The Index thread (please keep to subject)

^^^If only we had the sun that Australia gets then it would not be so bad. ha

Lucky I bought mine then before brexit :)

I just realized I've got the sacred and totally rare  <3  Wuhan <3  edition :o  :D  

I mean what were the chances of Valve making their own VR HMD then one component of it being made in a place that spawned a global pandemic. lol

Been watching Bad Boy Bobby in 720p with the Index - I have a much larger and better TV, so usually I do not watch full movies in VR. The 720p did look surprisingly good using the SkyBox VR player. And the big fov really turns Index into a large theater - much bigger screen than any TV can provide - in fact you not get same size screen as in a normal theater (and the res sitting in the front isn't that much worse when using at least 1080p). 

One minor problem with 90 Hz may be that a movie using 24 fps can't be shown perfectly using 90 Hz as 90/24 = 3.75. But 120 Hz (repeating each image 5 times) and 144 Hz (repeating each image 6 times) work perfectly with 24 fps - and since movies aren't taxing for the gpu, using 144 Hz and res 200% with the Skybox VR player worked flawlessly. 

I'm starting to think Valve chose 120 and 144 Hz to optimally support movies, lol. 

Really felt like a real cinema - so for movie enthusiasts using Index 144 Hz when watching movies might be a great idea - and might even work if you got a GTX 1060 6GB ;) 

Problem with the 4K movies is that some might be like 100GB in size, really not sure I'm gonna go through the hassle of getting such movies. We really need support for 4K and blu-ray 3D drives that can play normal discs in VR, sigh. Or just a 4K Netflix VR player - how hard can that be... 

Brilliant, Ill have to try that.

Some dude allowed a guest with glasses to try his Index - let this be a warning to all  B) 



Now, I've used Index with my glasses since day 1, even all dialed-in - never had a problem nor even a single scratch. 
But you have to be very careful. If my glasses make contact with the Index, I'm very lucky that the first point of contact is the glasses frame contacting the rubber surrounding the Index lenses - so I'm not sure I even can get direct "glasses to Index lenses" contact, lol. But other glasses will have different contact points.

Had one friend visiting, he wanted so much to try Alyx - but he can't see without his glasses - so I could not let him try to Index - not even with lenses all dialed out, I do not take any chances. 

Did get my CV1 lenses slightly scratched due to guests wearing glasses in 2017, but it's in the periphery and cannot be seen at all in VR - some of us learned the hard way  ;) 

After more than 3.5 years, my own glasses never scratched neither CV1 nor Index - but again, I'm very careful, and did get extremely thin glasses. 

Some dude also wrote in case some Index owners think they can just replace the lenses: 


So even if you could just change lenses that may not work well. Some also say that while Polywatch may work wonders for hmds like Vive and CV1, be very careful with the Index lenses as Polywatch may not work and may create blurry/cloudy Index lenses.  

I have had a pair of 44mm watch face screen protectors on my CV1 since day and they have done a fantastic job of keeping the lenses in pristine condition as the day the CV1 came out of its box, best £10 i ever spent was on them, also have the on the Vive.

Another victim of Brexit - for now if you live in the UK, you can no longer RMA your Index hardware, even if you have warranty:


https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/lfnafh/uk_index_owners_cant_rma_due_to_brexit/

I wonder if Valve is going to remove the UK entirely from supported countries if this does not get fixed soon. 

I feel for those Poms, lol!  I hope I never need to RMA my Index controllers since I imported them from a US re-seller.  Thanks to Steam support I did get a free copy of HLA .  Because I already bought it I ended up getting a Steam store credit (= what I paid for it).  Of course, I ended up spending this pretty quickly, lol!

It's kinda silly that Valve does not offer a Global warranty even though their warranty is transferable.  I'm pretty sure that even Oculus does Global now.  In those cases the buyer outside the purchase country just needs to cover all shipping costs.