Valve's New VR Set Revealed by HTC

Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned.

Earlier last week, Valve announced its intentions to reveal a new VR machine at this year’s GDC. Perhaps the cellular company it was developing it with, HTC, got so excited about the reveal it simply couldn’t wait that long, because a day before GDC actually began (which is today, actually) went ahead and revealed Vive, the virtual reality headset that Steam built.

The machine is said to have 1,200 by 1,800 pixel screen in front of each eye, and runs at 90 FPS (take THAT PC master race!) and will have an accelerator, a gyrosensor, and laser positioner to help keep track of your head position while playing. It will use a custom controller, a "Ergonomic VR game controller" in each hand that will allow players to interact with in-game objects and map out the player’s movement even further.

That’s neat, but the coolest has yet to come; apparently, Valve will also release “Base stations”—when set up within an empty 15 square feet of room, you can set up your own little ‘holodeck’, which allows you to walk around and interact with games in a more real way than ever before. So you can turn your head, move your hands, and even walk around—the applications in pornography are endless!

...oh, and games too.

Dovertail Games, Fireproof Games, and Cloudhead games are already signed up to make games for the device, while Google, Liongate and HBO will be providing other content like movies.

There’s no specific release date yet, but they predict customer versions will be available by the end of the year. That’s a pretty tight time frame, considering, but if there’s one thing Valve is good at, it’s giving all its attention to anything except Half-Life 3. So I can’t say I’m surprised, either.

Valve will probably talk more about this device at the GDC. I’ll keep you posted.