Valve’s Michael Abrash shares his Steam Dev Days VR slides and talk

Prototype VR headset at Valve

Valve’s Michael Abrash has updated his blog and kindly shared his talk and slides covering the VR portion of Steam Dev Days. The slides include all the text from his talk, he’s not keen on ad-lib notes it seems, so you can read exactly what he discussed.

There’s some good stuff in here if you’ve been following the development of Valve’s VR system or the Oculus Rift. He talks about how it is entirely possible to create VR experiences that don;t make people sick and he believes that this technology could ship within two years to consumers. Here’s a quick snip which explains their relationship with Oculus.

Valve’s goal is to enable great VR for the PC, so we’ve shared what we’ve learned through our R&D with Oculus. We’ve showed them our prototypes and demos, we’ve explained how our hardware works, and we’ve provided them with feedback on their hardware designs. By showing them a prototype with low persistence, we convinced Oculus of its importance, and the lack of blur in Crystal Cove is a direct result of that. We collaborated with Oculus on tracking as well. We’re continuing to work with them to improve tracking, displays, lenses, and calibration, and we’re excited about where they’re headed. If Oculus executes well, and so far they seem to be, I think they could well deliver strong presence on the PC within the next two years; we hope that happens, because it would be a huge boost for PC VR.

In addition to the PDF of Michael’s presentation you can also check out Joe Ludwig’s slides from his talk about Steam VR.

Exciting times ahead I think you’ll agree.