Valve will be delivering two talks at the next Game Developers Conference in March. No, you can stop swinging your replica Gordon Freeman crowbar with joy - both sessions will focus on the developer's work in the field of VR and wearable computing. One of them, titled "What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality," suggests that Valve have been attempting to port Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality. Granted, it's a subtle hint.
The talk will focus on the problems Valve have faced in the development of the port. According to the session description , "Several people at Valve spent the past year exploring various forms of wearable computing. The wearable effort included porting Team Fortress 2 to run in virtual reality goggles. This session will describe lessons learned from Valve's porting experience."
"Topics covered include an overview of what stereo support entails, rendering 2D user interface in a 90 degree field of view display, dealing with view models and other rendering shortcuts, and how mouselook can interact with head tracking in a first person shooter."
Valve's wearable computing genius Michael Abrash will also be hosting a talk, called ' Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going) .' That both events focus on the challenges of VR gaming suggests the dream of the 1980s isn't as easy to obtain as they may have hoped, but Valve seem peculiarly dedicated to making it a reality.
Of course, this is no guarantee that a VR version of TF2 will be commercially available any time soon. But who knows, one day that Killer Exclusive on your head might seem close enough to touch.
