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Valve Reveals High-End VR Headset Called the Valve Index (arstechnica.com)
After partnering with HTC to launch the Vive in 2016, Valve has moved ahead with plans to launch its own headset, called the Valve Index, in May 2019. Ars Technica reports: The news came on Friday in the form of a single teaser image, shown above, of a headset with the phrase "Valve Index" written on its front. The front of the headset is flanked by at least two sensors. This shadow-covered hardware matches the leaked headset reported by UploadVR in November of last year. That report hinted to Valve's headset supporting a wider, 135-degree field-of-view (FOV), as opposed to the roughly 110-degree FOV of the original HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.
Valve's dedicated website for the new device includes no other information than the above image and the date "May 2019." It does not include any mention of the new SteamVR Knuckles controllers, which Valve has advertised pretty heavily via developer outreach since their 2016 reveal and a later series of improved prototypes in 2018. This page also doesn't mention a series of three Valve-produced VR games that have been repeatedly advertised by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell since 2017. There's very little information about the headset, but after cranking up the brightness and contrast of the teaser image, Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech was able to find "a series of six dots on one of the headset's surfaces, [...] which may hint to this headset's use of an outside tracking sensor, a la the HTC Vive's infrared trackers." He adds: "Even so, those two giant lenses imply that 'inside-out' tracking, managed entirely by the headset without any extra webcams or sensors, may also be in the cards. Additionally, we can see a giant physical slider, which is likely linked to interpupillary distance (IPD), a precise measurement needed to ensure maximum VR comfort."
Valve's dedicated website for the new device includes no other information than the above image and the date "May 2019." It does not include any mention of the new SteamVR Knuckles controllers, which Valve has advertised pretty heavily via developer outreach since their 2016 reveal and a later series of improved prototypes in 2018. This page also doesn't mention a series of three Valve-produced VR games that have been repeatedly advertised by Valve co-founder Gabe Newell since 2017. There's very little information about the headset, but after cranking up the brightness and contrast of the teaser image, Ars Technica's Sam Machkovech was able to find "a series of six dots on one of the headset's surfaces, [...] which may hint to this headset's use of an outside tracking sensor, a la the HTC Vive's infrared trackers." He adds: "Even so, those two giant lenses imply that 'inside-out' tracking, managed entirely by the headset without any extra webcams or sensors, may also be in the cards. Additionally, we can see a giant physical slider, which is likely linked to interpupillary distance (IPD), a precise measurement needed to ensure maximum VR comfort."
You're not gonna succeed in drumming up any interest for VR in me for another 20 years.
Will somebody please ban this fucktard at the firewall
From what I've seen the issue is not so much the headsets but the fact that graphic cards can't yet keep up with comfortable frame rates. If one needs to upgrade to an NVidia 2080 to get some halfway decent FPS, this one is going to be a hard sell unless they come in some kind of promotion.
The ENIAC Demo Competition
'Index' sure is a geeky name for a VR headset. As in 'index of refraction' perhaps? I can see the marketing now: "Index: find your place in the virtual world."
Many headsets have an exploration naming scheme: rift, cosmos, odyssey, quest, (re)vive. Some are on the more technical side: gear, focus, reverb, 5k+.
This will almost certainly be targeted at VR enthusiasts. The text "Upgrade your experience" presumes a target audience who already owns a VR headset, and also throws shade on the Rift S' incremental improvements. That the Rift S was announced only a week ago suggests this announcement is a reaction to that; the camera angle focusing on the hardware IPD adjuster again throws shade on the Rift S for its lack of hardware IPD adjustment. The text implies this will be a substantial upgrade, although I wonder how it'll compare to the Pimax 5k+.
The RoadToVR article is more confident in saying that the 'mysterious dots' are definitely standard SteamVR tracking dots, and that the cameras have a good chance of being for passthrough video or hand tracking. In my opinion, their positioning and angles suggest they would give very poor coverage for inside-out tracking; the lenses are also larger than necessary for that, and would only be that large if a human would be seeing those images. They could be used for hand tracking in addition to passthrough video, I suppose.
This headset will almost certainly come with/alongside the Knuckles controllers, which have been more or less consumer-ready for months, apparently waiting for something else's completion before coming to market. I believe these controllers will be a turning point for VR, and will probably buy in to whatever headset they come with. I am kinda curious about the Vive Cosmos, though, since almost nothing is known about that either (except its controllers will look like the Oculus controllers, and it has a normal ~110degree FOV with fresnel lenses.)
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Pictures of the headset have been leaked months ago, so we already knew it was coming, this announcement just makes it official. And May 2019 is written straight on the website itself.
Noticing this more and more in business. Company X partners with company Y so that in a couple years company Y can fuck over company X and release something they both worked on without compensating company X. After everything I've seen from Valve, could have predicted it also. Fuck valve and fuck steam.
I saw this teaser yesterday, then today the "Valve Reveals" headline on Slashdot. Oh great, Valve are already giving us the lowdown on it! That was quick! Then look closer, and this is only about the teaser image. Somebody at /. needs to learn what "reveal" means, because this isn't it. Get back to us when you've got some info we can use, 'kay?
Outside-in lighthouse compatible, adjustable IPD:
https://www.roadtovr.com/valve...
Play with the page zoom, if you are too much zoomed in the date will get clipped away.
VR is a non-starter, it hasn't advanced that much since the *last* wave of hype 20 years ago. It still makes people dizzy, the gear is cumbersome, and if you wear corrective lenses, forget it, it's a joke. I doubt we will see anything truly useful come out of this in our lifetimes, and even for gaming it's pretty much a novelty, 3D TV 2.0. Enjoy it while it lasts, because it won't be hitting the mainstream in a meaningful way.
When your company name is a common noun you should not name your products with common words. One of two things becomes a problem either no one can find your product or conversely if you become famous like "Amazon" then you now obliterate searches for the original words
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Most of us skip over your crapflooding.
If you didn't format your spam in such an easily identifiable way, you might suck more people into reading your crapflood.
In any case, carry on if it amuses you.
The cameras have been known about, and indicate inside out tracking (where the device determines your position by analyzing the video feed of your movement). But the new image does show faint circles, which are indicators of Valve's outside-in tracking (the detectors for the base station infrared laser sweeps). So that's news... it'll offer both methods? Simultaneously perhaps, to allow for robust tracking even when the base station goes out of view? Outside-in is usually more accurate too, so this may allow for multiple price-points... high quality by adding some base stations in a fixed area, or adequate quality but able to be used anywhere, or without paying for the added base stations.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
At this point VR causes me less nausea than bad 3D games played on a large monitor (like The Witness, which makes me sick after about a half hour).
You are right about gear being cumbersome but we are already seeing reduction in that area with self-contained headsets. If you go in something like the Void you basically wear a small backpack/vest and a helmet and you get fully mobile VR.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
how good will linux work with it?
after all these years the vive still is rather troublesome to setup.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.