Valve offers its SteamVR tracking tech to other devs

Third-party developers will soon be able to make use of SteamVR’s tracking abilities in their own virtual reality hardware, opening the doors for custom controllers for VR titles.

Valve has announced that it will offer royalty-free licences for the platform to hardware makers who complete an in-person training course. The tracking technology is the same as that used in the HTC Vive headset, and means devices can be tracked in 3D space, both in terms of position and orientation, by using a combination of a base station, sensors and a host – in other words, a PC.

"It’s critical to the future of the virtual reality ecosystem to open up the tracking technology to support the growth of a healthy portfolio of products that work together with HTC Vive," commented HTC VR VP Raymond Pao.

Head over to MCV’s sister site Develop for more information.