We heard about it last week, got it excited and now it's finally hear, but unfortunately it's a little underwhelming. Still, it's only been available for an hour or so, so hiccups are to be expected.
Yes Valve's Steam Virtual Reality mode is now available as a download and mode for anyone that has an Oculus Rift Devkit to try out. Theoretically it will work with standard displays, but all you'll be looking at is two images of the same thing, without the 3D.
For those that do want to try it out, you'll need to do the following:
1) Run Steam in the desktop client without the -vr option
2) Find "SteamVR" under "Tools" in your library. (If you don't have it installed, install it.)
3) Bring up properties on SteamVR and opt-in to the "Beta Update" beta. Let the update download.
4) Quit the Steam Client again and start it with -vr
When you do all that, what you'll see might not be as exciting as you hoped, but it is a first step. It's essentially like looking at the Big Picture UI, but in 3D. You get to look at the display as if it's a screen in a virtual room in the Rift. Hardly revolutionary, but it's a simple way of being able to jump between games without removing the Rift, which will be very useful when more games support it.
However, more people than not aren't even able to get the limited functionality discussed above. A lot of them get a black screen whilst others just see errors.
It's very early days though, so let's give it some time. I'm sure Valve will work out the kinks.
