Valve Index Hands On

[Supmua]

There might be a way to hack it in by changing app ID within NVInspector. I’ll just wait for other people to try it first.

[SkipCarey]

tried it,VRSS in program specific settings in control panel for Pavlov VR (Nvidia supported VRSS title)and even though NV experience detected it(Pavlov VR) the VRSS option for Pavlov refuses to come up in NV control panel, but the Max FPS option was in there ? strange indeed I have a RTX 2080 so it should be there but...... nope would have liked to test it in Pavlov but I doubt people with hefty Rigs will notice a difference as Pavlov runs damn nicely on mine in VR but im running a I7 9700k an RTX2080 with NVME SSds with 64GB of DDR 3200 and a Asus ROG Maximus XI Code mobo.What ive noticed is NV Experience only wants to detect AAA titles even if you point the scanner directly at any other titles like DCS .This is starting to look like hype to sell some old RTX cards on the shelf before the next round of cards by Nvidia to set them apart from AMD?Im interested in what you guys think

Edited January 8, 2020 by SkipCarey

[MPK]

There might be a way to hack it in by changing app ID within NVInspector. I’ll just wait for other people to try it first.

 

It only works with games that do forward rendering. DCS does deferred rendering. Maybe in 5 years if the Vulcan rewrite ever materialises.

[Supmua]

tried it,VRSS in program specific settings in control panel for Pavlov VR (Nvidia supported VRSS title)and even though NV experience detected it(Pavlov VR) the VRSS option for Pavlov refuses to come up in NV control panel, but the Max FPS option was in there ? strange indeed I have a RTX 2080 so it should be there but...... nope would have liked to test it in Pavlov but I doubt people with hefty Rigs will notice a difference as Pavlov runs damn nicely on mine in VR but im running a I7 9700k an RTX2080 with NVME SSds with 64GB of DDR 3200 and a Asus ROG Maximus XI Code mobo.What ive noticed is NV Experience only wants to detect AAA titles even if you point the scanner directly at any other titles like DCS .This is starting to look like hype to sell some old RTX cards on the shelf before the next round of cards by Nvidia to set them apart from AMD?Im interested in what you guys think

 

Hmm people in Reddit Valve Index forum are playing Pavlov with VRSS on.

[SkipCarey]

Hmm people in Reddit Valve Index forum are playing Pavlov with VRSS on.

 

It may be because I installed the new drivers with out NV experience and the reinstalled experience after(Ive found experience to be buggy) odd thing is Pavlov was found an "optimised" by experience:smilewink:

[Kinger]

Well.........I've had the Reverb for about a week now. As much as I love the Index for so many things, I'm about positive I'll be putting it up for sale.

[Mr. Big.Biggs]

Was messing today with settings for my index. Has been crystal clear (within tolerances of course) both inside and outside, but running 45 fps pretty much solid both single and multi player. Only hitch was ghosting of planes that wiz by making it hard to vid even a model.

Today I turned resolution in steam down to 75, refresh rate 90htz. In dcs turned pd down to 1.6 every other pertinent on high. Had slightly less clarity in cockpit but still very readable. A fps that fluctuated between 60 and 90 and absolutely zero ghosting of fast moving objects. Had an absolute blast in the just dogfight server! I was the chrome and lime green cat kicking ass!

Give it a try. May work for you.

Regards

[Supmua]

FYI, according to Road to VR,

 

the index headset is sold out across the globe...again...

 

 

 

Yeah, it’s been like that since the announcement of Half Life Alyx.

[Supmua]

Was messing today with settings for my index. Has been crystal clear (within tolerances of course) both inside and outside, but running 45 fps pretty much solid both single and multi player. Only hitch was ghosting of planes that wiz by making it hard to vid even a model.

Today I turned resolution in steam down to 75, refresh rate 90htz. In dcs turned pd down to 1.6 every other pertinent on high. Had slightly less clarity in cockpit but still very readable. A fps that fluctuated between 60 and 90 and absolutely zero ghosting of fast moving objects. Had an absolute blast in the just dogfight server! I was the chrome and lime green cat kicking ass!

Give it a try. May work for you.

Regards

 

It would have been great if we can get VRSS support for DCS. Imagine running 0.7 to 1.0 SS in the periphery and 2.0 to 4.0 SS only in the center area with decent frame rate.

[Wali763]

Index vs Rift S

 

Hi.

 

 

After using the Rift S for some two months I went back to TrackIR, since VR had too many shortcomings for me. But it was a close call....

