Valve confirms that it has stopped makin...

In case you missed it, Valve introduced a load of latest {hardware} this week, together with a second stab on the , a Steam controller, and a long-rumored new VR headset referred to as the . However in with the brand new typically means out with the outdated, and maybe inevitably, the corporate has confirmed that its earlier headset, the Valve Index, isn’t any extra.

Valve’s Lawrence Yang advised  that it’s “not manufacturing” the Index, which we “the perfect desktop VR but” when it launched in 2019. The Index arrived across the identical time because the Oculus Quest and its promise of an inexpensive all-in-one future for VR. In contrast, the Valve Index was very a lot nonetheless a high-end tethered gadget for the hardcore fanatics, with a price ticket that mirrored that.

We don’t know the way a lot the Steam Body will price but, but it surely positively feels like Valve is making a play for the extra informal VR crowd right here too, in addition to those that need to play demanding 3D titles. You’ll be able to stream flatscreen and VR video games out of your PC or Steam Machine utilizing a wi-fi adapter, however the Steam Body can also be a standalone gadget just like the , backed by a built-in Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and 16GB of RAM. Valve is supporting Android video games too, seemingly a transfer to entice VR builders to carry their Quest video games over to Steam.

So as to monitor your actions in digital house, the relied on exterior lighthouse base stations, which meant you needed to undergo a greater than a bit of laborious setup course of to play roomscale VR video games. Shopper VR has moved in the direction of built-in sensors since then, and it feels like Valve needs to depart its lighthouses up to now too, with the corporate confirming to The Verge that they gained’t be supported on the Steam Body. The brand new headset as an alternative has 4 high-res monochrome cameras for inside-out monitoring, in addition to infrared LEDs on the surface that assist with monitoring in darker environments.