Oculus CTO John Carmack is an OG of the game development world has demonstrated a deep understanding of the ins and outs of computer rendering. In a detailed technical post published on Facebook, he shares a useful tips with VR developers which explains how to avoid ‘aliasing’, a common CGI artifact.

Aliasing, when it comes to 3D rendering, often manifests itself as apparently jagged edges in virtual scenes. When moving across the pixels of the display, these edges appear to flicker as the computer has to decide which of the screen’s finite pixels the line should be drawn upon, and so the line is essentially jumping across the pixels imperfectly as it moves.

aliasing
Photo courtesy Rayce185’s excellent primer on aliasing and anti-aliasing

Anti-aliasing is any method which attempts to reduce the effects of aliasing. There are many different approaches, like the generation of ‘mip maps’ for textures, which Carmack says is “missed by so many titles it makes me cringe.” He goes so far as to say that “Not using MSAA should be an immediate fail for any app submission [to the Oculus store].”

See Also: Oculus Shares Optimization Tips for Unity-based Gear VR Projects

In his post published on Facebook (below) he breaks down the best practices for anti-aliasing in VR, with a focus on mobile VR applications as seen on Samsung’s Gear VR (which runs the Oculus Home store), a project on which much of Carmack’s attention is focused.

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Ben is the world's most senior professional analyst solely dedicated to the XR industry, having founded Road to VR in 2011—a year before the Oculus Kickstarter sparked a resurgence that led to the modern XR landscape. He has authored more than 3,000 articles chronicling the evolution of the XR industry over more than a decade. With that unique perspective, Ben has been consistently recognized as one of the most influential voices in XR, giving keynotes and joining panel and podcast discussions at key industry events. He is a self-described "journalist and analyst, not evangelist."
  • Get Schwifty!

    How one could even stand to look at their own creation without AA is beyond me… it’s 2016 how the heck could a dev team NOT do AA from the very start…

  • Anonymous

    He should qualify that for where the goal is realism, but for pure graphics AA causes a loss of dimensionality. Beware that being surrounded by idiots could be diluting his genius.