Valve Index Hands On

I went back to the Nvidia site and looked for 436.30 but again, on the main DL site for GeForce drivers, it wasn't there. But when I searched for ALL drivers it showed up.. Odd.

Yeah that is, I always just go to the drop down box and select my GPU and search all drivers, which I guess is why I did not notice that.

I have not tried the very latest yet though.

So, any consensus on the new NVIDIA driver? I only used it briefly last night. There seems to be a lot of complaints about frame rate dropping or skipping.

So, any consensus on the new NVIDIA driver? I only used it briefly last night. There seems to be a lot of complaints about frame rate dropping or skipping.

I just flew about 20 minutes on our squad server and it seemed to be a little less solid than the 436.02. Granted I flew several hours last night with 436.02 and only a very short time today. I did see a couple more frame drops in the instant action I test with than usual though.

I just rolled back to 436.02 and tested again. It definitely has less frame rate drops than .30. I also noticed that when I use 138% for DCS App and 148% for Custom resolution there is a greater frame hit with 436.30 than there is using 204% and the other SS settings at 100%. There is no difference in frame rates between the two settings with 436.02. I tested these settings in Instant Action Free Flight for the F/A-18.

The Vive and Vive Pro controllers work, sure.

Imacken, I received the Vive controller today but found out quickly that Lighthouse 1.0 controllers do not work with Lighthouse 2.0 lol. Back to ebay they go!

Imacken, I received the Vive controller today but found out quickly that Lighthouse 1.0 controllers do not work with Lighthouse 2.0 lol. Back to ebay they go!

Yep, that is correct. 1.0 and 2.0 controllers work with base 1.0, but 1.0 controllers don’t work with base 2.0, sadly.

/rant on

I don't know about you guys, but I am feeling extreme frustration over a chasing mediocre performance with a seriously expensive pile of hardware.

I get what I think is a decent config, and new drivers come out.then back to the ole drawing board...

I turn things down and still get large hiccups during game play where I go to the mountains base screen and can see my base stations for a half second or two. it comes back, and things are smooth for 15-30 seconds, then bang, another one happens. totally intermittent. still looking for what is causing that. Happens mainly in MP so suspect the network.

I also get a lot of shimmer / artifacting with either bright lights - sun goes through the hud and the all of the hud symbols go wavy, or high waves on the sea causes a sh*t ton of visual defects and lots aliasing on boats, the hud, and any other thing that is near the waves. Speed also makes anything moving in 3 dimensions ghost bad. Sadly I don't get that in any other game.

I can live with some stuff, but this always seems like I have to make some very serious compromises. I haven't found any holy grail settings that give me good performance without either being fuzzy or crawling all over the screen with aliasing. I've had to push down to 150/120 to keep frame rates reasonable in MP, which then causes the aliasing crawl.

To add insult to injury, I can push the card to high SS 150/140 and the game looks amazing for a few seconds at a time. LMAO.

Ah well. I guess its only money.

/rant off

/rant on

 

I don't know about you guys, but I am feeling extreme frustration over a chasing mediocre performance with a seriously expensive pile of hardware.

 

I get what I think is a decent config, and new drivers come out.then back to the ole drawing board...

 

I turn things down and still get large hiccups during game play where I go to the mountains base screen and can see my base stations for a half second or two. it comes back, and things are smooth for 15-30 seconds, then bang, another one happens. totally intermittent. still looking for what is causing that. Happens mainly in MP so suspect the network.

 

I also get a lot of shimmer / artifacting with either bright lights - sun goes through the hud and the all of the hud symbols go wavy, or high waves on the sea causes a sh*t ton of visual defects and lots aliasing on boats, the hud, and any other thing that is near the waves. Speed also makes anything moving in 3 dimensions ghost bad. Sadly I don't get that in any other game.

 

I can live with some stuff, but this always seems like I have to make some very serious compromises. I haven't found any holy grail settings that give me good performance without either being fuzzy or crawling all over the screen with aliasing. I've had to push down to 150/120 to keep frame rates reasonable in MP, which then causes the aliasing crawl.

 

To add insult to injury, I can push the card to high SS 150/140 and the game looks amazing for a few seconds at a time. LMAO.

 

Ah well. I guess its only money.

 

/rant off

I feel your pain lol. Though I'm not having any major issues ATM, it seems for no reason it will work perfectly one day and the next it takes a huge shit. Having made no additional changes I'm beginning to wonder if every time I fire up Steam or DCS there are changes being made while loading. There's no other reason I can think of that would make the game crater after flying perfectly. I don't think it's only the Index as I have friends with the S, CV1 and other units saying the same thing. I will say the Index is more effected by packet loss when online than other units including my CV1. As I fly exclusively online unless testing I see stutters in the frame rate and frame tears before other guys flying with me see them. What's really weird is when these things happen my frame counter is usually locked at 45FPS running 90Hz. In other words there shouldn't be any frame drops or tears according to the frame rate.

We are currently flying a mission called Skyfox on our server and it has a lot of triggers and a lot of activity. But the frame tears don't really happen when there's a ton of things going on, rather there's usually nothing going on when it happens. Also, things get progressively worse the longer I'm on the server. Like a cache is filling up and not purging but I've not found where this is happening.

