Valve Teases Their Own VR Headset: The Valve Index

After some concern over their hardware department, Valve has returned to stir excitement with a new virtual reality headset teaser: the Valve Index.

So far, the only thing we know about this headset is what we see in a single teaser image placed on a designated webpage. But from this, we can discern a number of things.

Viewed from the bottom of the headset, we see a nose formation, a slider, a button, two cameras placed on opposite sides of the front bottom, and the name, Valve Index, printed between them. At the bottom of it all is the words "Upgrade your Experience. May 2019"

The slider and button are a mystery, but the two cameras offer a small bit of insight. On the HTC Vive, the unit tracks head and hand locations using lighthouse docks placed on each end of the room. Various low-budget headphones, often using Windows Mixed Reality (Microsoft's VR software), will have hand tracking function based out of the headset instead of lighthouses. The cameras on the Index might be used to track the hand controllers. If this is the case, it may mean that there will not be head location tracking.

Before this formal teaser, Valve also released the same image but darkened greatly. Of course, it didn't take long before websites like The Verge brightened it to see more of the headset.

There are a few rumors that supposedly connect to this. There was a rumor back in November that Valve was producing their own VR headset without the partnership of HTC. It was also rumored that this headset would be bundled with a different type of controller, the Knuckles EV3, as well as a new Half-Life VR game. The controller and game remain pure rumor at this time.

Whatever it is, we'll know more this May.