Valve hinted at its future VR plans in an interview about the Steam Deck OLED.
Steam Deck OLEDIt was announced yesterday as a mid-cycle update for the original Steam Deck. Its improvements include a larger HDR OLED display with 90Hz refresh rate, Wi-Fi 6E, improved cooling fans, and longer battery life thanks to its 6nm APU revision and larger battery.
Clearly, the Steam Deck has been a focus for Valve in recent years. Meanwhile, its Index series of PC-connected VR kits are over four years old, and their resolutions are now largely outdated. Valve has directly confirmed multiple times over the years that it is working on a new headset, but has yet to officially announce or reveal a specific product.
In an interview with Tested's Norm this week, Valve hardware engineer Yazan Aldehayyat and product designer Lawrence Yang hinted at the form the headset might take, as well as potential key features.
When asked by Norm how the learnings from Steam Deck could be applied to VR-ready hardware, Yang responded:
"A lot. Using APUs, miniaturization of computers - we don't have any specific products to announce today on the VR side, except that we are continuing to move forward on the VR side.
But just like the Steam Deck is a result of what we learned from [Steam]Controller and [Steam]Link and VR, future products will continue to learn from everything we do with Steam Deck. "
Aldehayyat then expressed his opinion:
“Obviously, there are a lot of overlapping technology elements that can be reused. For example, wireless streaming is very useful for VR. This also benefits the Steam Deck a lot, improving the wireless streaming experience.
But relationships can also be built with component suppliers and other hardware partners. The Steam Deck team and the VR team work together, so there's a lot of ideas and parts and technology between us. "
Norm went on to talk about the concept of "inoculation of ideas and parts and technology," asking if it was fair for Valve to "go OLED across the board," a question that seemed designed to reveal that Valve's next-gen headset will use OLED instead of LCD. But Aldehayyat didn't accept the bait, saying: "For the Steam Deck, definitely."
Aldehayyat's comments about wireless streaming strongly hint that Valve's next headset will support wireless PC VR. This may include using your existing home Wi-Fi network, like Virtual Desktop and Air Link on the Quest, or it may involve using a dedicated hardware adapter to avoid congestion and signal degradation. Valve will almost certainly support regular gaming PCs, but some evidence suggests it may be exploring the creation of a computerized PC that streamlines SteamVR for less tech-savvy buyers. Alternatively, Steam Deck 2 may be powerful enough to enable PC VR streaming.
While PC VR is likely to be Valve's main focus, Yang's comments about "working with APUs" and "miniaturization of computers" suggest the headset will have some sort of standalone functionality. A purely wireless headset for PC wouldn't require a full APU, and Valve president Gabe Newell has previously mentioned that the company is working on "tetherless integrated VR" and "portable" headsets. But Newell also said that "we are not very mature yet."
It appears that last year Valve posted a job ad for a computer vision engineer to help "prototype, launch and support" a VR headset for millions of customers around the world. The job ad describes the headset as having internal tracking, camera access, environmental understanding, eye tracking and hand tracking. Of course, Valve may have removed any of these features during development, or the product may even be canceled at any time.
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