My current settings have been working well the last two nights flying minimum of 4 hours straight. SteamVR Video Custom Resolution 148% and DCS Application SS 138%. No MSAA. These are the only settings I mess with as all of the other settings I use are good to go.

Hmm I seem to be in the opposite camp. Moved my VR setup to the living room to connect with my 4KTV this weekend, and I seem to be getting better framerate than ever. Now able to have shadows on medium and maintain 40 FPS in Dubai. The only differences are PC now running process lasso, now connected to 4K TV instead of dual monitor setup, Index in Roomscale instead of Standing Only mode, and may be a tad lower ambient temperature..

Hmm I seem to be in the opposite camp. Moved my VR setup to the living room to connect with my 4KTV this weekend, and I seem to be getting better framerate than ever. Now able to have shadows on medium and maintain 40 FPS in Dubai. The only differences are PC now running process lasso, now connected to 4K TV instead of dual monitor setup, Index in Roomscale instead of Standing Only mode, and may be a tad lower ambient temperature..

Really? When I unplugged my touchscreen things seemed to get worse. I have a Samsung 49" monitor running at 3840x1080 so not quite 4K and until recently a Dell 21.5" touchscreen. It seemed to run better that way lol. At this point who the hell knows. Nothing is consistent and basically I've learned to live with it. Glad you got a performance boost though.

Hey,

i'm wondering how much of an improvment the index high refresh rate offer compared to other headsets, specifically when coupled with motion smoothing.

could someone, who owns both the index and a 45/90 headset, post a quick comaprison of the quality and general smoothness?

- is index 60fps+motion smoothing noticeable better than 45fps+ASW?

- same for 72fps+ms

- how does steam motion smoothing in general compare to the quality of oculus ASW and other implementations?

when the index was announced, i thought the possibility to run 60 and 72 fps (comapred to 40/45) was a big advantage considering that 90fps is very difficult to archieve in dcs.

however i don't see much talkign about the motion smoothing and benefits of 60/72fps.

i would apreciate if you could share your experience.

thanks!

Having had an Index & Reverb at the same time I could see no advantage to higher refresh rates aligned with motion smoothing/reprojection.

Running the Index in DCS at 120 it would run at 40 or 60. Oddly 60 looked more jerky than 40. Running the Index at 90 so achieving 45 looked much the same in both headsets in terms of smoothness and the better option IMHO.

I also tried the Index at 80 but it seemed to lose some smoothness so for DCS I would definitely pick 90 which kind of makes its differentiation from other headsets moot, at least for me.

Valve Index Hands On

FPS perception depends on individuals I think. For people who are used to gaming at 100-120+ FPS it would be easier for them to tell the difference as things would feel more fluid/life like compared to 60 or lower. If you don’t typically game at high FPS then you might not even notice the difference (console gamers even game at 30 FPS).

In VR, the only clear advantage you will see is only when you can sustain 120 FPS without reprojection, which is not possible with DCS. This is apparent in games like Beat Saber where the Index really shines at 120+ Hz (tried it vs my Vive Pro and Rift). Let’s just say that DCS really gimps true potential of a lot of headsets due to high system requirements. Or we just don’t have the CPU and GPU that are powerful enough to take full advantage of these headsets for games with complex graphics.

This is also why people will pay more for monitors with high refresh rate with Gsync/Freesync, since it gives better gaming experiences. Of course it becomes a moot point if you don’t have enough horse power to get there.

Hey,

i'm wondering how much of an improvment the index high refresh rate offer compared to other headsets, specifically when coupled with motion smoothing.

 

could someone, who owns both the index and a 45/90 headset, post a quick comaprison of the quality and general smoothness?

- is index 60fps+motion smoothing noticeable better than 45fps+ASW?

- same for 72fps+ms

- how does steam motion smoothing in general compare to the quality of oculus ASW and other implementations?

 

when the index was announced, i thought the possibility to run 60 and 72 fps (comapred to 40/45) was a big advantage considering that 90fps is very difficult to archieve in dcs.

however i don't see much talkign about the motion smoothing and benefits of 60/72fps.

 

i would apreciate if you could share your experience.

thanks!

Personally, I see no visual difference whatsoever between 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz in DCS. So, I stick with 90.

Additionally, when running at 120, although I was holding 60 a lot of the time, it was going down to 40 a lot more than the 90 going to 30. I'm pretty much on a solid 45 with 90.

@Baldrick: That's dissapointing to hear. But thanks for the reply!

@Supmua: I was specifically asking about the "capped" experience on the index (60fps/72fps) because i was hoping that this would be a significant upgrade to the "capped" 45fps of the other HMDs. My reasoning that the difference between 45 and 60 might be more noticeable than the difference between uncapped 90 vs 120.

But judging by baldricks reply it's not a better experience... sadly.

Personally, I see no visual difference whatsoever between 90Hz, 120Hz and 144Hz in DCS. So, I stick with 90.

