In light of Sony releasing their next non-gaming related VR headset, Valve has pledged support for upstart Oculus Rift, announcing they will release an official VR SDK as soon as next week.
To be specific, they’ll be releasing it during the Steam Days conference in January 14 to 15 in Seattle. This SDK will be part of a bigger software kit they are equipping developers with so that they can have more control over games made on Steam Machines. Ultimately, they hope to make it so that whenever you connect a controller on a Steam Machine, the game will recognize it as a keyboard and mouse irregardless of what the controller actually is.
As Valve designer Brian Coomer points out, Steam wants to take out the hassle of having to reconfigure controls when they switch between controllers and games. They ultimately hope that this will help Steam Machines gain serious traction.
On the side, Valve indicated that they are also working on their own head tracking and headset technology, so their support for Oculus Rift may not necessarily indicate a direct collaboration so much as a friendly relationship.
As for Sony’s VR headset, the HMZ-T3Q looks fine for what it is, although it does not seem like it will be any less of a niche gadget than the other headsets that came before it. It is possible that the Playstation Now service will eventually incorporate their HMZ headsets as Sony figures out how to iterate the service, if they are even genuinely interested. Here and now, Steam and Oculus Rift are at the forefront of VR gaming.
Image is of the Oculus Rift dev kit.
