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A comment on What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be within two years [pdf].

Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by hobo_mark on Saturday January 18, 2014 @08:56PM (#7083091)
Waitaminute! Is this the same Valve who FIRED Jeri Ellsworth last year because Gabe didn't see any value in the VR/AR work she was doing, to the point that he just let her have the IP rights to her prototypes as she left?
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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by modeless on Sunday January 19, 2014 @12:16AM (#7083463)
It's not that they didn't see value in it. Augmented reality and virtual reality are two different things. Valve believes that AR technology will be harder to develop than VR, and consequently that VR will become feasible and popular before AR. They chose to go after VR first, postponing AR for later. Jeri Ellsworth didn't want to wait, so Valve let her leave and take all the IP with her to try AR on her own.
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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by programminggeek on Saturday January 18, 2014 @10:55PM (#7083312)
Also, there is probably no way to say this without sounding crass, but after listening to her tell her side of the story, it seems like she wasn't a great fit for Valve's obviously very particular culture.

I don't know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but sometimes it is better if two parties split so they can go do their best work separately.

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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by kakugawa on Saturday January 18, 2014 @09:25PM (#7083149)
Valve had two teams -- Abrash's VR and Ellsworth's AR. They decided to bet on VR and Jeri was the unfortunate result of them focusing their resources.
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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by teamonkey on Saturday January 18, 2014 @10:00PM (#7083214)
Abrash says in the slides they're not actually working on a device internally, except for research. I could be wrong but I remember reading that Ellsworth's team was developing a product.
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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by masklinn on Sunday January 19, 2014 @03:51AM (#7083887)
They're not working on a production device, but they have an internal prototype which the few third-parties who've tested it consider mind-blowing even compared to OR's Crystal Cove. It might be the result of Ellsworth's work though

https://twitter.com/DaveOshry/statuses/423961443889717248 (Palmer is Palmer Luckey, founder and CEO of Oculus Rift)

https://twitter.com/TheDavidHensley/statuses/423591891171426... https://twitter.com/TheDavidHensley/statuses/423592847531466... (Tripwire, Killing Floor & Red Orchestra)

http://garry.tv/2014/01/16/steam-dev-days-day-1/ (Garry's Mod author)

http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1vc9gz/im_a_dev_that... (random schmuck who got to try it)

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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by Geee on Sunday January 19, 2014 @01:18PM (#7085278)
Jeri's CastAR glasses were Kickstarted: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/casta...

Really cool innovation in itself using retroreflectors and micro-projectors.

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Re:What VR could, should, and almost certainly will be withi... by teraflop on Saturday January 18, 2014 @11:26PM (#7083377)
According to the presentation, Valve sees tremendous value in VR, but doesn't necessarily want to be the one to develop the hardware themselves. What you describe sounds completely consistent with that.
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