If last week’s Oculus Connect left you hungry for more news about virtual reality, maybe news of a new hardware out of Valve’s Steam Dev Days will do the trick. Perhaps the biggest tidbit is that the PC gaming juggernaut is working on a new controller for the Vive headset. What’s different from the current wand, according to TechCrunch, is the device will allow users to pick items up and put them down, all without letting go of the controller.
All of which suggests that the device may be palm or wrist-mounted. Since the event is developer-only, until our on-the-ground source can see the prototype for themselves further details (aside from those found on Twitter) are going to be hard to come by.
There’s some other news, too. Valve apparently wants its Lighthouse tracking system for the controllers to be as commonplace as WiFi, where anyone and everyone can develop for and use it. Currently there over over 300 different companies using the tech for motion tracking. New Lighthouse base stations may arrive next year as well. We’ll update this post with more info as it arrives.
Update: Pictures of the gizmo are surfacing on Twitter and as you might expect it looks very prototype-y.
First look at #valve’s prototype finger sensing controllers. I tried them. Awesome. #SteamDevDays pic.twitter.com/0B3SK48ld7
— Leigh_Christie (@Leigh_Christie) October 12, 2016
