NVIDIA Teams Up With SMI To Improve Image Quality In VR – Based On Where You’re Looking

To experience VR at its best, good hardware is required. I’m not just talking about the headsets, but the horsepower inside of the PC that’s making the magic happen. Admittedly, many VR titles today don’t actually look that impressive, image-quality wise, but that’s going to change, and soon. Look no further than Survios’ Raw Data.

Does this mean that VR fans will have to keep on top of upgrading their PCs? It’s hard to say, but NVIDIA is aiming to make sure that whatever hardware you’re currently using is exploited to its full potential – seamlessly.

NVIDIA plans to reach this goal with the help of SMI. The two companies have paired up to deliver a technology called ‘Perceptually-Based Foveated Virtual Reality’, which tracks your eyes to make sure the game or content being rendered is at its highest quality where you are looking. Because our peripheral vision isn’t as crystal clear as what we’re directly looking at, that area in the viewport would have its quality automatically decreased.

The video below shows different methods of this foveated technique, and I’d assume that most of the modes would be supported once the technology reaches us, with a drop-down menu available in the NVIDIA control panel. Ultimately, though, all of the modes share the same goal: to make sure what you’re looking at is clear, and that precious resources are not being wasted on out-of-focus areas.

For an implementation like this to be successful, the hardware would have to automatically detect a change in your eye’s positioning immediately, else you’d see textures essentially build in front of you. Based on what’s seen in the video above, we might see the technology take action faster than our brains will, eliminating the chance of that happening.

So when will this technology reach us? It’s hard to tell, but NVIDIA will be showing off live demos at the SIGGRAPH conference next week. I’ll be lucky enough to give the demo a go, so I’ll report back afterwards with my thoughts. In the meantime, you can peruse the official project page.