Variable Rate Shading Graphics Options on the Patch 10.0.7 PTR
Another small improvement discovered in today's Dragonflight Patch 10.0.7 PTR update is the inclusion of Variable Rate Shading options! Designed to boost performance in modern GPUs by reducing the complexity of small shaded objects, while allocating processing power for more complex ones, VRS modes breaks on-screen images down into blocks, determining their importance and saving processing power from shading unnecessary areas that the player can't see. The result of this process increases frame rates, ideally with little to no perceptible difference to the human eye.
An Nvidia Developer VRWorks article goes into great detail, with a sample image helping explain how Variable Rate Shading breaks down areas of the screen to prioritize different shading elements.
NVIDIA VRWorks Turing introduces a new and more flexible technique to control the shading rate called Variable Rate Shading (VRS). With VRS, the shading rate can now be adjusted dynamically across the image — every 16 pixel x 16 pixel region of the screen can now have a different shading rate.This fine level of control enables developers to deploy new algorithms that were not previously possible for optimizing shading rate and increasing image quality. In this section, we will describe the underlying hardware mechanisms of VRS, and a few of the ways developers can enable it.
Figure 1 – Turing VRS supported shading rates and example application to a game frame. Without VRS, every pixel in the scene in Figure 1 would be shaded individually (the 1x1 blue grid case).
With VRS, the pixel shading rate of triangles can vary. The developer has seven options to choose from for each 16x16 pixel region, including having one shading result be used to color four pixels (2x2),.
Read more on wowhead.com
