Valve Releasing VR SDK to Standardize VR Input

[Tbone]

BBC has an article on VR in 2014. It starts like a lot of CES articles, talking about Oculus and how they are solving some of the VR hurdles, but if you scroll down a bit, we end up getting some juicy new info about what Valve is releasing in just a few days at Steam Days:

While one or two developers making games specifically for VR headsets will help the technology become established, more will need to be done if it is to go mainstream.

Help on this front may come from game maker Valve as it pursues its Steam Box project.

Valve designer Brian Coomer says the company is "days away" from releasing a VR software development kit that will give game makers a standard way to provide an interface for VR controllers.

The kit will be released at Valve's forthcoming Steam Dev Days conference due to take place on 14-15 January in Seattle.

Valve's interest in VR has been long known, says Mr Coomer, as has its relationship with Oculus Rift.

"There's also technology in development at Valve based around head-tracking and headset manufacture and design," he says.

"We are working with other companies right now but we have not made any specific announcements."

The kit that Valve plans to release later in January will be part of a broader software tool chest that will help give developers a standard way to control games via Steam Box, he adds.

In a bid to make it easy for game makers to get their games working on the Steam Box gadget, Valve had spent a lot of time on its own controller, so that any game played via a Steam Box thinks a player is using a keyboard and mouse whatever the actual controller happens to be.

A similar level of abstraction is going to be needed if VR headsets are going to become ubiquitous, he says.

Players do not want to have to re-configure their set-up every time they swap games.

"Steam is in a unique position to be this intermediary between hardware and software and users," Mr Coomer says.

"Without that its going to be hard for any device to get any serious traction."

While it's still unclear exactly HOW involved Valve is getting, a standardized way of doing VR input and interfacing could be HUGE in creating a mass market success for VR. My hope is that Valve is developing their own VR input devices as well, but even if they can get companies like Sixense to make their hardware compatible with this SDK, then it'll go a long ways in bridging the gap. Right now you may need a gamepad, Hydra, Leap, Kinect, or any other thing to play certain VR demos. This will hopefully make it easier.