Valve‘s new Index VR headset has finally been revealed. The long in development VR headset will rival the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive devices on PC and Sony’s PSVR headset. The Valve Index VR headset is slated to release in June.
A landing page for Valve Index was published in late March, confirming the existence of Valve’s VR headset. Since then, store pages for the headset, controllers, and base station have gone live. All three look as though Valve published them too early, as only the headset has a photo. The base station and controller pages host barely any information, besides what is included in the hardware package. Valve’s Index VR headset’s Steam page is host to several “lorem ipsum” placeholder texts, as well as broken HTML tags.
The landing page for Valve Index VR notes May 2019 as important, but the Index headset’s page contains a different date. According to the headset’s page, the device will begin shipping on June 15. No price is listed for any of the hardware.
Valve’s long-rumored VR headset has a number of sensors on the front of the device, and is said to support a 135-degree field-of-view. Competitors like the original HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift feature a narrower, 110-degree FoV. The headset will have integrated headphones.
The new VR controllers from Valve is an evolution of the Knuckles VR controllers. Patents, images, and videos of various in-development controllers have been shared over the years by Valve or leaked online.
Valve has yet to publish more information regarding the Index VR headset, but at least we now know it’s real and coming soon. The company recently laid off a number of people from its hardware and VR team who were said to be working on the new headset. Valve is rumored to be working on a number of VR games to launch alongside the Index, including a Half-Life VR game.