SteamVR developers have announced a new feature called Motion Smoothing that enables users to play hi-fi VR games and experiences on more PCs. This technique works similarly to many TVs today. In this case, motion smoothing interpolates between two existing images and creates a new intermediate frame that smoothes the experience and increases the frame rate.
The SteamVR platform promises that this new technology will not add latency to the virtual reality gaming experience.
When this feature is enabled, SteamVR detects when an application has a frame crash. When this happens, it will look at the last two images and display them. The synthesis of new frames keeps the current application at the full frame rate, accelerates forward motion, and avoids stuttering.
The implementation of Motion Smoothing will make virtual reality games at Steam less hardware-intensive, so players with more modest graphics cards can enjoy the VR experience.
At the moment this feature is only active for the Vive and Vive Pro devices, Oculus Rift is not included or even the Windows operating system. So this function is only available on devices with SteamOS installed. This is clearly a “risky” step by Valve, who wants to seduce those players who want the best performance while installing their own operating system and opting for HTC glasses.