Nvidia Announces Performance Boosting GameWorks VR Technology

There are many different methods of VR heading to PC in the coming months, but they all have a few things in common. And that’s delivering high-resolution displays, typically at least 2160 x 1200, all at a solid 90Hz refresh rate. For immersion these two points are a necessity, with practically zero tolerance for latency and stutter, which could cause motion sickness. To that end, graphics hardware needs to be capable of outputting at the high resolution, all at a rock-solid 90 frames per second. That’s where Nvidia GameWorks VR lends a helping hand.

GameWorks VR achieves this using a number of techniques, including VR SLI, whereby multiple GPUs can be assigned to a specific eye. Context Priority meanwhile cuts back on latency and helps with rendering while gamers move their heads, while Front Buffer Rendering lets the GPU render directly to the front buffer, in turn reducing latency.

The headline feature though is undoubtedly Nvidia Multi-Resolution Shading, or MRS. MRS can be used to reduce the number of pixels generated by around 50%, and works on a principle of rendering the edges of the screen at a lower resolution.

When a GPU renders an image for VR it does so in a square, as it would for a monitor. This image is then morphed and distorted to fit how the human eye perceives it in VR. As a result, much of the rendered image is not even displayed in the final warped image, resulting in lots of wasted processing power.

Nvidia’s solution to this problem is to render the distorted zones at the edge in a lower resolution than the centre of the image, where the player’s eyes are naturally looking. Anything up to 50% reduction in the number of pixels rendered results in no visible difference to the user. This means it’s significantly faster to render but has little visual difference during gameplay.

From a sheer performance point of view, MSR can offer anything between 1.3x and 2x increase in pixel shader performance, all with negligible visual impact.

Nvidia continues to be top dog when it comes to software and driver support, and GameWorks VR looks to be a promising step to ensuring solid VR performance with Nvidia hardware. With frame rates of 90+ being a necessity, every little gain is going to help.

VR is clearly in a nascent period right now, will support like this encourage you to hope in early? Or are the hardware demands forcing you to take a wait and see approach? Or do you just dislike the concept of VR? Let us know your thoughts below!