Microsoft is planning to make a preview of its SteamVR integration available on Nov. 15.
The preview should make hundreds of VR apps available on Steam playable on headsets from Acer, Lenovo, HP, Dell and Samsung. So far, Microsoft has only offered access to developers through closed access to a Steam app.
We recently reviewed the Acer VR headset and found it lacking in the content department, so this feature could have a huge effect on sales as manufacturers just started shipping headsets to early adopters. Microsoft is launching the feature as a “preview”, which suggests it won’t be finalized and we’ve not heard an official launch date for the finished functionality.
We previously heard from Valve’s how this integration will work:
Microsoft is providing an OpenVR driver that allows SteamVR to automatically identify Windows MR hardware. From a consumer’s experience, this should allow SteamVR titles to ‘just work’ on these devices. On the dev side it is also possible for developers to tune their application for specific aspects of the headsets and/or for the Windows MR controllers.
