“Valve has been creating advanced prototype VR HMD’s since mid-2013 that are more advanced than other developers currently have access to, and this head start has allowed us to gain a ton of VR-specific rendering knowledge that we’d like to share with developers who are actively working on VR or plan to in the near future.

This talk will start with the base requirements of VR rendering, and it will progress into advanced rendering topics focusing on both performance and visual quality. First generation consumer HMD’s are expected to require renderers to shade over 4 million pixels per frame at a minimum of 90 fps. Due to the wide FOV of these HMD’s, each pixel ends up feeling lower resolution than viewing the same image on a monitor and requires better shading algorithms than rendering in non-VR.

Higher resolution rendering and higher quality pixels at much higher frame rates than games traditionally target is cause for taking a step back and rethinking many aspects of rendering. Some topics that will be covered include: efficient stereo rendering, reducing rendering latency, saturating the GPU despite synchronization points, reducing pixel cost for low-priority pixels, specular antialiasing, constrained anisotropic lighting, and other tips and tricks relating directly to VR rendering performance and quality.”

Speaker:

  • Alex Vlachos – Graphics Programmer, Valve

Ben Lang and Scott Hayden are Live Blogging this event which starts at 5pm PST. Updates should appear automatically below, no need to refresh.

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Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • HoriZon

    HL3 and I’m in ;)

  • pedrw nascimentw

    “And he’s laughing at me… because he knows I’m not very good at liveblogging.”

    You are great and are doing a great job :-)