Today Valve announced they will demonstrate its new 3d, virtual reality hardware early next year. This news comes on the day that Half-Lifeis celebrating its 15th anniversary. 3d hardware, divided by Half-life 15, minus two is proof of Half-Life 3! Conspiracy theories aside, Valve has been sneak-attacking big hardware news this year and this new "affordable" Virtual Reality hardware will use Steam and the new Steam Machines.
Valve is going to demo the new hardware at its Steam Developer Days event in January where it will reveal plans to change the streaming service, Steam, to support it.
In a scheduled talk at the event Valve’s resident hardware genius, Mike Abrash, will discuss the mystery headset. Here’s a sample from the official site:
"We've figured out what affordable Virtual Reality (VR) hardware will be capable of within a couple of years, and assembled a prototype which demonstrates that such VR hardware is capable of stunning experiences.”
Other talks will also focus on the changeover that Valve sees as its inevitable future. “Virtual Reality and Steam” will discuss the changes to the service to support and offer development tools for Steam users.
This first hint that Valve was working on Virtual Reality was when two ex-Valve engineers started their own Kickstarter to develop an augmented reality headset saying it was similar to what had been in development.
15 years ago today Valve released its breakaway hit Half-Life which introduced a generation of gamers to what would become the narrative driven first-person shooter and created a incredibly diverse mod community of amateur game developers. Valve has many successful online games, including Dota 2, and the Steam game delivery service. In September it announced the launch of its own console systems called Steam Machines that will be completely customizable by the user.
However, there is still no word on Half-Life 3, we miss you Gordon Freeman.
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[Via Eurogamer]
