Evidence suggests Valve’s next XR controllers could include a D-pad and bumpers to act as a gamepad together too.
XR enthusiast Brad Lynch and his team of SteamVR dataminers have discovered a new Valve controller codenamed Roy in the code of SteamVR, including an OpenXR extension, strongly suggesting it’s a tracked controller, not a new Steam Controller.
Roy is almost certainly a reference to the antagonist of Blade Runner, matching the apparent codename of Valve’s next headset, Deckard, the movie’s protagonist.
Lynch says the combination of datamining and information from “sources” reveals that Roy will have “at least” a D-pad, bumpers, grip buttons, triggers, ABXY buttons, a system button, and some sort of strap.
Further, Lynch claims he was told by these sources that Roy seems to be “far along in productization”.
Valve Job Listing Confirms It’s Planning To Ship A New VR Headset
Valve posted a job listing to “prototype, ship, and support” a VR headset with advanced tracking features: At Valve, we are pushing the boundaries of virtual reality (VR) experiences. We are looking for versatile, self-directed software engineers in computer vision who can help us achieve the next steps in VR
Valve has repeatedly confirmed over the past three years that it’s working on a new headset.
In December 2021, well over a year after the launch of Index, Valve President Gabe Newell said the company was “making big investments in new headsets”.
In October 2022, Valve posted a job listing for a computer vision engineer to help “prototype, ship, and support” a VR headset for “millions of customers world-wide“, with inside-out tracking, camera passthrough, environment understanding, eye tracking, and hand tracking. And in December 2022 Valve product designer Greg Coomer told a Korean gaming news magazine the company has been “working on a new VR headset lately”, and that there are “several projects going on in-house”.
Most recently, in November last year Valve strongly hinted that the headset would focus on wireless streaming from your PC, something that previous datamining suggested too.
Here you go! Your datamine revealed the Valve Deckard “Roy’ controllers! pic.twitter.com/av10tPXmDx
— KnightMD (@KnightMD1) November 22, 2024
As for Deckard’s controllers, seemingly codenamed Roy, in 2022 Valve actually patented a controller with an IR LED tracking ring and Index-like straps, though no D-pad was visible.
Given that this patent was filed two years ago, it’s very possible Valve has iterated on the design since. Since Meta has delivered a low-cost ringless tracker, which makes their previous ringed controlers look out of date, it is hard to imagine Valve creating a controller that still features rings. Index will be six years old this June and Pico is following Quest 3. It seems that 2025 could actually be the year Valve launches its successor.