Valve Deckard Release Date: VR Headset To Beat Meta Quest 3 Could Be Here Soon
With hardware from Apple, Sony, Meta and HTC, the world of VR headsets is growing apace. One of the most looked forward to is the next device from Valve, whose new model is expected this year and could be the most powerful headset for VR gaming. But a new rumor suggests it could be sooner than that.
Meta Quest 3: when will Valve's new VR headset arrive?
Code-named Valve Deckard (which arguably gives it the best name of any VR headset to start with), the first leaks happened in 2021. A new report from Tech Radar suggests that the late 2025 release date could be brought forward.
'New details from SadlyItsBradley – a source of several VR hardware leaks in the past – suggest that Valve could be steaming ahead with production, as the company has been importing the equipment needed to manufacture VR headset facial interfaces,' it says.
That doesn't sound like the headset will arrive in the coming weeks, of course, but the same source says that Valve has 'received new facial interfaces (not machinery),' which at least indicate that the Deckard is progressing as there's not much else such equipment could be used for.
More recently, experimental ARM container tools were announced for Steam and an unreleased beta was found to contain a Linux SteamVR Link driver.
All of which is exciting, though as the specialist site, isvalvedeckardout.com, which displays the word NO in a huge font, says, nothing is certain.
'Valve's reputation for 'Valve Time' (prioritizing product quality over deadlines) means the actual release could differ from these projections. The company has never officially confirmed Deckard's existence, despite substantial evidence from code, patents, and reliable third-party reports,' it points out.
In which case, we'll all be grateful whenever it arrives.
If there was any doubt about the codename, Is Valve Deckard Out explains it: 'The codename 'Deckard' is widely believed to reference Rick Deckard from Blade Runner, following Valve's sci-fi naming pattern (with companion 'Roy' controllers named after Roy Batty from the same film)' it says.
In case you don't know, Valve Software was founded in 1996 and its debut game Half-Life, changed everything. I played it then and still play it now.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
an hour ago
- Forbes
HBM And Emerging Memory Technologies Enable AI Training And Inference
AI During congressional hearing in the House of Representatives' Energy & Commerce Committee Subcommittee of Communication and Technology, Ronnie Vasishta, Senior VP of telecom at Nvidia said that mobile networks will be called upon to support a new kind of traffic—AI traffic. This AI traffic includes the delivery of AI services to the edge, or inferencing at the edge. Such growth in AI data could reverse the general trend towards lower growth in traffic on mobile networks. Many AI-enabled applications will require mobile connectivity including autonomous vehicles, smart glasses, generative AI services and many other applications. He said that the transmission of this massive increase in data needs to be resilient, fit for purpose, and secure. Supporting this creation of data from AI will require large amount of memory, particularly very high bandwidth memory, such as HBM. This will result in great demand for memory that supports AI applications. Micron announced that it is now shipping HBM4 memory to key customers, these are for early qualification efforts. The Micron HBM4 provides up to 2.0TB/s bandwidth and 24GB capacity per 12-high die stack. The company says that their HBM4 uses its 1-beta DRAM node, advanced through silicon via technologies, and has a highly capable built-in self-test. See image below. Micron HBM4 Memory HBM memory consisting of stacks of DRAM die with massively parallel interconnects to provide high bandwidth are combined GPU's such as those from Nvidia. This memory close to the processor allows training and inference of various AI models. The current generation of HBM memory used in current GPUs use HBM3e memory. At the 2025 March GTC in San Jose, Jensen Huang said that Micron HBM memory was being used in some of their GPU platforms. The manufacturers of HBM memories are SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron with SK Hynix and Samsung providing the majority of supply and with Micron coming in third. SK hynix was the first to announce HBM memory in 2013, which was adopted as an industry standard by JEDEC that same year. Samsung followed in 2016 and in 2020 Micron said that it would create its own HBM memory. All of these companies expect to be shipping HBM4 memories in volume by sometime in 2026. Numen, a company involved in magnetic random access memory applications, recently talked about how traditional memories used in AI applications, such as DRAM and SRAM have limitations in power, bandwidth and storage density. They said that processing performance has skyrocketed by 60,000X over the past 20 years but DRAM bandwidth has improved only 100X, creating a 'memory wall.' The company says that its AI Memory Engine is a highly configurable memory subsystem IP that enables significant