Norm fair creamed his little knickers over the 120/144 smoothness and presence. The audio seems a nice addition but very hard to fully appreciate in that demo environment.

If I was in the HTC/Valve system I'd be looking very hard as well... but.. for now there doesn't look to be the content quite there to sell a big new thing like that on for me; especially at the cool full grand system intro price tag.  

Running those screens at 120 or 144 is going to take maybe a upgrade to an RTX system (maybe? I'm sure the demos were done on meaty kit) as I'm not sure (like you say no reviews, not enough time out there spent) my 1080Ti would still crank the settings like it can at 90. I've heard devs out there saying it's easy to run some stuff at higher frame rates but until we get more hands on for longer periods I'd like to know quite what stuff will be ready to take advantage etc etc 

The Index trollers look an amazing upgrade from the wands from an outsiders perspective but not a mind blowingly huge upgrade from the Touchs. I'm sure that content can be made to emphasise the squeezy fingerness of them but no dev is going to make that a focus given the size of the potential market. Boneworks looks great but it doesn't look all that different with the Touch implementation either. 

As a £500 splurge it becomes a hell of a lot easier to think about for that sweet FoV, booming audio and extra smooth presence. I think you're right to potentially hold fire to see what specs are going to be needed to take full advantage of it all to the max though.

Oooh.. I saw that Index VRlink dongle. I just assumed that it was simplifying a cable run, must be fancier than it looks. 

VR link cards are going to pump up that outlay a touch there SG. 

It does seem to be an even more Valvey way of announcing things than even their usual oddness. A big wham bam game/Half Life/Portal 3 drop with all sorts of fingery squeezy amazeballs bits and a boomy soundtracks would have been a touch more.. conventional.. 

Hey ho. They're sold out already so Valve are probably happy to keep up the Valveness. 

The kit does look to be great.

Ay, that's what I'd read about it all. Sounds pretty fruity then anyway. 

Virtual link was a nice sounding bit of tech for us old school CV1 punters who have to deal with USB sensor bandwidth and whatnot. Now the world is already moving on it seems. 

I dunno .. that Index does sound very nice. Very temptingly nice indeed. 
We're not yet at full off the shelf PCVR wireless, foveated, eye tracked 4k loveliness perhaps but it sounds pretty damn swish. I'm impressed you've not got a pre-order in already. Heh.

One good thing about Valve is you just know they're going to be on sale at some point, the question is when? I'll be no doubt going in fairly early on the standalone headset but for everyone else it might sell hotcakes in a year or two. The Steam Link was £2 I think at one point. It's not hard to imagine the bundle with 50% off in a year's time.

One thing I liked about the price is they didn’t take the piss with USA to UK parity. The full kit came in at £919 preorder.

Vs $999 and with various taxes compared to VAT is far better than the $ to £ conversion that we typically see.

Have you poked around Reddit yet Boris? The thing I love about early days VR is the community. Becuse it's sort of like 1985 again in VR world, many devs are single bedroom coders and so they're always keen to show off early access stuff and updates. It's usual to ask them questions and get replies, and they'll often ask the community for ideas or feedback on what works and what doesn't.

This guy has been vlogging all his updates and then which you can then try for yourself and give feedback. It's fun to just fire it up and try the new things out after watching the vids.



You can then give him feedback if you like or just wait another week or two and try the next ones. It's come along way this game, and it's kinda just evolved on the fly and it's quite cool to see how it's slowly morphed.

Here's his current post in full on the new Valve Index subreddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ValveIndex/comments/bkfs03/h3vr_early_access_update_72_alpha_1_take_hold/

Edit: And here's the first one.

Have you tried Vivecraft? Works with touch controllers. It's pretty amazing and free if you own Minecraft. It's quite a thing in VR.

https://youtu.be/Y_JkrOKGGuI

Edit: You'll need the Java version, so steal it if you own the Win10/Xbone version. Think there are customisable mods for the controls iirc.

http://www.vivecraft.org/how-to-play/

I think the next gen VR will put puffs of air in to force you to blink more often.

Just had my first taste of motion sickness. Literally just started Windlands and the jumping and forward motion meant I had to switch off. Think I’ll try again later sitting with a gamepad.

Yep definitely hung around for about half an hour afterwards, like you say, it's almost like an hangover. Weird, as I didn't feel a thing playing Elite (finally got it to work) but guessing you have the ship to focus on which gives your brain some kind of indicator that you are in a simulation.

I'll have a crack at the ol' Box VR again Boris. I haven't failed at hitting arrows in too long.. 

I did see this Virtual Desktop vid pop up yesterday.



I think I've got it for the CV1 already but can see that with the better res and pairing a controller on the Quest it making me play some PC games and watch the odd fillum up in bed. 

I tried out Bigscreen again yesterday in one of the open rooms in there. Watched a perfectly decent bit of Jedi Awakens or something. It was quite chucklesome when the mod of the room tried shouting repeatedly at one punter who was snoring loudly mind. In the end I think he just muted or kicked him. 
Passing out in mobile VR... I'll have to try that sometime..

Not sure I’d use desktop VR until the res significantly improves.

Daqster have you have any crackling earphones on hour CV1? I’ve had it the last few days and wondering if it’s a failing unit or software. I did some googling and a solution was to turn off sound optimisations in windows settings. Did that and it seemed to go away, but it came back today. I’m wondering if it could also be my usb extension cables.

The CV1/Vive Res is a bit low for good watching of media or virtualized games. It's fine and works but.. you're aware of the Res. Quest/s/pro/index should be enough again to make that less of a problem. Maybe...

I don't think I've had trouble with the audio though there are internet complaints out there for sure. I've read something about wear on a ribbon cable not being good.
Have you made sure that the headphone is screwed in nice and tight? It should have come with a weird plastic pencil thing in the box for taking on and off the head phone cap things and I think one of mine came a touch loose at one point? I'm sure you can use any screwdriver to give them a tweak.
Might be worth a shot. I think I had to tighten one of mine up now that I think about it?

So 20 minutes of windlands. Who’d have know I was so scared of heights! Got real clammy hands and feel a little woozy. But come out of it feeling much better than the 2 minutes I played the other day.

So it’s basically Spider-Man VR. After falling to my death around a dozen times some of that fear goes away but there’s still a part at the back of your brain that screams “I’m falling!”

It’s definitely that, but right now the exhilaration and fear of leaping off a ledge and reaching out with the hooks not 100% certain if you are going to land on the other side is a rush. That said it was only £2.99. The second one I believe you battle titans, but I tried this out to see what motion sickness I am susceptible to. 

I’m guessing I’m reasonable and I can get used to it. I’m still feeling a bit weak at the moment, so baby steps I think.