It looks as if VR gaming has been in sort of a holding sample for the final yr or two, ever since Half-Life: Alyx got here out. I think that, with Facebook/Meta pushing hard to get AR into the arms of extra common customers, and the looming threat of Apple’s Vision Pro subsequent yr, lots of firms are utilizing this time to shore up their core merchandise. Like Valve, for instance — it simply printed an enormous replace to the SteamVR platform, now in its 2.0.1 beta launch.

For the uninitiated, SteamVR refers to each the platform (the system and APIs that lots of VR video games on Steam use) and the consumer interface that Steam makes use of for digital actuality. This update is mostly about the latter, which has been given a reasonably sizeable facelift and performance increase. SteamVR 2.0 introduces a brand new dashboard, new retailer web page, new keyboard interface — it’s simply lots of work achieved throughout the board. Steam Chat and Voice Chat at the moment are out there whereas utilizing a headset.

Perhaps most vital is the revamp to the Steam retailer’s presentation whereas in VR, which now places VR content material “front and center.” There are tons of smaller tweaks for ease of use and easy operation. A very attention-grabbing one famous by the replace web page is that SteamVR gained’t present you an inter-pupillary distance (IPD) slider when you’re utilizing a Meta-branded headset, because the Meta {hardware} covers that already.

This remains to be a beta launch, and there’s no indication of when it’ll graduate to the total model. Some are reporting that Valve could also be sprucing up its software program in anticipation of a brand new Index headset. While Valve has confirmed that new VR {hardware} is in improvement, there’s no signal of when it could be coming to market, both.