Will Frontier support 'Simultaneous Multi-Projection' in the Cobra engine?

[Arubeto]

As per the title: has there been any statement whether Frontier aims to support the new 'Simultaneous Multi-Projection' feature of the Nvidia Pascal cards for VR in the future?

 

[Arubeto]

For those who don't know what I am talking about: here is an article doing a nice job explaining SMP:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2016/06/15/evga-geforce-gtx-1080-ftw-review/5

Basically, it allows the creation of multiple views of a single scene in computer generated 3D graphics without the need to compute the associated geometry multiple times. VR could benefit greatly from it, given graphic engines support it.

 

[Yaffle]

As a player with three monitors I'd like to see it, the image distortion due to the one 'camera' currently is unbearable.

But it's never been on the list to do, as far as I know.

 

[PravusJSB]

I'd love some official word on this too, Rift user.

 

[dogbite]

I'd love some official word on this too, Rift user.

Love to see some official word on a lot of things. Overdue for Dave to do a livestream,

 

[[HJ]-RedRaven]

Would be lovely to see SMP used in ED, but I strongly doubt this is even on FD's radar.

Incorporating SMP into the Cobra engine would likely take some serious deep re-writes of the renderer code. It would cost a pretty penny in programmer time just to test it, before the actual motion-to-photon benefit is even known.

Cobra was not explicitly built for VR - the vast, vast majority of users are single-screen, 2D output players, with a small percentage on multiple screens, and a small percentage using a HMD like the Rift or Vive. Cobra has VR support, but that's it, and its mostly applied through the Oculus and Steam run-times. Its really only passing tracking info to the engine, and taking the final rendered frames back distortion before display in the HMD; the simpler process, the better.

SMP would undoubtedly improve ED, particularly for multiple-monitor users, and somewhat for VR users. Any SMP implementation would likely be only considered when the Cobra engine is considered ageing, and even then the cost-benefit would be weighing in heavily. So we're probably looking at 2-3 years (imo).

Hopefully though more VR users will join and push that percentage up!

 

[TorTorden_VR]

Would be lovely to see SMP used in ED, but I strongly doubt this is even on FD's radar.

Incorporating SMP into the Cobra engine would likely take some serious deep re-writes of the renderer code. It would cost a pretty penny in programmer time just to test it, before the actual motion-to-photon benefit is even known.

Cobra was not explicitly built for VR - the vast, vast majority of users are single-screen, 2D output players, with a small percentage on multiple screens, and a small percentage using a HMD like the Rift or Vive. Cobra has VR support, but that's it, and its mostly applied through the Oculus and Steam run-times. Its really only passing tracking info to the engine, and taking the final rendered frames back distortion before display in the HMD; the simpler process, the better.

SMP would undoubtedly improve ED, particularly for multiple-monitor users, and somewhat for VR users. Any SMP implementation would likely be only considered when the Cobra engine is considered ageing, and even then the cost-benefit would be weighing in heavily. So we're probably looking at 2-3 years (imo).

Hopefully though more VR users will join and push that percentage up!

Well if don't think it would take quite as long as that.
Like many game developers with an in house developed engine they use it for more projects (planet coaster etc ) and it is in their best interest to always keep it somewhat up to date.

Of course it will take time. But I hope it's not much more than a few months, but probably more than six months, quite possibly not before season 3. Whenever that will be.

 

[tarragon]

Would be lovely to see SMP used in ED, but I strongly doubt this is even on FD's radar.

Incorporating SMP into the Cobra engine would likely take some serious deep re-writes of the renderer code. It would cost a pretty penny in programmer time just to test it, before the actual motion-to-photon benefit is even known.

Cobra was not explicitly built for VR - the vast, vast majority of users are single-screen, 2D output players, with a small percentage on multiple screens, and a small percentage using a HMD like the Rift or Vive. Cobra has VR support, but that's it, and its mostly applied through the Oculus and Steam run-times. Its really only passing tracking info to the engine, and taking the final rendered frames back distortion before display in the HMD; the simpler process, the better.

SMP would undoubtedly improve ED, particularly for multiple-monitor users, and somewhat for VR users. Any SMP implementation would likely be only considered when the Cobra engine is considered ageing, and even then the cost-benefit would be weighing in heavily. So we're probably looking at 2-3 years (imo).

Hopefully though more VR users will join and push that percentage up!

Baseline is that going with homebrewed engine such as Cobra means, team FDev never has time to implement any modern features, because they always have more pressing matters to do (always) and it never pays of as it is niche. If you work with mainstream (Unigine, Unreal, Unity if casual)engine, not only you get better (specialized) people on the engine, but they also have nothing better to do, than to implement new features. It is also cheaper.