Well this is turning out to be quite a weird April Fools’ Day. First we saw the apparently unintentional leak of Valve Index info via a developer video. Now it appears Valve itself may have given us an early look at the headset.
A placeholder Steam page for the new headset went live today. It’s already been taken down but we’ve got some screen caps we took directly. It gives us a better look at the hardware design, which was only teased in Friday’s announcement. The page said it ships June 15th with ‘controllers’ but we confirmed with Valve that the company is “finalizing the targeted day in June to begin shipping units to customers.” The “Knuckles” controllers have been officially renamed Valve Index Controllers.
To confirm, this is not an April Fools’ joke. Valve confirmed to us the information on this page “while not comprehensive”, is also accurate.
The headset itself has some interesting notes. Namely, we can see built-in earphones similar to the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive Pro. The left of the device also seems to sport a dial of some kind.
The hardware specifications state the headset uses DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.0 with a power adapter. While Valve is a member of the VirtualLink single cable USB-C standard, Index doesn’t seem to use it (yet).
Earlier today screenshots were apparently leaked of the SteamVR settings with the Index connected. These screenshots seem to indicate the headset will have a refresh rate of 90 Hz and the same default render resolution as the Vive Pro- but the actual panel resolution is still unknown.
We’ll likely have to wait until May to find out more about the device. Sources previously told us the kit would have a wider field of view and possibly ship with a Half-Life VR game.
