performance boost for Oculus Rift

[dape]

very interesting article about Stereo Shading Reprojection. Up to 20% performance boost. I hope the DEVs will take a look at it...

https://www.roadtovr.com/oculus-new...ings-big-performance-gains-certain-vr-scenes/

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

nice..... 20% does not sound a huge amount but add this in with ASW and ATW and all of a sudden what 2 years ago needed a really high end machine to run on, suddenly starts to look possible on far more moderate machines.

(and then it means more eye candy for those on high end ones).

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

10% would be all i need to keep 90 FPS throughout. However, there are only very few situations, where the 1080ti switches to ASW and ATW, while having everything maxed in Elite.

Having 20% extra would definitely add some valuable reserves and will most likely be the 100% satisfaction bonus for high end systems.

I guess, the biggest advantage will be there for the low end VR GPUs, like the GTX970 and above.

 

[AstroCreep]

...where the 1080ti switches to ASW and ATW, while having everything maxed in Elite...

ASW is for Oculus, ATW is for Vive so can't see how your GPU is switching between them both?

 

[TorTorden_VR]

The company says the new VR rendering technique can be easily added to Unity-based projects, and that it “shouldn’t be hard to integrate with Unreal and other engines.”

Sounds like it needs to be in the engine.
We are as likely to see this in Elite as we are Nvidia VRworks.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

ASW is for Oculus, ATW is for Vive so can't see how your GPU is switching between them both?

? ATW is an oculus tech as well... vive has its own, which is (apparently) not as good.

ATW is when the frame rate of your game drops but your head tracking stays fluid
ASW is where the game inserts extra extrapolated frames into your game when your framerate drops so you cant see the drop in framerate... depending on the game it can be great or not so great so is sometimes best turned off.... ATW however is always something that should be enabled regardless of the game (I think... i do not claim to be an expert)..

Both can work together AFAIK.

The vive has asynchronous reprojection, which is their equivalent of ATW, valve stated they had an equivalent to ASW coming soon, but that was months ago.

 

[[VR] Frank_G]

You are correct, Mike.

Here is an excert from the Oculus page on how ASW interacts with ATW:

ASW builds on top of the virtual reality smoothing experience of ATW. ATW ensures that the experience tracks the user's head rotation. This means an image is always displayed in the correct location within the headset. Without ATW, when a VR application misses a frame, the whole world drags—much like slow-motion video playback. Encountering this while in VR is extremely jarring and generally breaks presence. ASW goes beyond this and tracks animation and movement within the scene to smooth over the whole experience.

And the full article: https://developer.oculus.com/blog/asynchronous-spacewarp/

 

[StiTch]

But the real question...will Bethesda manage to stop Fallout 4 VR being played on a rift through Steam VR?

...I'll show myself out.

 

[AstroCreep]

? ATW is an oculus tech as well... vive has its own, which is (apparently) not as good.

ATW is when the frame rate of your game drops but your head tracking stays fluid
ASW is where the game inserts extra extrapolated frames into your game when your framerate drops so you cant see the drop in framerate... depending on the game it can be great or not so great so is sometimes best turned off.... ATW however is always something that should be enabled regardless of the game (I think... i do not claim to be an expert)..

Both can work together AFAIK.

The vive has asynchronous reprojection, which is their equivalent of ATW, valve stated they had an equivalent to ASW coming soon, but that was months ago.

Aahh yes my apologies I'm getting the other mixed up

 

[TorTorden_VR]

But the real question...will Bethesda manage to stop Fallout 4 VR being played on a rift through Steam VR?

...I'll show myself out.

Not even VR can make me interested in fallout.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Hmmm

Reading that article worries me a great deal! Hopefully I am wrong but it looks similar to Crysis 2 and 3s and 3D Vision's depth buffer method aka fake 3D.

Going by screenshots, it looks like the section of the scene is copied and pasted then shifted with the halo around the edge corrected for. Very similar to fake 3D. Reading the article they also mention depth buffer

Has anyone seen what this looks like? I bet it will look like lots of 2D objects rendered at different depths.

If it is like the fake 3D mentioned above, we will be wanting to kick up a fuss to prevent it because it sucks!

 

[Kaltern]

Fake 3d is still 3d. This new system simply takes an existing 3D image, and, if the image isn't too complicated and would result in minimal image quality loss, just copies the buffer to the other screen without the need for rendering a whole scene. I can't see why it wouldn't work very well, assuming they indeed fix the obvious issues resulting from doing so.

It's almost like interpolation, for 3d stereo images.

 

[VR andysonofbob]

Fake 3d is still 3d. This new system simply takes an existing 3D image, and, if the image isn't too complicated and would result in minimal image quality loss, just copies the buffer to the other screen without the need for rendering a whole scene. I can't see why it wouldn't work very well, assuming they indeed fix the obvious issues resulting from doing so.