Additionally, when running at 120, although I was holding 60 a lot of the time, it was going down to 40 a lot more than the 90 going to 30. I'm pretty much on a solid 45 with 90.

interesting. i would have thought that the "ghosting" from the temporal interpoaltion would be less visible with a 60fps base.

but it makes sense, that stable 45 feels more pleasant than a 60 that sometimes drops to 40...

I don't expect to see 60-90 FPS on my Index but I never did. Having had the CV1 first I am totally happy with 45 FPS. At that frame rate everything is super smooth and there are no distracting hiccups or screen tearing killing immersion.

When I've set the Index to 120hz or 80hz it always falls back to 40 and seems to fall below 40 more easily than when I have it set to 90 and it falls back to 45 FPS. No idea why but my Index likes 90Hz.

Honestly, I'd sacrifice FPS above 45 for clarity. This isn't a monitor, I'm in the jet, totally immersed and surrounded by the jet. As long as it's a smooth ride I could care less about the specifics.

To reiterate, there's no significant difference to me in FPS unless it goes above 100+ in 2D. In VR, even less between 40 vs 45 vs 60 with motion smoothing on. And that's why I'm running my headset at 80 Hz, with my current settings--to ensure it won't drop below 40 no matter what I do (except that little parking area in Khasab). I'm still going below 45 sometimes when flying low in Dubai, so 90Hz is no good for me there since the frame will be locked at 30 when that happens in 90Hz mode (I do get 45-60 in Caucasus map though). Well, I can choose to have steady 45 fps/90 Hz in Dubai but I would have to sacrifice shadows to off or flat which is something I'd rather not do.

In order to see/feel the difference (in DCS), I think you have to have zero reprojection/motion smoothing. Which means the PC has be to roughly 2x as powerful as the 9900/2080Ti combo and we're not going to get there any time soon--may be in 5 years. My ideal headset would be something that has 200% resolution of the Index, so I don't have to use supersampling.

ok. thanks again for all the replies! much appreciated!

This might be slightly OT but I found a situation where Process Lasso is clearly helpful (in non DCS). Been messing around with Vader Immortal (an Oculus title) on my Index and found that I would periodically crash here and there. This can be mitigated by lowering the details setting to low, but the graphics lack shadows at this setting and it would still crash occasionally.

So I used Process Lasso to mimic current DCS settings. SteamVR and Revive assigned to core 0-3, Vader Immortal app to Core 4-15, Priority to high. I have had zero crash and and super smooth gameplay ever since.

This title is highly recommended even if you do not own an Oculus headset. On the Index it is a bit too dark but you can edit gamma setting in engine.ini, I set mine to 2.5 and it is now superb (probably default at around 2.0-2.2). The default controller setting also works perfectly, including the grab function. And this title is plainly awesome at 120Hz.

@supmua - taking a page from your book... Pushed refresh down to 80hz and went with a simpler 190% global setting in steam vr with shadows high, all textures and object draws high, and 2xaf. I get 18ms and NO RED frame times anywhere... Not quite as pretty as higher values, but very playable in SP or MP. Will continue to test things out but I am leaving those settings alone...

@supmua - taking a page from your book... Pushed refresh down to 80hz and went with a simpler 190% global setting in steam vr with shadows high, all textures and object draws high, and 2xaf. I get 18ms and NO RED frame times anywhere... Not quite as pretty as higher values, but very playable in SP or MP. Will continue to test things out but I am leaving those settings alone...

That’s why I’m sticking with 80Hz for now for zero red frames. I’d argue that having those shadows beyond off or flat makes the game look very pretty, especially in external views.

I decided to try the new beta. I like it. I didn't change any other settings though. Still at 148 custom res and 138 DCS SS. Everything looks cleaner and that was flying online on my Wing's server. No stutters at all.

The new SteamVR beta also seems to make the need for a controller obsolete:

• Changed the default bindings for HMDs with buttons (Vive, Vive Pro, and Index) to allow navigation of the dashboard using only the HMD button. The new bindings are:
  
  • Single click – Show dashboard
    
  • Single click – Laser mouse click
    
  • HMD pose – Laser pointer
     
    and

    Added per-app setting for disabling async reprojection. This is the same functionality that was previously toggled via Shift+A in the old mirror window or via the async_mode_toggle debug command.

    
    

   

The new SteamVR beta also seems to make the need for a controller obsolete:

 

• Changed the default bindings for HMDs with buttons (Vive, Vive Pro, and Index) to allow navigation of the dashboard using only the HMD button. The new bindings are:
  
  • Single click – Show dashboard
    
  • Single click – Laser mouse click
    
  • HMD pose – Laser pointer
     
    and

    Added per-app setting for disabling async reprojection. This is the same functionality that was previously toggled via Shift+A in the old mirror window or via the async_mode_toggle debug command.

    
    

   

Yep, those new 1.8.2 features are really interesting.

However, I'm having some problems. For example, I can't see how to exit the Steam overlay after pressing the Index button. Used to be a click on and a cick off, but, obviously, that doesn't work now. Long press? Has anyone worked that out?

Also, my desktop cursor is uncontrollable after taking off the HMD. Have to go into TM and close down SteamVR before it comes back to normal.