Report: Valve's experimental Dota 2 virtual reality experiences lets users spectate in first-person

Valve's experimental Dota 2 virtual reality experiences lets users view a game on a tabletop or spectate the action in first-person, according to an attendee at the Boston VR Bender, where a new development prototype of Valve's virtual reality helmet made an appearance.

"Talking with the Valve guys about that Portal office experience, they mentioned offhandedly that they have a Dota 2 VR experience where you see the entire game arena sitting on a table in front of you and can bend down to inspect any piece of the action," Reddit user jonomf wrote. "I really, really want to see that. They also mentioned a life-size Dota 2 VR experience where you're hanging out in a lane watching the heroes fight; they said it was very scary."

The headset shown at the Steam Dev Days earlier this year reportedly featured two 1080p OLED panels in portrait mode with a 90Hz+ refresh rate and an onboard camera to read augmented reality trackers on walls for positional tracking. The VR Headset demoed at the Boston VR Bender, currently underway, sports an external casing with white IR-reflective dots and a desk mounted camera to track the spots. According to the Valve developers in attendance, the portable units are kept on their desks for convenient testing and are not a sign of a discontinuation of AR-covered The Room method.

Valve reportedly stated during the Steam Dev Days that it believes consumer-ready virtual technology invested by the company is another two years away. The company marked Oculus as "the obvious candidate" to ship Valve-invested VR tech. Valve collaborated with Oculus on the tracking for the Crystal Cove prototype headset and will continue to work with the company.

Former Valve developer Michael Abrash recently joined Oculus VR as Chief Scientist to work on the virtual reality headset technology. He took up employment with Oculus because he could see that great VR is "clearly within reach," and now he "fully expects to spend the rest of [his] career pushing VR as far ahead as [he] can."