Virtual & Augmented Reality

I know a lot of people have been questioning forever whether Valve are working on VR hardware, with some outright denying it's existence. At most, we've all seen some patents here and there that seem a little interesting.

As a person who spends some time looking for a job, I decided to look at what Valve has going. I looked at 2 postings, which I've copied below and I believe few people have seen. I've highlighted some bits I find particularly interesting in bold (of course not every aspect is related to VR, as the first one is clearly also talking about Steam Deck iterations). It sounds to me like they're working on something like lighthouses that can use cameras to do pose estimation (could be done through the headset and controllers, but that does seem a lot more complicated, and their audience of Index users would be used to lighthouses), ultimately eliminating the need for Vive trackers (and their alternatives), taking the time to strap them to you, calibration and battery life, which I've thought for a while is an important next step in VR, and I'm glad to see there are hints this is being worked on by a big player.

At Valve, we are pushing the boundaries of hardware gaming experiences.

Exemplified on products like the Steam Deck and the Valve Index, engineers at Valve innovate on technologies that bridge the hazy divide between software and hardware solutions. Our engineers are versatile, self-directed, and empowered to bring the next generation of VR and hand-held gaming products to millions of customers world-wide.

Do you love making great hardware? Our team has senior, world-class experts bringing together the following areas...

• Software Development in C/C++

• Linux & Embedded OSes

• Firmware Development

• Computer Graphics (GPU Acceleration, Shading, Rendering)

• Novel Display Paths (low latencies, high bandwidth)

• Hardware Interfaces (cameras, imus, audio, USB, mixed signal)

• Core VR Technologies (tracking, optical calibration, display customization)

• Video Compression

• Wireless Technologies

• Engine Integration (Unity, Unreal)

• Human Computer Interaction, Controllers, and Haptics

Computer vision plays an indispensable role in modern VR experiences, providing headset and controller tracking, eye and hand tracking, 3D environment understanding, amongst others. Computer vision engineers at Valve are working on all those areas to help us achieve the next steps in VR with millions of customers world-wide.

Across the computer vision engineering group, we contribute in a variety of ways:

• Collaborate to define product goals

• Participate in conceiving, designing, and evaluating VR hardware

• Develop software (in particular computer vision related)

• Computer vision engineers at Valve have significant industry experience. Members of our team typically have proven professional software development experience in C/C++, and have both deep understanding and hands-on experience in 3D vision algorithms, SLAM tracking, amongst others. Our team includes and looks for individuals with expertise in one or more of the following areas:

• SLAM/VIO/sensor fusion, visual positioning or other related directions

• 3D vision algorithms (traditional, deep learning based, or both - including SFM, MVS(Net), NeRF or other 3D reconstruction methods.

• Object detection and tracking, 3D pose estimation or other related directions

• Human subject awareness, including hand tracking, eye tracking, and body tracking

tldr:

Valve has job postings, they reference the following:

• eye tracking

• 3D pose estimation/body tracking

• hand tracking

• designing/evaluating VR hardware

• wireless tech (this may just be for the Steam Deck, but seems likely we're talking about Wireless VR given the year we live in)

Been waiting for a Pokémon game for so long for VR. What are some other games you want to see adapted?

Has anyone tried this out? It allows for setting profiles for each game that are automatically launched on game launch, just like the quest game optimizer. That seems to be just the top of the iceberg of what the software can do.

The creator has a very detailed video on it.

Are you satisfied with what it’s provided you so far, I mean? I know quite a few people who basically tell me something like “Oh is VR still a thing?” when I tell them I own a Quest set and use it every now and then. I’m more casual about it these days — comes down to either replaying some favorites like Alyx or a couple of matches in Vail VR, though I do track new releases to see if anything gets my attention. 

