Big news from the Nvidia camp today! They have released their Gameworks VR SDK and service platform. Detailed in the above video, Gameworks VR is primarily a collection of tools and techniques that maximize their GPU performance in VR. Samples of this include:
- Proper SLI support for virtual reality (one GPU per eye)
- Multires shading which is about limiting render power to the pixels that are actually seen by the eye versus the whole screen space.
- Context rendering which appears to be Nvidia’s branding for asynchronous timewarp at the driver level.
- Direct Mode support is the recognition that the HMD is a unique display device versus an unnatural extension of the computer desktop.
Yay! Out of all the updates, we are most excited about their multires shading technique because this will create a much needed performance boost that doesn’t require brand new hardware to build from.