improvements in power efficiency, performance, intelligence, and endurance. This is not only for Numem's MRAM-based architecture, but also third-party MRAMs, RRAM, PCRAM, and Flash Memory. Numem said that it has developed next-generation MRAM supporting die densities up to 1GB which can deliver SRAM-class performance with up to 2.5X higher memory density in embedded applications and 100X lower standby power consumption. The company says that its solutions are foundry-ready and production-capable today. Coughlin Associates and Objective Analysis in their Deep Look at New Memories report predict that AI and other memory-intensive applications, including the use of AI inference in embedded devices such as smart watches, hearing aids and other applications are already using MRAM, RRAM and other emerging memory technologies will decrease the costs and increase production of these memories. These memories technologies are already available from major semiconductor foundries. They scale to smaller lithographic scaling that DRAM and SRAM and because they are non-volatile, no refreshes are needed and so they consume less power. As a result, these memories allow more memory capacity and lower power consumption in space and power constrained environments. MRAM and RRAM are also being built into industrial, enterprise and data center applications. The figure below shows our projections for replacement of traditional memories, SRAM, DRAM, NOR and NAND Flash memory by these emerging memories. NOR and SRAM, in particular, for embedded memories are projected to be replaced by these new memories within the next decade as part of a future $100B memory market. Projected replacement of conventional memories with new memories AI will generate increased demand for memory to support training and inference. It will also increase the demand for data over mobile networks. This will drive demand for HBM memory but also increase demand for new emerging memory technologies.
Associated Press
an hour ago
- Associated Press
LA sports celebrities anticipate World Cup's arrival, hope political climate has cooled by then
LOS ANGELES (AP) — When the 2026 World Cup begins across North America one year from this week, sports figures from across Los Angeles are hoping the global soccer community will find the U.S. both inspiring and welcoming. The Fox network marked the one-year milestone Wednesday night with a big party at its studio lot in Century City. Attendees included everyone from 'Ted Lasso' star Jason Sudeikis to luminaries from every corner of the sports world in the nation's second-largest metropolitan area, including Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh. 'I remember when the World Cup was here in the '90s, and then obviously what our American women's team did to win the World Cup (in 1999),' Harbaugh said. 'So yeah, I love sports, I love competition, and I think it's going to be incredible for our state, our city, our country. The vibe is going to be incredible to just have everybody here. I'm looking for another explosion of soccer — football — in America.' The attendees all expressed excitement about the return of the world's premier soccer tournament to the U.S. while acknowledging the uncertainty of whether the nation's fraught political climate could present significant challenges to the teams, the World Cup organizers and even the network that will broadcast the tournament domestically. 'I'm hoping this game can bring people together,' said former LA Galaxy midfielder Cobi Jones, a three-time World Cup veteran and the U.S. men's career leader in appearances. 'That's what we really want. We're talking about the travel bans and all that, I'm hoping that FIFA can work together with our government to find a way that everyone can be here, everyone can enjoy this sport, because it's a cultural event that's happening here in a year. I expect everyone from around the world to be able to come here and enjoy it.' Los Angeles is in the midst of several days of protests against intensified immigration raids across the nation that could cause international fans to wonder whether they can travel to the tournament safely. President Donald Trump's latest expansive travel ban has raised questions about whether some soccer fans will be able to visit at all. 'I think it will get figured out,' Harbaugh said. 'To quote the late, great Tom Petty, most things I worry about don't end up happening anyway.' Jones also preached caution for U.S. fans already fretting about the dismal state of their national team. Coach Mauricio Pochettino's squad is on its first four-game losing streak since 2007 after getting thrashed 4-0 by Switzerland on Tuesday in its final tune-up for the CONCACAF Gold Cup. 'We don't panic right now,' Jones said. 'Talk to me when we're a month out. I've seen from experience that with a year out from the World Cup, the team is going to completely change (in the interim). So for me, it's all about a general sense of whether they can come together as a team, because it's not about the individuals. We've seen it so many times.' ___ AP soccer:
Washington Post
an hour ago
- Washington Post