I’ve owned a headset, first Q2 and then upgraded to Q3, for about 2 years now and in just that time I’ve seen lots of improvements and experimentation in the scene. It’s all kind of “insider” in the sense that you probably need to already be a VR enjoyer to be aware of any of it. Still, I’m kind of perplexed that so many people still consider it a passing fad when in reality it’s only getting bigger. Or it will get bigger eventually when technological improvements, financial reasons (for big companies especially) and other factors all start overlapping more. I mean, you could just use it to watch movies in 3D and it can still be a viable option (I watched Mad Max last night and it was awesome, reminded me you can do other than gaming with a headset lol). 

But like I said, I do enjoy VR more on the side, and for specific genres. Like, neither Alyx nor Into the Radius (especially this one because of its atmosphere and focus on immersion) nor Vail (even if it’s basically CS in VR with some verticality) would work as well on flat screen. I mean they would, but they’d be just so much… less. And of course, I’ve started using it for watching movies much more recently, which I basically forgot you could do because of how obsessed I was with gaming.

In other words, it’s still giving me a good run for my money. I guess you could say I’m still looking forward to that breakthrough, but overall I think it’s something I can safely recommend to almost everyone (and in good conscience too). What about you, fine people — how satisfied are you with VR in general, and I guess Quest in particular?

Like who cares if it’s a VR exclusive. Like I legit thought people wanted VR to be a mainstream media. For that to happen VR needs more AAA titles like Bone Works or Half-Life Alyx. It’s not like they can’t play the other Arkham games plus the better and longer exclusive VR gets the more people will get a VR Headset and the more people do that the more companies will try to outdo each other by making better and cheaper VR Headsets that are easier and cheaper to buy. But god forbid that ONE Arkham game be a VR exclusive. Plus you’d actually get to BE BATMAN not just control him with a controller but actually see through his eyes and instead of hitting buttons to beat up criminals you actually get to beat them up yourself.

Hello guys, 

For my pleasure and yours I hope, I did a quick release of Arcade with some features & fixes! 

What's new: 

• Jérôme (aka majerik) proposed me a very good idea and something that is really missing in the game : the fresh score. Now your last play of the current Arcade session will be displayed in the menu section. 

• I also highlighted some moving texts like 'game over', 'level', etc.. 

• I fixed some bugs in the leaderboard. 

Next game: already maze! Probably in late july. 

So have fun! 
NeoPunk! 

Hi, I'm . We have a VR gaming company publishing in the Quest store. As you may or may not have heard, there was a thread posted here today showing someone from our company offering a key for the game in exchange for a positive review. That was me. I messed up.

I'm a new VR game designer, and in the hype to try to spread the good word about the experience in our game I tried to make an offer to a handful of people. I phrased it terribly, and I understand that it looked really bad. You should know that it wasn't intentional. English isn't my first language. I've gotten assistance in typing this out to you in better English so that everyone can understand the issue and how bad I feel about the misunderstanding. When the thread here was posted here I panicked a little, because l'd screwed up and didn't want it to hurt the game or the company. It's my own mistake, and I don't want anyone getting hurt because of it. I apologize for it, and I want to publicly correct it here for all of you just as I sent corrected messages to the people I made the offer to.

We want positive reviews. Of course we do, every game developer does. But we want honest reviews and honest feedback from the VR gaming community. We want real, legitimate positive reviews, not positive reviews in exchange for something. If you play our game and there's something you don't like or feel we can do better, please let us know.

To try to make up for this issue, l've set our game to be free to try for 15 minutes before purchasing. That will let you see for yourself if it's something you'd enjoy and are willing to support with your purchase, without having to wonder about any previous reviews. But, again, we value and really do want honest reviews, and we hope that anyone who purchases our game will leave one both so that other potential players know if it's worth picking up and so that we know what we can do better in.

VR gaming is still relatively niche, and we're not doing this as some sort of cash grab. We care about the games and the community and we want to keep getting better and providing better content for everyone to enjoy. We want to succeed, and we need your help to do that.