To everyone's surprise, on Friday night, Valve launched a teaser page showing a brand new virtual reality headset called the Index. Apparently, the device is manufactured by Valve itself, and not by its longtime partner in the development of the VR market - the Taiwanese HTC. The site does not offer the public any information other than the date - May 2019.
However, the image itself provides quite a bit of information, especially given previous leaks. You can see that the Valve Index has at least two protruding wide-angle cameras. This is evidence that there is no need for external stations with cameras to track movements - by analogy with Oculus Quest and other second-generation VR headsets that rely on sensors built into the helmet.
The device also has an adjustment slider, presumably for adjusting the IPD (interpupillary distance), so it will suit a wide variety of people. This is a fairly common feature on helmets, but the new Oculus Rift S, for example, lacks it (Oculus says the user can set their IPD in the Rift S software settings). Other than that, no specs have been revealed yet: it's not even certain if it'll be a standalone headset like the Quest, or a more high-end PC peripheral like the Rift S, HTC Vive and Vive Pro.
One way or another, but Valve's words that the helmet will allow "improving" the environment can be taken as a promise to present a product that can provide a better environment in virtual reality than anything on the market today. By the way, when The Verge journalists asked Valve if the company could give any additional clues or at least clarify whether it was an April Fool's joke, Doug Lombardi from Valve only answered in one word: "Not April." That is, this is not a joke, but we will hear the details only in May.
By the way, in November last year, the UploadVR resource claimed that Valve was really working on its own headset and even published photos of helmet prototypes that painfully resemble Index. Then it was also reported that the device will provide a wide 135-degree field of view with image detail at the level of Vive Pro. In addition, it was claimed that the headset would come bundled with Knuckles controllers and a kind of virtual reality game inspired by Half-Life.
Valve Knuckles motion controllers with a vertical grip were introduced back in 2016, and in 2017 the company sent working samples to developers and showed an EV2 version that allowed objects to be compressed in VR. However, Valve's layoffs this month cast doubt on rumors about the release of a virtual reality helmet: it was alleged that the company laid off employees precisely from the VR hardware division.
Despite this, it is now clear that the headset exists. Hopefully, we'll get more information before the stated May 2019 deadline, when only a full announcement can take place, not a launch. Valve will enter a saturated market, with Oculus planning to launch the Rift S and its standalone Quest headset in the spring, and HTC just unveiling its Focus Plus enterprise product and gearing up for a new Vive Cosmos headset this year or next.
Note that back in early 2017, Valve founder and CEO Gabe Newell said: “We are currently developing three VR games.” And then, in response to a clarifying question as to whether the games would be similar to The Lab’s free demo in the Portal world for HTC Vive, which was released earlier, he added: “When I say that we create these games, I’m talking about three full-fledged projects, not just another experiment. ". Mr. Newell did not say anything specific about them, but noted that the development is carried out both on the Source 2 engine and on the Unity engine. Based on his previous words, it can be assumed that at least one project will be dedicated to the Half-Life and Portal universe. Is this year the players will finally get the legendary continuation of the story of Gordon Freeman, albeit not in the form of Half-Life 3?
Source: 3dnews.ru