 

Anyway: this week I saw an ad for a little used Index with one basestation from a Racing-Simmer and jumped at the opportunity. I just wanted to know, if the "best" VR-set out there would change my deceision regarding VR (to wait till better headsets come out and are usuable in DCS; maybe if a ~ 8K-X/RTX3080Ti-combo (and Vulcan) could be had for maybe 1200Euros instead of the most likely 2500 Euros....)

 

After now testing the Index for a few hours vs my Rift S, thats what I found (very personal):

 

Index is better in resolution, FOV and sound. But only sound is a clear win. Resolution (and SDE) only so slightly and FOV a bit, but by far not a gamechanger for me.

 

Comfortwise I actually prefer the RiftS since its a bit lighter and has a thinner/lighter cable even the Index is very comfortable to wear.

 

What is annoying about the Index is the high pitched noise off the basestation. Its not too loud, but still hearable. Anyway you soon forget it, once the headset is on.

 

And the next big minus for the Index is the performance-drop I get with it.

With the Rift S (on my second install, the stable 2.5.5 that I used for this comparison) I used my old "standard" 2x MSAA and 1.3 PD (if ingame or OTT did not matter I think) and with that got a fairly stable 40 almost everywhere with my settings.

 

With the Index I had to turn off MSAA, set PD to 1 and went for 120% SS in Steam (which meant 2200x2450, that equalled the Rift S's resolution of PD 1,7 (PD1,3 plus 0,4 equivalent for MSAA)).

 

That way the performance was quite the same, but picture-quality of the Index was only on par, maybe even bit worse than the Rift S.

 

But going up to 250%SS in Steam made the picture-quality visibly better; in contrary pushing PD past 1,3 in the Rift S never really did much for me.

The resulting performancedrop got my system to the edge of acceptable playability in most situations and I often saw 27 fps....

 

But overall I have to say, that I kind of enjoy using the Index; for me its not a big, still a distinct step over the Rift S. But then again (especially with my current GPU) its not enough to make me overthink my decision to go back to the monitor. Maybe if I would have a GPU, that made those 27FPS to 40FPS. But I guess even with a 2080Ti Id have to make quite some concessions.

 

Another reason also being, that general concerns with VR like the annoying shimmering, are not really better compard to my Rift S.

 

So I guess, I will resell the Index again with a rather heavy heart and wait what future may bring.

 

I got one question though:

Ive already read quite a bit about this and was also confirmed by other people that the basestations do make some noise.

 

Arent there any completly quiet basestations out there? Right now, this would not keep me from going the 8K-X/RTX3080Ti-way, but certainly would make me think a few more times......

Edited February 25, 2020 by Wali763

[dburne]

You should get a good price on that Index, as they are very hard to get right now.

That also goes for about any of the VR devices currently.

Both Rift S and Quest are not available from stock any more, all you can find is third party sellers on Amazon charging high prices for them.

 

Not sure how much of this is attributable to the growth of VR or the Corona Virus.

I know Index pretty much sold out after the Half Life Alyx announcement.

And Quest sold out shortly after Oculus Link became available.

Now Rift S are even showing sold out.

[Mr. Big.Biggs]

Fyi my base stations are silent. Not a peep. Also I run max on just about all in game pertinent settings but water and civilian traffic and get 45-75 fps all day long in multi player at 90mhz and 70-90’ish single player. The key for me was that there are about 10 different versions of motion smoothing/ super sampling between nvidia/steam and DCS called

All kinds of shit. You have to shut them all off but 1 ( seems to be a bit system specific as to which works best) and crank the one you pick until performance starts to drop. My pd isn1.9 and cockpit is crystal clear and about 85% of the time I actually get only 1 jet, not a smear of a jet pass my canopy!

In my opinion the only thing in 2.5 holding image quality back after above is the actual resolution of the headset which will never be 2k.

Have not tried the new beta version yet and probably won’t for a while.

Good luck!

Edited February 26, 2020 by Mr. Big.”Biggs”

[Wali763]

Just wanted to add to my above post, that I now sold the Index. But in the end it was a close call since I liked it quite much.

 

If I werent only playing DCS, I would have kept it. But the poor implementation or high hardware-demand of VR in DCS kept me from that.

 

I cant see any situation, where I could reach the fps Mr Biggs claimes to have. But of course, my GPU is maybe 30% less performant. But a guy from our squadron also said, that he cant reach that fps with his 2080Ti. And from his statements during our MP-sessions it does seem, he quite often has low frames.

 

Anyway, Im pretty sure, that the Index will still be good in 6 months. Maybe by then, we have a new grafics-engine and better hardware. But then of course there is always the Pimax 8K-X.......

