Valve has released SteamVR 2.0 after a month in beta. The virtual reality software is finally heading to headsets with some big changes to the store, keyboard, library, and more.
I don't know if you've used SteamVR recently but prior to this release it's not been a piece of software that inspired feelings of 'next-gen' or the 'new way to play games'. While it's seen various bug fixes over the years, it's long felt dated and in serious need of a revamp.
Thankfully SteamVR 2.0 includes a pretty massive overhaul of the interface. It's more like the Steam app or Steam Deck's interface than ever today and much easier to navigate around. As I wrote in my first impressions of SteamVR 2.0, the best bit is "no longer having to take your headset off every 5 minutes" to use your keyboard and mouse to boot a game or app.
I go into greater detail of all the tweaks and changes in that article, as little has changed with the full release today, but here's a brief overview of what's new from Valve:
- Most of the current features of Steam and Steam Deck are now part of SteamVR
- Updated keyboard with support for dual-cursor typing, new languages, emojis, and themes
- Integration of Steam Chat and Voice Chat
- Improved Store that puts new and popular VR releases front and center
- Easy access to Steam notifications
With the changes it finally feels like SteamVR is a part of the Steam ecosystem, not a forgotten relic. Though there's still work to be done: the VR Home screens could do with a bit of a spring clean and some tweaks to make them a bit more user-friendly, for one.
While it had looked like all these changes were leading up to some kind of new hardware release, we're yet to hear any more about one. Valve is said to be working on a new VR headset, codename Deckard, but when that shows up is anyone's guess.
In the meantime, any headset compatible with SteamVR can benefit from these new changes. That's most of 'em.
