*** Warning: This Video Contains Spoilers ***
Watch as an anonymous player works through Valve’s Aperture Science demo, built to demonstrate the capabilities of Valve’s new virtual reality technology – HTC Vive.
At the PlayHubs game jam in London last week Valve supplied 3 HTC Vive systems and invited a bunch of developers along to see what they came up with over 48 hours.
To introduce the developers to the capabilities of Valve’s virtual reality system, in particular the room-scale tracking provided by Lighthouse, they were walked through various demos, seemingly similar or identical to those that debuted at GDC in March this year. The most anticipated among them being Valve’s Aperture Science demo, set in the Portal universe, which has you dropped into a robot repair workshop.
Up until now, those who’ve not been lucky enough to try the demo for themselves have had to make do with fleeting glimpses and other player’s impressions. This video, courtesy of ValveTime, however features the full demo from beginning to end and is therefore massively spoiler-filled – you have been warned.
We’re not going to give a blow-by-blow account of the video, but highlights include some spectacular visuals, with intricately detailed animation and a uniquely valve solution to the problem of breaking beyond a fixed, physical play-space.
HTC’s Vive, will be the first Valve VR solution to ship, supposedly before the end of the year. Developers who registered with Valve to be considered for a Developer Edition, began receiving them last month. The Vive Developer Edition contained updated hardware, most notably now featuring wireless Valve controllers.
See Also: Closeup with the HTC Vive Developer Edition Headset for SteamVR
It’s not yet clear whether the Aperture Science robot repair demo will be made available to the public once the HTC Vive goes on sale later this year, however we have some fairly strong hints thanks to a recent image leak which seemed to confirm the system’s software lineup. The leak indicates the name for the game this demo is taken from is called, Robot Repair Human Diversity Outreach Program – sounds about right for Aperture Science to us.
