The other day, Valve made an unexpected preliminary announcement of its own Index virtual reality headset. Only a blacked-out page was officially unveiled with the promise of more details in May. However, a Twitter user under the pseudonym @Wario64 found another, more detailed product page already in the Steam store itself, which talks about the release of the device on the market on June 15th.
Although the page (now no longer available to the public) did not contain full specifications, it did include some details and characteristics of the upcoming mysterious virtual reality helmet from the creators of the Half-Life and Portal series. First of all, the built-in on-ear headphones are striking with a design that will allow the user to hear what is happening around, while being immersed in virtual reality. Built-in headphones aren't new to VR headsets, but the design is definitely unusual.
Valve also lists supported Index inputs, including DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.0, mentions two seal options for a wide and narrow face, a power adapter (with adapters for regional outlets), and a lens cleaning cloth included. Among the minimum system requirements are AMD Radeon RX 480 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 graphics cards, a 2-core multi-threaded processor and 8 GB of RAM. Recommended system requirements imply an accelerator not lower than GeForce GTX 1070.
On the page in question, Valve also provided non-working links, one of which led to information about base stations (apparently, a motion tracking helmet will still require external sensors), but the link did not work. There was no description of the headset itself, so we're still missing most of the technical details about the Index and its features.
When The Verge asked Valve about the information on the page, the company confirmed its accuracy and provided some clarity on the Knuckles motion controllers - the latter are now also called Index controllers and will ship with the device starting in June.
"The technical information that has been provided on this page, while not exhaustive, is accurate," Valve spokesman Doug Lombardi told The Verge. Valve plans to make a full product announcement as early as May 1, with pre-orders starting the same day. Mr. Lombardi noted that the release date may change, but the company plans to start sales in June.
Source: 3dnews.ru