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[androvsky]

Really? Are you sure you're not thinking of the DS4, which has gyros and accelerometers?

I'm definitely thinking of the camera, but I'm having a hard time finding a definitive source. I recall someone from PS Nation asking why it had gyros, and the answer was something about so the camera could tell how it was oriented (aiming up or down while on a TV or stand, for example).

 

[BlastProcessing]

- The first demo stuck me in a simple room, whose walls were textured with financial data for Facebook from some website. An odd choice, yeah. There was a little red cube bouncing around the room, and the desire to avoid it was *extremely strong*. A dodgeball / laser field game immediately popped into my mind, but as I mentioned before, a tether really hurts this type of idea.

In light of the events of the past week, this is an odd detail.

 

[Feep]

In light of the events of the past week, this is an odd detail.

(shrug) I dunno.

 

[StuBurns]

The FB IPO story in Valve's demos is just a coincidence.

 

[GobFather]

Sounds cool, but you may punch me in the face. My wife would go nuts if I ignored her completely while playing video games. I mean... you are literally shutting yourself off from the rest of the world.

Lol I haven't thought of this. May have to reconsider VR

 

[Whompa]

In light of the events of the past week, this is an odd detail.

pure coincidence.

 

[Herne]

What's the point in them developing this if it's "not going to be on sale ever"?

 

[StuBurns]

What's the point in them developing this if it's "not going to be on sale ever"?

Someone had to do it.

 

[BlastProcessing]

The FB IPO story in Valve's demos is just a coincidence.

pure coincidence.

Oh I assume it is coincidence. How would Valve know anything about a potential Oculus acquisition? They obviously wouldn't and if they did they sure as hell wouldn't make that knowledge an easter egg in a VR demo.

I just thought it was one of those humorous things, like the fact Kennedy and Lincoln had the same golf handicap.

 

[HeroesInAHalfShell]

Great write up! I can't wait until quality VR tech becomes commercially available and relatively reasonably priced

 

[Andodalf]

Oh I assume it is coincidence. How would Valve know anything about a potential Oculus acquisition? They obviously wouldn't and if they did they sure as hell wouldn't make that knowledge an easter egg in a VR demo.

I just thought it was one of those humorous things, like the fact Kennedy and Lincoln had the same golf handicap.

I thought it was such an odd thing when I first read that write up, now it seems even stranger. Small world I guess. Or Giant company.

 

[Herne]

Someone had to do it.

The fact that it took seven pages is surprising. Also, nobody seems to have an answer.

 

[MaLDo]

What's the point in them developing this if it's "not going to be on sale ever"?

They need it to test steamVR and HL3.

 

[EVIL]

What's the point in them developing this if it's "not going to be on sale ever"?

To better understand this new emerging technology that is going to change interactive entertainment forever. As a software developer and platform holder, this information is very important.

 

[entremet]

A randomish blogger saw the demos and was amazed.

http://tynan.com/vr

Thanks to my friend Brian, I recently had the opportunity to try out Valve's new work on virtual reality. Only a couple hundred or so people have had the chance to try it so far, and most of them are people within the video game industry. I went in thinking that it would be a fun diversion, and left thinking that it will fundamentally change the world.

I've tried a lot of virtual reality devices over the years. When an ill-fated virtual reality arcade opened up in Austin, Texas, my friends and I hoarded coupons for a free game from the newspaper and played for hours. On a school trip to Houston I bought a Nintendo Virtual Boy, which I absolutely loved. And then, when getting a demo of Matterport's room-scanning software, I got to try an Oculus Rift.

All of those experiences were really great, but what Valve has managed to do is to make virtual reality so real that my brain records it as something I did or experienced, rather than something I saw. That's a huge shift, and having experienced it, I predict that it will change everything.

The Valve demo is about half an hour long. You go into a weird room that may have been a storage closet in a previous life, and put on a big prototype looking headset. The guy who operates the demo cycles you through about a dozen different demos.

In the first one you're inside a big cube. Neat, but not particularly amazing. A few later you're in a similar cube, but there's a ball bouncing around inside it with you. When the ball comes near your head, you duck. You duck not because it's a game (it's not), but because it feels so real, that your reflexes cause you to duck. It's hard to suppress that instinct.

The primary breakthrough Valve has made is that they can track you with incredible precision in 3D space. So you can physically walk around the room to walk around objects. If there's a small item on the ground, you kneel down and put your head close to it. You never think about how much of an idiot you must look like to the other people in the room, because you feel as though you're somewhere else.

It was interesting to me that none of the demos we ran through were games, considering Valve is a video game company. More interesting is that they don't need to be games to be engaging. Because that line between observation and experience has been crossed, just being put in a new environment is really compelling.

I can imagine virtual tourism happening. I love real travel, but I would probably try it out. I can imagine being in a virtual space with someone across the globe who is also wearing a VR headset. It wouldn't actually be like visiting them, but it would feel more real than skype does. Because this level of VR codes as an experience, I can't help but think that training in virtual reality could effectively translate into real life. The best uses of VR are probably things that I can't even imagine at this point.

We live in an exciting time. In my short lifetime I've seen the birth of the internet, 3D graphics, mobile computing, digital currency, 3D printing, and any number of other things. After experiencing the virtual reality they've cooked up at Valve, I have no doubt that virtual reality's time has come and it will be one of the most significant technological advances of our time.