Valve Confirms That It Has Stopped Making The Index Vr Headset

In lawsuit you missed it, Valve announced a load of caller hardware this week, including a 2nd stab astatine nan Steam Machine, a Steam controller, and a long-rumored caller VR headset called nan Steam Frame. But successful pinch nan caller often intends retired pinch nan old, and possibly inevitably, nan institution has confirmed that its erstwhile headset, nan Valve Index, is nary more.

Valve’s Lawrence nan told The Verge that it’s "no longer manufacturing" nan Index, which we called "the champion desktop VR yet" erstwhile it launched successful 2019. The Index arrived astir nan aforesaid clip arsenic nan Oculus Quest and its committedness of an affordable all-in-one early for VR. By contrast, nan Valve Index was very overmuch still a high-end tethered instrumentality for nan hardcore enthusiasts, pinch a value tag that reflected that.

We don’t cognize really overmuch nan Steam Frame will costs yet, but it decidedly sounds for illustration Valve is making a play for nan much casual VR crowd present too, arsenic good arsenic those who want to play demanding 3D titles. You tin watercourse flatscreen and VR games from your PC aliases Steam Machine utilizing a wireless adapter, but nan Steam Frame is besides a standalone instrumentality for illustration nan Meta Quest 3, backed by a built-in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and 16GB of RAM. Valve is supporting Android games too, seemingly a move to entice VR developers to bring their Quest games complete to Steam.

In bid to way your movements successful virtual space, nan Valve Index relied connected outer lighthouse guidelines stations, which meant you had to spell done a much than a small laborious setup process to play roomscale VR games. Consumer VR has moved towards built-in sensors since then, and it sounds for illustration Valve wants to time off its lighthouses successful nan past too, pinch nan institution confirming to The Verge that they won’t beryllium supported connected nan Steam Frame. The caller headset alternatively has 4 high-res monochrome cameras for inside-out tracking, arsenic good arsenic infrared LEDs connected nan extracurricular that thief pinch search successful darker environments.