Valve released the Valve Index virtual-reality headset in 2019.
The Index was developed and sold by Valve, the company best known for Steam and games such as Half-Life. It launched on June 28, 2019, alongside Valve-developed accessories including tracking base stations and Index Controllers.
The headset was designed for use with SteamVR on a Windows PC. Its features included high-refresh-rate displays, adjustable lenses, integrated headphones, and finger-tracking controllers. The system used external Lighthouse base stations for room-scale tracking, unlike newer headsets that commonly rely on inside-out tracking.
A common mix-up is confusing the Valve Index with the HTC Vive. HTC and Valve jointly developed the original Vive, released in 2016, but Valve produced the later Index independently. SteamVR is the software platform associated with both product lines.