Valve releasing its own VR headset

Team Fortress 2 is available for download from the Oculus Share portal. Click on image to watch video.

Valve just announced that it will show off its own virtual reality hardware, SteamVR, at next month’sÂ Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

Valve is theÂ company behind Portal, Team Fortress 2 and the widely-used PC game distribution hub Steam.

“At GDC 2015, weâ€™ll be giving demos of the refined Steam Controller, new living room devices, and a previously-unannounced SteamVR hardware system,” the company said in an announcement yesterday.

SteamVR is rumored to be the company’s answer to the Oculus Rift, a headset that plugs into a personal computer.

The two other approaches to virtual reality headsets are either a hollow case with lenses that users drop their own smartphones into, or the GameFace approach, where there’s a computer built right into the headset.

Since Steam’s current users are typically gamers with high-end PCs, it would make sense for them to release a headset that is a PC peripheral.

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Maria Korolov

Hypergrid Business editor and publisher Maria Korolov is a science fiction novelist. During the day, Maria Korolov is an award-winning freelance technology journalist who covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and enterprise virtual reality. See her Amazon author page here and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, and check out her latest videos on the Maria Korolov YouTube channel. Email her at maria@hypergridbusiness.com. Her first virtual world novella, Krim Times, made the Amazon best-seller list in its category. Her second novella, The Lost King of Krim, is out now. She is also the publisher of MetaStellar, a new online magazine of speculative fiction.