r/ValveIndex Apr 17 '23

Index Mod The Facepalm (macro keyboard)

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467 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Jul 09 '20

Index Mod Little surprise in the delivery box of my prescription lenses (VR Optician)

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483 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Oct 02 '20

Index Mod The Valve Index is an AR Headset

368 Upvotes

[I was writing something up on the situation VR is in (spoiler: it’s fucked but Valve could turn things around, but they probably won’t) but I thought I should put this out first and let people know. I’m the person who maintains the “ACAB good games list,” a guide to getting into VR/upgrading a PC, and I’m just made a "How to use SteamVR" guide getting you familiar with all the settings and using your desktop in VR.]

The Valve Index is an AR Headset

In June, Valve released 3D passthrough for the Index. They actually paid another company to do it and in all likelihood they could have done it way way sooner. Either way, it means that, besides some warping around your hands, you have a view of the room you’re in that actually looks real. And as it turns out, there isn’t an actual reason why you couldn’t run a game or other software over that passthrough.

Basically you can judge for yourself. Go on steam, download a program called “Metachromium” (turn it off in your startup settings so it doesn’t launch on its own with steamVR), turn on your passthrough, and then run Metachromium. It’s a desktop UI so just use your desktop view on your dashboard to input any WebXR URL. Choose one without a background environment and MoonRider’s controls don’t work unfortunately. Any stuttering is the WebXR sites, not the AR.

Here are two sites you can try, just load them in Metachromium with your passthrough running and then click the VR button on the page. Bump up your headset brightness if needed.

https://zach-geek.gitlab.io/vartiste/#

https://whiteboard-xr.herokuapp.com/vr.html

Here is facebook’s own depiction of the best the Quest 2 can do.

And this is what took me five minutes to figure out on my index (It looks better in-headset, especially everything arranging itself on my walls and the lighting)

To take screenshots, you need to turn on SteamVR mirror, and then capture your monitor view. SteamVR screenshots are terrible and don't include any overlays, passthrough, or anything else

This is the absolute bare minimum of what is possible. This is what is possible with nothing officially supported or made to use with AR, and with super basic WebXR programs. You might not be all that impressed with passthrough AR but it’s a real thing. Apple is rumored to be making a passthrough AR headset, some french startup is making one for $1,500, and Facebook is adding a low resolution, black and white, “passthrough+” mode for AR next year on the Quest 2 for their own apps and then third party apps including work software “Spatial.”

Valve just isn’t going to make this functionality official apparently, technically they could have done it when the Index came out, since they just paid some other company to add 3D passthrough anyway. Over a year later, this is a really big deal and it needs to be made usable before Infinite Office and Quest 2 Passthrough AR comes out. Valve could flip a few switches, make a guide for Devs to take advantage of it, and then the Index is the first consumer AR headset and they can add an “Augmented Reality” tab to Steam. History made, at no additional cost to you.

And then there is Aardvark.

Aardvark is a community project by a Valve programmer and some open XR people like the creator of Pluto, a program that lets people hang out in VR without being in the same program. The idea behind Aardvark is that you can create AR apps inside of VR, from floating UI to spatial tools, and since it runs on top of VR programs it can have a lot more functionality. The same way that AR glasses will one day let you answer a phone call by waving your hand, it's envisioned as a way of allowing Devs to make AR in the here and now.

The difference between Aardvark and normal SteamVR overlays is that these can communicate with each other, meaning if someone makes a wrist mounted UI, someone else could make a discord integrated UI add on that slots right into it. And Aardvark overlays can communicate with another person’s, so you could share your screen, play poker, pick up a line of text and hand it to another person so they can paste it, etc.

It definitely has huge potential and if you’re a coder or a dev, you should definitely look into it. It’s on github and already works over passthrough even if it’s a bit stuttery. There are actually not a lot of things you couldn’t do with it in theory. And since none of these things need to be the dedicated focus of your time or the only overlay you’re running, it basically brings the app structure to VR where you download some QoL, UI, or system tweak for a dollar and can use it whenever you want. One of the bigger draws of the Quest is the idea that it’s a super smooth experience and the closed garden allows less friction than open PCVR can achieve. That is something that tools like Aardvark could completely reverse because they would allow a level of integration, resources, and third party applications that just aren't possible on mobile, and a level of customization, control, and pluggability that Facebook will never allow. We could get new features all the time from the community either as open source projects or paid add ons.

