On the heels of its staggered Steam Deck rollout, Valve may have spilled the beans on its next iteration of PC hardware, an all-new Valve VR headset, in the form of an official patent filing. The imaged device draws parallels to a rumored AMD-powered wireless headset that was floated about in Sept. of last year, a Valve standalone VR headset codenamed "Deckhard."
Filed all the way back in Dec. of last year under the US Patent & Trademark Office, Valve's new patent is titled a "Head Mounted Display" that has no wires in any of its depictions. It shares features with its predecessor, the Valve Index, such as the rear knob and speakers. But the patent on this Valve VR headset isn't necessarily geared toward the actual hardware as it is the adjustment variations within the strapping apparatus.
"The harness may couple to a rear housing disposed at the back of the [Head Mounted Display]," reads the patent filing, referring to the potential of the long-awaited Valve standalone VR headset. "The rear housing may accommodate various computing components of the HMD."
In addition to drawing attention to the potential standalone aspect behind this patent, Valve also seemingly outs itself on the wireless PC capabilities that could be integrated into the device. The patent adds that "In some instance, the images may be output by an application of computing device communicatively coupled to the HMD," which adds weight to the rumored Deckhard Valve VR headset forwarded by a friend of YouTuber Brad Lynch.
The creator first highlighted the potential of a Valve standalone VR headset when citing his friend's findings within the Steam VR folders. Lynch's friend came forth with the codename 'Deckhard' proof of concept hidden in a lighthouse driver file, specifically in regards to input profile settings. In a YouTube video posted on Sept. 27, Lynch states that "Valve had been retooling the Deckhard to work with Steam VR for the past year."
It's unclear if this specific patent is, in fact, the proof of concept Deckhard device, but according to Ars Technica, Valve is currently working on two VR headsets. One is said to be a more PC-necessary Valve VR controller with tracking capabilities, whereas the other is intended to be this so-called standalone system. For its part, the Steam Deck has been touted by Valve president Gabe Newell himself as a "stepping stone" to high-performance standalone VR.
Valve first released its Index in 2019 for $999. It remains a staple in the space, featuring the best tracking and audio quality, and was marked as the second most used headset on Steam in Oct. Valve and VR go hand-in-hand in a way, proven most prominently in the release of Half-Life Alyx, but given the still-ongoing chip shortage and its outgoing shipments of the Steam Deck plaguing logistics, it's difficult to see them ramping up mass production on a new Valve standalone VR headset anytime in the near future.
