Vive Foveated Rendering in Q2 2019?

[hansangb]

https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/7/18172700/htc-vive-pro-eye-tracking-virtual-reality-headset-features-pricing-release-date-ces-2019

 

 

Exciting times....

[dburne]

Yes very interesting.

Oculus needs to get some focus back on PC-VR. Love my Rift, but something like this will be tempting...

[hansangb]

Yeah, we certainly need more competition. Great for us consumers. I'm hoping Pimax will be a kick in the pants for Oculus, and this announcement will light a fire under Oculus' ass.

[Wolf8312]

Isn't foveated rendering supposed to include big performance gains as well? That article didn't seem to mention them.

[dburne]

Yeah, we certainly need more competition. Great for us consumers. I'm hoping Pimax will be a kick in the pants for Oculus, and this announcement will light a fire under Oculus' ass.

 

I doubt Oculus is much worried about Pimax, however I would think new offerings from HTC will raise some eyebrows. HTC is much closer in market share to Oculus.

[Mr_sukebe]

That’s excellent news, as it’s not only going to increase competition, but also confirms that the technology is available. After all, there’s a good chance that HTC don’t themselves make the eye tracking units, just buy them in and assemble them (as they do with the Samsung screens).

 

Ref performance, my assumption is that it will either let you increase performance or visuals, just as you can now in DCS with a monitor. The key point being that it will introduce more headroom for us to choose. Tie that in with hoped improvements from Vulkan and we could be having some very nice frame rates a year from now.

[Strikeeagle345]

HTC, Oculus, and Pimax need to adopt Samsungs Anti-SDE tech as well.

[dburne]

HTC, Oculus, and Pimax need to adopt Samsungs Anti-SDE tech as well.

 

Nah, they need to do it better...

:smilewink:

[hansangb]

Isn't foveated rendering supposed to include big performance gains as well? That article didn't seem to mention them.

 

 

It's assumed in the "that renders sharp images for wherever the human eye is looking in a virtual scene and reduces the image quality of objects on the periphery." statement. You don't have to work hard rendering stuff you are not looking at. In DCS' case, it actually renders stuff you can't even see as seen by Kegetys' mod. I'm hoping this is the ED's VR tune up.

 

The big question mark for me is.....does this require appdev buy in? We know ED does not implement anything proprietary. Let's pray that's not the case here.

[Jyge]

So we'll be seeing 2nd generation in 2019 after all? I wonder whether this requires adaptation from DCS side as well or whether the foveated rendering is done directly between the card and the goggles. Also I read that NVidia is working on foveated rendering support, meaning that it might not be there yet for consumers...but yes it is defenately good news for PC simmers and maybe an egg to the face to Oculus and Facebook should they still care about PC gaming market...

[Strikeeagle345]

Nah, they need to do it better...

:smilewink:

 

Have you tried the +? not sure how you would do it better as there is no SDE with it. The only thing that would make it better is a higher resolution to make the pixels smaller.

[SonofEil]

I wonder whether this requires adaptation from DCS side as well or whether the foveated rendering is done directly between the card and the goggles.

 

The Ars Technica article I read mentions that it's up to game devs to implement game support of foveated rendering. ED's development pace may be glacial but they do seem to realize that VR is the future of flight sim, hopefully they can work on implementation once HTC makes the API available. I'm excited to finally see real world tests of the mythical foveated rendering.

It's also the first of three requirements for my next VR purchase. The others being increased FOV and a resolution bump, neither of which are part of the upcoming Vive. Considering I got the Odyssey a few months ago I'm not in any hurry to upgrade, but it's definitely promising that all of those requirements already exist in consumer products, just separately at the moment. I suspect (hope) that one of the mainstream manufacturers will have such a product in the next 24 months.

[Sniper175]

Have you tried the +? not sure how you would do it better as there is no SDE with it. The only thing that would make it better is a higher resolution to make the pixels smaller.

 

Exactly

[hansangb]

The Ars Technica article I read mentions that it's up to game devs to implement game support of foveated rendering. ED's development pace may be glacial but they do seem to realize that VR is the future of flight sim, hopefully they can work on implementation once HTC makes the API available. I'm excited to finally see real world tests of the mythical foveated rendering.

It's also the first of three requirements for my next VR purchase. The others being increased FOV and a resolution bump, neither of which are part of the upcoming Vive. Considering I got the Odyssey a few months ago I'm not in any hurry to upgrade, but it's definitely promising that all of those requirements already exist in consumer products, just separately at the moment. I suspect (hope) that one of the mainstream manufacturers will have such a product in the next 24 months.

 

 

Ugh. If it's a function of the developer, I don't think we'll see it anytime soon. I mean I don't know if ED has the wherewithal to write something for Vive, for Rift, for Pimax. It'll only happen if common API's of the world force the issue.

