Valve is making some changes to the way virtual reality is handled by its SteamVR software platform that should, in theory, mean you don't need quite such a hefty graphics card to run it at smooth frame rates. In turn, even those with decent graphics cards may be able to opt for greater detail rather than FPS, utilizing the feature to maintain comfort and avoid nausea throughout their play session.
"If you have a flatscreen TV, you may be familiar with the term Motion Smoothing," Valve explained in a blog post. "TVs apply Motion Smoothing by interpolating between two existing frames to create a new in-between frame. This smooths out the frames and increases framerate, but it also adds latency—providing passable results for TV but definitely not the right way to go in VR."
To ward off the dreaded latency spike, Valve is doing things a little differently with its motion blurring technology. It works by analyzing frames in real time and if it detects a judder between even a couple of frames, it will estimate the next frames in the sequence to smooth them out and then jump back to normal rendering again. This apparently allows the game to retain a smooth, 90 FPS but avoid any drops that might come about from having underpowered hardware.
In some cases Valve claims that this can halve the performance requirements for the game, which could have a dramatic impact on the kind of systems that could be certified as VR ready.
"Not only can lower-end GPUs now produce smooth frames in applications that were previously too expensive, higher-end GPUs can now render at an even higher resolution increasing the fidelity of all experiences on all VR systems," Valve said.
Motion smoothing is currently limited to Windows 10 and to Nvidia graphics cards, but that will change as it moves through beta testing.
