It would appear that the golden age of virtual reality is dawning upon us. Everywhere I turn, it seems that even more companies are jumping on the VR bandwagon and declaring a desire to invest in new VR games, headsets and everything in-between.
Valve is the latest, having announced that it’s signed up to support Razer’s upcoming VR headset, the Open Source Virtual Reality standard drive (or OSVR, for short).
Whilst offering the same experience as the current headsets, what makes OSVR differ from the rest is in the inclusion of Leap Motion trackers. With this, users are able to interact with software without the use of controller support, a feature that is yet to be announced for the Oculus Rift or PlayStation’s Morpheus headsets (Microsoft’s HoloLens headset does support controller-less interaction, but that’s augmented reality rather than full VR, so it doesn’t really count).
OSVR development kits are expected to ship out to developers in July, and with Valve now on board it raises the question of whether the Steam owner will add support for the headset to existing games like Portal and Left 4 Dead. With other games industry heavyweights such as Ubisoft lending their support and exploring the possibility of adding virtual reality support to future Assassin’s Creed games, and Borderlands developer Gearbox on board, Razer’s OSVR partners are growing - the company is currently sitting pretty with a total of 118 companies having pledged their support so far.
Here’s a video from Razer on what you can expect when OSVR finally lands.
Jason English
@crashtroll
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