2w ago

Valve looking into 3D support for flat games on Steam Frame

www.roadtovr.com Valve: Steam Frame Doesn't Support Stereoscopic Rendering of Flat Games but the Feature is "on our list"

Valve says that Steam Frame won’t be able to display traditional (‘flat’) games in stereoscopic 3D at launch, but they are looking into the feature for future development. The News The announcement of Steam Frame came with a lot of info but equally as many unanswered questions. One thing on my mind ...

Valve spokesperson told Road to VR that they're not promising to support stereoscopic 3D for flat games but they are looking into it.

The company further said it’s considering a system-level implementation that could display any stereoscopic 3D content, whether it’s stereoscopically rendered games, videos, or photos. Should the stereoscopic 3D feature be built, Valve told me it would “be our goal” to be able to display such content when streamed from a PC or rendered directly on the headset itself.

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One thing on my mind is whether or not the headset will be able to render flat games in stereoscopic 3D (assuming the game supports it). A Valve spokesperson told me that such a feature doesn’t currently exist, but the company is looking into it.
Should the stereoscopic 3D feature be built, Valve told me it would “be our goal” to be able to display such content when streamed from a PC or rendered directly on the headset itself.
I also asked if the company was exploring any technology to automatically convert flat Steam games into stereoscopic output for viewing in 3D on Frame; unfortunately Valve said it isn’t something they’re currently looking into.
Only way I can make these seemingly contradictory statements make sense is if they're saying they will display content, but not that they can make a non 3d game into 3d ( like 3dsen is doing to NES games ).
That doesn't seem like "3d support for flat games" unless I'm missing something...
- Making something like 3dsen is a much more difficult task than being able to display a game that is using a 3d engine and so would generally be fundamentally capable of providing a stereoscopic view. That said, most of them currently don't offer it anyway and it's still not quite zero effort to add such a capability.
  It does seem like Valve are saying they want to let you view a game in a stereoscopic 3D if the game has support for it built-in already so it would be 3d support for flat games (meaning games primarily made to be run on a screen) but only if the game has support for it. That's good but does mean there's still a need for either developers or 3rd parties to make the changes needed for it to function.

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