Best 3D printed mod ever.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/ciato3/valve_up_your_index/
Valve Index VR headset
- Thread starter Dooguk
- Start date
Need a steampunk version!
Yay, my Index is en route at last! Would you recommend enabling beta versions of SteamVR or is it better to stick to the stable channel?
Beta, as always with new Steam VR hardware. Can break fast, but then you'll simply fall back to stable if needed. Be advised that there is a lot to be desired from steam vr, they have "vive" strings hardcoded in many places, you might see the viwands instead of knuckles and last but not least prepare for the infamous "thumbsticks don't click when tilted" issue.
Other than that, beta usually contains newer firmware.
Also spend some time fitting your headset correctly and adjusting IPD. Given index's godrays and glare it is especially important. The comfort on this thing on the other hand is pure bliss.
Thanks. I've been following the subreddit so I'm aware of the importance of finding the sweet spot. My optician has told me my IPD, and my lens inserts from VROptician arrived this morning, so I think I'm all set.
PS: This might help:
support.steampowered.com
Steam Support :: Valve Index Fit Guide
Followup question for anyone with a 1080 Ti: what graphics settings in ED and SteamVR do you use, and what frame rate?
A non-obvious tip that I hope will save someone all the time I wasted swapping ports and rebooting: if you have an Nvidia GPU then you will need to have Nvidia's HD Audio driver installed, otherwise you will get no sound.
With my 1080 Ti I can run VR Medium at 120 fps and the recommended 114% supersampling, does that sound about right? I reckon that's quite a good result.
Well that depends of course. You may get 120fps in some areas but in honesty I doubt you would in other scenarios, busy stations, combat in RES, mining, planet surfaces, guardian sites etc etc. I have a 1080Ti, 8700K, 32GB of RAM and Elite installed on a M.2 drive. In honesty I've found more consistant frame rates with the Index in 80Hz mode and mix of medium / high settings. 120FPS, I feel is too much for current PC hardware In Elites case unless you are happy for the game to flip to motion smoothing (which I am not).
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That's fair. So far, only tested on my main account who is out explororing, on the way home from DW2, and my alt, where I just did a bit of launching, docking, planetary landing and SRV driving in Solo. I'll have to try some of the scenarios you mention.
BTW, the deep dive on the ear speakers is up and it's fascinating.
I run Elite at 120hz with a 2080 (not a Ti), 1.25x HMD res and everything runs quite smoothly after playing a bit with rendering settings. 1.5x HMD res was indeed causing frame drops but 1.25 seems to be quite right and at the Index pixel density you don't feel much aliasing.
Sometimes a single setting can screw the whole performance no matter what you do with the rest. I'd lower the volumetric effects as well.
While anything related to poly count and textures shouldn't be that critical( LODs, terrains...), exotic entities like volumes, or in particular the oversized 1.5x image quality that forces your card to effectively render slightly more than 2 times more pixels per eye, would tax tour graphics quite a bit.
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Volumetric effects is a FPS killer in some locations but lowering it can cause some undesirable effects in asteroid belts.
What do you class as "runs quite smoothly"?
Smoothly enough to play in 120Hz without noticeable frame drops most of the time. It still does at locations with heavy assets and tons of effects like stations with traffic and/or greenhouses, crowded belts, and in particular when using the night vision overlay. But I can live with that.
I'd say biggest impact is the HMD res multiplier, I don't really need it higher than 1.15x or 1.25x and it makes a huge difference to go up to 1.5x, might look like a small figure but it translates to a lot more pixels to rasterize at the native Index HMD resolution. 1.5x was ok when I was using the Vive, but for the Index is overkill.
Then it matters as well how big is your desktop mirror window (the smaller in desktop, the more resources you free up for VR). Followed by volumes, shadows, ambient occlusion, reflections, etc. The usual suspects.
Got mine yesterday.
First impression upon sitting in the SteamVR home room was overwhelmingly "OMG THE GLARE !!1!1". Yeah its bad.
I have been using the Rift S exclusively lately (The Reverb went back to HP because dodgy cable and the 5k+ is in its box) so i have become accustomed to completely ray free optics.
For me, it predominately exists in the extreme low periphery and i found that tilting it down helps.
After a while i chilled out and my brain consequently started the process of tuning it out...
So, glare drama aside the real highlight for me is the comfort. This thing is a head slipper, they have nailed it, nothing comes close.
Another big surprise is the color - really nice saturation for LCD - much more punchy than the S (which looks pretty meh in comparison back to back). Blacks are LCD, im used to it.
Resolution/SDE is pretty good - similar to the Rift S. Nowhere near as good as the Reverb.
The refresh rate options are really good and i have happily settled on 80hz.
Overall its a keeper, played Euro Truck and Assetto for a few hours last night and it really grew on me.
First impression upon sitting in the SteamVR home room was overwhelmingly "OMG THE GLARE !!1!1". Yeah its bad.
I have been using the Rift S exclusively lately (The Reverb went back to HP because dodgy cable and the 5k+ is in its box) so i have become accustomed to completely ray free optics.
For me, it predominately exists in the extreme low periphery and i found that tilting it down helps.
After a while i chilled out and my brain consequently started the process of tuning it out...
So, glare drama aside the real highlight for me is the comfort. This thing is a head slipper, they have nailed it, nothing comes close.
Another big surprise is the color - really nice saturation for LCD - much more punchy than the S (which looks pretty meh in comparison back to back). Blacks are LCD, im used to it.
Resolution/SDE is pretty good - similar to the Rift S. Nowhere near as good as the Reverb.
The refresh rate options are really good and i have happily settled on 80hz.
Overall its a keeper, played Euro Truck and Assetto for a few hours last night and it really grew on me.
You didn't mention almost edge-to-edge clarity, which is a big boon for me personally. I hated having to use my neck to look around, now I can go back to using my eyeballs. The glare is still there but not so big of an issue, and the positives outweight the negaitve. If I am being extremely nitpicky, I'd say that it doesn't sit firmly on the head, and while wacking out in Beat Saber it tends to slide a bit which is annoying because the actual sweetspot (the point where eyes are aligned with the lenses and you get best clarity then) is quite small. Oh, and do your knuckle controllers actuate in all directions? 
I didnt get the knuckes as i still have my Vive Pro base stations and wands. I kept them when i sold the Pro to use with the 5k+ (and now use with the Index).
Yeah the uniform sharpness across the field of view is good. Chromatic aberration is well under control as well (The Reverb was a bit of a shocker for CA)
Having owned a modded Vive Pro i became accustomed to edge to edge sharpness so it doesnt impress me any more, its more of a prerequisite to the HMD being useable.
I particularly like the vertical FOV as you cant see the top border which is really sweet.
Yeah the uniform sharpness across the field of view is good. Chromatic aberration is well under control as well (The Reverb was a bit of a shocker for CA)
Having owned a modded Vive Pro i became accustomed to edge to edge sharpness so it doesnt impress me any more, its more of a prerequisite to the HMD being useable.
I particularly like the vertical FOV as you cant see the top border which is really sweet.
In terms of glare the headset is very sensitive to positioning and tilt. I used the Glare Test in ROV Test FOV & Resolution to get it dialled in and it really helped.
Unfortunately in my case the sweet spot that I found puts my VROptician lens inserts off-center, meaning that their astigmatism correction goes all wrong (very apparent from the astigmatism test in the same room -- the circle of radial lines). So I guess I have a bit of a trade-off to make. I think I'll see if VROptician support have any advice for me.