The Index thread (please keep to subject)

Initial impressions after not using one for 2 years. I'll start with the positives.

FoV is noticeable instantly. Both Vertical and Horizontal. I'm getting 110 HFOV and 94 VFOV (new test)G2 I get 100HFOV and 90 VFOV on new test.

Blur - More clear lens area than G2. Still has edge blur for me a good ways out from the edges but more of the lens is clear than G2.

Eye Relief - missed having this. Nice comfort option.

IPD Adjustment - nice to have one that goes to my correct setting. G2 stops at 68 (I'm 69)

Comfort - I find this headset comfortable for my head. Similar to G2 overall for my head but having the ratchet adjustment is a nice luxury feature that will make it comfortable for more people.  

Audio - Self explanatory. Same as G2, one of the best you can get on an out of the box VR kit.

Controllers - Not the most comfortable things in the world but they feel good in my hands again. I still hate the position of the thumbstick but it's not a dealbreaker. Tracking is as it should be. Perfect.

Performance - Index is definitely in a pretty good spot for performance these days with the 3000 series cards. At 200% my 3090 isn't working hard at 90 hz in the few games I tried and I still have 80 hz to tap into if needed.

The rest -

Binocular overlap distraction quickly faded. Got used to it and It's fine now but it is definitely noticeable coming from other headsets. 

Lenses still glow with glare... It's better at 100 brightness than the old default of 130 though which is really **bleep** glowy lol. I tried it. Title screens are bad at 100 but that's not a big deal. G2 has glare/godrays but much less than this. I could use this at 100 though in most games and the option to lower more as needed helps.

Black levels, they're not bad at 100. I did a back to back comparison in Gloomy Eyes with G2 and at 100 they are brighter than my G2 but with the slider I can get them pretty good when I go down under 100.  Having that flexibility is nice. G2 is fixed and has no flexibility, but it already looks good where it's at. What does bother me about the blacks is if you have a scene with glare... it makes the blacks illuminate... It's like it's casting light on them and makes them appear lighter.

Sharpness/Clarity - much less sharp than G2. I felt like I needed glasses in TestHMD at 100% lol. Couldn't read much without moving really close. 200% looks a lot better but is still blurry looking to me. I'm spoiled by 4k tho. That said it looks fine and is totally playable.

SDE - It's clearly visible but I've used much worse. After about 30 minutes I got used to not looking at it again. But yea.

Those are my initial impressions, gonna use this for a couple of weeks until Vive Pro gets here and then I'll see how I feel then before making any definitive statements.

Yea I'm sensitive to it. Irritates me when it's visible. Why I love the 4k resolution so much.

That said, once I got going I quit noticing it so it's a pretty minor issue on Index. Reading very small Text on Index is kinda lackluster which I assume is both a combo from that and the blurry like vision I'm seeing. I've been without power since shortly after my last Index post. Bad weather here. I want to try pushing index to 3, or 400% and see if anything changes.

Yea exactly. It's a 2 year old HMD. It's the best of the CV1-Quest 1 time frame of HMD's for SDE except for O+. O+ had a softness to it though which was its biggest drawback visually.

CV1 bothered me from day 1, Index is nowhere near that bad. It's actually quite good it was just the first image I saw coming from G2 which has practically none. SDE on a sky background in my SteamVR lol. I was like yikes...but then I started looking at other stuff and it was fine. After a half hour I didn't see it much anymore.

Overall Index is still a great kit. It does nearly every thing within its capabilities well except blacks and high contrast scenes. Colors look good to me in most things I've tried.

Been playing Asgard's Wrath all night on epic settings and experimenting with Index's supersampling. I definitely see a difference up to 400%. Revive seems to break on me if I go above 400%. The hands won't load and then it crashes. Does the same thing in Lone Echo. But I see the full 500% effect in Steam and TestHMD.

What I determined in Asgard's is the difference between 200 and 500 is obviously not a 300% improvement. It's more like a 25% improvement in sharpness for a big performance hit. That sharpness does improve TAA blur in Asgard's and Lone Echo just like the G2. It's not perfect and it's still a little blurry but it's much better.  I went into Asgard's Wrath at 396% supersampling, 80 hz, Epic settings on everything and motion smoothing on and it was pretty playable. I'd probably run about 360 or so if I was playing long.

What I can't figure out though is why some things on the G2 look a lot better, like the water reflections and ocean water in general in Asgard's Wrath and some of the fine details in Lone Echo like the imperfections in the metal panels. I can hardly see them on Index but in G2 it all pops. Just has to be those LCD panels they used. They're near AMOLED...or maybe it's from the brightness they added when they required the adapter. IDK but it works lol. I hope Vive Pro 2 has something like that for the price.

In Lone Echo, I liked how it looked around 330-350% and 80 hz with motion smoothing. It starts kind of degrading past that for some reason. More flickering and such.

When I run through TestHMD at 300%+ the text looks better than at 200% to me and the blur I see at 200% is mostly gone at 300+. I have the performance to kill with a 3090 and not minding 80hz. I'm probably going to run this thing on 300% normally until the Vive gets here lol.

Another observation I made is that with the brightness all the way up, the colors look closer to G2 and look better...but that makes the blacks look worse for me. That brightness slider is kind of a double edged sword. It reduces the brightness of the gray in the black but it reduces your visibility which I don't like. Kind of robbing peter to pay paul but it's better than nothing.

TomCgcmfcI'm planning to compare my Quest 2 tomorrow, how'd you improve the black levels? Even when I reduce the brightness down to zero on my quest, they still glow pretty gray in a lot of areas.

Have you tried running it through Gloomyeyes with the Vive Pro and see how they compare?

Anyway just some observations.

Knuckles have the same revision number as the the last ones I had. 14.0.9 and 14.1.9.  My left one has a lot number of 1/12/21 and the right 1/13/21.

So apparently they didn't do a revision change for whatever they did to address the stick click issue. They all disappeared after the 08/19 lot numbers. Probably attributed it to a manufacturing defect and not a design flaw.

Finally finished my DCS Hornet campaign, tomorrow will be a good day to switch back to the Index and have a go with Boneworks to check it out.

RuneSR2  - any advantage in using VRSS in Nvidia Control Panel with Boneworks? Any idea how this works with say a SS set in Steam VR?

I played around with it some. As far as how it works in regard to supersampling, it is applied after supersampling so it's additional cost and has no bearing on your supersampling. What it does is apply MSAA to the center after the target resolution is reached. So kind of in a way, the higher you SS, the less benefit you get because there's already pretty sharp center if that makes sense. But it does help with flickers. But also, if you're too low the blurry pixel improvement won't be noticeable. People on reddit claim it's best to stay at 100% when using it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/el3ou3/worse_performance_with_vrss/

I gave up on it after using it briefly and went back to brute forcing lol.

👨‍🎤Knuckles are charging Knuckles are charging Knuckles are charging. 👨‍🎤

lol

Well I have begun with Boneworks, can't say I am overly impressed just yet. Still in I guess what one would call the training segment. I am at the part of puzzle solving I think. Seems a little convoluted, not natural feeling and simplistic like Alyx.

Plus I don't see a menu option to exit the game? Had to use the Steam Dash to quit the game. Sure hope progress gets saved.

Alyx you can save at any point prior to exiting the game.