At one time it would’ve been hard to imagine Chet Faliszek – senior wit of Portal and Old Man Murray, project lead on the Left 4 Dead series – getting excited about submillimetre level tracking and low persistence panels. But hey, his work in VR is testament to Valve’s vaunted philosophy of letting staff work on whatever the hell they want. The writer conducted a ten-minute talk at Helsinki event Slush last week, and you can watch the thing in full, if you like.
“None of us know what the hell we are doing,” says Faliszek. “We’re still just scratching the surface of VR. We still haven’t found out what VR is, and that’s fine. We’ve been making movies in pretty much the same way for 100 years, TV for 60 years and videogames for 40.
“VR has only really been [in development] for about a year, so we’re at Pong level.”
What do you make of the Valve-endorsed HTC Vive?