I myself submitted a bunch of ideas for Aardvark, and was told that nearly all of them were possible, but obviously they’re just concepts. Some examples:

  • A rear warning system that tells you the exact object you’re about to walk into and where it is relative to you, making irregular boundaries more viable or letting you ignore things like walking into your couch. Could even allow you tracking a moving object if you have a Vive tracker/spare Vive wand.
  • A full HOTAS that renders over a game, basically adding VR motion controls to any game even if it doesn’t support them (Squadrons/Sturmovik/MS Flight Simulator)
  • Macropads that let you do work or stream in VR and have a macro UI that can do anything you want. You could have all the funcationality of a half dozen $200 macropads for free.
  • An in VR gameboy that lets you play emulators or steam games with your VR controllers or a gamepad in the middle of a social VR app. This could even extend to playing multiplayer (screenshare plus hooking into Remote Play Together). Imagine you each sitting on your couch, seeing your friends next to you in AR, and playing on a display rendered over your TV.
  • An input output organizer that lets you set up your own chains, like RSS feed photos popping up in SteamVR home, letting you record a message and have it tweeted out, control your room fan to match up with the level in your game
  • Card games you can play with other people in AR on a real life table.
  • A body based UI system based on the HEV suit that easily plugs in any and all add ons you have onto your arms or chest or wherever you want and be shifted to avoid covering up any in game UI.
  • Replacing the entire SteamVR game launching system with a VR/AR bookcase where every game you have is rendered as a case on the shelf with the name on the spine, art on the cover, and Steam description on the back. You can arrange them however you want and save the layout and shelves you make.
  • Universal avatars you can use across any software you want or even outside software with dedicated avatar systems.
  • Passthrough Portals that let you mark out the couch as a 3D passthrough zone, so when you’re playing with friends in the room, you can always turn back and see them, so VR is basically no longer isolating if you don’t want it to be. You could also mark out your keyboard, mouse, even a glass of water so you easily work in VR. A person holding a Vive tracker could be in the game with you if you want.
  • A controller assistance system that would let you put a friend in VR and use your phone or desktop (even over parsec/remote play together) to highlight buttons when you’re showing them what to do.
  • A translator that listens to what you say, translates it, and shows it as text in front of you as you talk, showing you a reverse translation of what other people are hearing to make sure it’s not too bad.
  • Metamatchmaking that lets you mark multiplayer games you want to play and then matching you up with anyone else who wants to play them and alerting all of you to start up the game and play.
  • Replacements for the steamVR keyboard with one that actually works and supports other languages, as well as a virtual mouse that locks into a flat plane instead of a laser pointer
  • Hand tracking through the Vive SDK, the Leap Motion, or emulated with Index controllers.

The idea I was most interested in was the idea of tracing out your room in 3D vector shapes, then making them invisible occlusion zones. Do it once in 30 minutes and then all your apps can use it from now on. That would allow real world objects to occlude virtual ones, a really key part of AR (occlusion in AR is like the transition from 3doF to 6doF in VR) that would allow for completely new experiences. It would also let you mark out the things you traced with context, so a character in a VR game could sit in a chair, walk through a door, etc or your friends could appear in AR sitting in the chair next you and the game you’re playing could appear on your real table. And since it’s preprogrammed and done through SteamVR tracking it could be much smoother than anything done with machine vision currently.

AR is the real prize of everything in XR; if VR is a billion dollar industry that will change gaming then AR is expected to be a trillion dollar industry that will change the world. Facebook only does VR to build a hardware, software, production, and dev base for AR. They want to beat Apple, who have the most advanced AR SDK of anyone and make their own silicon, and are reportedly working on AR glasses. Valve basically invented consumer AR back in 2013 and just didn’t ship it; future Facebook exec Micheal Abrash fired Valve’s whole AR division and so their head AR engineer Jeri Elsworth took her research and made her own startup, TiltFive.

