A good place to follow all things VR related is at The Road To VR. This is an informative site that carries news and developments rather than trying to be funny and clever like far too many sites. The site has recently posted an interesting article regarding a VR initiative from Steam : Valve to Reveal “SteamVR Dev Kit” Next Week at GDC 2015 :
Gaming giant Valve has announced that they’ll be revealing a “previously-unannounced SteamVR hardware system” at GDC 2015. The company has been actively engaged in R&D in the AR/VR space but hasn’t previously broken into the hardware market. This new information makes it look like they might be gearing up to do just that.
Valve were at one stage expected to enter the VR hardware market, but then some of their staff moved to Oculus and things went quiet on the Valve front, very quiet. However the latest news suggests that Valve are very much interested in sharing a piece of the VR hardware pie.
Valve are also reaching out to VR content creators, as they explain on the steampowered site :
With the introduction of SteamVR hardware, Valve is actively seeking VR content creators. Are you a developer or publisher interested in experiencing the new SteamVR hardware? We’ll be giving scheduled VR demos during the week of GDC, March 4th-6th, 2015, at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
This is a very interesting development to say the least.
GDC 2015 is The Game Developer’s Conference. In the past companies such as Linden Lab have had a presence there, although it looks as if that’s not the case this year. Whereas Second Life isn’t a game, it does contain games, so there is scope for a Linden Lab presence at such events. A brief summary of GDC informs us :
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is the world’s largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event.
The GDC attracts over 24,000 attendees, and is the primary forum where programmers, artists, producers, game designers, audio professionals, business decision-makers and others involved in the development of interactive games gather to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry. The GDC is produced by the UBM Tech Game Network.
So whereas the show is not for us mere mortals, news will break from the conference that is for us mere mortals. Well as long as the industry press can find their way to put pen to paper without leaping into silly insults anyway.
I look forward to reading more about SteamVR Hardware over the next couple of weeks. I still think that in terms of VR, this year will be more tease and talk rather than consumer adoption.
Hype about VR has been here before, more than once, but the teasing and talking looks like it may well have quite a bit of depth this time around. Time will tell, there are still many hurdles on the road to VR.