SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode Lets You Play Any Game In VR

[Megalith]

Valve is working on a solution for those of you who want to play non-VR titles on their Vive or Oculus. It sounds like it’s just another virtual cinema mode, though.

Valve today confirmed that SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode is in early beta and that the company would show it off for the first time at GDC 2016 next week. The mode is a bridge that allows games not made for VR to be played inside a virtual environment in a sort of virtual home theater with a huge display. The company says SteamVR Desktop Theater Mode will support the HTC Vive “and others,” which we presume to mean ‘any headset that SteamVR supports’ which is currently the Vive and Oculus Rift.

 

[DPI]

Inb4 "porn"

 

[Dr. Righteous]

This kind of like the software 3D "conversion" hack that has been around forever for games and videos.

All it does it it puts an outer frame around the game or video and makes the playback look set back from the frame giving it a fake depth.

 

[tetris42]

This kind of like the software 3D "conversion" hack that has been around forever for games and videos.

All it does it it puts an outer frame around the game or video and makes the playback look set back from the frame giving it a fake depth.

That's kind of lame then. I want to see more games converted to actual stereoscopic 3D. Nvidia was supposed to add VR support to any 3D vision with their "auto stereo" feature, but they've been quit on that for a year and a half.

 

[Nenu]

This kind of like the software 3D "conversion" hack that has been around forever for games and videos.

All it does it it puts an outer frame around the game or video and makes the playback look set back from the frame giving it a fake depth.

What makes you believe they are using a 3D hack rather than rendering from 2 different view points?

 

[B00nie]

Virtual glasses such as Vuzix's have been able to play regular 3D games stereoscopic for years already. All it takes is a special driver.

 

[nvgrim]

Virtual glasses such as Vuzix's have been able to play regular 3D games stereoscopic for years already. All it takes is a special driver.

shitty steroscopic 3d is a little different than VR....

 

[B00nie]

shitty steroscopic 3d is a little different than VR....

It's far from shitty when you can have 6 degrees of freedom movement and ability to look around in flight/car simulators for example. Which is about the only thing I would imagine I would want to use VR for.