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.
This would be a dream feature for me as even many flat games become so much more visually impressive and immersive experiences when you are able to look at them in real 3D. Currently you can get a decent number of games displayed this way if you have a stereoscopy-capable device but it’s just a royal PITA that involves lots of fiddling with config so having that be easy on very comfortable hardware like the Frame would be game-changing as far as I am concerned.
Finally, I can throw away my red/blue glasses and play Rad Racer for the NES the way it was meant to be played.
This was a thing for a bit in the Xbox 360 era, but disappeared as quickly as it appeared. Wasn’t there some Nvidia thing that also tried to do this on PC?
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_3D_Vision
Allowed it with any DirectX game apparently.
It is a shame 3D Vision was phased away by Nvidia. I feel like it would have a better chance of success now that many people have VR headsets and no-glasses 3D monitors are starting to appear.
Only thing VR related I’ve wanted in a long time.
VR is also flat…
Have you not experienced stereoscopic 3D before? Every VR game I’ve played is using stereoscopic 3D, which is why we differentiate regular games as being “flat”.
I’m well aware. My reply was meant to be a joke, because VR is displayed on flat displays (ok maybe curved a bit).
Maybe use a tone-tag next time. These kinds of jokes can be hard to identify in text form.
You have a point. I also fell sometimes for jokes, because I think they were meant seriously. BTelling people its a joke is kind of not funny. But I get your point and will try to make sure its clear next time.
FWIW, I didn’t get it at first but found it funny after reading the comment where you explained it.
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.
Did this with Reshade playing that Radiohead Amnesia Exhibition thing and Marvel’s Insomniac’s PS4 Spider-Man on PC. It was great!
