Valve releases The Lab renderer for free to Unity devs

Heads up, Unity devs: You can now download the set of scripts and shaders (plus source code) Valve used to render its Portal-inspired package of room-scale VR experiences, The Lab.

It's a notable opportunity to dig into the nuts and bolts of one of Valve's most prominent VR development efforts, and may offer useful insight to VR game developers working with Unity.

Valve's Chet Faliszek announced plans to release The Lab Renderer for free on-stage at Unity's Unite Europe event in Amsterdam today, and in an ensuing blog post Valve's Aaron Leiby described it as "an example of how we think current generation VR rendering can provide the highest fidelity experience with the best performance."

Developers curious to check it out can download The Lab Renderer from the Unity Asset Store, though they should note it requires at least Unity 5.4 (which is currently in beta) to run.