Valve Index official artwork showing all the components

It is no secret that Valve has been investing a lot of time and resources into VR over the past few years, but even though the rumors surrounding their projects are far too numerous to recount, we received very little in terms of official information. With that in mind, I am quite glad to say that the endless silence has now finally been broken as Valve has come out to fully announce their very own VR device - Valve Index.

According to the announcement, the Valve Index headset comes with dual 1440x1600 RGB LCDs and runs primarily at 120Hz, with an experimental mode that can push that up to 144Hz. I won't bore you with the technical details as you can find all of those on the official website, but from the looks of things, the Valve Index headset will be a notable improvement over its current competition, both in terms of resolution, refresh rate and visual clarity.

The same story goes for the Index controllers and base station. The controllers will be coming with a variety of additional sensors in order to better replicate hand movement in-game, including the ability to recognize how tightly you're gripping the controller and how hard or how far you're trying to throw something. As for the base stations, they're boasting increased tracking accuracy and range, which should you give a much larger area to play around in, as well as give you a much greater chance to slam your head against the wall... not that I've ever done that.

Valve Index official promo art for the controllers

If everything works out as planned, the controllers will be the most impressive part of the Valve Index

Valve is also currently working on three VR games that are supposed to showcase just what the hardware is truly capable of, though no details have been announced just yet. If you're willing to indulge some rumors, however, there is talk that one of the games will be the much anticipated Half-Life 3, or at very least a brand new VR game set in the Half-Life universe. Whether any of that is true or not, I'm afraid only time will tell.

While everything surrounding the Valve Index certainly sounds impressive, there is a little bit of a problem here - the price tag. If you're going to purchase the entire Valve Index package (headset + 2 base station + 2 controllers), you're going to have to shell out over $1000 or €1000. So if you're like me and you were hoping Valve would make a quality, affordable VR device, I'm afraid you're out of luck on the second part.

If the hefty price tag doesn't scare you off and you're still quite interested, you can learn more about the Valve Index, as well as grab yourself a copy, over at Steam. As for the shipping date, you can expect the Valve Index to ship by June 28th, though sadly nothing more specific has been said just yet.