Valve Index showing up as a monitor, Direct Mode doesn't seem to fix it.

[Kc]

Heya, I've recently obtained an Index and have been trying to set it up, but no matter what I try it constantly shows up as an additional monitor on display settings (which it apparently shouldn't if the troubleshooting guide is anything to go off of). Any idea what's causing this and if it's possible to fix it? I'm guessing it's related to the USB but would absolutely hate to replace such an expensive cable if only one part of it is inexplicably malfunctioning.

Thanks.

[Silex]

Are you using an AMD GPU by any chance? If yes, those can be a pain sometimes (AMD driver issue), and you may need to do a little dance on the first setup.

1. Ensure the Index is fully connected to your machine (and that the Displayport cable is plugged in directly to your GPU, not to a DP on your motherboard for the iGPU)
2. In Windows, go to Settings > System > Display
3. Locate and click the display representing your Index
4. Change the Display resolution to 2880×1600 (if that's not available, then look for 2016x2240 -- I run a Bigscreen Beyond these days, and I don't have my Index set up at the moment to double-check the rez that gets exposed to Windows, sorry!)
5. Click on the Advanced display settings link.
6. In Windows 10, this will be near the bottom of the page.
7. In Windows 11, this will be in the Related settings section of the page.
8. Ensure the refresh rate is set to 120hz
9. In SteamVR > Developer > Developer Settings, find the Direct Display Mode section and click on the Enable Direct Display button.

You should be all set after that and free to control your refresh rate and render resolution from SteamVR normally, and you'll never need to do this again unless you reinstall Windows or completely wipe and reinstall your GPU drivers with DDU or AMD's own cleaner tool.

Those steps aren't usually needed if you're using an NVidia GPU, unless there's something royally hosed with your display cache in Windows.

If you're not running an AMD card and it's not the AMD extended mode driver bug, then you're probably going to have an annoying bug hunt ahead of you, unfortunately. And if the Index kit you've acquired is used, there's a chance that there's a tether cable issue.

Otherwise, off the top of my head, one other major easy to fix possibility would be if you have/previously had a Meta Quest or Rift installed. Those use a different VR runtime by default, and sometimes SteamVR doesn't pick up and switch gracefully when a native SteamVR headset gets installed afterwards. If that's the case, then you'll want to set your OpenXR runtime to SteamVR, following the instructions from Valve in this post:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/250820/discussions/0/2950377478180790461#c4036980308302558114

[Kc]

I think the issue is related to the resolution since it shows up in the error log but I can only set it to 1920x1080 or lower, tried using a custom resolution app but having issues with it.