Well, success! The aforementioned colleaque at work ended up buying the full Index setup
I just tried it out in DCS yesterday, and wow! Zero eyestrain thanks to the adjustable IPD, even better visibility than the Rift S, big sweetspot and a bit more FOV.
Also, very comfortable to wear, at least on par if not better than Rift S/CV-1. However, it’s not as accomodating for glasses as Rift S, as the face interface is not as wide and roomy. This one will need a set of inserts, unless you have rather narrow glasses. Oh, and the flip up function is nice too.
The larger FOV, while I don’t think it’s really noticable without a direct comparison, makes for a much less cramped feeling, for lack of a better word, and also makes it somewhat easier to check six.
As for visuals, I was able to read stuff on the Hornet AMPCD even with the map background on, even though the contrast still sucks, and best of all, seeing the Ball was way easier than in the Rift S.
While I still think the Index is quite a bit on the expensive side for what it is, I have now put up my Rift S for sale, and ordered the full Index set. I do hope my eyes will thank me, the creditcard sure as heck don’t look too happy right now…
What about the fluidity while flying fast at treetop height and looking off to the side? If that is blurred or jittery then the reprojection routines are not as good as Oculus’ ASW. That is a key thing IMHO.
I didn’t notice any difference to my Rift setup, but I didn’t specifically look for it.
I had two flights, one in the Hornet landing on the boat, and a Instant Action dogfight in the Mirage over Caucasus. In the latter I spent a lot of time down low, looking to the sides and aft (yeah, I suck at A2A) and didn’t notice any jumping or judder. But, that being said, I was kind of preoccupied with the badguys on my six
PC was a i9, with a 2080ti. I forgot all about checking DCS settings unfortunately, but judging from the looks, they were towards the high side.
That is encouraging. My usual litmus test is the Mirage instant action Takeoff mission, or Free Flight in the Harrier, both in the Caucasus map. The Harrier Free Flight in particular provides a lot of trees in the valleys. With my system, and trees cranked up to max, it is pretty much buttery smooth with the Rift S (i7 9800X, 32Gb RAM and 2080Ti). The IPD issue with the Rift S is increasing in it’s annoyance factor after a few months of using it. Apart from that one detail it is an excellent headset. If only I had an average sized face!
Yep, I agree. I find myself flying alot less, because my eyes get gritty and tired when I use the S. it’s like they keep trying to get the blurry sides into focus, but it’s off course impossible.
But, I don’t think thats going to be a problem with the Index, it felt “right” straight away.
My only worry is if I’m able to run it ok, or if yet another expensive upgrade is in order…
PC specs are i7 7700k, 32Gb RAM and a plain 1080.
Not to derail the thread but…how does one know if the IPD issue is a factor? I know there is a setting in DCS but I haven’t touched it. I think there is a setting in the Rift-S app but again, I have never touched it. So how do I know? (no headaches or dizziness…well…none unless I’ve been drinking).
Finally, how does one measure their IPD…just use a ruler and have mh wife do it? Or do I need to see an optometrist?
There’s an convoluted trick with a ruler but that gives very subjective and imprecise data. Just visit the optometrist. He’ll do it in like two minutes as he has a specialised tool to measure IPD.
The IPD setting in DCS (and deep under the hood of Il2) will subtly affect the sense of scale of the sim. Experiment with it. For me, a setting close to my measured IPD worked best.
If your eyes aren’t sitting somewhat in the middle of where the optics offer a sharp view of the headset screen, you will see some blurryness of to the side.
So, if your IPD is wider than the headsets, the outer edges will look blurry. That is, if you turn your eyes to look to the side.
Looking dead ahead with your eyes, and instead turning your head to look to the sides,you have to be completely outside the headsets IPD to get blurryness. And vice versa for a narrow IPD.
Did that make any sense?
Basically it’s the same as when you adjust a pair of binouculars to fit your eyespacing. Only you can’t on the Rift S, cause it’s fixed.
To add, having IPD wrong will make you look cross-eyed or (worse, it will give you a splitting headache!) walleyed at stuff in the distance/close by.
Only with IPD (in-game and on the HMD) set just so will the amount of cross-eye correspond to real life and make your deeply ingrained sense of scale and distance work for you in the sim. And that’s when you become deadly with the gun
The original Rift had a really nice calibration tool where you adjusted the lens spacing to make a double lined cross come into sharp focus. For me that was consistently at the 68mm position. More recently I picked up a free iPhone app called Eye Measure, which consistently tells me the same thing.
My advice though Will, is that if you are not experiencing any problems, then don’t worry too much about it. It will be obvious to you after an extended session if the IPD spacing is causing you problems.
I received my Valve Index with just one base station and no hand controllers today. It was actually quite easy to set it up in SteamVR. It expects hand controllers but I could still load up DCS. I will have to work out what to use instead of a controller I suppose but as I mainly use DCS and a couple of racing sims don’t think that will be a show stopper. It asked me if I wanted to use 120Hz so I clicked OK and loaded up DCS. I set a few VR settings and restarted DCS. I soon found myself in a Hornet. My reaction: OMG this is amazing! Clearly heaps of playing around to understand it all but I was able to take off, fly over the Hoover Dam and land. It seems so much easier than using a monitor as I was in the cockpit and could look around normally. I’m delighted. It’s comfortable, I can wear glasses with little trouble. It’s nice and clear and I can move my eyes to look around, that is not just rely on head movement. So happy right now. One base station seems enough for seated use. I can get another later if needed and hand controllers in due course but for now I think I’m set. I was a little concerned that my GTX 2070 may not be enough but its fine.
Hey welcome to the Index club
It really is an amazing headset, and one of the few where you can actually look around with your eyes, without the picture getting all blurry towards the edges.
I also ended up skipping the controllers for now, in part because of all the RMA stories on r/valveIndex. Apparantly the joysticks on the controllers are of very poor quality, but I’m hoping Valve is fixing that for new production batches.
Anyway, if you have an old PS3 controller or the like laying around, that will do nicely for various seated games. There’s a xBox driver for the PS3 controller on github somewhere, I can dig up the link if you need it?
Btw, I can really recommend getting a set of prescription inserts! My glasses didn’t really fit inside the headset, so I kind of had to buy a set, but oh boy, it was so worth it. I went with VrOptician, but judging from reviews WidmoVR is just as good.
