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Foveation built in to rift driver ?

gamefan101
Adventurer
Re: Eye Tracking and foveation (only rendering high res where the user is looking, to reduce GPU load)

Batman Arkham VR uses foveation based on where your head is pointing (without eye tracking).  This works because a VR user typically moves his head around to keep things in the "sweet spot" of the lens.

Of course it's not as technically pure or sophisticated as eye tracking, but I think it does a great job nonetheless at reducing rendering effort by the GPU. 

In batman, with a GPU monitor gadget (or the SDK tool), you can see the performance improvement as you adjust
the level of foveation.

On my system, enabling and tweaking the
foveation saw my GPU usage drop from 80% to 45%  and I could not notice any  penalty in the  display.  No lag, no blurries.   With foveation enabled,  I was able to
tweak the SS up to 280% with no noticeable fps issues, but amazing
clarity.

All games could use this technique NOW without any hardware addon or modification.

I am surprised that their isn't more noise being made about this feature in Batman.

Hey oculus!     Foveation could even be built in to the driver (via a toggle on/off similar to ASW) so the game doesn't need any re-coding whatsoever.

We'll get the CV1 working on a 3DFX , no worries  😉
11 REPLIES 11

kojack
MVP
MVP



Hey oculus!     Foveation could even be built in to the driver (via a toggle on/off similar to ASW) so the game doesn't need any re-coding whatsoever.



Unfortunately it's not that simple.
Foveated rendering needs to be performed in the game engine during the rendering pipeline. By the time the rift driver gets involved, the entire frame has already been rendered and it's too late for foveation.

Author: Oculus Monitor,  Auto Oculus Touch,  Forum Dark Mode, Phantom Touch Remover,  X-Plane Fixer
Hardware: Threadripper 1950x, MSI Gaming Trio 2080TI, Asrock X399 Taich
Headsets: Wrap 1200VR, DK1, DK2, CV1, Rift-S, GearVR, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Reverb G2

CrashFu
Consultant
Huh. A feature like that makes sense on a game that was originally developed as a PSVR exclusive.  I mean, I remember hearing that they have really high-quality displays in their headset, but the console powering it doesn't exactly have much horsepower...

Know if any other games (originally developed for PSVR) share this feature?
It's hard being the voice of reason when you're surrounded by unreasonable people.

gamefan101
Adventurer

kojack said:




Hey oculus!     Foveation could even be built in to the driver (via a toggle on/off similar to ASW) so the game doesn't need any re-coding whatsoever.



Unfortunately it's not that simple.
Foveated rendering needs to be performed in the game engine during the rendering pipeline. By the time the rift driver gets involved, the entire frame has already been rendered and it's too late for foveation.



Oh well, perhaps we can get Unreal and CryEngine etc to build it into their engines.

Anonymous
Not applicable



kojack said:




Hey oculus!     Foveation could even be built in to the driver (via a toggle on/off similar to ASW) so the game doesn't need any re-coding whatsoever.



Unfortunately it's not that simple.
Foveated rendering needs to be performed in the game engine during the rendering pipeline. By the time the rift driver gets involved, the entire frame has already been rendered and it's too late for foveation.



Oh well, perhaps we can get Unreal and CryEngine etc to build it into their engines.


Well in theory - you just have to tell the engine (if it supports it) to go a head and turn it on - on load - from a driver stand point. So in theory - it could be turn on or off depending if it detects a HMD or not. So it could be that "simple" long as the engine is smart enough. Unlike dual GPU support - it doesn't require programming (if at all) to change render type at that point as the engine would take care of that half of the code. Long as the programmer already created the view points, it shouldn't matter from a programming stand point who setups the control for eye and rendering.

The only downside is that all software would have to be recompiled with the new engine before it could take advantage of such a system. Not something a driver alone could do.

FlakMagnet
Adventurer
Batman VR is using Unreal Engine 4 as far as I know, so this is already supported by at least one engine :smile:

nalex66
MVP
MVP
Very interesting to see this already in use in current-gen games and systems!

DK2, CV1, Go, Quest, Quest 2, Quest 3.


Try my game: Cyclops Island Demo

Greyman
Superstar
I want it in my X-Plane, DCS World and Dirt Rally and i want it now 🙂

Anonymous
Not applicable
I thought that tech was epic when I first saw it in Batman - definitely needs implementation in more VR games/programs! It made such a huge difference for minimal if any loss in quality of the displayed graphics (that you are actually looking at).
+1 for in DCS World - lord knows they need it BAD!

RedRizla
Honored Visionary
Hasn't it already been mentioned you can't do it on an existing game? So DCS isn't going to get it and if it did it would be 10 years away. How many years did it take them to change the engine in DCS last time around?