There's a bunch of specs on this thing over at Ars Technica. It doesn't look like there's anything super-revolutionary about it:
So what is Valve's big aspiration for the future of VR as far as the Index is concerned? The answer is long-term comfort. In Valve's eyes, that goal doesn't (yet) include features that we have been dreaming of, such as reducing the clutter of an average PC-VR experience, dropping the price, optimizing performance with eye-tracking systems, or liberating users with true, cordless freedom. Valve wants to convince us that Index is as good as VR users are going to get at a $999 price point in 2019—and that it delivers $999 worth of VR quality in 2019.
"Oftentimes with virtual reality, people want to say what's 'good enough,'" one Valve representative said during an informal Q&A. "And their sample size for 'good enough' is five minutes [of VR use]. One of the driving factors for our game teams, and externally for our partners, is that we want long-form VR experiences."
Another Valve staffer interrupted, saying, "I don't use VR for 30 minutes a day. I use VR hours a day. This is where we ended up. What's good enough for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, is dramatically different than one hour, two hours. We think tracking, optics, displays, ergonomics, input fidelity, the comfort of your hands—all of those matter a lot."
"They're all coefficients, too!" an engineer added. "They're all related."
Valve still has to release more information about the games they're putting out for this thing before I'll get too excited about it. I'm not sure that VR as a whole is still a selling point for a lot of people - I know there are still a bunch of games being made for VR but it's not something I see a huge amount of people chatting about? I certainly don't know of anyone who's spending hours of time a day in VR. But more power to them if they do because it sounds like the Index is going to be right up their alley.
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