Foveated rendering
Foveated rendering is a rendering technique which uses an eye tracker integrated with a virtual reality headset to reduce the rendering workload by greatly reducing the image quality in the peripheral vision (outside of the zone gazed by the fovea).[1][2]
A less sophisticated variant called fixed foveated rendering doesn't utilise eye tracking and instead assumes a fixed focal point.[3][4]
History
Research into foveated rendering dates back at least to 1991.[5]
At Tech Crunch Disrupt SF 2014, Fove unveiled a headset featuring foveated rendering.[6] This was followed by a successful kickstarter in May 2015.[7]
At CES 2016, SensoMotoric Instruments (SMI) demoed a new 250 Hz eye tracking system and a working foveated rendering solution. It resulted from a partnership with camera sensor manufacturer Omnivision who provided the camera hardware for the new system.[8][9]
In July 2016, Nvidia demonstrated during SIGGRAPH a new method of foveated rendering claimed to be invisible to users.[1][10]
In February 2017, Qualcomm announced their Snapdragon 835 Virtual Reality Development Kit (VRDK) which includes foveated rendering support called Adreno Foveation.[11][12]
During CES 2019 on January 7 HTC announced an upcoming virtual reality headset called Vive Pro Eye featuring eye-tracking and support for foveated rendering.[13][14]
In December 2019, Facebook's Oculus Quest SDK gave developers access to dynamic fixed foveated rendering, allowing the variation in level of detail to be changed on the fly via an API.[15]
On January 4, 2022, Sony announced that their follow-up to PlayStation VR will include eye tracking and foveated rendering.[16]
On June 5, 2023, Apple announced that the Apple Vision Pro extended reality headset includes dynamic foveated rendering.[17]
Use
According to chief scientist
Eye-tracked foveated rendering was first demonstrated[20] in a product in Sony PlayStation VR 2 headset.
See also
References
- ^ a b Parrish, Kevin (2016-07-22). "Nvidia plans to prove that new method improves image quality in virtual reality". Digital Trends. Retrieved 2017-02-02.
- ^ "Understanding Foveated Rendering". Sensics. 2016-04-11. Retrieved 2017-02-04.[dead link]
- ^ Carbotte, Kevin (30 March 2018). "What Is Fixed Foveated Rendering, And Why Does It Matter?". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
- ^ Orland, Kyle (21 March 2016). "How Valve got passable VR running on a four-year-old graphics card". Ars Technica. Retrieved 9 September 2019.
- S2CID 253523241.
- ^ "FOVE Uses Eye Tracking To Make Virtual Reality More Immersive". TechCrunch. 10 September 2014. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
- ^ "FOVE: The World's First Eye Tracking Virtual Reality Headset". Kickstarter. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
- ^ Mason, Will (2016-01-15). "SMI's 250Hz Eye Tracking and Foveated Rendering Are For Real, and the Cost May Surprise You". UploadVR. Retrieved 2017-02-02.
- ^ Mason, Will (2016-01-15). "SMI's 250Hz Eye Tracking and Foveated Rendering Are For Real, and the Cost May Surprise You". UploadVR. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
- ^ "NVIDIA Partners with SMI on Innovative Rendering Technique That Improves VR". Nvidia. 2016-01-21. Retrieved 2017-02-02.
- ^ "Qualcomm Introduces Snapdragon 835 Virtual Reality Development Kit". Qualcomm. 2017-02-23. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
- ^ "Foveation in Game Engines". vr.tobii.com. Retrieved 2021-06-01.
- ^ Statt, Nick (2019-01-07). "HTC announces new Vive Pro Eye virtual reality headset with native eye tracking". The Verge. Retrieved 2019-01-14.
- S2CID 4899582, retrieved 2018-07-01
- ^ "Oculus Quest gets dynamic fixed foveated rendering". VentureBeat. 2019-12-22. Retrieved 2020-01-21.
- ^ "PlayStation VR2 and PlayStation VR2 Sense controller: The next generation of VR gaming on PS5". 4 January 2022.
- ^ "Discover visionOS". 7 June 2023.
- ^ Oculus (2018-09-26), Oculus Connect 5 | Keynote Day 01, retrieved 2018-09-30
- ^ Kaplanyan, Anton (2020-05-15). "DeepFovea: AR/VR rendering, inspired by human vision". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-05-15.
- ^ "PSVR 2 Foveated Rendering Provides 3.6x Faster Performance - Unity". UploadVR. 2022-04-27. Retrieved 2022-04-27.