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Valve's first in-house virtual reality hardware should be dropping at your door soon, if you were one of the lucky ones to order it quickly in the first batch. Additionally, Gabe Newell and others held speeches at a little launch party.

You can see the video of the speeches below:

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It's quite hard to hear what co-founder Gabe Newell actually says, as he addresses both Valve employees and visitors, since he decided not to use a microphone. I've listened and done my best to quote him and yes, there was a Half-Life 3 joke included:

The history at Valve, we had a lot of significant milestones. We had Half-Life our first single-player game, we had Source that was our first engine, we had Counter-Strike our first multiplayer game, then we had Steam and Workshop and Mac and Linux support just on and on. Index is another of those critical milestones for our company. Which represents a tremendous amount of hard work and creativity on your parts.

This represents a significant breakthrough in the field, visual fidelity and all that implies in terms of optical design, panel design, industrial design that's a real breakthrough. Knuckles, is hugely important not only for how it's going to help ourselves and our game partners make their games better but how it enables entirely new kinds of games.

Milestones aren't really the end of anything, they're really the beginning. So Half-Life led to Half-Life 2, Source led to Source 2, the experiments we did with Team Fortress 2 were what enabled us to build Dota. Artifact is the reason we're able to do Underlords, so maybe someday the number 2 will lead us to that shiny integer glowing on a mountain someplace, we'll just have to see.

We're gonna all look back at some point and realise the consequences of what we've built with your creativity and your hard work, for us and for all of our customers.

*Gabe Newell then addresses the "Green Tag people" (visitors)*

Shipping a product isn't the end, it's really the beginning. So in the case of the Index there's going to be some obvious next steps. It's simple for us to broaden our distribution from outside US, EU and other countries. There's obvious ways for us to lower the cost, there's obvious ways to the product lighter and improve the ergonomics, but then we get to speculative issues. We are looking at several methods of doing untethered Index, we have a lot of ideas for kind of revolutionary things to do with display optical technology, there's lots of opportunities to continue to improve, the volumes your tracked in, those are going to be pretty fundamental opportunities.

What they're going to enable is the best part of this, when you're going to start seeing new VR games from Valve and from our other partners and that's where you guys come in. See it's very hard for us to develop a product to work at Valve without customers, and we have to guess what's important and what trade offs we should make and will this be valuable to you. We can sort of run a simulation in our head but it's so much better when we actually have real customers we can engage with. We';re really entering the best time as creators, we're reaching a time when you guys are involved, you not only telling us how to deal with Index you're teaching us how to make Index better and that's awesome, such an exciting time for all of us.

If you're looking to buy one now, you're in for a wait as the store page on Steam is currently noting shipping by September 30th for some bundles, with the headset by itself not having a date.

This is going to be a very interesting time for PC gaming, quite exciting really especially if Valve are going to be putting out some VR games. However, I do hope they remember all those who cannot afford the hardware or prefer not to use it. I guess that all depends on how many people pick it up of course but considering it sold out early-on during the pre-orders, it's looking like it will do rather well.

I've emailed Valve again today to see if we're getting a unit, we were initially told we were but additional emails since have gone unanswered—I'm hoping the emails just got buried.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Liam Dawe Jun 28, 2019
Even if Valve do reply about us getting one (or not if they changed their mind), I'm sure everyone would be interested to know some initial thoughts from a Linux gamer - so if you get one feel free to write it up for us ;) - happy to provide a game for someone to do so.


Last edited by Liam Dawe on 28 June 2019 at 1:47 pm UTC
Sil_el_mot Jun 28, 2019
Quoting: slaapliedjeThe Index seems much lighter than both the Original Vive (I had pre-ordered mine) and the Vive Pro.
I put it on a scale and its just 30g difference. But i had the impression at first too
fabertawe Jun 28, 2019
Quoting: Nanobang...I love the thought of the audio/video immersion brought on with VR headsets. Surround sound and vid, yeah. Can one play non-VR only games with these like normal, but with surround sound and vid? That's enticing...

I'd be interested to know that as well.
wit_as_a_riddle Jun 28, 2019
Quoting: GuestI picked the wrong to to stop gaming and open my own (vape) shop.
So much big stuff happening and so many awesome games on their way right now and I feel like I'm going to miss a lot of it. Gaming was a massive thing in my life until very recently, the joys of reaching 40 eh.
Seeing as I have enough floorspace I might look into getting a vr setup in the shop I think.
Vape shops don't get overly busy and I'm sure the customers would love it as much as I would.

I have my own shop too, and am also just arriving at 40. So this gaming news is how we motivate ourselves to do such a good job that we can hire people to cover the front, and set up a gaming room in the back where we can entertain ourselves haha.

I hope Gabe starts taking his health seriously at some point.
Maath Jun 28, 2019
Quoting: GuestI picked the wrong to to stop gaming and open my own (vape) shop.
So much big stuff happening and so many awesome games on their way right now and I feel like I'm going to miss a lot of it. Gaming was a massive thing in my life until very recently, the joys of reaching 40 eh.
Seeing as I have enough floorspace I might look into getting a vr setup in the shop I think.
Vape shops don't get overly busy and I'm sure the customers would love it as much as I would.

Name your shop VapeR, with very large V and R.
ElectricPrism Jun 28, 2019
Gabe Newell also referenced Mac and Linux as milestones not included in the transcript excerpt from the article. It's encouraging to see that he considers us to be a milestone in the history of Valve.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 28 June 2019 at 8:06 pm UTC
tuubi Jun 28, 2019
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Quoting: ElectricPrismGabe Newell also referenced Mac and Linux as milestones not included in the transcript excerpt from the article.
Right there in the first paragraph of the transcript. :)
Zelox Jun 28, 2019
Quoting: Eike
Quoting: ZeloxAnd btw, I might be old fashion. But cant Gaben dress up when he apperences on events and sutch? It gives a very lazy impression.

And I still love lord gaben so dont get me wrong, but pr, communication and public apperances isnt really valves thing I guess :P

It's unbelievable how you can be that unprofessional and that successful at the same time! :D

But then, maybe it's our luck that they're not the usual business type of guys...!

Haha very True, but somehow he made it.
And it doesnt really matter cause they make money anyways. Guess passion and the right surcemstanses is the answer. :P

Ye, imagen EA or ACTIVISION instead of valve. When I think of it, The only company I really want to take valves place, if I hade to choose to replace valve, CDPR.
slaapliedje Jun 29, 2019
Quoting: Sil_el_mot
Quoting: slaapliedjeThe Index seems much lighter than both the Original Vive (I had pre-ordered mine) and the Vive Pro.
I put it on a scale and its just 30g difference. But i had the impression at first too

Good part of it is I think it feels less bulky. Far more comfortable than either as well, and I bought the VR Covers for both.
slaapliedje Jun 29, 2019
Quoting: liamdaweEven if Valve do reply about us getting one (or not if they changed their mind), I'm sure everyone would be interested to know some initial thoughts from a Linux gamer - so if you get one feel free to write it up for us ;) - happy to provide a game for someone to do so.
I still need to clear out my game space some more, but I'd be happy to write some reviews.
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