Valve index

[Marioysikax 89]

Valve index has been out for some time now, but it is not listed on articles in any way and there's no dedicated fields for it either. 

1. Should "HTC Vive" be renamed into "SteamVR headsets" to include both Vive and Index or should Index be additional entry on the table? 
Headsets should be almost interchangeable, hence why valve is selling controllers and lighthouses seperately, however steam store still keeps mentioning vive and index seperately on store pages and mentioning index on articles would be more SEO. 

2. With tracked motion controllers, should we indicate specific controllers, rather than just true/false? 
Many games are updated to support valve index controllers, but almost as many are not and will give you prompts for htc vive controllers instead. This can also lead into some trouble if the game relies heavily on e.g. touchpad controls. e.g. Payday 2 is impossible to play out of the box with index controllers, even if it fully supports motion controllers. 

[Aemony 150]

"SteamVR headsets" are technically all headsets, as it supports Oculus Rift and other models as well. I'm still not really sure what the best approach would be to track support, as new headset models will continue to arrive and we're moving into a future where the supported VR API is more important than the headset itself, so tracking support per headset feels wrong.

[Mastan 14]

"SteamVR headsets" also supports WMR through Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR. I don't know if it's true for all games, but I've seen games that are not marked with WMR support, but still work. E.g. Batman: Arkham VR. Controllers in-game have non-native look, but that's minor. Some games(e.g. Obduction before official WMR support patch) use not very comfortable tracked controller bindings, but otherwise work.

WMR also supports OpenVR, I played one standalone game by choosing OpenVR in settings.

So, in my(not very big) experience it's more about APIs than headsets.

[Marioysikax 89]

12 hours ago, Mastan said:

"SteamVR headsets" also supports WMR through Windows Mixed Reality for SteamVR.

This has also kinda been weird to look at, because almost all games which use SteamVR are by default compatible with almost all headsets and the only problem seems to be similar to what Valve Index has: non-native in-game controls. Right now there's no proper way of indicating this in article other than note. 

So would it actually be better to start listing APIs used instead of individual headsets? Some games utilize several APIs e.g. OpenVR (aka SteamVR) and Oculus SDK and use whichever is open in the background. OpenXR is also supposedly coming and fixing the fragmentation and that's headset and platform independend solution. 

[Marioysikax 89]

Just to point out another reason why the current table is kinda failing: Oculus support on Steam games. 

Right now how the table is simply checking compatibility on Steam and calling it a day, however many games do actually rely on OpenVR translate the game into Oculus which adds overhead and possible issues. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/wiki/steamgameswithnativesupport

Do we still keep stating that all games on Steam are Oculus supported or should they be stated to be false and that they are using openVR support (aka HTC Vive on current table) or limited that they simply don't have direct support but are using OpenVR for official support as stated on games steam page. 

This also kinda ties around my idea of wanting to simply state SDK that games use rather than individual headsets, especially now as Unity is already dropping support for most VR SDKs in favor of openXR, meaning that information of what SDK game is utilizing is becoming more vital. 
https://uploadvr.com/unity-deprecates-openvr-support/