It's almost like interpolation, for 3d stereo images.

As someone who has gamed in 3D for well over a decade I can wholehearted say Fake 3D is NOT still 3D. OK it is '3D' but it is called fake for a reason. You can tell within seconds, I would argue instantly. I have little interest in 3D cinema so fake 3D might work there. It never has worked for gaming. OK it works but it is not true S3D and any non-cyclops can tell instantly.

Depth buffer is a totally different beast to ATW and ASW, where ATW and ASW predicts the pixels for missing frames, depth buffer removes information.

You need all the information from both eyes' representations for decent S3D. Not sure how you would achieve that 20% performance gains without some significant information loss. Eyes are fairly sensitive.

I am so concerned because this sounds just like depth buffer 3D to me. The article says depth buffer and the picture shows a *single*, as in one single halo for a sphere! A sphere has infinite changes of depth. The only difference between this method and nvidia's depth buffer is that Oculus corrects the halo effect on the final pass. The perfomance boost with depth buffer was good sure, but information loss has a rude impact on image definition. As I said, you can tell instantly!

I said the above similar on the Oculus forums.

The reason I am so concerned is because I remember watching a Crytek dev discussing depth buffer for Crysis 2 and 3 and highlighting the performance gains. And we all know how that ended...

I was excited about ATW and ASW; this I am not.

 

[StiTch]

Not even VR can make me interested in fallout.

I utterly failed to engage in fallout 4 until I put it in the cupboard for a few months and revisited it while ED was down. Honestly never changed opinion on a game so sharply.

Ahem...that's the sound of the train rattling those rails. I'll leave it alone.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

I utterly failed to engage in fallout 4 until I put it in the cupboard for a few months and revisited it while ED was down. Honestly never changed opinion on a game so sharply.

Ahem...that's the sound of the train rattling those rails. I'll leave it alone.

still not played F4 yet. completed everything in FO3 GOTY however.. great game. still waiting for FO4 complete edition then i shall get on board... and if it happened to be in VR too, so much the better.

the grat thing about fallout (3 at least) is it is fairly slow paced, not too much sprinting about which lends itsself potentially well to VR.

(my hope is ED goes a similar way if we get space legs)

 

[dape]

As someone who has gamed in 3D for well over a decade I can wholehearted say Fake 3D is NOT still 3D. OK it is '3D' but it is called fake for a reason. You can tell within seconds, I would argue instantly. I have little interest in 3D cinema so fake 3D might work there. It never has worked for gaming. OK it works but it is not true S3D and any non-cyclops can tell instantly.

Depth buffer is a totally different beast to ATW and ASW, where ATW and ASW predicts the pixels for missing frames, depth buffer removes information.

You need all the information from both eyes' representations for decent S3D. Not sure how you would achieve that 20% performance gains without some significant information loss. Eyes are fairly sensitive.

I am so concerned because this sounds just like depth buffer 3D to me. The article says depth buffer and the picture shows a *single*, as in one single halo for a sphere! A sphere has infinite changes of depth. The only difference between this method and nvidia's depth buffer is that Oculus corrects the halo effect on the final pass. The perfomance boost with depth buffer was good sure, but information loss has a rude impact on image definition. As I said, you can tell instantly!

I said the above similar on the Oculus forums.

The reason I am so concerned is because I remember watching a Crytek dev discussing depth buffer for Crysis 2 and 3 and highlighting the performance gains. And we all know how that ended...

I was excited about ATW and ASW; this I am not.

I see your concern. This would not be the kind of improvemnet we are all hoping for. It can hopefully be manually selected or deselected if it will be implemented.

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Will reserve judgment until I see it in action.
ATW is a life-saver. I don't like ASW for the visual artifacting it introduces, which I notice really easily and it drives me up the wall (or up the crater). I always turn ASW off in ED.

However, I can't fault Oculus for introducing ASW as many don't notice or don't care about the artifacts and wibbly lines etc - or need the extra boost when using mid or entry level VR hardware.

 

[TorTorden_VR]

ASW causes the occasional ripple.
ATW under 75 fps turns the entire image into a blurry, ghosting, double vision mess.

So I do not recommend disabling ASW unless you NEVER EVER EVER ! go below 80-75fps.

I sure don't like ASW artefacting any more than you. But where ASW actually engages is where ATW turns into a useless yak inducing mess.

 

[darkeccho]

Frame drop

Well after the forced update I am now experiencing a 50% framerate drop on the game i am developing in Unity, this only happened after the forced update as i was running 60+ FPS prior.

This really annoys me, better performance? yea right lol the update should not have been forced.