Roughly a year and a half after moving from the computer monitor to the TV with Big Picture mode, Valve has transitioned its Steam interface to head-mounted displays this week, launching SteamVR on the beta version of its popular game distribution client.

As noted in the newly launched SteamVR section of the Steam Community website, users with a head-mounted display like the Oculus Rift Developers Kit can launch the SteamVR mode by downloading the beta client and then adding the "-vr" option to the command line launcher. One beta user told Road to VR that the mode projects "a giant floating curved screen in front of you" complete with head tracking that suffers "a little bit of lag."

The new interface comes ahead of Steam's "Dev Days" gathering of developers starting on Wednesday. That conference includes a number of sessions on virtual reality development and how it relates to Steam in particular. In one session, Valve VR guru Michael Abrash will discuss and demonstrate Valve's own VR headset prototype, which the company feels will be ready for market "in a couple of years." Abrash and company have teased Valve-developed AR glasses and VR head-mounted displays in the past.

Last month, Valve started highlighting games with explicit VR support in the Steam interface. The BBC also reported last week that Valve was "days away" from releasing its own SDK for VR game development, further demonstrating the company's interest in the platform.