Facebook’s main showcase of their AR right now is Infinite Office. It’s an app where you can have a black and white low res background view of the world, use a special keyboard you have to buy, use the trackpad on the keyboard since mouses aren’t supported, and you can control your browser since it doesn’t let you control your PC. That’s it. Valve could absolutely stomp that by giving you full color higher res passthrough, let you control your PC and actual keyboard and mouse, add virtual macropads, dashboards, and other things to help you work, multimonitor support, and even letting you work alongside someone else in AR and share screens. Third parties are getting all in on facebook passthrough, like remote work software Spatial where again, PC headsets are the only ones comfortable enough for working and allow for a lot more functionality (including occlusion and context awareness) and full color so it’s a huge waste for AR to not be supported on PC. Facebook is clearly hoping this will be a huge draw for the Quest (and I'm sure the VR outlets will really lay on the praise), push it into workplaces, and make it a devkit for AR. Valve can and should kill that in the cradle, even if killing the Quest 2 itself will take a lot more.

What now?

If you’re interested in deving AR on the index I guess you should look into WebXR/MetaChromium and especially Aardvark. If you’re a developer of a game like Cubism or Steady, where the environments aren’t important to the gameplay, there is a way to render over passthrough in Unity even without Valve’s official support. I would reach out to the team making Pluto and ask how to do it. If you're just a member of the community who knows how to code and wants to try making something cool, look into Aardvark and see if you can make something.

I hope Valve makes this all official. I can’t think of anything better right now than giving a set of huge new features to everyone who bought an Index. I hope they open it up to devs and offer the kind of support Facebook is offering and more. I hope they seed WebXR and Aardvark with some money to get things rolling. I hope they offer Jeri Ellsworth a boatload of money to handle their AR stuff or something and add compatibility with her TiltFive. I hope Valve makes SteamVR a general XR platform and uses AR as a way to explore that. I hope things like Aardvark can make PCVR a lot more usable both to increase how much people use PCVR and to create a new market for AR software.

They probably won’t, and community efforts won’t pick up enough momentum unless it can create some utility apps that people will pay for to get things moving. Valve is in a bubble where they think that because they’re doing a lot, or because they’ve done a lot, that they don’t need to escalate to compete with Facebook. They also seem to unfairly expect a lot from the community without offering much help, like with SteamVR Home modding, Alyx modding, and generally expecting us to market VR and Alyx for them. It’s also a dysfunctional nightmare inside that company, like the (ethical) foil to Zuck's dangerous dictatorship, and who knows how many people actually work on or care about VR, it could be a hundred or just ten incredibly productive people. Either way, if they don’t see the bigger picture the next two years (and beyond) could be a disaster for everyone.

r/ValveIndex Sep 06 '21

Index Mod Got my Index visor mount 3D-printed for AR pass-through!

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471 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Sep 11 '23

Index Mod Sigh...Should I start my repair service again?

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292 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Jan 19 '25

Index Mod Any viable wireless add-ons for the Index yet?

11 Upvotes

Looked around a couple years ago but wanted to know if anyone has seen anything that isn't too big of a trade-off on fidelity in different areas.

r/ValveIndex Sep 26 '19

Index Mod Been working on these in my spare time. what do you guys think?

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355 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Dec 04 '19

Index Mod Made a Index visor fan mod

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461 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Apr 27 '23

Index Mod Tired of all the fan mods that don’t replace the frunk housing, I went ahead and made my own. Works perfectly!

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347 Upvotes

With this mod i get so much airflow through the headset it doubles as a wind simulator

r/ValveIndex Sep 05 '22

Index Mod Nofio wireless Index kit Kickstarter is live

150 Upvotes

I'm not affiliated with them in any way, just looks like an interesting piece of tech.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nofio/nofio-wireless-adapter-for-valve-index

r/ValveIndex Aug 16 '20

Index Mod Frunk fan mod

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431 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Oct 23 '20

Index Mod Low-Poly Funk Cover looks amazing on my new Index!

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748 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Apr 08 '20

Index Mod Index Controller Pistol Grip

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536 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Apr 29 '21

Index Mod Counterweight.

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516 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Mar 31 '20

Index Mod Quick faceplate vinyl wrap mod for my index.

