The Index thread (please keep to subject)

Seems the Index is sold out in the UK, lol:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/10tkbeu/out_of_stock_lol/

In the EU, only controllers and hmd alone are sold out. Actually I've never - ever - seen the hmd only in stock - that's in soon 4 years. 

Finger tracking with the Index now seems to be working - for those caring about that and I do not (I like to feel something in my hand while holding a gun or sword, lol):

https://twitter.com/moshimeowshiVR/status/1629230973492645895

Incredible - but my nearly 4 years old Index controller finally started to drift - so I got into some spinning when turning right. I had nothing to lose and contacted Steam Support - and Valve really is top of the line. They offered not only to replace my old controller for free, but also gave me advanced RMA - so didn't have to return the old controller before I got the new one:

I'm starting to think they like me, lol. 

Not much news about the Index - it's simply working flawlessly at least on my part. Lately my new trend is going for 80 fps in 80 Hz, which I never thought I'd do - but to push super-sampling the most. If possible, I'd normally go for Index res 300% in 80 fps instead of something like res 270% in 90 fps. Works great in games like Crossfire: Sierra Squad and Firmament - where you want image quality as sharp as possible. 

Regarding Index 2 - or Deckard - or maybe Galileo - or maybe just Model 1030 (Index is model 1007, Steam Deck is 1010), there are some rumors - the latest gossip:

https://www.youtube.com/live/syLTCCR23FU?si=AZ7VVFV78MD6Qiaa

The new model 1030 - Index is 1007 - but no one knows what 1030 is

https://twitter.com/sadlyitsbradley/status/1699836012900544823

PS. Some bonus:

https://youtu.be/YVkbcZ8JH2E

The wife gave me a Samsung 8TB SSD for my birthday, she's the best 🙂 Now I have tons of space - and thought why not download DCS? 🤔 🤓

Thinking that DCS would make me cry for a RTX 4090, I was very surprised by the great performance - ok, it's not like 144 fps with Index res 400%, lol. But it really felt close to 80 fps with Index res 200%. And the game has the best use of motion smoothing I've seen for long - really turns 40 fps into 80 fps so greatly that the difference to real 80 fps is minimal, and often will go unnoticed.

I ended up using 80 Hz with motion smoothing and an insane Index res 350% (about 30 million pixel per frame combining both eyes) - and I upped many settings:

Using res 350% really clears up the image - I've seen many blurry images from Index in DCS, and image quality is not good using Index res 100% - but it's really good using Index res 350% (could use Index res 400% too, but now performance started tanking even with motion smoothing):

Examples of image quality:

Everything is very sharp using Index res 350%. The above image is reduced in res to make it faster to load - this is the real image sent to one Index panel 1:1:

This is not through the lens, but it looks much the same in the hmd - also because you got full 3D in the hmd, and your brain turns two images into one. Image quality was much better than I had hoped for - here are more dials and instruments:

The sun/lighting effects, clouds and view distance are impressive too:

I've only been using the sim for about an hour, and have not been engaged in battles. Maybe I'll need to turn down settings more in big battles... 

Also - very impressive - you do not need HOTAS for the game, you can use your VR motion controllers to control the stick and throttle (just like in VTOL). 

DCS is also free - well, for the first two planes at least 😉 Get it here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/223750/DCS_World_Steam_Edition/

Btw - I'm so proud, my first landing! 🤗

Spoiler

Finally got around to test the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 (MSFS2020). It's 35% off on Steam right now for the first time ever - and a nice price for 150+ GB 😉 Took much time to download due to MS having a really slow connection, often down to 2mbit. 

Couldn't start the game, but then remembered I had set OpenXR to the Oculus Desktop App - so I set it back to Steam and that worked. Still the game starts in 2D, and I have to enable VR inside the game. 

The game worked really bad the first few times I launched it in VR - got reprojections even on the 2D menu screen. I was soooo close to a refund, worst garbage ever - but then I found DLSS (set to Quality) 😯 - and got down to 80 Hz 👌 - and enabled motion smoothing 👍 - voila - that worked some serious magic. I set FidelityFX to the max to fight the DLSS TAA blur - that worked great too. 

First I set the VR res to 100% in the game (or 1.0) - and then I set SteamVR res to Index 200%. Did test res 300% and res 250% too, but res 200% is the only one to mostly make the game look like 80 fps only thanks to motion smoothing. Do not deactivate motion smoothing for this game, it works miracles for the Index. 

In short - I'm playing the game using in-game Ultra settings - even pushing landscape texturing details up from 200 (=Ultra) to 400 (=beyond Ultra) - and the game looks amazing and mostly feels like 80 fps, because like ASW 2.0 you do not see the reprojections (much) with motion smoothing. 

