The Performance Benefit Of Foveated Rendering On Quest Pro - UploadVR

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Quest Pro supports Eye Tracked Foveated Rendering, but precisely however overmuch does it amended performance?

If you’re not acquainted with the term, oculus tracked foveated rendering (ETFR) is simply a method wherever only the portion of the show you’re presently looking astatine is rendered successful afloat resolution, frankincense freeing up show since the remainder is little resolution. That other show tin beryllium utilized to amended the graphical fidelity of apps, oregon for higher basal resolution.

You don’t announcement the little solution successful the periphery due to the fact that the quality oculus itself tin lone spot precocious solution successful the precise halfway – the fovea. This is wherefore you can’t work a leafage of substance without moving your gaze. Believe it oregon not, that foveal country is lone astir 3 degrees wide.

ETFR has agelong been considered a “holy grail” for VR, due to the fact that if your GPU truly lone had to render 3 degrees of your tract of presumption successful afloat solution the show payment could beryllium connected the bid of 20x. That would alteration ultra-high solution displays oregon incredibly elaborate graphics. But successful reality, achieving this would necessitate perfect oculus tracking with zero latency, an absurdly precocious show refresh rate, and a high-quality reconstruction algorithm truthful you wouldn’t announcement flickering & shimmering.

Quest Pro is Meta’s archetypal shipping headset with oculus tracking. The end-to-end latency of this first-generation oculus tracking tech is connected the bid of 50 milliseconds, and the display’s refresh complaint maxes retired astatine 90Hz. As such, the existent savings from its foveated rendering are obscurity adjacent 20x.

Meta’s headsets person supported Fixed Foveated Rendering (FFR) – rendering the edges of the lens successful little solution – since Oculus Go six years ago. In a speech this week fixed to developers, Meta elaborate the nonstop show benefits of Eye Tracked Foveated Rendering (ETFR) and compared it to FFR.

Both types of foveated rendering are enabled by developers connected a per-app ground (though evidently some can’t beryllium utilized astatine once). Developers are fixed 3 choices for the solution simplification of the periphery: Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. With ETFR Level 1 the periphery is rendered with 4x little pixels, portion astatine Level 3 mostly with 16x little pixels.

The nonstop show payment of foveated rendering besides depends connected the app’s basal resolution. The higher the resolution, the greater the savings.

In Meta’s show trial app, they recovered astatine default solution FFR saves betwixt 26% and 36% show depending connected the foveation level, portion the caller ETFR saves betwixt 33% and 45%.

But astatine 1.5x the default solution the savings were greater, with FFR delivering 34% to 43% and ETFR delivering 36% to 52%. That’s an up to 2x boost implicit utilizing nary foveation astatine each – but lone a tiny payment implicit FFR.

Of course, what truly matters is what we don’t cognize yet: however noticeable are each of these ETFR levels? And however does this comparison to however noticeable FFR is? This is what needs to beryllium compared – not a fixed level of FFR to the aforesaid level of ETFR. This is thing we’ll beryllium investigating successful item for our Quest Pro review.

On Quest 2 FFR Level 1 isn’t noticeable astatine all, but Level 3 decidedly is. And since Quest Pro has lenses that are sharper some successful the halfway and edges, FFR whitethorn beryllium much noticeable than ever before, making ETFR adjacent much advantageous.

On PlayStation VR2 the claimed show payment of foveated rendering is greater. Sony claims its FFR saves astir 60%, portion its ETFR saves astir 72%. This is astir apt down to the vastly antithetic GPU architectures of consoles and PC GPUs compared to mobile GPUs, arsenic good arsenic the higher resolution. It could besides beryllium down to differences successful the oculus tracking tech – Meta’s is interior portion Sony uses Tobii’s.

Eye Tracking connected some Quest Pro and PlayStation VR2 is optional for privateness reasons. But disabling it volition evidently disable ETFR too, truthful apps volition person to autumn backmost to FFR.