Here we will be taking a brief walk-through of the NVIDIA VRWorks APIs. These sets of Application Programming Interfaces, sample code, and libraries are intended for use by the VR developers.<\/p>\n
NVIDIA VRWorks appeals to game and application developers, VR headset developers and generally professional developers all in their own way.<\/p>\n
With the advancements in the VR technologies from around the world, there is a clear need for high quality, high-performance set of APIs and libraries to aid the developers to create various applications. These applications include video games and simulations as well as the VR headsets that accompany them.<\/p>\n
Such a toolkit would be incomplete without addressing the needs of professional VR environments like CAVES, Immersive Displays & Cluster Solutions.<\/p>\n
Now as far as\u00a0 NVIDIA VRWorks goes, when we look at the game and application developers we think more about improving performance mainly with the implementation of Multi-Res Shading and VR SLI.<\/p>\n
Multi-Res Shading<\/strong> entails rendering a scene with multiple resolutions based on the pixel density of a warped image. With the aid of Maxwell’s multi-projection architecture, GPU features complex scenes with multiple scaled viewports can be rendered in a single pass. The benefit here is a notable performance boost<\/p>\n As for VR SLI<\/strong>, this allows the system to split multiple GPUs and assigned them to a specific eye. By doing this the developer can achieve accelerated stereo rendering on DirectX and OpenGL.<\/p>\n NVIDIA VRWorks targets VR headset developers by placing tools in their hands which helps reduce latency and improves industry compatibility with multiple interfaces and devices.<\/p>\n Context Priority<\/strong> is a feature which provides headset developers more control over the GPU scheduling in places such as the asynchronous time warp allowing a scene to sync with the headset wearer’s movements in real-time with reduced latency.<\/p>\n Then there is Direct Mode<\/strong>. This allows the developer to isolate the VR headset as though it is a head-mounted display independent of the normal monitor. This provides more stability and better compatibility with the final product.<\/p>\n Front Buffer Rendering<\/strong> grants access to the GPU to render directly to the front buffer. This reduces latency and consequently improves performance.<\/p>\n CAVES, Immersive Displays, and Cluster Solutions have not been left out. NVIDIA VRWorks brings Warp and Blend<\/strong> APIs which provides independent geometry adjustments across the VR environment. It does this without increased latency.<\/p>\n Then there various Synchronization<\/strong> techniques which prevent distortions in the image output when producing a large Desktop driven by multiple GPUs or clusters. These techniques include Frame Lock, Stereo Lock, Swap Groups and Swap Barriers.<\/p>\n Performance improvements are achieved with GPU Affinity<\/strong> by managing the placement of graphics and whatever is rendered across multiple GPUs.<\/p>\n Finally GPU Direct for Video<\/strong> allows the transfer of video to and from the GPU without the increase in latency. That way the developer can achieve efficient video overlays into VR environments.<\/p>\nVR Headset Developer Features<\/h2>\n
Professional Developers<\/h2>\n