Valve has created Automatic Resolution Rendering for SteamVR

Steam creates Automatic Resolution rendering for SteamVR to deliver a better VR gaming experience

Valve has created Automatic Resolution Rendering for SteamVR

VR games are often demanding applications, with headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive operating at a high refresh rate of 90Hz. With higher-resolution VR headsets on the way like the HTC Vive Pro, the problem of performance has once again emerged, increasing VR’s GPU requirements while also delivering the prospect of increased visual clarity. 

In recent years one of the greatest innovations in the console market has been dynamic resolution scaling, a rendering method which allows a game’s resolution to vary depending on GPU load, allowing games to achieve higher resolutions in less demanding scenes while lowering a game’s resolution to prevent framerate dips in others. With the increasing popularity of high-resolution consoles like the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, this rendering method has become increasingly popular, developers to minimise framerate dips at the cost of rendering resolution in specific scenes. 

Valve has decided to take this solution and apply it to their SteamVR ecosystem, allowing their runtimes to measure the speed of your GPU and tell an application to run at a higher resolution for increased clarity or a lower resolution to stabilise framerate, preventing GPUs from being underutilised or overburdened. This solution can even force a headset to run at a higher resolution than a headset’s native resolution, offering users supersampling if possible.   

The best thing about this technique s that it will require no user intervention, applying to all SteamVR compatible headsets, including the HTC Vive, Vive Pro, Oculus Rift and Windows MR headsets when using SteamVR titles. This option can also be manually disabled if users prefer a fixed resolution. Right now this update is available to VR users by opting into Valve’s latest SteamVR beta, which is available under tools in your Steam library.   

  

Steam creates Automatic Resolution rendering for SteamVR to deliver a better VR gaming experience

 

With the introduction of new headsets with varying display resolutions, Valve wanted to create a solution where users won’t have to be wary of a specific headset’s GPU requirements, allowing lesser GPUs to lower a users VR gaming resolution when required while users of high-end GPUs will receive supersampling. In theory, this method will make thing easier for VR developers and gamers alike, as this method will ensure that existing SteamVR games will not need to be updated with the release of every new VR headset and resolution option. 

You can join the discussion on Valve’s new SteamVR Dynamic Resolution Rendering feature on the OC3D Forums.   Â