Virtual reality coming soon?
It seems a few people at Valve spent the past year trying to get Team Fortress 2 working on virtual reality goggles. At the Game Developers Conference, Valve will explains some of the lessons learned from the experience.
According to the session description for “What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality,” Valve have something to say about creating an experience that feels truly 3-D: “Topics covered include an overview of what stereo support entails, rendering 2D user interface in a 90 degree field of view display, dealing with view models and other rendering shortcuts, and how mouselook can interact with head tracking in a first person shooter.”
The other talk — “‘Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going)” — seems more focused on the future of virtual reality: “This talk will look at one such discrepancy in some detail, review a laundry list of such issues, and discuss one possible roadmap by which augmented and virtual reality might eventually achieve their full potential.”
Both talks seem fairly optimistic about virtual reality. Whether that means a virtual reality version of Team Fortress 2 is around the corner is anyone’s guess. It’s definitely possible Valve were messing with the technology for experiment, not distribution. Still, it would be fascinating to witness the virtual reality technology first-hand, even if it’s not the most practical way to play Team Fortress 2.
It’s not surprising Valve, known for their egalitarian, innovative corporate structure, are trying new ideas. But it’s nice they’re willing to share their lessons learned from experimenting with virtual reality with the rest of the public. In a highly competitive market, most companies would probably keep all their secrets to themselves.
What do you guys think? Is virtual reality around the corner? Do you have any interest in virtual reality? Make sure to comment below.
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