[Mr. Big.Biggs]

I find it interesting that one time I will load into a MP server and be locked at 45 psi on the ground with 45-60 while flying. I crash and load back in and it stutters on the ground with 45 psi in the air.

Ping rates “seem” good. Their obviously is more to the issue than just a single setting or configuration that “works”. Its almost like my pc has mood swings....

I do believe I have it set on single player to about the best I’m going to get tho and I am quite happy. I did tweak something lately that makes distant planes “shimmer” instead of black blobs making them quite hard to see.

Will fuss more with it when I finally get the guts to update to the next OB. Still flying stable and haven’t opened OB since this morning whole update thing began. Going to wait till the get some more patches out.

[USA_Recon]

Once Valve releases a headset at 2160x2160 resolution I'm all in :)

[dburne]

Once Valve releases a headset at 2160x2160 resolution I'm all in :)

 

If the Index offered inside-out tracking like my Rift S I would strongly consider it as well. I have gotten spoiled with it now, the thought of going back to setting up sensors/cameras whatever they are is not appealing to me.

 

I have very good tracking with the Rift S and love the simplicity of it.

[RealDCSpilot]

In fact, the Index uses also inside-out tracking. The optical sensors on the HMD and the controllers look for the emitted laser fields of the base stations. This offers a higher rate of precision, much more redundancy than SLAM with basic CCD chips and doesn't have the problem of dead angles. That's why you will always find professional HMD's using SteamVR instead of cheaper "inside-out" tracking.

[SAABoy]

TL;DR which headset should I get in Q2 2020?

 

Overclocked 2080ti KP owner here, thinking about splurging on a VR headset. Leaning heavily towards Valve Index because of Half-Life:Alyx synergy but will end up using it many more hours on DCS assuming DCS with VR is as awesome as they say.

[Waxer]

Water-cooled EVGA 2080 Ti owner here. (Wish I had patience for a KP!)

I own a Rift S, so can offer some comments regarding that.

 

1) My GPU drives it without issue. I am CPU bottled, not GPU.

2) Very nice motion tracking. Provided that there is light in the room that I am using it never loses tracking which is smooth and accurate.

3) Had some troubles early on with the hand controllers losing wireless signal. Then had to faff around reconnecting them. But that seems to have been corrected now with firmware improvements.

4) Microphone: crap.

5) Earphone: meh. Not crap, but not particularly good either.

6) Optics: surprisingly decent. Kind of a good all rounder, but does not excel in anything either.

 

Overall Rift S is a good way to try VR at a low price point and / or to get VR but hedge yourself for a bigger purchase once the technology matures further. You got a KP, so I imagine value is not top of your criteria. But anyways...! LOL.

 

Half-Life game, no idea. But in DCS even though spotting targets and reading some moving maps and things like that in a cockpit is difficult with VR, the overall immersion means that I am NOT going back to TrackIR. It is truly an incredible experience. DCS and VR is way better than any other VR application I have experienced.

Edited March 27, 2020 by Milou

[Damalio]

I have the Vive, Odyssey, and Valve Index.

 

I ditched the Odyssey for the Valve Index for DCS. The Index is just amazing and super comfy. With a 2080GTX the Valve Index is just amazing. Increase FoV over the others I have had and the base stations/Controllers are easily setup in SteamVR. I can read everything in the cockpit without issues with the Valve Index as well.

 

I don't use the controllers in DCS so I have just one base station mounted in front of my SimPit. I use a mouse and head look for in cockpit switches at the moment. Works great!

 

I use the SIM so much that I have not even setup the Index for room scale. I still use the HTC Original Vive for roomscale games. Half-Life:Alyx works just fine on the old Vive too.

 

Back on topic...

I ditched the Odyssey because of the inside out tracking. It was awful when I was trying to look around fast while controlling the Sim. It also hurt my head after a while.

 

The Pimax will be the best for FoV but its more difficult to setup than the Index. Thumbs up for the Index here.

[dburne]

I am an Oculus junkie here myself, love both my Rift S and Quest.

However if I decided to splurge today for a new headset just for my flight sims, it would definitely be the Valve Index. I would keep the Oculus for most of my other Touch supported games.

[SAABoy]

I ordered the Valve Index but steam didn't take any payment and instead sent me a confirmation email with 8-weeks wait time warning. I guess I'm waiting. But maybe the rumored future HP/Valve headset will be on the horizon at that point. What anyone consider waiting for that nowadays?

 

Water-cooled EVGA 2080 Ti owner here. (Wish I had patience for a KP!)

