Valve Announces the Source 2 Engine, Steam Link, and SteamVR at GDC 2015 in San Francisco

HTC Vive Headset
image via HTC

As part of their presence at the GDC 2015 conference in San Francisco, Valve has officially announced the Source 2 engine, Steam Link, and SteamVR–the last of which is specifically being used in conjunction with HTC‘s Vive headset.

Two new technologies are part of the VR release – a room scale tracking system codenamed Lighthouse, and a VR input system. “In order to have a high quality VR experience, you need high resolution, high speed tracking,” said Valve’s Alan Yates. “Lighthouse gives us the ability to do this for an arbitrary number of targets at a low enough BOM cost that it can be incorporated into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices, or mobile devices.” Valve intends to make Lighthouse freely available to any hardware manufacturers interested in the technology.

The Steam Link is a device for streaming Steam content from a PC to a monitor or device on the same network. Though the device initially appeared on Steam itself, it has since been removed for reasons unknown.

Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).

Steam Link
image via Steam Database

Those interested in more information are directed to a Steam Universe page which appears to be mostly a placeholder at this time.

via Steam Database

Rollin Bishop
Rollin Bishop