I took some shots while playing - click on an image to see larger size:

One great difference from DCS is that Index controllers are much better supported - I only use the Index controllers (no hotas or gamepad), and these work even better than a gamepad (you can use a gamepad too, but this will deactivate Index controllers and make it harder to access menus). There are some buttons missing with the Index controllers, so haven't found a way to activate cockpit view yet when doing free flights (all images above) - but not a big deal for the free flights. 

With Index controllers you can you point to a button in the cockpit and activate it. You can do that in DCS too, but only in a few models, like the Apache helicopter (AH-64D). I don't think I get to bomb any cities in MSFS2020 🤔 ☹️ 😉 - but so far MSFS2020 costs less than one DCS AH-64D Apache helicopter and feels like a much better deal 🤓

Btw, note I'm not saying that running MSFS2020 is much easier than DCS - I can use res 350% in DCS with some lowered settings, while I'm down to res 200% but with maxed Ultra-settings in MSFS2020. Both games depending on motion smoothing in 80 Hz for these settings - and you'll need a RTX 3090 or similar (or better). So not sure there's a winner here for performance and image quality - but MSFS2020 may be much more accessible to newbies and non-simmers like me. 

Got a bad crash when starting MSFS 2020 today, had to reboot the entire rig, the game hadn't even started yet, only got to the 2D menu screens. Then it started in some sort of safe mode - and the performance was really bad. I closed everything and restarted the game, and suddenly the great performance was back. 

Does MSFS2020 have good and bad days? 🤔 😅

I've only had one crash - have probably rebooted the game about 40 times, lol. 

Well, science is the way forward - I would like to know my real performance. I started up fpsVR - and using Index res 200%, 80 Hz, Ultra+ in-game settings I got (prolonged drum-roll) 40 fps - with some occasional dips to 27 fps. Valve's motion smoothing works great for 3 x 27 fps (=80 fps vsync), but of course is better for 2 x 40 fps. I did not see 4 x 20 fps. 

Now tried lowering res to Index 100% - about 9 mill pixels per frame instead of 18 mill (res 200%). All other variables kept the same - started the same free flight level - and got (prolonged drumroll) - 40 fps 😬. Now with a lot fewer dips to 27 fps, but could still happen. The tried super-blurry Index res 50% - still got 40 fps. My oc'ed RTX 3090 is a mountain of raw gpu power using the very low Index res 50%. 

Thus the game - using my i9 10900K (10cores/20threads, up to 5.3GHz) - is cpu bottle-necked. But only to about Index res 200% - at res 250% and especially res 300% it's 27 fps or worse. 

It does indicate that even with a much faster gpu, I'm stuck with 40 fps (ok, maybe 45 will work too). In some heavier levels, 27 fps seem the max - like my trip to Japan with vast view distance and tons of trees - but I don't think I've ever seen graphics like this in VR:

With a RTX 4090 I might be able to do 2 x 40 fps in res 300%, but res 300% is not that much better than 200% thanks to FidelityFX. I'd love to be able to get solid 80 fps, but seems not even the RTX 5090 will be able to help in the future. I need a cpu twice as fast as the i9 10900K to be sure of 80 fps - and currently the fastest new cpus are only 50% faster - but measured in other games than MSFS2020 (https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-13900ks/16.html ). Solid 80 fps in MSFS2020 using Ultra+ settings may be some years away... 

Now, I'm using Ultra+ in-game graphics settings, and some might consider that to be on the very edge of sanity. But reducing settings to high or medium didn't do that much - and I prefer the best image quality. 

That said, maybe I am bogging my cpu down with some strange settings. In the old days, I'd have sat down starting with the lowest possible settings to see it that would give me 144 fps in 144 Hz, lol - but not going to spend much time doing that when the game works nicely in 3 x 27 fps and 2 x 40 - only thanks to motion smoothing. 

Small update - yup, I'm getting solid 80 fps with Index res 200%, DLSS Quality, FidelityFX 200 using the low setting preset, but I'm hitting 40 fps already using the medium preset - and then I can just as well enjoy 27-40 fps using maximum settings, lol - she's a beauty, right?

Probably the best VR graphics - or maybe more precisely extremely demanding 2D pancake graphics x 2 in VR, lol. But very soothing and stress-reducing, might work against depression, who knows...  

Also seems I need to start the game twice - after just booting the rig and starting the game for the very first time. The first time the intro vids, before the game is starting, show some stuttering - and this affects the entire game. But closing the game and restarting - now the intro vids are perfectly smooth and the performance incredibly much better. Might just happen to me - but if you got very bad performance, try to restart the game. 

Btw, just saw this nice video from a dude owning many different hmds and ending up preferring the Index for several reasons in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020:

I think the fact that "The Index thread" is the most commented on thread on the Facebook / Meta / Oculus Forums is absolutely hilarious.

Can't wait to see the Index 2 / Deckard drop sometime soon (in Valve Time)!