[Teaser] [Me spinning around with a headcrab]
We’ve been dreaming about this for years, and I honestly didn’t think it would still happen cuz
it’s hard. But this Australian company did it and made a wireless adapter for the Valve Index.
And they plan to support future PC VR headsets. This is a big deal! As we may
say goodbye to all wired VR headsets… They came by our studio to give me a demo,
and I’m EXCITED to say that it works surprisingly well, but there are some things…
Let’s get into it after leaving this video a like, as that supports us
a lot! And now, join me beyond reality. Making a wireless adapter for VR headsets is
hard. There’s just so much data to be transferred, and it needs to be
low latency, or else people get sick. You may not remember, but a company tried
this already, and it wasn’t good. Valve said they were working on it, but
years later, we still haven’t seen anything. The ONLY decent wireless adapter we have now
is the one by HTC VIVE, but it has its limitations.
No one else has dared to try it, so honestly, I was skeptical.
But here we are. This is the Nofio wireless adapter, a prototype, so NOT what the final
design looks like. The version you’ll get will look smaller and a lot smoother.
You only need two things to get this to work aside from the base stations, the base and receiver. The
base is the transmitter, which you connect this to your PC using a DisplayPort, USB, and a power
adapter. Actually exactly like the Valve Index. The receiver goes on the headset and it’ s
connected with the headsets cables. Btw, the final design will have shorter cables, so
no worries, it won’t be this messy. To power the thing, you can use any USB-C
powerbank that has power delivery. Hot swapping is supported, too, so you can have unlimited
power if you have multiple powerbanks. There’s a little holder down here for your battery that
you can demount if you want something else. Once you plug everything in, all you need is
to download a USB driver to get it to work. Eventually, this will be plug-and-play.
I was impressed by how easy it was to get set up. This is by design. They made it, so your PC
sees the whole setup as a standard Valve Index. That’s a big plus because it won’t
interfere with any SteamVR updates or all other VR software you may be using.
BTW, right now, you’re seeing gameplay while I was testing it.
And I was especially surprised by how it all looked. The unit uses WiFi6E and Nofio’s own
video codec, making it possible to use a subframe streaming technique. That basically means,
instead of waiting for a full frame to come through, they send fragments of that frame
immediately whenever they’re there. For us players, this MEANS; you get
very low latency. They can achieve 1.5ms 99% of the time with a promise
of less than 5ms in any environment. When I use Quest 2’s Air Link, the best I
can get is maybe 20ms, which is already playable. So 1.5ms is pretty much unperceivable latency.
It looked really good graphically too. Graphics looked almost identical to
wired Index. I could NOT see any compression. Maybe if you start looking for it hard.
It’s currently made to support the headset’s max resolution and refresh rate. But it can actually
support the max resolution of DisplayPort, which can go as high as up to 8K.
However, it’s not perfect yet, in this early unit, some bugs caused streaming artifacts.
Occassional frame drops, and the screen became blocky.
Although it happens for less than a second, it happens often enough to be noticeable.
Nofio said their built-in error correction is the cause. Meaning if the software notices
something went wrong, like a full frame was expected but didn’t come through,
it shows a subframe instead, which looks blocky. This is on purpose, so you don’t see black frames,
which would be much more distracting. The good news is that this can be fixed by
software, meaning it can be improved even if you already have the device,
and Nofio thinks they can get it to 98% perfect. They’re already working on this.
The Nofio base also does not need a line of sight unlike the VIVE wireless adapter, so
you can place it anywhere you want, and it works up to a 5 to 5m play area.
This adds fun use cases like it even works if you place the base next to your computer,
but you play in a different room. All you need in that playroom are the base stations, so you
don’t even need to be close to your PC. I’m impressed. In the past, I tried working
solutions for the Index that FEELS wireless, but it’s nothing like playing wireless for real
and trying to romantically dance around with a headcrab.
Another thing I was curious about was whether it would get hot,
as the VIVE wireless adapter literally burned some people. Not everyone but it happened. Thankfully,
I played for about an hour with the Nofio one, and it only got warm. It was about 50 degrees
Celcius at the end, which I couldn’t feel. Maybe my hair helped with that, though 😉
So pre-orders start next week when the Kickstarter launches. The early back price is 400 US dollars
with a higher price later. This is a steep price, especially for a 3-year-old headset.
However, the really exciting part is that this may be the end of all wired PC VR headsets
because Nofio has bigger plans. Right now, it only supports the Valve
Index because it’s the most popular PC VR headset, and they want to focus on perfecting the wireless
experience on one headset first. Makes sense. Eventually, they plan to support other PC VR
headsets, too, and even further down the line, their ambition is to become THE
wireless solution that headset manufacturers can license and put in any VR headset.
You see, Nofio didn’t come out of nowhere; the company behind them is
IMR Next, a video streaming company that has been working on its tech for years.
Time will tell, but they did give me trust by creating a working prototype
even before launching their Kickstarter. The future is exciting! Are you interested in
getting this wireless adapter? Let me know why yes or why not below, and if you have any remaining
questions, put them in the comments too! This isn’t a full review as it’s not the
finished product yet, but I’ll for sure keep my eye on it.
So I don’t have an exact release date yet for the Kickstarter, but once I have the link,
I’ll let you know on our socials and put it in the description below. So please follow us there.
I love you all. Thanks for being here and VR on.