The latest release of Unity, version 2017.1 now officially supports NVIDIA’s VRWorks rendering tech. VRWorks contains a number of rendering features unique to the company’s GPUs which are designed to improve performance in VR applications.

Update (7/13/17):  After several months in beta, this week Unity launched its latest main branch release, version 2017.1. Alongside some VR fixes and a few improvements noted in the full release notes, VRWorks support also comes to the main branch for the first time, allowing developers working on the release version of the game engine to install the Nvidia VRWorks plugin to enable a range of VR specific rendering features (noted below) that can improve performance and enhance visuals on Nvidia GPUs.

Now supported by the main branch, we’d expect VRWorks to remain supported on the Unity main branch going forward.


Update (4/26/17, 10:26PM PT): While NVIDIA had formerly made a branch of Unity with VRWorks support available to select developers, the company has now launched a VRWorks plugin on the Unity Asset store which is supported by the latest Unity beta (2017.1.0b2). This makes it easier for developers to enable VR rendering features unique to NVIDIA’s latest GPUs:

  • Multi-Res Shading (Maxwell & Pascal) – renders each part of an image at a resolution that better matches the pixel density of the warped image. Multi-Res Shading uses Maxwell’s multi-projection architecture to render multiple scaled viewports in a single pass, delivering substantial performance improvements.
  • Lens Matched Shading (Pascal) – uses the new Simultaneous Multi-Projection architecture of Pascal-based GPUs to provide substantial pixel shading performance improvements. The feature improves on Multi-res Shading by rendering to a surface that more closely approximates the lens corrected image that is output to the headset display. This avoids the performance cost of rendering many pixels that are discarded during the VR lens warp post-process.
  • Single Pass Stereo (Pascal) – uses the new Simultaneous Multi-Projection architecture of NVIDIA Pascal-based GPUs to draw geometry once, then simultaneously project both right-eye and left-eye views of the geometry. This lets developers effectively double the geometry in VR applications, increasing the richness and detail of their virtual world.
  • VR SLI (Maxwell and Pascal) – provides increased performance for virtual reality apps where multiple GPUs can be assigned a specific eye to dramatically accelerate stereo rendering. With the GPU affinity application programming interface, VR SLI allows scaling for systems with more than two GPUs.

NVIDIA also maintains a custom branch of Unreal Engine 4 with integrated VRWorks features.

Original Article (11/9/16): As developers explore the limitless potential of VR, performance and efficiency continue to be an essential focus of hardware and software. Unity, one of the most popular game engines for VR development, has been a long-term supporter of the medium, introducing many VR-specific features as the hardware evolved at a frantic pace over the last few years. At GDC 2016, Unity announced they would be adding support for VRWorks, Nvidia’s SDK for optimisation of VR using the company’s GPUs.

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At Unite 2016 this month in Los Angeles, this commitment hit an important milestone, with Nvidia providing early access to a version of Unity with native VRWorks support for select VR developers, which includes the four major features for VR graphics optimisation: VR SLI, Multi-res Shading, Lens Matched Shading, and Single Pass Stereo. Developers can apply for early access here. Nvidia says they’re working toward bringing these features into the main branch of Unity. Per the update above, the NVIDIA VRWorks plugin is available now on the Unity Asset Store, supporting Unity 2017.1.b02 or higher.

Integrated VRWorks support in Unity means faster and easier integration of VRWorks technologies for developers, which Nvidia says can result in major performance improvements thanks to features unique to their GPUs. Multi-res Shading, which has already featured in custom branches of Unreal Engine, deals with the barrel distortion required for rendering optically-correct images to a VR headset, rendering multiple viewports across a single render target, using a hardware feature called ‘multi-projection’. By shrinking the outer viewports, the render target is much more efficient, offering a 30% improvement in some cases.

Pascal-equipped systems benefit most significantly, as the Simultaneous Multi Projection technology introduced with the architecture allows VRWorks to perform Lens Matched Shading, where 16 views can be rendered at different angles in a single pass, which can be shaped to closely match the distortion of a lens in a VR headset, resulting in far fewer wasted pixels across the render target. Combined with Single-Pass Stereo—which allows for reprojecting geometry around a second viewport—means 32 views are being rendered in a single pass, which can produce a significant performance increase in pixel shading throughput compared to Maxwell and earlier GPUs.

