Idea: Screen space effects for overlays

[BOLL7708]

Hello! Long time no issue-posting! This is just a loose idea though, not a real issue.

Ever since I made my own overlay application, I felt as if the overlays themselves stood out a lot, they did not look like they belonged in the rest of the VR environment. I was looking for some way to get the average color of the scene to tint my texture before submission, but did not find anything immediately available.

I have not stopped thinking about it though, and while the original inspiration for this post was the blur effect that exists for some Windows 10 settings windows, where it blurs what is behind it, funny enough Apple is now doing the same in their Vision OS. And that is basically what this suggestion/wish is about. The ability to use screen space effects in overlays, basically to access the pixels beneath it when rendered. It would be a convenient way to make overlays that do not look out of place, I've attached some shots from Vision OS.

I do understand that Vision OS is one unified 3D engine, and that the overlay system in OpenVR might not be in the pipe for any substantial updates, especially if OpenVR is moving towards OpenXR, although from what I've heard OpenXR is kind of lacking overlays at all so perhaps some innovation could be pushed on that front.

In any case, I just wanted to leave this here so it has any chance of happening at all 😅 Good job with SteamVR 2.x, I've already been enjoying playing games in the new game theater 🙂