Valve Creates The Perfect Demo For Steam VR And The HTC Vive

This morning the HTC Vive officially went on sale, and with it, a launch of Valve's Steam VR initiative. To bring on a greater understanding of what this new environment is like, Valve set out to create a single video which showed what virtual reality was like for the user. To do this, they needed a bit of Mixed Reality. That is a green screen room, a 3rd-party camera, and an HTC Vive. To do this, they needed to be able to track outside the user – to do this, they needed to attach a Vive controller to their camera rig.

Once you've found your way into a whole lot of green material to plaster your walls with, you'll be able to capture a video just like the one you're about to see. Have a peek at what Valve did to make the VR universe even easier to understand an accept for the common user – or potential user.

In this demonstration you'll see a number of games and apps that either are now or will be soon available in Steam for the HTC Vive. In no particular order – or is it – the following games and apps:

• The Lab

• theBlu

• Job Simulator

• Cloudlands: VR Minigolf

• Fantastic Contraption

• Irrational Exuberance

• Audioshield

• Final Approach

• Space Pirate Trainer

• Everest VR

• Arizona Sunshine

• Elite Dangerous

• Budget Cuts

• Hover Junkers

• Tilt Brush

• The Gallery – Episode 1

As HTC's Shen Ye suggests, there's a third (or another, if you prefer) HTC Vive hand controller mounted to the camera capturing video for the video you see above. This is used in concert with the Unity plugin which allows the camera to see the person while the computer "sees" what the controller is telling the computer the camera "sees" – inside the VR environment.

This is just part of the VR experience. Today is the day we get to fully unveil our first experiences with the consumer version of the HTC Vive – as seen in our first mega-large HTC Vive Review. Have a peek!