Valve has experimented with virtual reality for years, but the is the first anyone outside the company and its tight-knit circles have seen of its efforts. It's an impressive piece of kit, featuring a high-res, independent display for each eye, and a chassis that's packed with sensors to monitor your movements so that they can be replicated in VR. It's a great VR headset, but so are the Oculus Rift and Sony Morpheus, which have seen great improvements over the last year. Yet, after my demo during GDC this week, I can say one thing with certainty: Valve has taken the lead in the VR arms race.

VR isn't just about the headset, because for a VR system to work its magic, it needs to account for more than just what you see and where your head is. For a VR experience to truly shine, you need to be able to move and interact with your surroundings. Granted, I've experienced these capabilities on both Oculus Rift and Morpheus, but Valve's solution to these problems is far and away the best yet.

Valve set me up in an empty room about 15' x 15' in size. I was handed a belt in order to secure the Vive's cables to my waist, rather than having them pull down on the headset as I moved around the room. The Vive was placed on my head, and for a moment, I stared at a white landscape with pillars surrounding me, bobbing slightly in place. I began to walk around, and the pillars moved out of my way. Then the person running the demo told me to look down. There were one-handed, virtual controllers on either side of me. When he told me to grab them, I did so with ease, because they were exactly where my brain expected them to be.

Similar to Sony's Move controllers, Valve's prototype VR controller features positional tracking, but that's where the similarities end. It's closer to a Wii nunchuck than a Move controller, just larger and flatter. Where you would find the analog stick on a Wii nunchuck, Valve has placed a large touch-sensitive pad on the front, a trigger in the back, and two buttons on either side that you activate by tightening your grip on the controller. They're comfortable and simple; everything a controller should be.

Valve's VR demos aren't a far cry from what I've seen before, but the hardware component coupled with the small touches in the demos was what sold me. I was able to move in a relatively large area and explore my surroundings, intuitively interact with objects, fall into a trance as I created color and shapes out of thin air, and revel in my ineptitude as I floundered in the world of robots and AI. Yes, the HTC Vive is a great VR headset, and Valve's controllers felt great, but it's the marriage of all of that tech with thoughtfully designed software that really sold me on Valve's flavor of VR. Valve has a reputation as the PC gamer's company, which is probably because they listen to their users and respond in line. If they manage to deliver what I experienced today before any of the competition catches up, both on a hardware and software level, it's going to be hard for anyone, Oculus or otherwise, to topple the current king of the hill.