SteamVR Beta Introduces Motion Smoothing For Improved Framerate

Valve introduces motion smoothing for SteamVR. The technology should prevent users from experiencing a reduced frame rate in games. Motion smoothing, like SteamVR, is still in beta. It only works with Windows 10 and Nvidia GPUs.

In a blog post, Valve explains that motion smoothing uses self-generated frames to replace dropped frames. These are created from estimates of the motion and animation from the last two frames. According to Valve, older video cards can function more efficiently by applying the technology. In addition, the developer states that, when necessary, motion smoothing can also render two to three frames per single ‘real’ frame.

The technique does not work with the Oculus Rift and Mixed Reality headsets from Windows with SteamVR, because they use different techniques to keep track of the frame rate. It is not yet known when the application and SteamVR will come out of beta.

Motion smoothing builds on asynchronous reprojection, which has been available for SteamVR since October 2016, according to Valve. Oculus uses a similar technique, called Asynchronous Spacewarp.