Selv hvis virtual reality mister moment vil 2016 for alltid bli husket som året da VR var på alles lepper. Forbrukermodellene til Oculus VR og HTC er endelig sluppet, og i oktober kommer også Playstation VR fra Sony.
HTC har som kjent samarbeidet med Valve om å utvikle HTC Vive-headsettet, og det hersker ingen tvil om at selskapet bak Steam har sansen for virtuell virkelighet. Faktisk jobber så mye som en tredjedel av staben nå med VR-prosjekter, hvis vi skal tro Alan Yates' innlegg på Reddit. Yates jobbet med "Lighthouse tracking"-systemet til HTC Vive-headsettet:
"There are a number of teams around the planet doing great things in this new space, it is truly exciting. But we all owe a huge debt to those in academia and niche industries that kept the dream alive after the 90s VR implosion. People like Mark Bolas at USC where Palmer Lucky got his start and Jaron Lanier now at MSR who popularised the term Virtual Reality and has never stopped thinking about the future of digitally mediated reality.
I was super fortunate to start at Valve right around the time Michael Abrash had begun the AR/VR research team.It was a much smaller team then than it is now, it has since grown to encompass about a third of the company, but the key individuals that solved most of the really hard technological problems and facilitated this generation of consumer headsets are still here working on the next generation.
Digitally mediated reality is one of those incredibly impactful technologies, short of human space flight or life sciences I can't imagine working on something of more significance right now."
Kanskje dette betyr at Valve har begynt å fokusere mer på sine egen spill igjen, noe de tilsynelatende ikke har gjort så mye av siden lanseringen av Portal 2 i 2011.