Thursday, October 18th 2018

Motion Smoothing in SteamVR Will Make Low-End GPUs Ready to Support VR Games

Developers at SteamVR have announced a new feature called Motion Smoothing that will enable "more players on more PCs to play high-fidelity VR games and experiences". This technique works in a similar way to what it does on flat screen TVs. In this case, Motion Smoothing interpolates between two existing frames and creates a new in-between frame that smooths the experience and increases framerate. That adds latency, which is not a good idea in VR experiences, and that's precisely what's different at SteamVR implementation.

With that feature enable, SteamVR detects when an application is going to drop frames. If that happens, "it looks at the last two delivered frames, estimates motion and animation, and extrapolates a new frame. Synthesizing new frames keeps the current application at full framerate, advances motion forward, and avoids judder". This allows the user to enjoy full framerate while the performance requirements decrease. That way, even users with graphics card not specially powerful can still enjoy VR experiences without problems.
In the announcement Valve developers focus on Vive and Vive Pro and they confirm that with this new feature users can enjoy games running smoothly at 90 Hz. Even lower-end GPUs will allow to get nice VR experiences previously available only on expensive, higher-end GPUs. The technology is available in the Beta Program of SteamVR and requires an NVIDIA GPU. It won't be enabled on Oculus Rift or Windows Mixed Reality Headsets, though, "because their underlying display drivers use different techniques when applications miss framerate".
Source: HardOCP
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13 Comments on Motion Smoothing in SteamVR Will Make Low-End GPUs Ready to Support VR Games

#1
Vya Domus
These sort of features should be implemented at the driver level by AMD and Nvidia. Could be very useful.
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#2
Salty_sandwich
I loved VR from day one although I suffered from bad Motion sickness :( .... the PSVR was the worst device I tried for giving me motion sickness so sold it oculus rift was better but still left me feeling ill. it would last for days were I would be feeling sick lol but I still love the tech, shame i cant use it :(
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#3
qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
I went to a computer museum where they had a beta version of the Occulus Rift. The demo that came with it was designed to be as barf inducing as possible, by having you swing wildly on a giant swing and then chucking you off. Alas, it didn't work on me and the contents of my tummy remained intact. I tried to get my mate who feels sick with any kind of computer animation, to try it, saying with my best soothing voice that he'd feel fine, but alas he chickened out. Shame, muhahaha. :D
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#4
Vayra86
Nice for frame drops, but low end cards have poor performance all the time.
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#5
HM_Actua1
THis is a fucking horrible idea. WTF latency!!!

How about doing a Variable refresh rate like Freesync and Gsync?
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#6
xkm1948
Only for Nvidia. Yeah I knew it!


God damn you RTG work your lazy ass on VR support for ONCE! I know I no longer have the FuryX but the lack of VR support from team red is just infuriating.
Posted on Reply
#7
Vayra86
Hitman_ActualTHis is a fucking horrible idea. WTF latency!!!

How about doing a Variable refresh rate like Freesync and Gsync?
Read the article. It is mentioned specifically
xkm1948Only for Nvidia. Yeah I knew it!


God damn you RTG work your lazy ass on VR support for ONCE! I know I no longer have the FuryX but the lack of VR support from team red is just infuriating.
There is quite a few other things lacking at RTG atm... VR is solid bottom priority IMO
Posted on Reply
#8
qubit
Overclocked quantum bit
xkm1948Only for Nvidia. Yeah I knew it!


God damn you RTG work your lazy ass on VR support for ONCE! I know I no longer have the FuryX but the lack of VR support from team red is just infuriating.
I know, AMD graphics cards are rubbish nowadays. All we can do is to pay the reassuringly expensive prices for NVIDIA cards to get something decent.

Hopefully AMD will become competitive one day.
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#9
Mindweaver
Moderato®™
Finally, I've been waiting on this feature. Of course, I don't need it to play Beat Saber.. lol It's the only game I've been playing lately. I do need to jump back into FO4VR soon.
Posted on Reply
#10
xkm1948
MindweaverFinally, I've been waiting on this feature. Of course, I don't need it to play Beat Saber.. lol It's the only game I've been playing lately. I do need to jump back into FO4VR soon.
FO4VR has been AMAZING on overclocked 2080Ti. Like OMG level awesome
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#11
TheGuruStud
50% motion blur? You'll need stock up on Visine and enough acetaminophen to kill you.
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#12
las
Motion blur is the worst that have happend to gaming
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#13
Mindweaver
Moderato®™
xkm1948FO4VR has been AMAZING on overclocked 2080Ti. Like OMG level awesome
Nice! I really need to upgrade my GTX970, but I probably need to upgrade my 2600k first. I almost pulled the trigger on a 2600 ryzen the other day.
TheGuruStud50% motion blur? You'll need stock up on Visine and enough acetaminophen to kill you.
This isn't the same kind of motion blur tech. This shouldn't be noticeable were as the blur tech you're thinking about is an option in a game.
lasMotion blur is the worst that have happend to gaming
I agree, but this isn't the same tech as what you're thinking of in game.
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