Valve Software, a major game developer and the owner of Steam video game distribution system, will discuss research and development challenges for head-mounted displays and tracking systems as well as reveal details concerning porting of Team Fortress 2 title to virtual reality goggles.

Valve programmer Joe Ludwig's presentation called “What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality” will explore the efforts of several employees over the last year to get the game to run in virtual reality goggles. These efforts have included 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. Mr. Ludwig will also share ideas on how a game specifically designed for virtual reality could avoid many of the issues that Valve faced when porting Team Fortress 2.

In addition, Valve's Michael Abrash will discuss the hardware challenges that lie ahead and possible solutions for virtual and augmented reality in “Why Virtual Reality is Hard (And Where it Might be Going)” session.

The talk will include technical content involving head-mounted display hardware and its interaction with the human perceptual system, with Mr. Abrash examining one real world discrepancy to which human perception is sensitive.

Tags: Valve, Steam