A new hat will be offered to those who try out virtual reality

Mar 19, 2013 09:09 GMT  ·  By

The development team at Valve has announced that it is adding a new virtual reality mode, in experimental stage, to the Team Fortress 2 first-person multiplayer shooter via an update set to arrive on the PC later during the week.

All those who own the Developer Kit version of Oculus Rift, which has now shipped, will be able to play all the game modes and all the classes using the Virtual Reality settings.

Those who activate it will also get access to a new and unique Oculus Rift hat which will show other players that they are using virtual reality to enjoy the game.

Joe Ludwig, a Valve representative, is quoted by Kotaku as saying that, “When we first played an early version of Virtual Reality mode in Team Fortress we were blown away by the immersion we experienced. VR is just getting started, but it is going to have a big impact on gaming.”

When the Oculus Rift was first revealed by the hardware team via Kickstarter, some saw it as the next evolution in gaming immersion, more important than the Kinect motion-tracking system from Microsoft or the PlayStation Move from Sony.

Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR Inc., adds, “Valve's done an incredible job bringing Team Fortress 2 to virtual reality! TF2 is the most-played game in my Steam library, so you can imagine how excited I am to play it in the Rift with all of our backers.”

Valve is keen to push PC gaming tech forward and has its own hardware division, which is supposed to start beta testing its own equipment, including a much rumored Steam Box, later during the year.

Team Fortress 2 is heavily played and the developer delivers constant updates to balance the experience and add new content, with more than 250 patches launched since the game was first available.