First Source 2 Screens From Aperture Demo

GDC 2015 continues to deliver noteworthy information, with developer sessions slowly being released to the public.

Today it’s time for the very first Source 2 screens, included in the 67 pages long presentation (now available as a PDF here) by Alex Vlachos, Graphics Programmer at Valve. While the presentation is mainly about Advanced VR Rendering, the Aperture demo (which was received extremely well at GDC 2015 by those lucky enough to try it) used to demonstrate the new Valve/HTC Vive VR device has been confirmed to be running on Source 2.

Source 2, rumored ever since August 2012, has been officially announced at this year’s GDC. Valve confirmed that it will be free for content developers, with 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-compatible version of Source 2 will be available. Vulkan, as we mentioned earlier, is the official name of Khronos‘ Next Generation OpenGL Initiative and it’s a cross-platform 3D graphics API which will allow developers to extract the most out of the hardware, similarly to DirectX 12 and Mantle; this pretty much means that Valve’s engine could very well be used not only for PC but also for consoles, such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.