If any company is moving forward with VR technology, it’s going to be Valve. Today Valve announced The Lab, a set of VR experiments set in the world of Portal. The Lab will immerse players in the Aperture Science laboratory and run experiments with VR technology. The Lab is not so much a full game but rather a tech demo of what VR technology can do.
The Lab will release on Steam later this spring for free and will show off the capabilities of the HTC Vive, the $800 virtual reality headset. Valve will officially debut The Lab at The Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco on March 14th.
This isn’t the first time Valve has experimented with VR. The SteamVR Performance Test was released last month and tests if your computer is capable of the HTC Vive. Interestingly enough, the Steam VR Performance Test also puts players in the Aperture Science labs. The world of Portal seems like a great setting to test out VR technology, although GLaDOS trying to kill you might be more scary than funny in Virtual Reality.