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NVIDIA Explains Pascal's 'Lens Matched Shading' for More Efficient VR Rendering

Ted Carefoot, producer at Cloudhead Games, the studio behind Unity-based The Gallery series, said of the announcement, “Optimizing VR content is always a huge challenge, so we’re very excited to be working with NVIDIA on VRWorks. Features like ‘multi-res’, and ‘lens match’ shading (MRS/LMS) are indispensable tools in the quest to make beautiful, interactive, and deeply immersive virtual worlds.”

Nvidia has also integrated VRWorks into the latest versions of Unreal Engine, Unity’s closest competing game engine for VR development.

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The trial version of Microsoft’s Monster Truck Madness probably had something to do with it. And certainly the original Super Mario Kart and Gran Turismo. A car nut from an early age, Dominic was always drawn to racing games above all other genres. Now a seasoned driving simulation enthusiast, and former editor of Sim Racer magazine, Dominic has followed virtual reality developments with keen interest, as cockpit-based simulation is a perfect match for the technology. Conditions could hardly be more ideal, a scientist once said. Writing about simulators lead him to Road to VR, whose broad coverage of the industry revealed the bigger picture and limitless potential of the medium. Passionate about technology and a lifelong PC gamer, Dominic suffers from the ‘tweak for days’ PC gaming condition, where he plays the same section over and over at every possible combination of visual settings to find the right balance between fidelity and performance. Based within The Fens of Lincolnshire (it’s very flat), Dominic can sometimes be found marvelling at the real world’s ‘draw distance’, wishing virtual technologies would catch up.
  • DiGiCT Ltd

    Awesome, will apply for it, want to see how far it can blow my gtx 1070 :d
    THX

  • Get Schwifty!

    This makes me dream of a VR version of Kerbal Space Program one day….

  • OgreTactics

    Great, for once Nvidia goes all the way through its work and actually make it…usable by some people unlike VGXI, Flex, Hair/Wave/Turf etc…

    Now let’s wait for Unreal 4 implementation, in fact I just realised there’s not longer really a concurrence between Unity and Unreal: Unity is great because optimised for mobile and performance, while Unreal is the way-to-go for easy performance and graphics on PC/Consoles…

  • Raphael

    good news. Nividia need to get vrworks into all the major game engines and promote amongst lazy game developers. You know… all those big name studios still pushing out dx9 or dx11 games who can’t be bothered to move with the times. SLI still hasn’t become a standard feature because it relies on game developer support and nvidia perhaps could have done more to promote it.

    VR Sli and and 1000 series GPU features supported in major games would be great. Unity is a great place to start.

  • Daniel Gochez

    I just switched my game entirely to “The Lab Renderer” I wonder if adding this breaks anything.

  • mbze430

    I hope AA and AAA developers start using the VRWorks plugins soon.

    • J.C.

      Same here. Currently, Nvidia is the ONLY game in town for VR anyway, so supporting these features would affect almost the entire customer base. I’m hoping the implementation is fairly painless, so maybe some “finished” or near the end of development games can benefit from this.

      For a while there I thought Nvidia was ignoring their single-pass stereo feature, since it mostly negates the benefit of going SLI. Nothing can TRULY stack up to throwing twice the muscle at a problem, but SPS seems like it’s a huge benefit. I guess we’ll see, unfortunately devs don’t tend to point out when they add this sort of functionality to their games.

      • David Hall

        Best not tell croteam who successfully implemented multigpu VR rendering for AMD GPUs as well

        • J.C.

          How many existing/upcoming games use that engine? Oh, just Serious Sam games.

          AMD multicard rendering will matter when UE and Unity have that. Pointing to a single (small) developer and saying “look, AMD crossfire is a success!” is like saying “this one guy survived a car wreck because he didn’t wear a seat belt, so that means not wearing seat belts is a good idea!”.

  • victor

    Can’t wait for games like elite dangerous, warthunder, Il2 to adopt this!

  • Raphael

    RAW DATA benefits greatly from vrworks support. I’m able to push gfx to insane levels on my 1070.

    • David Herrington

      I want to see a list of games that support VRWorks so I can try them out!

      • Raphael

        Serious Sam first and second encounter and Tue wave shooter I guess and raw data. Nvidia boring fun house and that lame Star Wars demo.

    • MasterElwood

      is the vrworks support for RD new?

      • Raphael

        Been around since last year I do believe.