AMD GPUs to Support Asynchronous Reprojection via SteamVR

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Announced at AMD’s GDC 2017 press conference, Radeon GPUs will support Asynchronous Reprojection on SteamVR in the next update. The technology helps to maintain smooth head motion when framerate drops below the headset’s refresh rate.

Roy Taylor, Corporate Vice President – Alliances at AMD took to the stage with some passionate announcements about AMD and its VR support, promising ‘120+ fps, billions of entities and 16K graphics’ in the future. Today, their focus is on delivering the most seamless VR experience possible on existing hardware, and a much-needed feature is an effective way of dealing with performance drops. Taylor invited Dan O’Brien, General Manager of HTC Vive, onto the stage to announce Asynchronous Reprojection for Steam VR on Radeon GPUs.

amd roy taylor

While AMD’s LiquidVR technology has supported Asynchronous Spacewarp on the Oculus Rift since December, Asynchronous Reprojection for SteamVR has been limited to Nvidia GPUs since its introduction in October 2016. The technique is very effective at mitigating the impact of small performance drops below 90fps, maintaining totally smooth head orientation tracking, which can result in a significant improvement to comfort and immersion. AMD is aiming to include the update in the next release of Radeon software.

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The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.
  • Oskar P

    Finally!

  • AMD is always “aiming” for something but never quite hits the target. I gave up when they raved that OpenCL was the next best thing back in 2013 then let it stagnate while CUDA got full support and regular updates. Then they announce Radeon ProRender with a big fanfare and that ended up crawling along with minor progress. Meanwhile the GTX 1080 Ti is being announced in 4 hours. Cheap isn’t always cheerful in my opinion.

    • Sebastien Mathieu

      Yep!! you steal my toughts!!

    • Xron

      If they will offer a gtx 1070/1080 perf cards at a decent price it would be a HUGE win for us, buyers.
      Cheaper price means:
      1st. We save money.
      2nd. More people will be able to run vr on their entry, mid tier pc’s.
      3rd. Competition is always good.

      • MW

        Dreams… New gpu cheaper than a year old NVIDIA? I don’t think so. Amd was cheaper for a reason. Top adm gpu costs as much as nv.

  • Foreign Devil

    Road to VR very clever making the black sidebars of their website clickable ads. . don’t know how many times I accidentaly click on side bars when I want to scroll up. $$

  • Median N. Mean

    Still waiting.