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Watch Valve's vision of our virtual reality future (and other Steam Dev Days talks) right here
We did our best to break down and explain talks given by Valve's virtual reality leaders at Steam Dev Days, but there's no replacing the real deal. As such, we'd be silly not to share news that Valve's published to YouTube all 28 talks given at its first-ever developer's conference -- including the two virtual reality talks from Michael Abrash and Joe Ludwig, not to mention Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey's talk. We've embedded all three of those below, but the whole shebang is available right here for your marathoning pleasure.
Half-Life 2 officially supported on Oculus Rift, beta gets shipped to developers
Gordon Freeman, in your head. Well, that's the plan, with Oculus now offering official beta support for a headset-based Half-Life 2. There's a few known issues to iron out already, including an overly-dim UI and issues with the zoom. But even at this early stage, it appears to lack any gameplay deal-breakers we've seen elsewhere. As mentioned by Valve's Joe Ludwig on the Oculus developer forums, however, the current build is a bit rougher around the edges compared to the Team Fortress 2 beta that launched earlier this year. Developers with the necessary Rift hardware can pick up the files on Steam or follow the developments on Oculus' own forums -- but no comments about headcrab hats and wearables, okay?
Valve's 'Sea of Cubes,' and the challenges of working with augmented reality
Valve Software's experiments with virtual reality, most recently exposed as a "VR Mode" of its popular free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2, are actually just an offshoot of the company's longer-term goal: augmented reality. The dozens of AR markers plastered to the three walls of Valve programmer Joe Ludwig's shared office are testament to that (seen above). "We're mostly looking at a software level. We've talked to a bunch of different display vendors on the augmented reality side, and none of them are quite ready to go yet," Ludwig says when we prod him for more on Valve's AR efforts. One thing's for sure: we didn't spot any Google Glasses on-site, nor products from other companies producing wearable computers, not to mention in-house glasses. "We've done some gameplay prototypes," he says. "We've done some test pattern type stuff. But that's basically it. There's an application that we call 'Sea of Cubes' that fills the room you're in with cubes just to basically test a bunch of different tracking methods and displays." Thus far, though, Valve isn't much deeper than that. A variety of different cameras mounted on tripods can be seen throughout Ludwig's office. A $30,000 3D camera, which looks an awful lot like a giant Microsoft Kinect, sits in one corner. Ludwig tells us it can pinpoint specific objects with incredible accuracy, though he wouldn't share much more. It's not clear what all of this means for Valve's AR work, but it's clearly still a work-in-progress. Indeed, when the company first started talking wearable computing, Valve's Michael Abrash called it "more research than development." So, what fruit has come of that research since last April?%Gallery-183116%
Playing an actual game with Oculus Rift: hands-on with Valve's Team Fortress 2 'VR Mode'
Valve's free-to-play first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2, is getting Oculus Rift support with its VR Mode update in the coming weeks. Think of it as a large beta test -- Oculus Rift dev kits ship to Kickstarter backers and Team Fortress 2 players on PC can snag a free update, thus feeding Valve valuable feedback on how people play TF2 with VR. The only thing left to know is perhaps the most important: how does it play? We found out just that on a recent visit to Valve's Bellevue, Wash., offices, where Valve programmer Joe Ludwig lead us through a hands-on demo of the game's VR Mode update on a near-final build of the Oculus Rift dev kit (not quite the one shipping to backers, but far more advanced than the previous Oculus prototypes we've used). Follow us beyond the break for detailed impressions of playing an actual game (read: not just tech demos) with the Oculus Rift VR headset.%Gallery-183116%
Valve's Joe Ludwig on the uncertain future of virtual reality and partnering with Oculus
It's a beautiful late winter day in Bellevue, Wash. Instead of enjoying the outdoors, I'm sitting in a rectangular white room with three programmers, surrounded by three walls covered in augmented reality markers. Not that I'm complaining: Valve Software's Joe Ludwig, the programmer in the room who most resembles a member of Anthrax, is walking me through his company's latest work in the world of virtual reality. It's the first anyone outside of Valve will see of the company's VR efforts thus far. As it turns out, the software company is working with Oculus VR to port the tremendously popular free-to-play first-person shooter, Team Fortress 2, to the upcoming Rift development kit. The free update, dubbed "VR Mode," is the latest benchmark in Valve's ongoing hardware initiative. "We think that both augmented and virtual reality are going to be a huge deal over the next several years," Ludwig tells us.%Gallery-183116%
Valve's Team Fortress 2 is Oculus Rift's first game, free 'VR Mode' update coming soon
We've known for some time now that Valve was working on virtual reality support for its perpetually updated free-to-play shooter, Team Fortress 2. The company's even giving a duo of talks at the upcoming Game Developer's Conference on the difficulties of game development for virtual reality. What we didn't know, however, is that said support is also headed to consumers as "VR Mode," and it'll get pushed to PC Team Fortress 2 players "sometime within the next couple of weeks." But how will you play it? Simple: Team Fortress 2 is the Oculus Rift's first official game. Valve programmer Joe Ludwig revealed as much during a recent visit Engadget paid to the Bellevue, Wash.-based game company. "This is a mode that everybody who has a Rift dev kit and access to Team Fortress 2 will be able to play, just on public and in the same servers that everybody else is playing in," Ludwig said. Of course, "everybody" doesn't include Mac or Linux TF2 players just yet. "We don't have a Mac or Linux SDK from Oculus quite yet, but once we get those, we'll get it ported over to those other platforms," he explained. Oculus tells us those SDKs are coming. "The Oculus SDK will only support Windows at launch, but we plan to add support for OS X and Linux as quickly as possible. It's just a matter of time," Oculus VP of product Nate Mitchell says. We'll have more from our visit to Valve in the coming hours, so keep an eye out! [Image credit: Michael Clinard]
