[Motor Gráfico] Source 2

[Winjer]

Source 2 Engine Officially Announced, Available for Free to Content Developers

During this year’s GDC, Valve has officially unveiled Source 2 Engine. Although the company did not reveal any noteworthy new title (like, you know… Half Life 3 or Left4Dead 3), it stated – via a press release – that the engine will be available for free to all content developers.Valve’s Jay Stelly said:

“The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favourite games. We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.”

In addition, Valve announced Steam Link; a new device that allows streaming from any PC or Steam Machine at 1080p and 60H. Steam Link will be priced at $49.99.
Furthermore, the Steam Controller will also be available alongside Steam Link, and will also be priced at $49.99.
Both Steam Link and Steam Controller are planned for a November release.

[Winjer]

Source 2 announced, SteamVR, Steam Link and more at GDC

March 3, 2015 -- Valve announces a number of product and technologies at this week's Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco.

"We continue to see very strong growth in PC Gaming, with Steam growing 50% in the last 12 months," said Gabe Newell, Valve's president. "With these announcements we hope that we are helping build on that momentum."
Steam Machines, Windows PCs, Macs, and Linux PCs will be able to take advantage of a new product announced at GDC called Steam Link. Designed to extend your Steam experience to any room in the house, Steam Link allows you to stream all your Steam content from any PC or Steam Machine on the same home network. Supporting 1080p at 60Hz with low latency, Steam Link will be available this November for $49.99, and available with a Steam Controller for an additional $49.99 in the US (worldwide pricing to be released closer to launch).
Steam Machines from partners Alienware and Falcon Northwest are being shown, with Machines from a dozen other partners slated to release this November. Steam Machines will start at the same price point as game consoles, with higher performance. Customers interested in the best possible gaming experience can choose whichever components meet their needs. Epic will give a demonstration of the newly announced Unreal Tournament running on a 4K monitor driven by the Falcon Northwest Steam Machine. "We love this platform," said Tim Sweeney, founder of Epic Games. "Whether you're running incredibly detailed scenes at 4K or running 1080p at 120 FPS for an intense shooter experience, this brings world-class gaming and graphics to televisions with an open platform true to Valve's PC gaming roots."
Valve will show a virtual reality (VR) headset. Developer versions of the headset will be available this spring, and partner HTC will ship their Vive headset to consumers by the end of the year.
Two new technologies are part of the VR release - a room scale tracking system codenamed Lighthouse, and a VR input system. "In order to have a high quality VR experience, you need high resolution, high speed tracking," said Valve's Alan Yates. "Lighthouse gives us the ability to do this for an arbitrary number of targets at a low enough BOM cost that it can be incorporated into TVs, monitors, headsets, input devices, or mobile devices." Valve intends to make Lighthouse freely available to any hardware manufacturers interested in the technology.
"Now that we have Lighthouse, we have an important piece of the puzzle for tackling VR input devices," said Valve's Joe Ludwig. "The work on the Steam Controller gave us the base to build upon, so now we have touch and motion as integrated parts of the PC gaming experience."
"We've been working in VR for years and it was only until we used SteamVR's controllers and experienced the magic of absolute tracking that we were able to make the VR game we always wanted to make," said Alex Schwartz of Owlchemylabs.
VR demos being shown at GDC include work from Bossa Studios, Cloudhead Games, Dovetail Games, Fireproof Studios, Google, Owlchemylabs, Skillman & Hackett, Steel Wool Games, Vertigo Games, and Wevr.
Valve announced the Source 2 engine, the successor to the Source engine used in Valve's games since the launch of Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2. "The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform. With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games," said Valve's Jay Stelly. "We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform."
Also as part of supporting PC gaming, Valve announced that it will be releasing a Vulkan-compatible version of the Source 2 engine. Vulkan is a cross-platform, cross-vendor 3D graphics API that allows game developers to get the most out of the latest graphics hardware, and ensures hardware developers that there is a consistent, low overhead method of taking advantage of products. Vulkan, previously called Next Generation OpenGL, is administered by the Khronos Group, along with other standards such as OpenCL, OpenGL, and WebGL.
GDC 2015 will mark the 13th anniversary of Valve's first public announcement of Steam, which has since become the leading platform for PC, Mac, and Linux games and software. In the last year, Steam realized the addition of many new services and features - including In-Home Streaming, Broadcasting, Music, and user-created stores - as it grew to over 125 million active accounts worldwide.
For more information, please visit www.steampowered.com/universe

That's it for the official press release, we've compiled the highlights and some additional information below.
Steam Link


The Steam Link seems to be a small computer that you can hook up to your TV through HDMI. It has an Ethernet port so you can use Valve's in-home streaming without hiccups. There's also three USB ports to send input back to the PC you're streaming from. Steam Link will be available in November this year for $49.99. Steam Link on the Steam Store.
Update: Valve removed it from the store, it might be back later.
Steam Machines

There will be a bunch of Steam Machines released in November by different manufacturers. Even though specifications and price points of the actual machines have probably changed significantly, we expect most of the manufacturers announced by Valve duringCES 2014 to be part of this.
Steam Controller

The Steam Controller will be released in November this year as well. It's available separately for $49.99. International prices coming closer to release.
Source 2

Source 2 will be free to all content developers. There will also be Vulkan support in Source 2, we'll probably hear more about Vulkan (and Valve's involvement) in the upcoming GDC talk. Valve have not mentioned licensing/royalty costs yet.
VR

Valve have officially announced their "Lighthouse" room tracking system used with the HTC Vive through two base stations. Valve says Lighthouse can be integrated into a multitude of different hardware including televisions, mobile phones, headsets and input devices. Alan Yates's weird "Chief Pharologist" Twitter bio sure makes a lot of sense now.

