Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: ShmerlOnly HDMI output? That's a huge no go. At least they should use both DisplayPort and HDMI, if they think HDMI is so necessary.

Plenty of TV sets with no DP inputs, but all of them have HDMI. I doubt this is such a no-go for most of their target audience.

Yeah, unless you want to use this as a cheap computer, why would you need DisplayPort? Not a single game console out there has it. Now on the other hand, hopefully they actually do a newer HDMI standard, so it actually will work in 4k. Granted, something tells me not many games will actually take advantage of it. It's not like you need 4k for Combat. :P

Guess we'll see what the library for it looks like, but at least if it sucks, this is the new Steam Machine.

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I am going to assume this is also in anticipation of the Atari VCS?

Will have to check it out, though I have an actual 5200 I can play on.

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Quoting: tuubi

Quoting: slaapliedjeSo if you're like me and have high resolution / refresh rate monitors that also require display ports, get a card with three of them.

Or buy monitors that support MST / DisplayPort 1.2 daisy chaining. You could also get a DP hub, which is much cheaper than a new GPU. :)

Ha, I tried two different DP hubs, neither fully supported the headset+two 144hz monitors.

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Oh, another side note on the Vive/Vive Pro/Index. The Pro and Index both require a Display Port. So if you're like me and have high resolution / refresh rate monitors that also require display ports, get a card with three of them. That's basically why I jumped from the 1080 to the 2080 :P

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Quoting: sub

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...

Yeah, at least the game is included with people who own the Index. I've read some people (who outwardly seem bitter) not believing that a new Half-Life game would be a platform / peripheral seller.

But then, who has gone out and bought a new monitor/graphics card/CPU upgrade just to play a game? I know for many of my upgrades, it was to get something working in Mame that wouldn't work on my previous CPU. Took YEARS for a capable CPU to play the Gauntlet arcade games that use a 3dfx chip, since it uses only raw CPU power for the emulation. These days my upgrades are "Can I play Elite: Dangerous in the best way possible!"

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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 :)

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Quoting: chr

Quoting: slaapliedjeNow of course the question is, why doesn't CD Projekt also see that as a possibility, and properly port the GOG stuff to Linux?

I think most companies are extremely short-sighted and worry a lot more about the here and now and can be abused in the longer term. If companies were rational, non-USA companies would definitely avoid MS Windows, since NSA was shown to have performed industrial espionage to the profit of USA companies and detriment of non-USA companies. Avoiding Intel on the other hand is more difficult since they would be left between choosing USA-based espionage or PRC-based espionage. (But some bigger companies could still pour some money into open-source hardware to that end).

Ha, Intel needs to somehow be punished for selling processors that then have to be gimped to be secured. Whether it is a class action to make them pay cash to the customers, or that they give away replacements with fixes.

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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!

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Quoting: skinnyraf

Quoting: ArehandoroI might consider if it was at half the price. That would put more VRs in people's homes.

Oculus Rift S, while technically not as advanced as Index, is $399, which is less than half the price of Index. It works really well and is much easier to set up than Index. People expect it to be available for $349 on Black Friday.

Unfortunately no Linux support, not even a half-baked one like Index.

Not sure why you'd say Index support on Linux is half-baked, it actually works just as well as it does under Windows (with the exception that I think the bluetooth power management for the lighthouses is still broken, I need to test that again).

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Quoting: orochi_kyo

Quoting: vskye$999.00 is a really hard price to justify, even if I could afford it.

Try to say that on Steam forums, their replies goes from "you dont have a job" to "maybe it is time to move to another country".

These VR owners are just a bunch of 4ssh0l3es(not all of them, some has been very open minded and they know VR isnt for everyone, so Alyx should have a non VR version), they even speak that you arent a "PC gamer" if you dont upgrade your PC every two years. Also they automatically think that if someone doesnt like VR is because they cant afford it.

This has been a cancer since PC gaming exist in the 90s, a handful of people who had plenty of money to spend on the most expensive hardware is always attacking PC gamers that play on laptops and low-mid end hardware, when a game is poorly optimized they blame people for not "upgrading", the worst thing is they are a vocal minority, because Steam surveys show most people play on Laptops and low end PCs, worst of all, VR owners are even less than Linux gamers, but they are behaving right now like if they were an entitled mayority.

VR is expensive, Valve had 4 years to make it affordable but instead of that they prefer to launch an "exclusive" game, Index is their first solo VR product, but one could think that they experience with VIVE would serve Valve to learn that the first step was making VR accessible for most, but they preferred the EGS/Console way.

I'm going to go ahead and be one of those dickheads. I'm not going to say boo hoo, you can't afford it, or that you shouldn't play games on laptops, that's up to you.
But I don't think they should make a non-VR version of this game; Because when you do, it tears up the intention of the game. If it is made for VR there are certain criteria that would make it suck in a non-VR environment, just as if it were made in 'pancake' mode, and then converted to VR.
Being able to correctly interact with objects, and having realistic reload mechanisms, physics, etc would be incredibly difficult to get working right without being 'in there'.
Will this single game sell VR kits? Most assuredly. Will people whine that they can't play it for whatever reason, also most assuredly.

Whether some people like it or not, VR is the wave of the future of gaming (and other things. I'm really waiting until I can strap my face in and have multiple screens and do the 'Minority Report' style of work.) Yeah, the kit is expensive right now, and yes it requires a high end PC. But as you say, in the 90s, there was this push for hardware to run the games at full optimizations, though I think you're remembering it wrong. 90s was mostly EGA/VGA/Amiga/Atari ST competition. Late 90s/early 00s were when people first really started the PC master race arguments. Or maybe I'm remembering it wrong because I didn't really get into Wintel systems until '95 when I was more or less forced to. Only a couple years into that I started dabbling with Linux :)

I will end with this, VR does make things better. For example, try Elite: Dangerous on a normal monitor, then try it with VR. It's a HUGE difference.

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