All You Need to Know About the Upcoming Valve Index Headset

In case you haven’t heard of it yet, the Valve Index is the latest upcoming virtual reality headset and is expected to hit the market by June 15^th. The headset will be manufactured by the same company behind Steam and is expected to challenge some of the high-end headsets in the market including Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Valve released a teaser image of the headset on March 29^th , promising to release additional information about the headset in May. However, plenty of leaks are already trickling in, some of which were unwittingly shared by Valve on its Steam page, which reveal the design, specifications and capabilities of Valve’s upcoming headset.

Details from Leaked Store pages

Barely a few days after details emerged that Valve might be working on a Valve Index virtual reality headset, more “accidental” releases emerged from an unfinished store page on Steam that revealed quite a bit about the Valve Index virtual reality headset, the controllers and the base station, its new render and bits and pieces on its tracking and hardware requirements. The store pages were eventually pulled down but not before some hawk-eyed Twitter user @Wario64 had gleaned the details of the product. The details about the Valve Index VR headset quickly spread around the social media, message boards and in tech news websites.

From the information that has leaked out so far, we already know quite a bit about the VR headset. The product image had the usual Lorem Ipsum placeholder text blurb which didn’t reveal much but the images reveal quite a bit about the product details and hardware requirements whose accuracy have been confirmed by Valve. The crystal clear visual on the product page revealed the following about the Valve Index:-

The Valve Index Headset

The virtual reality headset will ship on June 15, 2019 and the teaser image gives a clear view of the device from the front. The headset comes with the following includes: integrated headphones, power adapter, a regionalized power adapter plug, headset, 2 face gaskets, a cleaning cloth and tether with Display Port 1.2 as well as USB 3.0 Connections.

The leaked page displayed these system requirements hence confirming that Valve will be targeting the PC gamer base as the Valve Index headset will need to be tethered to a computer that has some good specs. The original teaser also showed an adjustment slider for IPD (inter-pupil distance) for adjusting the distance between the wearer’s eyes. This is feature which is missing in the upcoming Oculus Rift S set to be released this spring.

To fully leverage the Valve Index headset, you will need hardware with the following minimum specs:-

• Operating System: Windows 10
• Processor should be a dual-core with hyper-threading.
• Needs a RAM of 8GB
• The graphics minimum specs should be an NVIDIA 970, AMD RX480
• Network requirements: Broadband internet connection
• Additional requirements: An available DisplayPort Version 1.2 and a USB port (2.0+)

Recommended specifications:

• A Quad core+ processor
• Graphics requirements: NVIDIA 1070 or better
• Additional requirements: An available USB port of 3.0+ will be required for the headset pass-through camera along with a USB port support.

Valve Index Controllers

The long awaited Knuckles controllers have been rechristened Index controllers. The box includes 2 controllers, left and right; two USB charging cables and cleaning cloth.

Valve Index Base Station

The valve index base station includes regionalized power plug(s), one SteamVR 2.0 base station and 1 XX-foot power cable.

The Valve Index VR headset will work with a base station for room-scale tracking uses. However, the base station comes with the option to be sold separately which may imply that there may be options for inside-out tracking or an even more accurate tracking function that makes use of external sensors. Being optional could also imply that it will be compatible with the existing Vive sensors in which case VR users that have already purchased VR equipment will not need to start afresh with new hardware acquisitions.

All the products-the Valve Index Headset, the base station and controllers- will have separate listings on the store but it would be more logical if they were sold as a bundle. The price has not been leaked so far but it is likely to be in the range of $400 to $600 in order to be competitive with the other PC-bound virtual reality headsets. Valve will make more announcements on May 1 during which the product may likely be opened for pre-orders. Expect to see more leaks and rumors in the run up to the May announcements and the June 15 launch.

https://virtualrealitytimes.com/2019/04/04/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-upcoming-valve-index-headset/https://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Valve-Index-600×369.jpghttps://virtualrealitytimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Valve-Index-150×90.jpg2019-04-04T00:00:51+00:00Sam OchanjiHardwareValve IndexVR HeadsetsIn case you haven’t heard of it yet, the Valve Index is the latest upcoming virtual reality headset and is expected to hit the market by June 15th. The headset will be manufactured by the same company behind Steam and is expected to challenge some of the high-end headsets…Sam OchanjiSam Ochanjisochanji@yahoo.comAdministratorVirtual Reality Times