SteamVR Home Updates With Boxing Ring & Other Features

Published: September 25, 2017 11:40 AM /

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Steam VR Home Kitchen

SteamVR Home has updated and added a boxing ring, trophies, new furniture, and a number of other new features according to a news post on Steam.

Serving as a sort of launchpad for Steam's virtual reality endeavors, SteamVR Home was originally launched in beta in May 2017. It includes a customizable home, Steam Workshop integration, a customizable avatar, and a fully-functional menu for Valve's digital distribution service that allows you to launch games while in the program.

The first new addition is Trophies, physical doodads that represent games on your account. Trophies will gradually upgrade in appearance as you unlock achievements and craft badges. The objects can give you information about the game and act as a shortcut for launching it if you so choose.

A purely aesthetic addition is the ability to place your screenshots and artwork from games into the world itself. A player could take a screenshot of a particularly enthralling vista in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, load up SteamVR Home and hang it on the wall of their virtual home. The images can be moved, manipulated, or removed just as you could with any other object in the world. A slightly more interactive addition is Panels, which adds 2d Panels. In short, you can place segments of the UI like your Friends list or Recent Apps into the world and use them just as you would if you were viewing them on a screen.

Steam Audio has now been integrated into the app. This will allow users to play sounds in the game world (whether it's music, sound effects, or something else) and experience positional audio. For example, a radio on a shelf behind you would have the sound processed relative to your position in the world to make it seem as if it were actually behind you.

Lastly, a boxing ring environment has been created so you and a friend can duke it out in virtual reality. (Just be careful not to punch something in meatspace while you're re-enacting your favorite scene from Rocky III.) Other changes to the app include more furniture, increased visual fidelity on existing items, and improvements on the way props and furniture are positioned within the world. If you haven't yet experienced SteamVR Home, you'll need an HTC Vive and a Steam account to check it out for free.

What do you think of the latest additions to SteamVR Home? Do you make regular use of the features of the environment or do you use it as nothing more than a vehicle for launching games? Let us know in the comments below!

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A photograph of TechRaptor Senior Writer Robert N. Adams.
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One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I… More about Robert N