Valve this week released the SteamVR 1.23 update which brings with it a new set of bugs.

Dead bugs, that is. The latest update to SteamVR includes a curious addition… a new SteamVR Home destination that includes CT scans of dead bugs “found lying on the ground” outside of Valve’s office.

The company explains:

A CT scan involves passing X-rays through a subject at different angles—captured data is then processed with a computer to generate a 3D voxel grid representing density at each point. These scans were produced using an industrial CT scanner capable of extremely high resolution scans—gigabytes of voxel data being converted into simpler 3D models capable of being rendered in real-time on your GPU.

If you’d like to see the dead bugs for yourself, subscribe to Valve’s ‘CT Scans’ home environment here.

The rest of the SteamVR 1.23 update has a handful of figurative bug fixes, improvements to OpenXR, and some small Quest 2 tweaks said to “reduced controller position jitter,” and “improve the Quest 2’s grip trigger animation.”

Dead bugs are cool and all, but it certainly doesn’t bolster confidence that Valve is taking VR very seriously at the moment. Similar to the last SteamVR update back in May, which added another new SteamVR Home environment, the dead bug update strikes us as the hobby project of a single Valve employee.

The company has been making slow improvements to the SteamVR interface and continued to work on the platform’s OpenXR support; but otherwise it has been extremely quiet about any future plans for VR games, hardware, store improvements, or native SteamVR versions of core Steam features like friends list, voice chats, a fully functional store and library, achievements, and more.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • XRC

    Valve super busy with Steamdeck, it’s a small company with limited manpower resources, there’s only so much time in the day!

    Bought another Index in January, after having a chat with some friendly people, no complaints thoroughly enjoying myself…

    • My Index has become the go-yo headset for me this past year – it just works, no hassles or tinkering.

      • ViRGiN

        i use my index as doorstopper.
        as one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest headsets on the market, it does it’s job remarkably well.

  • ViRGiN

    LOL! Who would have ever thought monopoly corporation is only interesting in selling software of all kind, shovelware or not, asset flip or not, 1 dollar meme game or not; instead of investing and collaborating on various open-source standards for the next future personal computing platform?

    “buy your games on steam so when you change headsets, you don’t “LoOsE” your access”

    It’s been clear for years that anyone sane will switch to Meta sooner than later; unless you are that kind of guy like the one below, buying 3 year old index and being happy with it.

    • Bruh

      Valve puts 3d bugs into steamvr and this man thinks that means people are going to loose their games.

    • Anonymous

      As much as I always find blaming FB for everything and hating the Quest for the sake of it dumb, this is just another breed of stupid.

      • ViRGiN

        we are anonymous, we are legion

        • vancleefmustache

          I mean, you get that just because you change your name from Anonymous to something else, you are still anonymous. Unless your name really is VIRGIN. In that case, carry on.

          • ViRGiN

            username checks out

          • Bruh

            You talking about yourself?

          • ViRGiN

            bruh whaaa?

          • Bruh

            It’s just a little ironic for you to tell someone “username checks out” is all

          • ViRGiN

            no it’s not. for some reason it is you having some extremely negative connotation to the word ‘virgin’

    • flappy

      FB’s meta will be cancer, just like FB. new name doesnt change any of that but they seem to have tricked you by it.

    • Boom244

      homeboy saw Valve putting CT scans in SteamVR and went full schizo

      • ViRGiN

        stop getting triggered you gaben footrest

  • Sven Viking

    So what else is new?

    • ViRGiN

      New shovelware. What did you expect?

  • WTF

  • Ookami

    Lol waht?

  • VR5

    Well now this time I definitely did that first/before Valve. The Puny Climber got bug infested with its October update last year already.

  • Rudl Za Vedno

    Brave new world. It seems like Stream doesn’t give a flying F about VR anymore and Meta cancer has metastasized fully, effectively killing PCVR gaming industry in it’s infant state. What we get instead of “Ready Player One” dream, founders of Oculus dreamed of, is “bugs” and shallow XR2 games for children :( https://media0.giphy.com/media/zbgeBSyaDPUvFmLsDu/giphy.gif

    • NL_VR

      Just hold on its about to “explode”

  • Ad

    An update a few days later added a function where controllers from any headset can run in compatibility mode as any other headset. Pico as Touch, for example.