Two musical revolutionaries, Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, leave life's stage nearly simultaneously
Sometimes there are strange symmetries in death, as in life. The twin passings of Sly Stone and Brian Wilson this week brought that into sharp relief. Both were musical geniuses who paid a high price for their gifts. They burned bright, with art they created at their peaks that became more moving and meaningful with time, only to see their creative lights extinguished suddenly through mental health and addiction issues. Both were 82 when they died — Stone on Monday and Wilson on Wednesday. 'It's such an unsettling coincidence,' said Anthony DeCurtis, contributing editor at Rolling Stone. 'These two figures, they were very different and massively influential, and each ran into a wall of their own problems in many ways. As much as they achieved, it's hard not to think that they could have done more.' With his late brothers Carl and Dennis, Beach Boys co-founder Wilson was the architect of the California sound that captured surfing and sun, beaches and girls. Yet for all the 'Fun, Fun, Fun,' there was something much deeper and darker in Brian's abilities as a composer. It was more than disposable music for teen-agers. He had an unparalleled melodic sense, hearing sounds in his mind that others couldn't. He could worm his way into your head and then break your heart with songs like 'In My Room' and 'God Only Knows.' The tour de force 'Good Vibrations' —- had anyone ever heard of the theremin before he employed its unearthly wail? — is a symphony both complex and easily accessible. 'He was our American Mozart,' musician Sean Ono Lennon wrote on social media. The 1966 album 'Pet Sounds' was a peak. Wilson felt a keen sense of competition with the Beatles. But they had three writers, including Sean's dad, John Lennon. Wilson was largely alone, and he heard impatience and doubt from other Beach Boys, whose music he provided. He felt the pressure in trying to follow up 'Pet Sounds,' and 'Smile' became music's most famous unfinished album. Wilson, a damaged soul to begin with because of an abusive father, never reached the heights again. He descended into a well-chronicled period of darkness. Stone's skills came in creating a musical world that others only dreamed of at the time. The Family Stone was an integrated world — Black and white, men and women — and the music they created was a potent mixture of rock, soul and funk. It made you move, it made you think. For a period of time from 1967 to 1973, their music was inescapable — 'Dance to the Music,' 'Everybody is a Star,' 'Higher,' 'Hot Fun in the Summertime,' 'Sing a s Simple Song,' 'Family Affair,' 'Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).' Their performance at Woodstock was a milestone. 'His songs weren't just about fighting injustice, they were about transforming the self to transform the world,' musician and documentarian Questlove, who lovingly tended to Stone's legacy, wrote this week. 'He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths. His work looked straight at the brightest and darkest parts of life and demanded we do the same.' From his peak, the fall was hard. Years of drug abuse took its toll. Periodic comeback attempts deepened a sense of bewilderment and pity. Music is littered with stories of sudden, untimely and early deaths. Yet until this week, both men lived on, somewhat improbably passing average life expectancies. Wilson, by many measures, achieved some level of peace late in life. He had a happy marriage. He was able to see how his music was revered and appreciated and spent several years performing it again with a younger band that clearly worshiped him. It was a postscript not many knew, said journalist Jason Fine, who befriended Wilson and made the 2021 documentary, 'Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road.' 'That sort of simple message he really wanted to give people through his music going back to the '60s — a sense of warmth, a sense that it's going to be OK in the same way that music lifted him up from his darkness, he'd try to do for other people,' Fine told The Associated Press in an interview then. 'I think now, more than earlier in his career, he accepts that he does that and that's a great comfort to him.' Stone emerged to write an autobiography in 2023. But less is known about his later years, whether he found peace or died without the full knowledge of what his music meant to others. 'Yes, Sly battled addiction,' Questlove wrote. 'Yes, he disappeared from the spotlight. But he lived long enough to outlast many of his disciples, to feel the ripples of his genius return through hip-hop samples, documentaries and his memoir. Still, none of that replaces the raw beauty of his original work.' Did Sly Stone and Brian Wilson live lives of tragedy or triumph? It's hard to say now. One suspects it will become easier with the passage of time, when only the work remains. That sometimes brings clarity. 'Millions of people had their lives changed by their music,' DeCurtis said. 'Not just enjoyed it, but had their lives transformed. That's quite an accomplishment.' ___ David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at and .