Valve intends to make Lighthouse freely available to any hardware manufacturers interested in the technology.

[Jorge-Vieira]

Valve – Source 2 Portal VR demo at GDC

Valve announced the Source 2 engine and started demoing its VR headset at the Game Developers Conference. It would make sense that they would also introduce a new game that would use their new engine tech, but nothing was revealed. They did however demo a VR Aperture experience, built on the Source 2 engine, and using both the headset and the motion controllers. It should be noted however that this does not point to a new Portal being in development, or any other title for that matter, as the demo was only for the purpose of demonstrating the VR technology of the Valve/HTC Vive. It does however give us a glimpse as to the incredible visual fidelity and capabilities of the Source 2 engine.




Despite the apparent low quality of the video, the potential of the source 2 engine is quite obvious. We can only imagine what a Portal title would like, or even the highly anticipated Half-Life 3. This does not in any way indicate that the aforementioned titles are in development, but we can certainly dream.

The Valve and HTC VR experience has left some great impressions

There have been some very positive impressions of the VR experience offered by the Valve/HTC unit, including IGN’s Mitch Dyer, who talks about his experience. There’s certainly an immense amount of anticipation for Valve’s titles, and whether they could be coming or not, remains a mystery. If Valve have opted out of developing their own games, it would be unfortunate.
Valve talked about the Source 2 engine stating:

“This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity, will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.”
“The value of a platform like the PC is how much it increases the productivity of those who use the platform.”

said Valve’s Jay Stelly

“With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user-generated content is becoming,
Source 2 is designed not for just the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games.
“We will be making Source 2 available for free to content developers. This combined with recent announcements by Epic and Unity will help continue the PCs dominance as the premiere content authoring platform.”

Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/valve-source-2-p...#ixzz3TYJMbv8E

[Jorge-Vieira]

First Source 2 Screens From Aperture Demo

Ar GDC 2015, Valve used the Aperture Science VR demo to demonstrate its new VR device, the Valve/HTC Vive. It was expected that the demo was using the Source 2 engine as it featured extremely detailed assets. Today the first Source 2 screens became available, included in the 67 pages long presentation (now available as a PDF here) by Alex Vlachos, Graphics Programmer at Valve. The Aperture demo, while mainly about Advanced VR Rendering, was met by extremely excited impressions from all lucky enough to try it. The Aperture demo for the new Valve/HTC Vive VR device has been confirmed to be running on Source 2.


ValveTime @ValveTime
@joeludwig Hi Joe, could you let us know if the Aperture Science VR demo you guys are showing off at #GDC2015 is running on Source 2? Thanks

Joe Ludwig @joeludwig
Follow
@ValveTime Yes, the Aperture demo is in Source 2. Alex Vlachos gave a talk including some details. Look for it on the vault if you missed it
7:50 AM - 5 Mar 2015

The Source 2 engine has been rumored since August 2012, and it has finally been announced at GDC 2015. Valve confirmed that it will be free for content developers, with a statement by Senior Engineer Jay Stelly stating in the press release:

With Source 2, our focus is increasing creator productivity. Given how important user-generated content is becoming, Source 2 is designed not just for the professional developer, but enabling gamers themselves to participate in the creation and development of their favorite games.

Valve also confirmed that a Vulkan version of Source 2 will be available. Vulkan is the Khronos Group new API, and successor to OpenGL. Source 2 was demonstrated running on Vulkan in a Dota 2 build, that even though it has been demonstrated running on Intel graphics, it displayed a massive amount of enemies onscreen.
Gabe Newell talked about Source 2 engine and how it will be free for everyone to use. One of the big focuses on the new engine is productivity for bot developers and gamers. He also talked about Vulkan and the support from companies like Valve, Blizzard and Epic Games.
Newell also talked about Valve’s Source 2 engine and how it will be free for everyone to use. One of Valve’s focuses on its newest engine, he elaborated, is productivity for both developers and gamers. Vulcan, which is the next-generation of OpenGL, was also talked about and how it is a cross-platform API that will be supported by companies such as Valve, Blizzard, and Epic Games.




We will bring you any new information on Source 2 and Valve as soon as it becomes available. You can read more about Valve in our previous coverage, here and here.

Noticia:
http://wccftech.com/source-2-screens-aperture-demo/