PSVR 2’s secret weapon is its performance-boosting, game-changing eye tracker

techradar.com:

What’s a VR game without some cracking virtual reality hardware to power it? It seems that Sony is already eyeing up a spot on best VR headsets lists with its PSVR 2 accessory, after a GDC showcase revealed the power of its built-in eye-tracking system.

According to Android Central, Sony showed developers the new headset as part of a talk on the Unity game engine, detailing how the system’s eye tracking and foveated rendering combo can dramatically improve the performance of virtual reality games.

When used correctly, foveated rendering (which works to make sure only the area of a scene a player is looking at is rendered in detail) can lift performance on the PSVR 2 by 2.5x. But foveated rendering working in tandem with eye tracking can increase that to 3.6x faster than without either technology employed – that’s the difference between broadly downgrading the visuals outside of a player’s direct gaze, and specifically lifting the detail only on what a user is looking at. 

The VR Alchemy Lab demo was what was used to show off the PSVR 2 headset’s capabilities – a multi-platform app that allowed for a degree of comparative experience. Using the foveated rendering and eye tracking features of the headset saw frame time drop from 33.2ms to 14.3ms in the demo. 

A second 4K sci-fi demo saw similar results, with CPU thread performance jumping 32% and GPU frame time dropping from 14.3ms to 12.5ms. It’s going to be a key part of PSVR 2 developers’ arsenals, then, if they want to ensure their games run silkily smooth while retaining high visible detail – particularly given the demanding resolution of the PSVR 2’s displays.

The performance benefits appear to be clear ahead of the hardware’s release. But arguably more important, from a