What Is Foveated Rendering?
If you’ve been following virtual reality headset developments you might have come across the term “foveated rendering” used in press conferences and marketing materials. The technique can help improve VR performance, which is important in maintaining immersion and reducing motion sickness.
Foveated rendering is a term that describes a reduction in rendering quality in the wearer’s peripheral vision. It works by tracking or predicting the position of the eye so that the portion of the scene that the wearer is looking at is prioritized for high-quality rendering.
This means that rather than rendering an entire scene at a fixed or even dynamic resolution, the rendering budget can be better spent on just the part of the image that a wearer is looking at. The very edge of the wearer’s field of view may see a reduction in resolution or other image-enhancing techniques like anti-aliasing since they aren’t in focus.
The technique works best when paired with a camera inside of the headset to accurately track the position of the eye. A less sophisticated method involves predicting the position of the eye, known as “fixed foveated rendering” but naturally this has its limitations.
Not only is the technique more efficient in terms of hardware utilization, but it is also said to provide a more “lifelike” VR experience, better mirroring the way our eyes perceive the world.
Foveated rendering first appeared on a headset called Fove in 2014. HTC Launched the Vive Pro Eye in 2019 which includes eye-tracking using cameras mounted inside the headset. Finnish company Varjo also produces a range of headsets including the XR-3 and VR-3 which track eye position for true foveated rendering implementation.
Most notably, the upcoming PlayStation VR2
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