Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: sub

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: F.UltraWell that is what being outside the EU gets you (combined with being a small country)

Sounds unlikely. We're member of EEA, and have access to the inner market of EU. And absolutely everything else of hardware - including Vive who it looks like Index is based on (same base stations) - is here. But The Valve hardware specifically is not. I know of no other products in the same situation. Never heard of.

My guess is, Gabe traveled there once and also had food that poisoned him, so no Valve products for Norway!

Don't you have that delicious fermented fish?

Back on topic.
You said you basically own all new VR headsets, right?

Is the higher price of the Index vs. the Vive / Oculus justified?
Or in other words, for someone only going for ONE VR kit,
would you say going for the Index is worth the price?

Thanks for your input! :)

I own the Original Vive, Vive Pro and Index. Each has it's pros/cons. Vive is nice because you can use a lesser GPU to get nice FPS. Vive Pro got a lot clearer, but I was running into issues with screen tearing. Turns out it was an issue with having G-Sync monitors, which I believe they have since fixed (I don't know, because I ended up getting the Index which didn't have the problem.)
Now here's where it gets a little muddled. The Index and the Vive Pro both have the same resolution. But there are some advantages to the Index in comfort, one they ditched the velcro method of holding the facemask on and instead have a cool magnetic one. The downside of course is that you have to currently buy those from Valve, but I do like it better than the sweat soaker that the HTC comes with, and you can buy third party fake leather ones that are pretty nice, though if you sweat a lot, you might want to use the sponge, since then it should prevent sweat from dripping into it.

Please also note that the Index uses LCD vs OLED, so while the screen door effect (which I never noticed until watching a movie, now I can't unnotice it...) is a lot less on the Index, the black levels are off, so everything kind of looks like the contrast is up too high. This isn't all that noticeable in video games, but in the virtual theater, it kind of is. Any games where you need to read, I'd suggest either the Vive Pro or Index. It was pretty much too fuzzy for me on the original Vive. It's clearest on the Index, but definitely a huge improvement over the original Vive with the Pro.

Onto the controllers. Index vs Vive wands. Now, almost all games out there support the vive wands. Not as many support the Index controllers, which is a shame. You can program them of course, much like the Steam controllers. But as far as future proofing goes, I'd get the Index ones even if you're getting a Vive setup. Also, I believe the 2.0 lighthouses are supposed to be more future proof as well.

Overall, price of them, I'd say get the Index. You're getting better resolution, better controllers, and the 2.0 hardware for a bit more than the original Vive, but far less than a full Vive Pro setup, which I think is still 1400? Plus you get the Half Life game for free :)

Thank you very much for that helpful and detailed insight. :)

I still have a DK2 that I can't use since years.
My desktop has a Phenom II that's not supported (anymore) by the Occulus RTE.
My notebook is also not supported anymore, as it is an (awful) Optimus system.
Yet, both configuration were indeed supported when the DK2 shipped.
And it worked fine. :)

Actually, I didn't want to buy a new VR system (which, in my case, also means a new PC).
But that HL:Alyx thing changed everything.
HL1+2 both meant truly outstanding gaming experiences to me.
And that trailer blew my mind.
I simply don't want to miss that one. :/

Not sure they'll have a good deal on the next Steam sale,
but I seriously consider to get the Index now...

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Beamboom

Quoting: F.UltraWell that is what being outside the EU gets you (combined with being a small country)

Sounds unlikely. We're member of EEA, and have access to the inner market of EU. And absolutely everything else of hardware - including Vive who it looks like Index is based on (same base stations) - is here. But The Valve hardware specifically is not. I know of no other products in the same situation. Never heard of.

My guess is, Gabe traveled there once and also had food that poisoned him, so no Valve products for Norway!

Don't you have that delicious fermented fish?

Back on topic.
You said you basically own all new VR headsets, right?

Is the higher price of the Index vs. the Vive / Oculus justified?
Or in other words, for someone only going for ONE VR kit,
would you say going for the Index is worth the price?

Thanks for your input! :)

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That was a very good read! :)

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Quoting: bubexelThis game will appear on linux. Other thing will be the performance. But it will show on linux.

Just guessing what could be a potential problem for Valve.
It's not just an announcement.
You can pre-order the game and pay real money.
That's why they feel pressured to put some systems requirements.
(Otherwise I'd say just leave it empty for now)

But judging from the specs of the Windows version,
the requirements for Linux will also be quite high.
While (I hate to say it) this won't be much of an issue
for Nvidia GPUs but the state of the current drivers for
the newer AMD Navi cards will have to improve over the next few month.
It might be that Valve didn't want to omit AMD just for a start
(they are stakeholders and contributing to the AMD Mesa driver, right?),
but also couldn't just yet definitely say it will work in March...(?)

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Quoting: Liam DaweUpdate 19:40 UTC: Valve press emailed back, they said "Right now we can only confirm windows for this product".

Ewww, as I said... This sounds worse to me than just a great game not being available as a native build for Linux. :/

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: ToriMichael from Phoronix has anwsered me here [External Link] that he has unofficial info, that it is in fact coming to Linux. Perhaps due to the beta state of VR on Linux, that's how it shows up?

Ah yes, good old unofficial info that you're not confident enough to even mention in the article. I will wait for confirmation.

I think it's very unlikely that it won't come to Linux.
It would seriously hurt their credibility of their whole Linux "strategy", won't it?
How would you convince other devs to bring your AAA flagship to Linux if you don't.

Then again, like Liam often and justified complained about Google's awful introduction of Stadia - why the h*ll would Valve be so amateurish to just forget Linux (and Mac) on the store page, if they were so serious about it? :/

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Oh my gosh, that announcement trailer! 8(_________)

I'm not so much interested in the VR part
(simply because of the costs for the VR kit + capable PC),
but as a die-hard Half Life fan, this looks so fantastic...

I want a HL3 like that.

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What can an ad do more than having lots of people talking about it?

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I somehow get the feeling there are many different stakeholders that just don't want to see this thing to be successful. Be it because some see their well known concept of a local gaming rig in danger or plain and simple competitors.

I'll take the many reports with a big grain of salt.
They are too diverging anyway.
Let's wait and see for yourself.
I'm pretty sure we'll get are totally objective review by you. ;)

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"We realised that if we did a port to Vulkan, which is a renderer that is used on phones and various other stuff, we get Mac support, we get Linux support, we get support for things like Google Stadia and so on ..."

I wish other devs would follow that chain arguments.

Yet, we know. A Vulkan renderer does not automatically mean Linux support. :/

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