Valve has officially confirmed that it is conducting a research into the domain of wearable computing. The confirmation means that Valve has joined the innovative club that includes Google's Project Glass as well as Nokia R&D.

The company's official was quick to clarify that a commercial product must not be expected any time soon. Valve's Managing Director Michael Abrash unveiled the research endeavours, determining to research the possible future of "Terminator vision" style wearable hardware devices that could map the route that Valve might pursue.

"What does a wearable UI look like, and how does it interact with wearable input? How does the computer know where you are and what you're looking at? When the human visual system sees two superimposed views, one real and one virtual, what will it accept and what will it reject? To what extent is augmented reality useful - and if it's useful, to what extent is it affordably implementable in the near future? What hardware advances are needed to enable the software?" reflected Michael Abrash.

With similar endeavours, Google spoke on its Project Glass earlier this month and stated that nothing physical must be expected right away. Abrash warned that what is in prospect is R&D that must not be expected to involve a product anytime at this stage of the innovative thrust and further clarified that there will be no tangible product based on this technology for a long while if ever. The official warned against grapevine on steam glasses and such announcements being made at E3.

As the Director warns, the thrust will be an inquiry into an exhilarating as well as promising space falling more fittingly in the category of research than development. Reflecting on the prospect from a technical perspective, Abrash stated that the launch of a physical wearable computing product may not be far looking at the long term prospects. "I'm pretty confident that platform shift will happen a lot sooner than 20 years - almost certainly within 10, but quite likely as little as 3-5, because the key areas - input, processing/power/size, and output - that need to evolve to enable wearable computing are shaping up nicely, although there's a lot still to be figured out" argued Abrash.

The lines of intent blend with what other computing wearables-components producers like Lumus have been articulating lately on the prospects of the release of a tangible product based on such innovation. Lumus has been talking around the same timelines and pointers are heightening the possibility of the availability of such a product in the market as soon as 2013. Valve could be tapping into the virgin domain of wearable computing as its identified inflection point in a pattern similar to Quake which has catapulted elements such as 3D graphics and networking into a computing reality.

(reported by Gugulethu Nyoni, edited by Dave Clark)