I own a Rift S, so can offer some comments regarding that.

 

1) My GPU drives it without issue. I am CPU bottled, not GPU.

2) Very nice motion tracking. Provided that there is light in the room that I am using it never loses tracking which is smooth and accurate.

3) Had some troubles early on with the hand controllers losing wireless signal. Then had to faff around reconnecting them. But that seems to have been corrected now with firmware improvements.

4) Microphone: crap.

5) Earphone: meh. Not crap, but not particularly good either.

6) Optics: surprisingly decent. Kind of a good all rounder, but does not excel in anything either.

 

Overall Rift S is a good way to try VR at a low price point and / or to get VR but hedge yourself for a bigger purchase once the technology matures further. You got a KP, so I imagine value is not top of your criteria. But anyways...! LOL.

 

Half-Life game, no idea. But in DCS even though spotting targets and reading some moving maps and things like that in a cockpit is difficult with VR, the overall immersion means that I am NOT going back to TrackIR. It is truly an incredible experience. DCS and VR is way better than any other VR application I have experienced.

 

Patience for a KP? You think I do anything fancy? Just a normal OC, nothing exotic. For now...

 

1) I have a 3950x so I'm hoping I wouldn't be CPU-limited though I'm not sure if VR in general takes advantage of cores/threads or single-thread performance is important.

 

Thanks for the info. I thought Rift S would be $200-400 but it's $660! Might as well go for Valve Index for $880 at that point.

 

For DCS only would you consider a Pimax for FOV/resolution?

 

I have the Vive, Odyssey, and Valve Index.

 

I ditched the Odyssey for the Valve Index for DCS. The Index is just amazing and super comfy. With a 2080GTX the Valve Index is just amazing. Increase FoV over the others I have had and the base stations/Controllers are easily setup in SteamVR. I can read everything in the cockpit without issues with the Valve Index as well.

 

I don't use the controllers in DCS so I have just one base station mounted in front of my SimPit. I use a mouse and head look for in cockpit switches at the moment. Works great!

 

I use the SIM so much that I have not even setup the Index for room scale. I still use the HTC Original Vive for roomscale games. Half-Life:Alyx works just fine on the old Vive too.

 

Back on topic...

I ditched the Odyssey because of the inside out tracking. It was awful when I was trying to look around fast while controlling the Sim. It also hurt my head after a while.

 

The Pimax will be the best for FoV but its more difficult to setup than the Index. Thumbs up for the Index here.

 

I've never flown with a VR headset so it's hard to put these things into context. I have a 34" curved ultrawide monitor, 21:9 aspect ratio: and I know I couldn't stand going back to a lesser FOV. Maybe Pimax FOV is that good, too?

 

I am an Oculus junkie here myself, love both my Rift S and Quest.

However if I decided to splurge today for a new headset just for my flight sims, it would definitely be the Valve Index. I would keep the Oculus for most of my other Touch supported games.

 

You would pick the Valve Index over another something with a larger FOV? Or you wouldn't wait for the rumored new HP/Valve headset?

[Waxer]

For DCS only would you consider a Pimax for FOV/resolution?

 

Well, I have never demoed a Pimax. What I have read and seen in review videos is that despite the Pimax's wider FOV the sweet spot is the limiting factor and that much of the wider FOV is wasted (and uses up GPU resources).

 

It is very difficult shopping for VR headsets as 1) just reading the specifications gives only a partially accurate impression: how good a headset turns out to be is often the sum of parts rather than certain specifications being better than others. 2) What works well for one person might not work for another because our eyes and IPD are different. 3) It is hard to demo things so you generally have to read reviews, order in faith and return if the experience sucks.

 

In terms of wait or buy now, we are close in theory to the next upgrade cycle. However with this terrible Pandemic sweeping over the planet I imagine that new product launches in every industry around the world will be getting delayed this year.

 

In terms of Rift S or Index, I had no idea that prices were that comparable where you live. When I bought my Rift S it was less than half the price of the Index (including base stations and all that jazz).

[dburne]

Rift S is 399.00 normal retail price.

Problem is at this time no one has them on a regular basis so all you have is third party sellers trying to capitalize on that fact.

 

Lately Oculus has been getting them in occasionally but they go fast.

[SAABoy]

Update: Got impatient and purchased a Vive Pro Eye. It has been great fun so far but I'm a bit underwhelmed by the FOV and refresh rate; I'm pretty sure I'll be returning it. For the first time I'm considering a PIMAX headset. Does anyone have either of the 5K or 8K models and could you comment on DCS-specific experience including your hardware and FPS/hz?