Items tagged with steamvr
Valve has announced a rather significant update to the SteamVR Beta that will be a boon to owners of both current and future virtual reality headsets. The SteamVR runtime has been upgraded with a new auto-resolution scaling routine that is able to enhance your visual experience based on how powerful the GPU is in your current gaming rig. So how does this work? According to Valve's Alexa Vlachos, SteamVR will automatically determine the speed of your GPU and will choose a resolution based on what it is capable of rendering. Vlachos says that many gamers have incredibly powerful graphics cards that simply aren't being utilized to their fullest potential in VR applications. Now, however, SteamVR...
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Late last month, Microsoft and Valve announced that Windows Mixed Reality headsets would play nicely with SteamVR content. “Virtual reality enthusiasts know that Steam is a great place to enjoy cutting edge immersive experiences,” said Microsoft Technical Fellow Alex Kipman at the time. “We can’t wait to bring their content to you.” Unfortunately, it appears that this match made in virtual reality heaven will not arrive on October 17th, which is when the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update and Windows Mixed Reality devices will officially launch. According to a new report from German news outlet Computer Base, Microsoft and its partners are only in the beginning stages of incorporating support for...
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Augmented and virtual reality is starting to take off now that we have computing hardware that is powerful enough to provide a compelling experience. However, interacting with a virtual environment can be a bit tricky if you don’t have the proper controllers to supplement your experience.The Oculus Rift has its Touch controllers, and the HTC Vive has the Wand. Now, Valve is looking towards the next logical progression when it comes to VR controllers, which it calls “Knuckles”. Unlike other VR controllers, Knuckles can independently track all five of your fingers thanks to capacitive sensors embedded in the controller handle, face buttons and trigger buttons. You can look at the diagrams below...
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While companies left and right have been jumping on the virtual reality bandwagon that was created in large part by the Oculus Rift, one firm has been curiously absent—Apple. That changed yesterday when Apple announced at its annual developer conference (WWDC) an external graphics enclosure that will enable developers to develop and test graphically demanding apps, including VR content. The "External Graphics Development Kit," as it is called, can attach to any Mac with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity. Support for the enclosure is added through macOS High Sierra, the latest version of Apple's operating system. It is the first time in the history of the Mac that external graphics processors have been...
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In the VR space for the PC, it is largely a two-horse race between Facebook-owned Oculus and its Rift headset and the HTC Vive, the latter of which has the backing of Valve. Interestingly enough, it appears that Valve is also working with LG Electronics on yet another VR headset solution, one that will utilize SteamVR Tracking and the OpenVR platform. Perhaps a price war is not too far off.That is getting a bit ahead of ourselves. It remains to be seen how pricing for VR hardware will shake out in 2017, but in terms of available solutions, LG is going to be joining Oculus and HTC. The company is planning to show off a prototype at the Game Developers Conference that runs from today until March...
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Valve has been no stranger to sharing some of its home-brewed technologies, and now that's being extended to VR, a market that the company is very serious about. The company has just decided to release its 3D tracking technology to anyone who wants it, and the best part is: it's royalty-free. In its press release, Valve's Alan Yates gives some feel-good vibes: "Making this tracking technology available to more partners is an extremely important step in the evolution of virtual reality and 3D tracking. We are very confident that doing so will result in new and innovative experiences for all VR customers." (emphasis ours). While Valve has a lot invested in HTC's Vive, the goal here isn't to just...
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In the nearly twenty years the company has been in existence, Valve has proven itself to be a master in several key gaming categories. First, it has managed to craft not one, but multiple hit series; the most prominent titles being Half-Life, Team Fortress, and Portal. It's hard not to appreciate the company's spectacular foresight, either. They seem to have a knack for knowing what's going to hit big. Look no further than Dota 2 for proof of that. Beyond that, Valve has also proven itself to be great at the whole gaming platform thing, with Steam becoming the de facto spot for gamers to play, share and get access to top titles. That's all fine and dandy, but on the press side of things,...
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Would you like to know how your current gaming rig fares when it comes to handling virtual reality gaming? Considering that the Oculus Rift is priced at $599 and that HTC Vive is priced at an eye-popping $799, we’d expect that only well-heeled gamers would be taking the VR plunge this early, which in turn means that they can likely afford to tout a beefy gaming rig. But what about the rest of us? We can dream, right? Well, head on over to Steam where you will be able to install the SteamVR Performance Test to see if your rig can past muster. As explained by Roy Taylor, AMD VP for Alliances, Technology and VR, the SteamVR Performance Test is built around the Aperture Science Robot Repair demo,...
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Valve has a slew of products it's planning to showcase at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, California, next week. Among the items it will bring to GDC is a previously unannounced SteamVR hardware system, presumably one that's not part of the Oculus Rift ecosystem, which at one point could have been a possibility.The two companies had a pretty tight relationship a year ago when Valve developed a virtual reality prototype that, at the time, was intended for VR research that it would share with Oculus. Minus a minor announcement here and there, it doesn't appear the two are doing a lot of work together these days, and instead are mostly entrenched in their own projects.Naturally...
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