If you want a budget VR setup get a Windows Mixed Reality setup.

Yes

Totally gonna sell my Vive Pro and controllers for the Index and Knuckles

That's really expensive for an upgraded Gen1 headset.

It's interesting that Valve has continually reaffirmed that they want their VR products to be the premium offer on the market. This is like a direct contrast to every other aspect of their operations which typically have been about accessibility.

$999 lol fuck no. If it was around $599 to $650 then sure.

For some reason I was thinking this was supposed to be a cheaper alternative to the Vive. Boy was I wrong.

Wasn't this meant to introduce a whole new wave of people to VR and revolutionize the format? All this does, as someone who's not into VR but is waiting for a good angle to enter from, is push me further away from the format.

What a load of honk. $280 for just the controllers? Even a full set of Joy-Cons will only run you $80, to say nothing of PSMove and other motion control solutions. I'm aware of the capacitive grips and finger-tracking sensors here, but that price is obscene regardless. Either it's overengineered for what it needs to do if that price really is necessary, or they're gouging the hell out of buyers. For crying out loud, my Razer Hydra only cost me $150 back in 2012 and that was using far more proprietary tech than just a bunch of tiny cameras.

?? I don't understand https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/58145/868591a8-934e-4a5c-ace3-bb66b372c8cf/541365656.jpg

Oculus is doing more to move VR gaming forward. I think the Oculus quest is going to introduce a ton of people to proper VR gaming, and help boost interest and software sales.

I don't think Valve are planning on selling as many Knuckles controllers as Nintendo have sold Switches/Joy-Cons. They're probably not set up with an economy of scale to charge lower prices. Though they're still way too expensive. You can almost buy a Switch for the cost of those controllers.

I think some common flame retardants are linked to an increase risk in cancer.

That warning is on like 99% of all products sold in California so it means nothing Well, not entirely nothing. It is basically warning you that the plastic items are made of plastic.

The hardware may not exactly be revolutionary, but what I find more distressing is that Valve, formerly known as a video game company, seemed to have nothing much to show at this event. I’m sure there’s a lot of great VR stuff out there, but it doesn’t feel like anyone has really launched a game-game; you know, one that kinda goes far beyond just showcasing VR’s (admittedly extremely cool) gimmicks. I don’t want to say that Valve should make Half Life 3 for VR, but VR seems to need a title like that. Dumping $1000 on a setup for a fairly limited games library is not that compelling.

As someone who hasn't bought any PC VR hardware yet, I'm kinda liking this one over HTC's offerings.

https://twitter.com/LambdaGen/status/1123294800831229955

DotA Royale.

Yeah I'm gonna just stay with my CV1 for a while until the price drops, the knuckles aren't really useful since theirs not a lot of games that support its functionality yet afaik.