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Unity, GTX1080 cards - Lens Matched Shading, Single Pass Stereo

Discussion in 'AR/VR (XR) Discussion' started by Fattie, Aug 24, 2016.

  1. Fattie

    Fattie

    Joined:
    Jul 5, 2012
    Posts:
    476
    Nvidia, 1080 (and better) cards now have a significant new feature,

    * Lens Matched Shading
    * Single Pass Stereo

    in short the 1080 (+) cards give you "the second eye for free" in hardware on the card.

    This is a huge, huge advance in graphics cards for VR.

    In fact, if I make a Oculus project with Unity, does the project take advantage of this when running on a 1080?

    Does Unity use Lens Matched Shading / Single Pass Stereo found in 1080 cards, as yet? (Unity 5.4) Thx
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2016
    pittsburghjoe likes this.
  2. elbows

    elbows

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    Nov 28, 2009
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    2,502
    Single Pass Stereo is a technique that can work on a much broader range of cards. Unity has VR support for this since version 5.4.

    What I cannot tell you, is whether Unity makes use of whatever nvidia have stuck in the 1080 to make single pass stereo rendering run extra-well on that GPU, nor do I know what the gains are compared to other cards.
     
  3. scottb

    scottb

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Jan 26, 2016
    Posts:
    13
    We currently don't utilize any VRWorks extensions. However we are working with Nvidia to support them in the future.
     
  4. Fattie

    Fattie

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    Hi @scottb - thanks for that.

    Just TBC are you working with Unity? Your profile is new and you don't have the usual "Unity Technologies" profile or icon.
     
  5. elbows

    elbows

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    Having skimmed over an nvidia pascal architecture review, I can add some more jargon to help differentiate the nvidia pascal accelerated version of single pass stereo from the existing, broader single pass stereo support.

    Nvidia pascal architecture builds on stuff first tried with Maxwell 2 architecture, an upgraded version of the PolyMorph Engine enabled them to create a new feature called Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP). Their Single Pass Stereo thing makes use of this feature, and reduces the amount of geometry the GPU needs to setup with VR.

    If I understand things properly, the result of this is reduced load on the GPU with VR, whereas the Single Pass Stereo we already have that works on the broad range of GPU's is something that mostly reduces CPU load.

    Lens Matched Shading also uses SMP.

    Most of the initial press and dev articles about this tech mentions the 1080 but since its an architecture thing I would be inclined to think it works on the 1070 too, and that didn't get a mention because it was the 1080 that was launching at the time. The underlying SMP tech might also work on the 1060 but that card isn't marketed as being up to VR spec so probably not relevant to these particular uses of SMP.
     
  6. pittsburghjoe

    pittsburghjoe

    Joined:
    Aug 29, 2016
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    What a Cr@p answer. Give us details!
     
    Fattie and zenGarden like this.
  7. Fattie

    Fattie

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    Posts:
    476
    >What a Cr@p answer. Give us details!

    couldn't agree more @pittsburghjoe. beers on me if i'm ever in your town.

    what a frickin' joke. dealing with Unity is becoming like dealing with the government.

    And give me a break - don't yet utilize the VRWorks extensions? who's running that group at Unity? I'd just stay up all night one night to patch it in. No wonder Unity are constantly trying to headhunt everyone competent

    Good grief guys
     
    pittsburghjoe likes this.
  8. DevDuFF

    DevDuFF

    Joined:
    Jan 3, 2013
    Posts:
    17
    This is now available in Unity 2017 beta: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-vrworks-and-unity

    Re: previous comments... it doesn't seem fair to blame Unity for not releasing VRWorks extensions sooner since we know little about the working relationship between Unity and NVIDIA, and what hardware and software requirements are necessary to add this feature to the engine. It looks like VRWorks extensions require Pascal GPU, while Unity's existing VR SDK does not have those hardware requirements. That's a pretty good reason for Unity to have focused on their native VR SDK first, before adding VRWorks extensions.

    That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there were marketing reasons for holding back the release of VRWorks extensions for Unity 2017. Regardless, It's likely that there are many reasons for the delay related to the implementation details of a new feature.
     
    elbows likes this.