The Valve Index, the virtual reality head-mounted display coming from Steam, has been officially shared with the world, but information is lacking. The Steam page for the device suggests you “Upgrade your experience” in May, teasing an in-depth reveal for this new piece of hardware. Before that official reveal, though, Valve leaked some Valve Index store pages prematurely and shared some details including a June 15 ship date. Despite today’s date, it does not seem to be an April Fools’ joke.
Valve’s mistake, which included unfinished store pages for the Index HMD, controllers, and Index base station, has been rectified via removal. SteamDB, however, captured what the Index HMD comes with, minimum/recommended specs, and additional details. The pages had placeholder text, but an image of the HMD was included along with the June 15 ship date.
The input devices coming with the Valve Index are likely the controllers known as Knuckles. The prototypes tracked fingers, allowed squeezing, and featuring navigation via analog stick all with an ergonomic design. The leaked store pages hint that the controllers are rechargeable, due to the inclusion of two USB charging cables with them.
The Valve Index itself features integrated headphones, a tether with DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.0 connections, a power adapter, regionalized power adapter plugs, two face gaskets (narrow and wide), and a cleaning cloth. The HMD also features dual cameras on the front, as seen in the image from the now-deleted store page. The headset will be tracked by the SteamVR 2.0 Base Station. Due to all three items having their own page, SteamDB theorizes all three devices can be purchased separately or in a package that includes the Valve Index and controllers or Valve Index, controllers, and the base station.
There is no information on how powerful Valve Index will be, but the VR HMD will demand at least the Nvidia 970 or AMD RX480 GPUs at a minimum. For reference, the HTC Vive Pro has the Nvidia GTX 970 and AMD R9 290 in its minimum specs. UploadVR’s analysis of a video showing the settings for the Valve Index estimates that the upcoming HMD operates with a 90hz refresh rate and the same render resolution as the HTC Vive Pro, but we most likely won’t have confirmation of the exact details until May.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.