Sharing John Carmack's advice for using 3D panoramas as game environments (e.g. Defense Grid 2)
When discussing with John about the implications of his current research on RGB-depth 360 panoramas in mobile VR (TL;DR: perf cost to render is too high), he provided the ff. advice for implementing an advanced optimization technique for achieving the visuals seen in OTOY's synthetic stereo 360 photos in a game context:
A similar optimization can be found in Hidden Path Entertainment's Gear VR port of Defense Grid 2. AFAIK it's the only published title on any VR platform to even attempt such a technique. While the results are mixed, the decision to pursue this technique should be highly praised from a developer's standpoint, and its value to the dev community cannot be overstated.
You can bake view dependent offline rendering onto crude geometric approximations to improve on the simple sphere or cube of standard stereo 360s.
(link to Tweet)A similar optimization can be found in Hidden Path Entertainment's Gear VR port of Defense Grid 2. AFAIK it's the only published title on any VR platform to even attempt such a technique. While the results are mixed, the decision to pursue this technique should be highly praised from a developer's standpoint, and its value to the dev community cannot be overstated.