[SonofEil]

Yeah, that's my fear too.

[remi]

Foveated rendering might be an Nvidia feature, but honestly who's using ATi graphics card anyway?

 

 

It's obvious that ED should incorporate the feature: higher performance and higher graphical quality, win-win.

[Jyge]

Have you tried the +? not sure how you would do it better as there is no SDE with it. The only thing that would make it better is a higher resolution to make the pixels smaller.

 

Not sure the increase in pixels is going to make a huge difference past the point. Both Odyssey+ and Vive Pro feature the same resolution.

 

Foveated rendering might achieve a better rendering on the focus point with less SDE but would you still need overall more pixels for it? Localized rendering can unload the GPU and provide an improved local rendering but what is the final image quality?

 

I am not sure about other things in optics. Where does the "sweet spot" come from? Is is due to relatively flat displays we have in the goggles? So If I look off center, the distance between iris and lense changes which I guess would be outside the sweet spot? This apparently would not be repaired by foveated rendering? I somehow still believe that a next improvement in the real image quality might be achieved with varifocal on top of it all.

 

Other than that I do not think the foveated rendering is so much vive specific. It will be supported by Nvidia drivers, so for DCS it should not really make a difference whether it is Vive or later Pimax that is connected with eyetracking. The question is rather whether DCS need to be adapted much for it, I am pretty sure a Vive specific interface is not needed, if they need to do something it is probably going to cover all (with Nvidia that is, of course but who cares about ATI anyway)?

Edited January 9, 2019 by Jyge

[Mr_sukebe]

I did think I’d read that the Nvidia drivers already supported foveated rendering.

[Brun]

I'm sceptical of significant performance gains from foveated rendering. Even though it might lighten the rendering load, the reason for of poor performance in VR (in DX11 at least) is having to 'create' the scene twice rather than render the pixels. I don't see how foveated rendering will do anything to alleviate that.

 

Might be that DX12 and Vulcan benefit more, but that's not much use for DCS.

[DeltaMike]

I dunno. There's a difference between looking at a monitor and wearing one. How often are we holding our head still and flicking the eyes around? Helpful if you're flying steam gauges I guess, but I think you get the most out of VR by keeping your head moving. That's the key and I think Kegetys has the solution

[hansangb]

I dunno. There's a difference between looking at a monitor and wearing one. How often are we holding our head still and flicking the eyes around? Helpful if you're flying steam gauges I guess, but I think you get the most out of VR by keeping your head moving. That's the key and I think Kegetys has the solution

 

it's not mutually exclusive. The whole point of FR is to make sure whatever you're looking at is crystal sharp. And everything else fades away. How you move your pupil, via eye movement or head movement, shouldn't matter.

 

This is exactly how our eyes work. We *think* we see in HD clarity, but we really don't. NatGeo's Brain Games show demonstrated this to an astonishing level. The lack of clarity of what we perceive to be HD was quite striking.

 

Ultimately, I want the best experience with VR with DCS. It's certainly not bad today, but it's really the first generation so there is a lot more upside . So long as it doesn't get abandoned by the vendors due to the niche-ness of it all.

[Zoomer]

Eye tracking and foveated rendering are the future of VR to ease gpu load, Oculus are already working on it.

RTX cards already can provide the deep learning on the fly for VR. Edited January 9, 2019 by Zoomer

[etherbattx]

it may ease GPU load (great!) but it does nothing to fix the resolution and clarity issues.

 

it’s still a long ways away from what a simple monitor can do

[Jyge]

Eye tracking and foveated rendering are the future of VR to ease gpu load, Oculus are already working on it.

RTX cards already can provide the deep learning on the fly for VR.

 

 

I am afraid they seem to be working a little bit slower on that one since the video. Apparently, they got re-prioritized to light-weight entertainment on standalone sets like Go and Quest. For pushing that approach, the Quest intentionally does not feature a PC connection and has own processing for its own games. The Rift 2 seems to be pushed back (maybe out of the way, in order not to hamper the standalone strategy), CES 2019 for Oculus is just about Quest-approach.

Edited January 10, 2019 by Jyge

[wormeaten]

I am afraid they seem to be working a little bit slower on that one since the video. Apparently, they got re-prioritized to light-weight entertainment on standalone sets like Go and Quest. For pushing that approach, the Quest intentionally does not feature a PC connection and has own processing for its own games. The Rift 2 seems to be pushed back (maybe out of the way, in order not to hamper the standalone strategy), CES 2019 for Oculus is just about Quest-approach.

 

 

Could be true but it is natural when you look in some direction even in real life you stayed focused on some details. This effect maybe not affecting much in usage and this input lag will compensate naturally just like do with persons with bad vision. If you don't wear glasses you focus a little bit more and longer so this natural reflex will eliminate that input lag.