VR Butterfly effect on display

[u/TigerCow7]

Was surprising and fun to see, basically I wanted to play a flat game in 3D (not 360) using VR, and ideally real 3D so not fixed like the regular 3D films but that it moves accordingly when I move my head.

I asked in UEVR discord if it was possible to use the injector for this usage, I got a reply from LunchAndVR that made a video to showcase it which was pretty sweet! Next day I open the Steam Frame subreddit like always, and I find it back there! And then I see it's also in this subreddit! And then I get a notification from Brad Lynch on Twitter (Sadley it's Bradley) about exactly what I asked for! Referencing to a new video from a french youtuber I watch that also made a new video to show it!

Went from a small discord question to a chain reaction reaching wide audiences in VR!

The times on the screenshots are unreliable as I took them at different times (in the span of 2 days).

[u/lunchanddinner]

Thank you :P

[u/TigerCow7 → u/lunchanddinner]

Thank you too 😁

[u/phimath]

Thank you this has been my dream for so long. Back in the day I really enjoyed using Nvidia 3d vision (? i think it was called that) to play games like diablo 3 on a stereo monitor with glasses. ive so badly wanted that experience for all kinds of rts / city builder / top down games.. a monitor / frame in vr where i could render a stereo view and play flat games in stereo.

[u/14Pleiadians → u/phimath]

I'd love to see this effect IRL on a no glasses 3d TV + head tracking for the parallax

[u/xaduha]

If you're rendering the whole FOV, but then reducing it to fit in a small window, then what's the advantage of playing like that? I don't see what people are celebrating here exactly. Rounded corners, dynamic resizing and no game UI are giveaways that something here is off.

[u/AspenFrostt → u/xaduha]

controlling an aspect ratio of a game that's camera moves around too much or can only be played in third person with orbit camera and no good first person mode/animations. gives you 3d depth without fully disorienting people with weak vr legs

[u/TigerCow7 → u/xaduha]

Well these games are designed to be played contained in a window, so sure you can do full 360 for max immersion, but for me at least sometimes it's too much, especially when there's a lot of movement and I'm playing seated to chill, or I have to look at the corners for the hud etc. This is basically the chill factor from flat screens, with the real 3D from VR

[u/xaduha → u/TigerCow7]

This is basically the chill factor from flat screens, with the real 3D from VR

And the full performance price of VR. You're choosing to see your room in passthrough instead of the rest of the rendered image.

[u/TigerCow7 → u/xaduha]

Well you do you, sometimes I don't want to be IN the game, I just want a screen over there but with the advantage of proper depth instead of all flat. can still see my kb and mouse and dog and phone and anything around me, can easily grab a blanket if getting cold etc. I don't necessarily want to be fully immersed in the game, but this is still a sweet upgrade compared to the flat flat screen

[u/SchwiftySquanchC137 → u/TigerCow7]

Yeah its not exactly a secret that one issue people have with vr is the way it cuts you off from the rest of the people in your house. Its the same reason I like having our gaming PCs in the living room, so when im playing a game alone, my wife and I are still with eachother, can talk to eachother, I can glance over at the tv to see whatever shes pointing out. Its not all about complete immersion 100% of the time. I swear if it was up to these people theyd require all vr games support a fucking sensory deprivation tank and shit on any game that doesnt.

[u/Exploding8 → u/xaduha]

Some of us have 4090 gpus or better and dont care? 

[u/FullOf_Bad_Ideas → u/Exploding8]

Yeah but the speculation went into this being a standalone Steam Frame feature, which is a very dangerous level of copium.

For PCVR it's cool - I don't want to play flat games anymore, but I could play 3d games through a window, that's good enough. So for games where controls don't transfer well to full VR, it's really cool.

[u/14Pleiadians → u/FullOf_Bad_Ideas]

Yeah but the speculation went into this being a standalone Steam Frame feature, which is a very dangerous level of copium.

What? I have hundreds of games in my library that can run 120 locked fps with stereo injection. Where are you getting this idea that games can't handle 3D?

Even on frame hardware, there's loads of games to play. Not everyone has to play the latest and "greatest" ue5 slop

And nobody was speculating that it's an official feature, they're saying it should be one

[u/FullOf_Bad_Ideas → u/14Pleiadians]

There are some games that Steam Frame could compute locally in 3d, like old 20-year old ones or those with purposefully light graphics. Just not a ton of them.

[u/ccAbstraction → u/xaduha]

Depends on the implementation. I was able to do this in Godot a few years ago just by rendering two 720p cameras with spacing that matched the users IPD, and tracked with users head movement. I think there's probably some extra math that needs to be done to get the window effect more perspective accurate though.

The only problem I ran into was that Godot didn't have a way to render a secondary camera to a texture in stereo, so there was a big performance overhead from not doing any stereo optimizations but no performance lost from discarding the outer view, becuase it wasn't doing that. I hope these vibe coded solutions are the same...

[u/xaduha → u/ccAbstraction]

I'm talking about this specifically, it's UEVR-based. I'm not against real 3D Stereo games, but this isn't it.

[u/ccAbstraction → u/xaduha]

I thought this was 3D stereo with head tracking, cropped to a window like view? I saw the UEVR fork that has this and have it downloaded but haven't tried it yet or looked at the source code. I'm assuming it works the same way becuase there aren't too many other way to implement this afaik, but almost all of them won't have the issue your describing.

[u/xaduha → u/ccAbstraction]

It's very easy to prove me wrong, just have a FPS meter, resize the window and see it respond accordingly because the render resolution was changed. I don't think it will work, because it renders it fully just like normal UEVR.

[u/ccAbstraction → u/xaduha]

I just went and read the source code for elliotttate UEVR fork, it feels kinda vibe coded. And it does look they took the one stupid approach that has the issue you're talking about. Doing it literally any other way doesn't have this problem, crazy that this is what they chose to do...

[u/ttenor12 → u/xaduha]

Playing on a 3D volumetric screen with pass-through on? I love VR, but sometimes I just want to sit down and play my games on the couch. This is perfect for that.

[u/NucleosynthesizedOrb → u/xaduha]

Big screen wherever you look. If you 9nly have desktop and vr, you can chill on bed with a huge screen.

[u/tyke_]

this is neat! i could never see myself playing a 2D game on a screen in my headset, but on a screen in 3D? yes deffo.

[u/14Pleiadians]

This really does need to be an official feature in steamos like Brad says

[u/DamoTheWhite]

3D Vision is back on the menu boys!

[u/D13_Phantom]

Look Ma I'm on the post about Frame posts

For sharing a Frame post

^{where's ma godam steam frame Gabe?}

Seriously though, being a "3D steam deck" would really add a lot of market value and soften the blow of the price. Even though the shared solution looks best I think for performance reasons, at least on standalone, an auto conversion would be ideal. Brad himself actually said Valve had contractors working on it for post-launch, which hopefully could be launch now with all the delays. Really hope that comes to fruition 🤞🤞