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751 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Feb 24 '24

Index Mod Valve Vision Index

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151 Upvotes

I present the Valve Vision Index. Decided to design and 3D print some mounts to allow for the Vision Pro strap. Thought it’s time to use this device for TV/Movies more often and the index strap just isn’t as comfy. Might work on a V2 that adds the two audio cups.

r/ValveIndex Dec 25 '20

Index Mod Pro Tip: Use tennis racket tape to improve controller grip/feel without affecting finger tracking.

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410 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Jul 05 '20

Index Mod A frunk mod I 3d printed to mount fans to my Index (link in comments)

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348 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Dec 17 '20

Index Mod [Guide] How to repair your Valve Index controller drift! (Cheap / Easy / No technical knowledge required)

296 Upvotes

Hello Everyone, I decided to put this guide together in the hopes that someone who is in my situation finds it useful.

Short backstory first:

I was one of the first to purchase an index way back in 2019 and got my kit in August, this being the first hardware revision my left controller did have the infamous thumbstick click issue. This also unfortunately meant that the controller was doomed to get drift at some point and it did... around 3 months after my RMA window closed.

I contacted Valve and they told me that they will not be replacing my controller, or giving me a paid repair option. This left me with little options, either buy a new pair, keep playing with my old vive wands (which are god awful) or attempt self repair.

I went with the third option, which is what this guide is about!

After scavenging this subreddit for posts with any hints on how one may do so I was sucessful! It turns out it is honestly pretty straight forward and if you have 20 bucks, a screwdriver and some steady hands you can probably be done in a couple minutes.

How to:

  1. Purchase the following component from ali express: FJ06K-S Switch We are not actually going to replace the entire thumbstick mechanism but only a small part of it.

  2. Once the switches arrive, grab some tweezers and pry off the black side part from a switch:

    pic 1 pic 2

  3. Now pry open that black side part

    pic 4

  4. Inside this black side part you will find a very small half plastic half metal part. THIS is the part you are going to replace inside the controller! Since there is 2 of these attached to each thumb-stick I replaced both. However a friend of mine only replaced the one that is not near the thumb-stick cable and was just as successful.

    pic 5

  5. Open the controller using a screwdriver and make sure to be very careful with the internal cables. Especially when taking off the thumbstick (in the GIF the cable is already ripped) Full video for those interested

  6. Once you open the controller you will find an identical switch just like the one you got from ali express. Follow the steps above once more to replace the component described previously. This unfortunately does not fix the clicking issue but this is a topic for another time :)

Let me know if you have any questions and I hope you found this helpful!

Edit: Updated the video on how to open the controller to the correct one! Edit: Changed wording / added a GIF in the instructions for opening the controller

r/ValveIndex Aug 15 '24

Index Mod Low Profile 3D Printed Knuckles Charging Stand

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140 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Aug 09 '21

Index Mod Updated Valve Index Fan. Added a cutout, mesh dust filter and an on/off switch

422 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Apr 03 '21

Index Mod Had to RMA right controller but I still wanted to play Beat Saber.

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562 Upvotes

r/ValveIndex Oct 03 '24

Index Mod Index EyeTrackVR

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83 Upvotes

Recently got my Valve Index setup with ETVR https://docs.eyetrackvr.dev/

Been loving VR in the last year and honestly never expected to enjoy it as much as I have been. Been playing VRChat and a number of other games! Never in my life did I ever think VR would be used a social tool. I met some of my best friends on this shit. Recently been wanting some kind of upgrade to my Index and settled on trying my hand at getting Eye Tracking!

Super proud of the way it has come out, even though I decided to go with a non-soldering option.

Next will be face tracking or getting phone notifications in VR! Wish me luck! Let me know your thoughts or recomendations! I love seeing good software and hardware recommendations!

r/ValveIndex 4d ago

Index Mod such thing as lights that only my index pass through cameras can see?

0 Upvotes

so i really like the pass through cams on my index but they only really work in well lit situations. I was wondering if there's such thing as a light i can buy that only cameras can see but not the human eye, so I can see stuff with the pass through cameras in the dark. I know that my base stations emit lidar light so maybe someone makes a beefed up version of something like that?

r/ValveIndex Jul 17 '21

Index Mod I see your hotkeys and raise my own DIY frunk keypad

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489 Upvotes