Valve expects virtual reality to make major debut in '15

Besides Nintendo's launch of the Virtual Boy home console in the mid-90s and the occasional SkyMall product, virtual reality has mostly phased out.

Today, employees at Valve think companies like Oculus VR are closer to making virtual reality more of a well… reality.

Valve Research and Development leader Michael Abrash presented a talk last week at Steam Dev Days, a two-day game developers conference in Seattle, Wash. where he discussed the future of virtual reality.

"Compelling consumer-priced VR hardware is coming, probably within two years," he said. "…and we think it's possible that it could transform the entire entertainment industry."

At his talk, Abrash showed the audience slides of already functioning prototypes of head mounted virtual reality devices.

"It's the sense of being someplace else while in virtual reality; many people feel as if they've been teleported," he said. "Presence is an incredibly powerful sensation, and it's unique to VR; there's no way to create it in any other medium."

Abrash said Oculus VR's augmented reality goggles dubbed Oculus Crystal Cove are a step in the right direction toward mainstream virtual reality, especially on a computer platform.

"You see, for latency and bandwidth reasons, presence can only happen with a head-mounted display connected to a device capable of heavy-duty 3D rendering, so there's no way that TV, movies, streaming, or anything that lacks lots of local compute power is up to the task," he said.

Although the future looks bright for virtual reality, there are some steps to overcome before VR-headsets will be launched.

"Haptics, 3D-audio, body tracking and input are going to be huge positives for presence, and they're bigger and harder problems than head-mounted displays," he said. "I'm confident that that work will happen soon, now that we've demonstrated what's possible, and if that happens, it should be feasible to have these head-mounted displays on the market within a couple of years."

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