Valve’s Team Fortress 2 Gets the Virtual Reality Treatment with Oculus Rift Headset

Prepare to swoon, lovers of virtual reality gaming: Valve’s Team Fortress 2 is getting a virtual reality mode that supports Oculus Rift VR headset, and it’s coming this week. TF2 has long been a sort of experimental playground for Valve, so adding this VR Mode is par for the course. What’s most notable about the update to the game, however, is that there’s already working hardware to use with it.

Granted, Oculus Rift specs aren’t widely available yet, but dev kits abound; anyone lucky enough to have one can strap them on and go wild in TF2, playing in first-person mode. Valve is hungry for the feedback about the VR gaming experience, and the company is investing substantial manpower in the partnership.

Oculus Rift

The Oculus Rift headset itself has some industrial design ahead of it, as the unit looks very much like a clunky prototype. However, it works, and that’s good enough for most people right now.

Team Fortress 2

"When we first played an early version of Virtual Reality mode in Team Fortress we were blown away by the immersion we experienced," said Valve’s Joe Ludwig in a statement. "VR is just getting started, but it is going to have a big impact on gaming. This update will let us share that experience with more of the Team Fortress community."